Wayne Rowland, on the Vance County Cooperative Extension Report:
You can raise chickens successfully if you take the time to care for your chickens.
Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.
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The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina is partnering with Vance County Schools and the Henderson Family YMCA to provide food to children during the summer.
Two food distribution sites will be set up throughout the month of July – Wednesdays at Vance County Middle School and Fridays at the Henderson Family YMCA – to provide a week’s worth of shelf-stable breakfast and lunch items for any child 18 years and under who resides in Vance County.
The Wednesday dates are July 2, July 9, July 16, July 23 and July 30 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Vance County Middle School, located at 293 Warrenton Rd.
The Friday dates are July 11, July 18 and July 25 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Y, located at 380 Ruin Creek Rd.
Participants may visit one site per week; the program is open to any child in Vance County.
Along with the food items, children and families will be able to pick up other items and get connected with other community resources.
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Jamon Glover, on the Vance County Cooperative Extension Report:
We talk further on the Supporting Father Involvement Program.
Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.
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At the height of the Civil War, Gen. Robert E. Lee thought it best to send his family somewhere safe and out of harm’s way. His wife, Mary Anna, had a cousin in Warren County, so Warren County was where she and the children ended up waiting out the war.
And that is how it came to be that Lee’s favorite daughter, Annie Carter Lee, was buried in Warren County.
For a century, at least.
Annie Carter was only 23 when she died in 1862 of typhoid fever.
The grave marker remains in Warren County, but Annie Carter Lee’s remains were moved to the family crypt at Washington & Lee University in 1994, where the Confederate general taught after the war ended.
Annie Carter wasn’t the only member of the Lee family to die in Warren County – Annie Carter’s nephew, Robert E. Lee, III – the Lee’s first grandchild – died in infancy at Jones Sulfur Springs, a resort that touted the healing powers of the mineral springs there.
That’s something local historian Mark Pace learned when he was researching Annie Carter, the topic of discussion for the most recent Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.
Gen. Lee’s wife, Mary Anna, suffered from poor health much of her life and Pace said in later years she was confined to a wheelchair.
“She was a great believer in the healing powers of mineral springs,” he said,” and several months of the year, she’d take her daughters and go to her cousin’s place – in Warren County.
Mary Anna’s cousin, William Duke Jones, ran the Sulfur Springs resort. You can still see remains of some of the buildings there. The resort had accommodations for 300 guests, Pace said.
Annie Carter’s gravesite was one of the first sites identified when the state’s historical marker program started back in the 1930’s.
But over the years, Pace said the site was the object of vandalism and so the Lee descendants had the remains disinterred and reburied in Virginia.
The fourth child of Robert E. Lee and Mary Anna Custis Lee, Pace said Annie Carter Lee was her father’s favorite child because of an injury she sustained when she was quite young, which left her with a disfiguring scar on her face.
She contracted typhoid fever by the end of the summer of 1862 and, despite the doctors’ best efforts, she died. Pace said the fatality rate at that time was about 40 percent for people who had typhoid fever.
Two of her brothers visited her gravesite in 1866 to have a formal funeral for their sister, but her father, as the defeated leader of the Confederate Army, was not allowed to leave Virginia.
He finally got to Warren County in 1870 and, along with his daughter Agnes – 1 and ½ years younger than Annie Carter, to visit the grave.
As Pace tells the story, Lee and his daughter asked a young man at the Warren Plains Depot if he could recommend a place for them to spend the night. The man was William J. White, who had been a captain under Lee’s command, recognized the former general and offered his parents’ home as lodging for the night.
That home, Ingleside, stands in Warrenton today.
Word spread quickly throughout the town of the visitors and the reason for the trip, and next morning, Pace said that some 800 people – dressed in their best mourning clothes – lined the streets of Warrenton to pay their respects to the father and daughter who came to visit the grave of their beloved family member.
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— information courtesy of the office of N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson
A security breach of the company many public school districts have used as their data management system has affected about 4 million teachers, students and parents in North Carolina. N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson said he is demanding that the company, PowerSchool, disclose more information about exactly how the breach happened and how it affected as the investigation continues.
Students and staff affected by the data breach have until July 31, 2025, to enroll in free identity protection and credit monitoring (offered for adult students and educators) here. You can also find out more about setting up a free security freeze here.
Vance County Schools was part of the security breach. Visit https://www.vcs.k12.nc.us/about/powerschool-data-breach for the most current information about the breach.
“Last year’s data breach compromised the personal information of teachers, public school employees and families across North Carolina,” Jackson stated in a press release. “I’m demanding more information from PowerSchool about how this breach happened and who it affected, and what we learn will drive our next steps.”
Jackson issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to PowerSchool that legally requires it to provide to him the following information:
· The exact number of North Carolinians impacted by the 2024 data breach.
· Details about PowerSchool’s cybersecurity measures that were in place to protect users’ personal information leading up to the breach.
· Which security flaws may have contributed to the breach.
· Information about PowerSchool’s response and actions in the immediate aftermath of the breach.
· Steps PowerSchool has taken to address the cybersecurity failures that contributed to the data breach and strengthen data protection methods.
· PowerSchool’s work to communicate with and assist consumers affected by the breach.
PowerSchool sells software products used by schools across the country, including public schools across North Carolina. In December 2024, a hacker gained access to that software, potentially exposing Social Security numbers, addresses, names of minors, and medical and disciplinary information. The breach impacted more than 62 million people across the country. PowerSchool later paid a ransom to the hacker to delete the information that was stolen, but a hacker then tried to extort North Carolina public school districts again.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice charged 19-year-old Massachusetts college student Matthew Lane with hacking PowerSchool’s system and facilitating the 2024 data breach. Lane entered a plea deal with the federal government in May. Lane pleaded guilty to cyber extortion conspiracy, cyber extortion, unauthorized access to protected computers, and aggravated identity theft.
Telessie McGhee is being honored by the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of North Carolina & Jurisdiction, Inc.
A celebration of service and testimonial is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 9 at the Durham Hilton, 3800 Hillsborough Rd., Durham.
Tickets for the event are $60.
Contact the hotel at 919.383.8033 to make a lodging reservation. Mention “PGWP McGhee Testimonial” to receive a special room rate.
The following web address (https://mwphglnc.us/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Telessie-McGhee-Testimonial-2025.pdf) has a QR code for tickets to the testimonial dinner.
Independence Day falls on a Friday this year, which give folks a chance to take part in more festivities over the long Fourth of July weekend.
Take the fireworks show at Kerr Lake’s Satterwhite Point Park, for example, sponsored by Vance County Tourism.
The annual event will take place on Saturday, July 5 this year, and Pam Hester and Norman Dickerson are working like a well-oiled machine to make sure there’s plenty of food and fun for the whole community.
“The fireworks are going to be beautiful,” Hester said, adding that the pyrotechnics team creating the show does a “fabulous job” that will surely wow the audience.
The fun begins at 4 p.m., and there will be a wide variety of food vendors, as well as music provided again this year by DJ Jay.
“As always, DJ J has it down to a science,” Hester said. He plays patriotic music during the countdown to the fireworks show, which helps get the crowd really involved, she said.
It does take place in early July, so in addition to the fireworks and the fun, friendship and fellowship that will be served up, Hester adds one word to the description: HOT.
While there will be plenty to do during the afternoon and into the evening, the star of the show is the fireworks, so the tourism duo makes sure that all the permits are secured and helping agencies are on board with their role in making sure all goes according to plan.
“It takes roughly 16 different organizations to pull off this 20-minute affair each year,” Dickerson said. “We are indebted to these organizations. Without them, we could not do it.” Among the assisting agencies are the Vance County Sheriff’s Office, the N.C. State Highway Patrol, Vance County Rescue Squad, Fire Department, EMS and the county commissioners.
In addition, permits are needed from the N.C. State Parks and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And oddly enough, Dickerson said they have to seek approval from the U.S. Coast Guard, which has an auxiliary at the lake that assists the rescue squad to maintain safety along the perimeter of the shoot site.
Hester offered a shout-out to Kerr Lake Parks Superintendent Bill Stanley and his team. “Bill Stanley and his crew are just top of the line,” she said.
The shoot site usually takes place along the shoreline at Water’s Edge subdivision, Dickerson noted, but if the lake level remains as high as it is now (301.6 feet), the Plan B is to move across the lake near Shelter 3, which is more elevated.
“Anything over 301.6 and our shoot area is under water,” Dickerson said. The lake level may come down some between now and then, “but we’ve still got a backup, so we’re good,” he explained.
Here’s a quick rundown on some of the food and beverage options that are scheduled to be on site for the event:
The event is free, but there is a $10 gate fee to enter the park. And remember, alcohol is not permitted at any state park.
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SportsTalk 12:30 p.m. M-Th
Scout Hughes and Doc Ayscue talk about their all-time favorite baseball movies.
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