INSIDE... Obituaries ................. 5 Police Report ............ 7 School News ............ 9 Classified Ads ........... 9 Sports ..................... 6
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Serving Belmont, Mount Holly, Stanley, Cramerton and McAdenville
Volume 79 • Issue 49 • Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Fond memories of winter and the holidays By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail.com
Louella Connor
Emma Hambrick
Cold weather is here and Christmas is just around the corner, but to many of the senior citizens who avail themselves of the Gaston County Adult Nutrition program at Burge Memorial UMC Church in Mount Holly, this time of year brings back fond memories of days gone by. Mount Holly resident Louella Connor may be 90 years old, but her eyes twinkle when she talks about winter and Christmas growing up on a farm near Lowesville. “When it got cold we heated the house with wood in the fireplace,” she said. “I chopped the wood and made a stack out of it on the porch. It didn’t seem too hard then, but it does now.” Connor’s bedroom was unheated. “I had a lot of covers on the bed,” she said. “I had to. The covers were quilts made by hand.” Cold weather meant that it was time to kill a hog. “After it was killed we put it in a big pot of boiling water to get the hair off,” she said. “We would clean him up and salt the meat. The ham was so good. We did this right before Christmas.” Connor recalled how her childhood Christmas mornings went. “We didn’t get any big presents,” she said. “We got a shoebox with peppermints or oranges and some raisins on a little twig. Once I got a little rag doll with a head made out of china.” Connor has fond memories of those days. “We didn’t have much money but we had everything we needed,” she said. “We enjoyed it. We were happy.” Emma Hambrick currently lives in Belmont and
celebrated her 83rd birthday on November 24. She was born in West Virginia but moved to Gaston County when she was a child. “I grew up in the Rex mill village in Ranlo,” she said .”We rented a mill house for 80 cents per room a week. It had a big gas heater in the middle of the floor and in the winter we would gather around it to stay warm. When it came time to go to bed, we piled on the quilts.” Even though she lived in a mill village, Hambrick says her stepfather carried out the traditional winter hog killing ritual. “We had a cow, too,” she said. Christmas for Hambrick and the other mill folk revolved around the company get together. “We always had a big party,” she said. “Fred Kirby would come and the mill owners would give us a ham.” Santa was not at the top of the list in Hambrick’s Christmas scheme of things. “We never did think too much about him,” she said. “We were glad to be warm and have enough to eat.” Rev. Alfred Woolbright will be 93 years old this coming January 9. He lives in Mount Holly but grew up near Abbeville, S.C. in a mill village. He and his dad both worked in the mill. “We had a big fireplace in the front of our house and a woodstove in the kitchen,” he said. “We finally got a kerosene heater. When winter came, I remember being comfortable.” Woolbright recalled one Christmas when his sister got a bike- that he later put to use. “I rode that bike 14 miles to Greenwood and rode it to town too,” he said. “One year I got a pair of boots.” Woolbright is currently writing his memoirs, and hopefully recalling winter and Christmas days decades and decades ago. See WINTER, page 2
Rev. Alfred Woolbright
Rev. Forney Spargo Photos by Alan Hodge
Two Belmont men share unique bond By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail.com
Tim Duncan - 1969 Tim Duncan - now
Cramerton town manager resigns By Alan Hodge
Sometimes life can take folks full circle, and in the case of Tim Duncan and David Teague of Belmont, their circle had incredible coincidence stamped all over it. Duncan and Teague, both 66 years old now, grew up in Belmont together during the 1960s. They attended South Point High. Then, in 1968, they were both drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam where they lost touch-each man enduring his own version of that conflict. Duncan was in the U.S. Army's 4th Div. where he served first as a machine gunner and then as a combat photographer. His home base and “beat” was Kon Tum Province in the central highlands of Vietnam. Duncan saw plenty of action, including saving a comrade from being crushed by a tank. "I would like guys to remember me as the one who got the tank to stop before it completely ran over SP4 Warren Garret, west of Polei Kleng,” Duncan said. “The tank driver and tank commander didn't see that Warren was laying in a prone position firing his M-60 when the tank started backing up. I was behind a nearby APC, bullets bouncing off the hull. I hollered to the tank commander, but he didn't hear me, so I took off running toward the front of the tank and accidentally smacked into another guy sprinting around the corner of the APC to find shelter from the small arms fire. It almost knocked See BOND, page 2
David Teague - 1969 David Teague - now
Christmas Town USA lights up
alan.bannernews@gmail.com
After nearly a decade on the job, Cramerton’s town manager Michael Peoples has resigned to take a position with the City of Gastonia. He will be Gastonia’s new director of enterprise services and will be over several divisions including electric, solid waste, transit, fleet, garbage, and airport. Peoples will Michael Peoples replace Paul Jakubczak who took a job in Florida. Gastonia’s assistant city manager, Flip Bombadier, declared Peoples “creative, innovative, and efficient.” Peoples presented his resignation at a recent board of commissioners meeting. “The board of commissioners and I were saddened to hear of Michael’s resignation,” said Mayor Ronnie Worley. “Michael has been a tremendous asset to Cramerton over the past ten years. Michael will be sorely missed by me and our staff. His work ethic is unsurpassed. We wish him well on his future endeavors with Gastonia, our loss is truly their gain. This is a great opportunity for him and his family and we are glad he will remain a resident of Cramerton.” Peoples said he was sad to go, but looked back on his years in Cramerton with satisfaction. See TOWN MANAGER, page 2
These kids and hundreds of other folks were full of holiday cheer at McAdenville’s annual Christmas lights event Monday afternoon. See more photos on page 3A. Photo by Alan Hodge