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Volume 81 • Issue 30

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Serving Belmont • Cramerton • Lowell • McAdenville • Mount Holly • Stanley

Fire chief digs out department records going back a century By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail.com

Mt. Holly Fire Chief Ryan Baker says he's always been interested in history and that passion recently led him to do some digging, and the treasure he came up with is an extensive trove of records and photos tracing his department back to its earliest days. “I wanted to know where the department's roots are,” Baker, who came to Mt. Holly from Cornelius in 2002, said. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Mt. Holly Fire Department marked 101 years in operation. It's growth has been phenomenal. In the 1930s its budget was $2,020 and last year that amount was $1.7 million, Staff in 1918 was 11 guys and one truck. Now, the staff includes 19 full time and 17 volunteers, five trucks, a boat, jet ski, a service truck and a rescue truck. Baker's inquiry into the background of the Mt. Holly Fire really got going after he gave a presentation to the Mt. Holly Historical Society and former mayor Bobby Black gave him a couple of ledgers containing city meeting minutes- one dating back to 1907. “I read the March 1914 entry where the mayor and town board created a public safety committee,” Baker said. “In July, 1914 they voted in A.D. West as fire chief.” West was also named as police chief. The first piece of equipment the fire department had was a hand pulled hose cart. In 1918 it bought an O.J. Childs fire truck. it was built on a 1-ton Ford frame and cost $3,700. Another feature on that rig was a brass bell. That very bell has been passed see more

FIRE CHIEF page

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Mt. Holly Chief Ryan Baker is seen with one of the department's trucks and the 100 year old bell that was mounted on the city's very first engine that was bought in 1918 for $3,700. Photo by Alan Hodge

Mt. Holly Sports Hall of Belmont teen injured Mt. Holly Sports Hall of Fame inductee Roberts is Fame to induct versatile by horse dies Destiny Stafford, a resident of Belmont and rising 10th grader at Stuart Cramer High, died early Monday morning from injuries she sustained after being kicked by a horse over the weekend. According to Carolinas Medical Center, Stafford died at Levine Children's Hospital in Destiny Stafford Charlotte. Stafford had been kicked by the horse on Saturday. She was airlifted to Levine after the accident. On Sunday afternoon she was on life support at Levine Children’s Hospital. A prayer vigil was held Sunday night at Stuart W. Cramer High School where she is a student and Captain of the JV cheerleading team. Hundreds turned out and stood in groups, holding hands. According to Facebook "Prayer Chain for Destiny Stafford," the 15-year-old was labeled 'brain dead' at 1:17 a.m. Monday and her family decided to donate Destiny's organs "to let her give someone else life." "We know God still answers prayers because thousands are praying somewhere else for their child to get her organs and they are receiving them," her mother wrote online. "She would love this and we don't want anyone else to ever feel this pain."

a man on the go

By Kathy Blake Phil Roberts’ life of perpetual motion had two beginnings: a telephone call to Mount Holly Elementary School that sent the first-grader running home in a race to beat the school bus, and a yellow legal pad from his dad on which his tiny hands logged numbers in neatly columned rows. Phil Roberts The phone call, from Roberts’ mother to the school office, came on February 2, 1970. Roberts’ family lived on West Catawba Avenue, just beyond the cemetery and about a mile from the school – two houses away from where the county drew the line for bus transportation. His baby sister, Penny, was sick, so would someone please get word to the boy to walk home? “I took off down the road and was trying to beat the bus home. It was something fun to do. I didn’t get to be bussed, so I figured I’d show them, and beat it home,” Roberts said. “I enjoyed it so much that my first nine grades I ran to school and ran home.” About that time, Roberts’ father gave him some legal pads from work, and the child logged his distance each day – from the house, through the property by the middle school, past the gymnasium, down to his school and home again. see more

PHIL ROBERTS page

athlete Zeb McDowell

In an era when statisticians didn’t exist, and boys played sports purely for the love of the game, Zeb McDowell excelled at everything he attempted, until loss and destiny made him walk away. It was in the days of segregation, when McDowell, 83, attended Reid High School in Belmont; and he laughs sometimes at the joy of Zeb McDowell it all, when he sees the memories on the pages of the 1952 yearbook. “They didn’t keep records then like they keep them now, you know. They didn’t take a whole bunch of pictures, either,” he said. “I was looking, trying to find a group picture. You wouldn’t think about it, back then….keeping records, or anything like that.” McDowell was born in 1932 and grew up in Mountain Island, out by the dam, in a home with three brothers and four sisters, on land that his family farmed and where sports became not so much something that required skill, but something that took up the time. “Well, there wasn’t nothing much else to do but play sports and go to school. That was our relaxation, playing sports,” he said, then laughs. “Well, I enjoyed playing sports because

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