Maria Parham Health Welcomes New OB-GYN To Staff

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Maria Parham Health has added an OB/GYN physician to its team.

Dr. Rachel Anne DeSpenza has joined the MPH staff, according to a press release from MPH Communications Coordinator Donna Young.

“We are excited to bring Dr. DeSpenza to the region to help make our communities healthier,” said Bert Beard, CEO of Maria Parham Health. “Her training and focus on community health programs for women and families are exceptional, and Maria Parham is excited for the positive impact she will have.”

DeSpenza received her medical degree and a master’s in Health Science from Yale School of Medicine. She recently completed her OB-GYN Residency at Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, CT, where she served as administrative chief resident.

She completed her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of California, Santa  Barbara, graduating with highest honors. Her academic and clinical excellence has been  recognized through numerous awards, including the William U. Gardner Memorial Student  Research Fellowship, the Yale School of Medicine Medical Student Research Fellowship, and the  ACOG CT Section Outstanding Student James F.X. Egan Award, among others.

At Maria Parham Health and Maria Parham Women’s Care, DeSpenza brings a wealth of expertise and a commitment to patient-centered care, hospital officials said. She is now accepting new patients and looks forward to contributing to the health and well-being of our community.

Call 252.492.8576 to schedule an appointment.

Vance County Schools Honors Top Teachers, Administrators At ‘Excellence in Education’ Banquet

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Vance County Schools honored the district’s top educators at its annual Excellence in Education banquet Thursday evening at the Henderson Country Club.

Jozette Broughton of New Hope Elementary was named Teacher of the Year and Khris-Tina Stewart-Hendricks of Vance County High was selected as the Beginning Teacher of the Year, Top administrators included Facetia Branch of Vance County Middle as Assistant Principal of the Year, and Dr. Nealie Whitt III of Vance County High as Principal of the Year.

VCS Superintendent Dr. Cindy Bennett said, “Being a part of the recognition of our Educators of Excellence is always such an honor. Vance County has some of the best educators in North Carolina, while we can only recognize a few of those stellar educators, I continue to be humbled by their commitment to children by ensuring they are on the path to a successful future.”

The top winners will represent Vance County at the regional level.

A little about last night’s honorees:

  • Broughton earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and master’s of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from Strayer University. She has been in education for more than 20 years, and has been at New Hope Elementary for the past four years. She has a new role – that of an instructional facilitator – at the school.

Currently working on her National Board for Professional State Standards, Broughton said she plans to elevate her work through continued memberships in professional organizations and professional development in instruction.

  • Stewart-Hendricks teaches history at Vance County High School, She received a degree in Sociology from the University of the West Indies and is in her third year of teaching with Vance County Schools.  With plans to pursue a master’s degree in Psychology, Stewart-Hendricks said her classroom experience has highlighted the correlation of social and emotional wellness and academic success. She aims to develop effective strategies to support students, enhance their educational experience, and foster their enthusiasm for learning.
  • Branch is an assistant principal at Vance County Middle School. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from N.C. Central University and a bachelor’s in Elementary Education and Special Education from East Carolina University. She continued her education at Strayer University with a master’s of Public Administration and at Gardner-Webb University with a master’s of Education in School Leadership.
  • Whitt is principal at Vance County High. He earned a bachelor of Science degree in Physical Education and Health with an emphasis in Secondary Education from N.C. Central University and has a master’s in Educational Administration and a Specialist Degree from Grand Canyon University. Whitt also has a doctorate in Educational Administration at the University of Southern Mississippi.

2024-2025 Vance County Schools Teacher of the Year Nominees:

  • Nino Robles, AdVance Academy
  • Stephanie Sewell-Brown, Aycock Elementary
  • Lillian King, Carver Elementary
  • Cassandra Chartier, Clarke Elementary
  • Justin Wrenn, Dabney Elementary
  • Ebony Watkins, E.M. Rollins STEAM Academy
  • Christina Welch, E.O. Young Elementary
  • Estelle Mangum, L.B. Yancey Elementary
  • Jozette Broughton, New Hope Elementary
  • Laura Brown, Pinkston St. Elementary
  • Jean Marie Munroe-Criddle, STEM Early High
  • Eva Jennings, Vance County Early College
  • Wennie Perez, Vance County High
  • Deris Mora, Vance County Middle
    ● Cynthia Schlessinger, Vance Virtual Village
  • Venessa Lalor-Lofters, Zeb Vance Elementary

2024-2025 Vance County Schools Beginning Teacher of the Year Nominees:

  • Dian Bowers, Advance Academy
  • Sharnakay Plummer, Aycock Elementary
  • Tressy Person, Carver Elementary
  • Nordette Givens, Clarke Elementary
  • Nichole Campbell-Gordon, Dabney Elementary
  • Danielle Brissett, E.M. Rollins STEAM Academy
  • Hailey Reavis, E.O. Young Elementary
  • Keita Kelly Lamay, L.B. Yancey Elementary
  • Carolina Carraway, New Hope Elementary
  • Ma Viance Estrosos, Pinkston St. Elementary
  • Edna Celis, STEM Early High School
  • Vance County Early College, Angelique Bagagnan
  • Khris-Tina Stewart Hendricks, Vance County High
  • Venice Arellano, Vance County Middle School
  • Raymond Pagayon, Vance Virtual Village
  • Niya Sneed, Zeb Vance Elementary

2024-2025 Vance County Schools Assistant Principal of the Year Nominees: ● McShell Edmonds, Vance County High

  • Facetia Branch, Vance County Middle
  • LaVonda Williams, Pinkston Street Elementary

2024-2025 Vance County Schools Principal of the Year Nominees: ● Dr. Shannon Bullock, L.B. Yancey Elementary

  • Dr. Carnetta Thomas, EM Rollins STEAM Academy
  • Dr. Nealie Whitt III, Vance County High
  • Nowell Brooks, Advance Academy

Three Arrested Following Report Of Gunshot Into Occupied Vehicle

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-information courtesy of Henderson Police Chief Marcus W. Barrow

Three men were arrested Wednesday following a report of gunfire involving two vehicles on a city street. No injuries were reported, according to a press release from Henderson Police Chief Marcus Barrow, and it is believed to have been an isolated incident.

On Aug. 28, at approximately 12 noon, it was reported that someone in a dark-colored Jeep SUV discharged a weapon into another vehicle near South William Street and Chavasse Avenue.

Investigators with the Henderson Police Department quickly developed information that led them to obtain a search warrant for 1722 Lynn Ave., where the suspect vehicle was located.

During a search of the residence, multiple firearms were located and recovered, leading to the detainment and subsequent charging of multiple people.

Djhante Blash, of 1722 Lynn Ave. was charged with possession of Schedule II and possession of a firearm by a felon. Blash was remanded to the Vance County Detention Center without bond, pending his first court appearance.

Nigel Malik Torres, 23, of Franklin County was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon with intent to kill and discharging a weapon into occupied property. Torres was remanded to the Vance County Detention Center without bond, pending his first court appearance.

Kobe Isaiah Allen of Winston Salem was charged with possession of firearm by convicted felon and possession of a stolen firearm. Allen received a $50,000 secured bond and was transported to the Vance County Detention Center.

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TownTalk: Budding Chefs Can Sign Up For 4-H Cooking Teams

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If Micah Sharpe can get young people to buy in to 4-H at an early age, the chances are better that they’ll stick with it through their teenage years. And if some of those youngsters are interested in learning their way around a kitchen to create healthy, nutritious foods, the Vance County 4-H Youth Development agent said they’ll be able to whip up something a little more exotic than Oodles of Noodles.

A team of local 4-Hers from Vance and Warren counties participated in the “Got To Be NC” festival competition back in May and they represented themselves well, said Nitasha Kearney, who works in the Granville County Extension Office’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program.

Kearney and Sharpe teamed up to guide the young chefs-in-training on the path to the competition, called the Dinah Gore Healthy Food Challenge. The kids learn the 4-H curriculum from Sharpe and then Kearney came in with her EFNEP curriculum.

The new classes for youth begin on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 5:30 p.m., with the ultimate goal of being in the 2025 competition and bringing home the gold. The classes are free.

“My very first lesson is going to be on food safety,” she said. There are four simple rules: Clean, Separate, Chill, Cook.

Team member Kadin Bowden can attest to that. The 11-year-old Vance Charter student said he learned that “you wash your hands before you touch anything in the kitchen – 20 seconds with soap and water.”

Bowden said he’s learned a lot about cooking and enjoys cooking for his family. Knowing the rules of cooking – using the right temperatures and knowing the right way to cook different items keeps foods “safe for you to eat and not get sick.”

He and his teammate and brother Timothy, see their dad Ken Bowden show off his cooking skills in his food truck T&K Best Bites in Town.

“He taught me all the basic stuff about cooking like Miss Nitasha and Mr. Sharpe,” Kadin said. Breading catfish, cooking eggs, chicken, hotdogs and more, Kadin and Timothy have a role model close by to emulate.

Team Captain Jaque Oliver said he took his role seriously. “I want to try to help as a team,” Oliver said. “Let them have fun, have a nice time, but don’t let anybody down.”

In the competition, the team had to create a salad with a homemade dressing within the prescribed 40-minute time limit. They were given a list of ingredients and one “mystery” ingredient. The final product looked pretty impressive, he agreed, especially since they added some pork balls and fresh strawberries and blueberries.

The setting for the competition didn’t really resemble those popular cooking shows on TV, but there was a nice-sized table that all the team members could fit around to do prep work, Oliver said.

In their own preparation before the competition, Kearney estimated that the team already had created 40 different recipes. “We expect rice, we expect pork chops,” Kearney said, referring to probable foods they’d be working with in the competition. “We don’t expect goat cheese.”

The final product must be healthy and delicious, but the team also must utilize food safety skills in its preparation.

Jamera Oliver is Jaque’s 12-year-old sister and also a member of the team. She said she’s a bit of a party planner and said she’s likely to create healthy dishes as a result of what she’s learned in 4H.

She’s got plenty of experience helping her parents with holiday food prep – turkey and mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, and candy apples at Halloween. She said pasta dishes are pretty easy and so is stir fry, but her favorite dish to make is lasagna.

She likes the idea of working with a team to create food. “I feel like these things will help me out through life,” she said, meaning not just cooking, but also other things too, like making new friends. “It was fun working with everyone here, being a team.”

Kearney said “fun” is a key ingredient in cooking and preparing meals that she relishes sharing with her community.

“I feel like this job was made for me,” she said. “The fact that I get to show my community how to cook, prepare healthy foods, (and) how to have fun” while doing it, is icing on the cake.

Visit https://vance.ces.ncsu.edu/ to learn more about 4-H in Vance County or call the office at 252.438.8188.

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TownTalk: Frank Sossamon – Litter Clean Up Program

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In speaking with constituents across Vance County, State Rep. Frank Sossamon said he picked up on a familiar theme: litter.

“Litter kept coming up as our Number 1 problem,” Sossamon said. “It’s a plague on our county.”

And he’s making a connection with the trash that fouls the roadsides and public safety. A public safety task force is being assembled to strengthen a community-wide partnership of agencies and organizations to help improve the situation.

Overgrown trees or debris that obscures road signs, public safety issue. Trash blowing across the highways and interstates, public safety hazard.

“If we’re going to tackle it, we’re going to tackle all of it,” Sossamon said on Wednesday’s TownTalk.

A good first step is the kickoff of a litter campaign that will take place on Friday, Sept. 13 at 9 a.m. at the city’s Operations Center on Beckford Drive. Sossamon said there have been litter pickups before, but this is the first full-on campaign in the area.

“We’ve got to change the mentality of our citizens,” he said. Illegal dumping along roadsides, throwing fast-food containers from vehicles, junk cars cluttering yards – are just a few examples of what needs to be addressed through education and through awareness.

Groups ranging from civic organizations and churches to the local Chamber of Commerce and the local school district are all part of the community-wide partnership.

And the city is going to implement an “adopt-a-block” program to encourage residents to tidy up even a small section of the city. “Hopefully we can get every block adopted,” Sossamon said. A couple of fringe benefits of getting outside to pick up trash include extra physical activity and getting to know our neighbors, he said.

“The potential is to make the community even healthier,” he said.

Sossamon is putting stock in the younger generation for everything from reminding their elders not to litter to sending letters to the editor about cleaning up streets, sidewalks and roadways.

A letter-writing campaign provides extra benefits as well, he said. “It helps them academically, improves their critical thinking,” but youngsters also can take pride when they see their name in print.

“The schools have already opened the doors for us to come in,” Sossamon said, adding that trash containers painted with children’s handprints are in place as a way to build capacity.

“Education is what we’re after,” Sossamon said, and the public safety task force will be driving that home in as many places as possible.

The goal is to not to have more and more groups who fan out into the county to pick up trash. The goal is to have fewer and fewer litter sweeps because there is less trash to pick up.

We’ve all probably witnessed a driver or passenger in the vehicle in front of us throw something out the window, and Sossamon said NCDOT’s “Swat a Litterbug” campaign is one way to discourage littering.

If you see someone throw out trash and can get the vehicle’s license plate number, you can submit it to the NCDOT and the car owner will get a letter to report the offense. The letter is just a warning for the first offense

“The second time, you won’t get a letter, you’ll get a citation,” Sossamon said. The link to report a litterbug is https://www.ncdot.gov/litter/default.aspx

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Henderson Police Make Arrest Following Aug. 22 Search Of Williamsboro Home

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– Press release from Henderson Police Chief Marcus Barrow

On Thursday morning, August 22, members of the Henderson Police Department and the Vance County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at 47 Canary Lane in the Williamsboro community. During the search, Abdul Malik Harris, 31, a resident of the address, was arrested and charged with the possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, following the discovery of a firearm at the residence.

As a part of our ongoing partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, a federal detainer and subsequent criminal complaint was filed against Harris as a result of this investigation.

The arrest resulted from collaborative efforts between the Henderson Police Department, Vance County Sheriff’s Office, Granville County Sheriff’s Office, Oxford Police Department and ATF.

 

 

TownTalk: Introducing Matthew McLaughlin, Kerr-Vance Academy

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Matthew McLaughlin said he didn’t set out to be a school administrator – he really wanted to be a middle school band teacher.

And McLaughlin was quite happy doing just that for many years.

Now, after close to two decades in the field of private education, he finds himself not in front of a bunch of tweens and teens learning music, but as the Head of School at Kerr-Vance Academy.

“School leadership and administration wasn’t on my radar,” McLaughlin said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. But as he took on various leadership roles, he was led to the University of Notre Dame to pursue a graduate degree that is specifically designed for private school leaders.

Since private schools are funded differently and governed differently than public schools, McLaughlin said private school leadership inherently involves aspects of business that public school leaders may not have to contend with.

He described his studies at Notre Dame as training that marries education and business, which he said is critical for private school leaders.

“We have to have some different conversations,” McLaughlin said. “The facilities are our facilities,” and they have to have some “pretty tight operational procedures” in place to make sure those facilities are maintained properly.

And although McLaughlin has only been on the job a month or so, he’s already witnessed one capital improvement project at his new workplace.

The school is finishing up work on a major renovation project at the Crawford Gymtorium, a multipurpose facility on the KVA campus that has been used over the years for everything from basketball games to graduation exercises.

They’ll have a ribbon-cutting on Friday, Sept. 13 at 3 p.m. to unveil the new gym floor, which McLaughlin said looks amazing.

A crew gutted the floor down to the concrete pad and built it back, he said, noting that it’s rated to last for 100 years.

Elected officials, alumni and others from the community are invited to attend the ribbon-cutting, which will take place during the KVA Fall Classic, which will bring several area schools together for two days of volleyball and soccer matches.

McLaughlin said he sees value in having a school like KVA in a community like Henderson, and you’ll never hear him say negative things about charter schools or traditional public schools. There’s room for all.

“I’ve made a career out of private schools,” he said. “There are some things that we do really, really well that can’t be recreated in the public schools…(but) they can do things that we’ll never be able to do.”

One of KVA’s advantages, he said, is the way it intentionally creates a feeling of community among its students and their families. There’s a day care on campus, so a child spend his or her entire school career at one school. That’s a long time to build community, McLaughlin said.

That dovetails perfectly with what McLaughlin said he has worked throughout his career for – watching and overseeing “the development of the whole person – it’s not just about reading and math. I love being a part of that and being a part of their story.”

Want to learn more? Visit https://www.kerrvance.com/.

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The Local Skinny! Kerr Lake Regional Water System

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Funding improvements to the regional water system are being approved at a steady trickle, and city leaders are managing the various projects that could ultimately have a price tag twice the size as was originally quoted, pre-COVID.

The Henderson City Council approved a couple of resolutions at its Aug. 19 meeting that will bring $16.5 million to keep working on the Kerr Lake Regional Water System to bring its production to 20 million gallons of water a day as well as other related infrastructure projects.

Council member Garry Daeke told WIZS News in a telephone interview that the city has the money necessary to complete the regional water system expansion, having received $10.8 million from the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality for the water project and $5 million in grant funding with support in July 2022 from State Sen. Lisa Barnes.

An additional $1 million is being allocated to address lead mitigation in the city’s water lines from the state’s drinking water revolving fund.

Water Resources Director Christy Lipscomb continues to manage the projects and keeps city leaders informed about progress.

As spelled out in the City Council’s agenda package, the city was originally approved for a state revolving loan of more than $31.8 million for the water system upgrade project, but NCDEQ has kicked in another $10,890,172 to help the system reach its full capacity of 20 million gallons per day. This addition brings the total thus far to $50,783,172.

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