NC Coop Extension

Cooperative Extension Encourages Land Owners to Know Their Land

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This fall the Vance and Granville offices of N.C. Cooperative Extension are partnering with the NC Forest Service to host a series of six classes with a focus on “Getting to Know Your Land”. The series will cover everything from plant identification to pond, pasture and woodlot management, providing a broad overview of practices that help landowners get the most benefit from the natural resources on their property. The classes are scheduled for Friday afternoons from 2 to 4 pm on October 1, 15 and 29, November 19, and December 3 and 17. The sessions will offer a mix of classroom instruction and in-the-field learning. The classes are free, but registration is required. For complete details and to register, visit http://go.ncsu.edu/knowyourland or call 252-438-8188 or 919-603-1350.

Granville Central AD Ray Noel Earns National Certification

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Granville Central High School’s Athletic Director Ray Noel has completed the requirements to be a certified athletic administrator from the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.

Noel completed the voluntary certification process which involves an evaluation of the candidate’s educational background, experience and professional contributions, in addition to a comprehensive written examination, according to information from Dr. Stan Winborne, public information officer for Granville County Public Schools.

Granville Central Principal Dr. Janita Allen praised Noel for his efforts. “I am so proud of Coach Noel. He works so hard to support our student athletes on and off the field. The Panther family celebrates this recognition!”

Noel, a Granville County native, graduated from J.F. Webb High School in 2002. He graduated from Averett University in 2007 and has been at Granville Central since 2007. He is the son of Becky Noel and the late Ron Noel.

The NIAAA is a national professional organization consisting of all 50 state athletic administrator associations and more than 12,000 individual members. It is dedicated to promoting the professional growth of interscholastic athletic administrators and preserving the educational nature of interscholastic athletics and the place of these programs in the secondary school curriculum.

TownTalk: History of Kerr Lake

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(Photo courtesy R.F. Timberlake – Kerr Lake Park Watch on Facebook and Shutter Art Gallery)

It was the flood of 1940 that finally set in motion the creation of the reservoir and dam that we here in North Carolina call Kerr Lake, but our neighbors to the north in Virginia insist on calling Buggs Island Lake.

The Roanoke River has had 17 major floods since Europeans first arrived in this part of the world, said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford. The 1940 flood put the Roanoke River a full 42 feet above its regular level, Pace said. If that type of flooding had occurred in downtown Henderson, for example, the only building that would not have been completely and utterly inundated would be the Vance Furniture Company building.

There had been a lot of talk about establishing some sort of flood control along the Roanoke River system for many years leading up to that devastating flood eight decades ago, but the talk turned to action after that event.

Pace and Bill Harris discussed the story behind the lake with two names, its economic impact and its future on the tri-weekly history segment of Town Talk Thursday.

Money to create the reservoir and dam was appropriated in the 1944 Federal Flood Act. Pace said the period between 1935 and 1975 saw the construction of many massive dams in the U.S. During that time, there was “a certain mentality that humans could control nature and use it to our own benefit,” Pace said.

Construction of the lake and dam began in 1947. Albert S. Bugg sold the land where the dam was to be built, a strategic location where the Roanoke River was quite narrow. It took 2,100 workers four and a half years of around-the-clock work to complete the project, Pace noted. That’s three shifts, day and night, 365 days of the year. The $5 million price tag then would be about $975 million in today’s dollars.

Workers excavated all the way to bedrock, placed concrete pillars and created what amounts to an earthen dam. There’s very little concrete in the dam, save the area around the hydroelectric plant, he added.

Longtime U.S. Congressman John H. Kerr from Warren County flipped the switch on Oct. 3, 1952 to officially open the dam and reservoir.

In an upset, Kerr lost his seat to newcomer politician L.H. Fountain in 1952. In a nod to his tireless efforts on the dam and reservoir project, Congress decided to name the reservoir and dam after Kerr.

Folks in Virginia had no problem naming the dam for the North Carolina politician, but they did have a problem naming the reservoir for him, considering three-quarters of the lake lies in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In fact, Pace said, 95 percent of the water in the lake comes from Virginia. “It’s their water,” he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers claims the land under the water, the land around the lake shoreline and the flood plain, which totals about 110,000 acres. The Corps owns to the 320 mark – that’s 320 feet above sea level – all around the lake, and lake property owners must refrain from disturbing any Corps-owned property.

“It’s one of the truly significant things that’s happened in our area – the creation of the lake,” Pace said. The lake and dam provide flood control, its original purpose, as well as hydroelectric power. Dominion Energy buys about 58 percent of the electricity the dam generates for its Virginia customers; Progress Energy gets the balance for its North Carolina customers.

And recreation is what Pace called an unintended consequence of the lake. Boating, fishing and camping are popular activities all around Kerr Lake, which boosts the local economy.

But not everyone was initially in favor of building the lake, Pace said. Henderson officials originally were on record in opposition of the lake. Agriculture was king in Vance County back in those days and it was not appealing to think that 10,000 acres of good farmland would become a lake bottom.

“People did not envision what the lake could be,” Pace said. “They didn’t want to lose their homes and their land.”

Almost 400 families lost their homes to the lake. And more than 1,000 graves had to be removed and re-interred in nearby cemeteries.

The lake also took Occoneechee Island, which was located near Clarksville, Va. Pace said the Smithsonian Institution conducted an archaeological survey there before the land was swallowed up by the lake. “That island was probably the most significant Native American archaeological site from Richmond to Raleigh,” he said. In addition to a Native American fort that figured prominently in Bacon’s Rebellion, the trading path passed through that area, too.

The United States doesn’t build dams any more – they’re too expensive. The $100 million price tag for Kerr Lake in the early ‘50s would easily be $1.2 billion today. The life span of a hydroelectric dam like the Kerr Dam is between 100 and 150 years, Pace said. After that, equipment fails, cracks form in the dam, and then it becomes a question of whether it’s cost-effective to repair and replace.

Kerr Dam will celebrate its 69th anniversary next month.

TownTalk: History of Kerr Lake – Click Play 

The Local Skinny! Downtown Live on Young – Amanda Ellis

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Young Street in downtown Henderson will be transformed in a couple of weeks for a few hours of al fresco dining, all for a good cause.
“Downtown Live on Young” will begin at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11 and Amanda Walker Ellis, chairperson of the Henderson-Vance Downtown Development Commission board said this fundraiser is all about Henderson – from the chef right down to the entertainment.

In planning for the annual event, which is the nonprofit’s major fundraiser, organizers looked “local.”

“We just wanted it to be all about Henderson, bringing Henderson back,” Ellis told John C. Rose on The Local Skinny! “This is a perfect way to show that we can and we will” succeed and thrive as a vibrant community, she added.

Instead of one long banquet-style table with a fancy flair, this year’s event will be set up a bit differently, Ellis said. There will be 10 tables that will each accommodate 10 people. Frankie Nobles BBQ N More is providing food for the event, which includes appetizers, garden salad, baked potato and made-from-scratch corn muffins, topped off with two entrees slow-smoked brisket and marinated grilled salmon. In addition to water, tea and lemonade, beer and wine will be served as well.

Ellis said all planning considered COVID-19 safety measures. For instance, each table will have its own appetizers and food will be buffet-style, but there will be designated food servers to fill plates.

On one end of the street, local musician Jimmy Barrier and friends will provide musical entertainment.

This year’s fundraiser is a little scaled back, she said, and she expressed appreciation of the various community sponsors who are providing financial support.

Tickets are $75 each – seating is limited to 100 people. Contact the Henderson-Vance Chamber of Commerce or any member of the HVDDC to get your tickets today!

The HVDDC is a nonprofit dedicated to downtown revitalization. It uses the money it raises for events and beautification projects like the one on the corner of Orange and Winder streets. Whether working to preserve buildings or address structural issues before they become bigger problems, HVDDC strives to avoid demolition and prevent neglect of buildings.

“All of that takes money,” Ellis said.

Click Play for More

Cooperative Extension With Jamon Glover Open Conversation on Parenting

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Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.

 

TownTalk: Local Author Michael Elliott Has Faith In The Music Of John Hiatt

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His name may not be a household name, but John Hiatt is the force behind many popular singers and bands – and Mike Elliott has written a book of the singer-songwriter’s life.

For longtime WIZS listeners, the answer is yes, OUR Mike Elliott. The Oxford native and former program director and operations manager of the radio station, who spent more than a decade on the local airwaves, got caught up in a different medium – writing stories, reviews and now a book which chronicles the life of someone he has admired for many years.

The biography, Have a Little Faith: The John Hiatt Story, is set for release on Sept. 14, but pre-orders can be made now, Elliott told Bill Harris on Wednesday’s Town Talk.

“It’s great to be back on the radio,” Elliott said. He left in June 2001 to continue his career, which ultimately took a turn to print media on sort of a whim.

“I’ve always written for fun,” Elliott said. Then one night while writing, he decided to submit a story to Bitter Southerner, a nationally known online publication. A few months later, he got word that the story he’d written about growing up around music and loving music would be published as part of its folk life collection. That was a few years ago, and Elliott said he branched out from there to include album reviews, among other things.

The research for this biography was done by phone and Skype, Elliott said, thanks to COVID-19. Which turned out to be sort of a blessing in disguise – everyone he wanted to interview would normally have been on the road and hard to catch up with. But not during COVID-19.

“It made people slow down, take stock and reassess,” Elliott said of the pandemic. “And they were home – not touring.  So they said, yes, they’d talk to me.”

Elliott was a teenager when he first learned of Hiatt. He said he was probably watching the music video channel VH1 when he took note of Hiatt’s voice – it was an “amazing raspy, soulful voice,” Elliott recalled.

The more he listened and learned, the more he was enamored of this man called John Hiatt who was writing songs for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Suzy Boggus and many others.

“The man is a powerhouse – he’s writing all this stuff,” Elliott said, adding that the song “Have a Little Faith in Me” has been recorded by many singers and is considered a current standard.

And it’s that song that Elliott said encapsulates Hiatt’s story of resilience, hitting rock bottom and coming back better and stronger.

His first two records weren’t great, Elliott said, and his record label dropped him. From there, he got gigs playing at colleges – even standing atop a table in a cafeteria singing for students eating all around him.

There were some other twists and turns that brought him to seek treatment for substance abuse and addiction – read the book to find out details – and that’s when he wrote “Have a Little Faith in Me.”

Hiatt, sober since 1984, was writing it about himself, Elliott said. “(That song) gave him the strength he needed to go forward.”
Big-time names like Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy all have recorded Hiatt’s songs. And although his name may not be a household name, Hiatt’s songs are probably familiar to many.

Hiatt’s story isn’t the typical rags-to-riches type story of a musician who hit it big, lost it all, then climbed back up the ladder of success. No, Elliott said, Hiatt’s story is about someone who was “kind of fair to middlin’, cleaned up and became artistically huge.”

Elliott said he was very pleased when Hiatt’s management team helped clear the way to talk to the artist himself. “I was planning to write the book without him…but I did want his personal take.” He said he was indebted to the 69-year-old for his contributions to the book

“When he started opening up about his life, he gave me stuff that he’d never given anyone before. He felt like it was time to just tell it,” Elliott recalled, for which he is grateful.

You can place pre-orders for Elliott’s book from online retailers or visit michael-elliott.com to find a link to purchase. The book also will be available on Audible. Listeners to the audio format may recognize a familiar voice  – Elliott will be reading the introduction.

 

 

Bowling To Sign Copies Of His Book On 275 Years Of Granville History

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Local author Lewis Bowling will be signing copies of the book he wrote to commemorate the 275th anniversary of Granville County during the 15th annual Hot Sauce Contest in downtown Oxford on Sept. 11.

Bowling researched and wrote the book, Looking Back: 275 Years of Granville County History and will be at the Granville County Historical Society Museum from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. as part of the museum’s special exhibit to highlight the anniversary, according to information from Lynn Allred, county public information officer.

Granville County’s history dates back to 1746 – 30 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence – and Bowling’s book chronicles that rich heritage.

“There is so much history here,” Bowling said. “Even with all my research I have not even come close to covering all of it.”

Bowling, a regular contributing columnist to the Oxford Public Ledger and the Butner Creedmoor News, has published a variety of books that spotlight the history of the area including commemorative books for the City of Oxford’s bicentennial in 2016 and Camp Butner’s 75th anniversary in 2017.

Copies of his coffee-table style book are available for purchase online through the Granville County website www.granvillecounty.org and locally at the following locations:

  • Ace Hardware, 119 Hillsboro St., Oxford
  • This ‘n That, 125 Main Street, Oxford
  • Granville County Chamber of Commerce, 124 Hillsboro St., Oxford
  • Butner Town Hall, 415 Central Ave.
  • Creedmoor Town Hall, 111 Masonic St.
  • Granville County Government Administration Office, 104 Belle St., Oxford
  • Oxford Public Ledger, 200 West Spring St.
  • All branches of the Granville County library system

The Granville County Historical Society Museum is located at 1 Museum Lane in Oxford.

For more information about the book signing, contact the museum at 919.693.9706.