Tag Archive for: #hendersonews

SportsTalk: Youth Lead KVA Baseball To Championship Game

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Mike Rigsbee, Kerr-Vance Academy baseball coach, is proud of his young team.  With only two seniors in the lineup, the team advanced all the way to the state championship series this past week.

Unfortunately, KVA lost two games out of three to Lawrenceville Academy.  “Our goal was to get there,” Rigsbee said on SportsTalk Wednesday.

KVA lost the first game 5-4, rebounded in the first game Saturday by winning 3-2 but lost the second Saturday game by the score 10-0.  “It was a great season overall,” Rigsbee stated.  “I knew we could make a run,” the coach continued.

Rigsbee has already started preparations for next season.  Schedules are being prepared now, and he fully expects that KVA will be back in the running for a championship next year.

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H-V Chamber Student Leadership Vance Graduation 2024

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The 15 members of the 2023-24 Student Leadership Vance program finished up earlier this month with a graduation ceremony. And although that May 1 graduation marked the completion of the program, Henderson-Vance County Chamber of Commerce President Sandra Wilkerson said she believes it’s just the beginning for these high school students who have a deeper appreciation for their community and the things that Henderson and Vance County offer.

Wilkerson said she told the group at graduation that if they only took away one thing, she hoped that it would be that they speak positively about their community. “Positivity is the name of the game,” she said on Wednesday’s TownTalk.

Modeled after the Leadership Vance program, this program gave students a chance to visit area businesses, agencies and organizations that operate in the city and county, as well as observe government and civic engagement activities.

Vanessa Jones led the program, and Wilkerson called her the program’s “fearless leader” and a perfect fit. Retired from Vance-Granville Community College, “she’s been around students all her life” and undaunted by the prospect of working with teenagers.

Feedback from the participants – students from four different schools across the county – ranged from “I never knew that existed” to “never knew we had that here,” Wilkerson said.

“I challenged each of them to spread that knowledge” about their community, she added.

A 2022 pilot program worked with 8th graders, but Wilkerson said that age group proved to be a little young, so this year’s program was limited to 10th and 11th graders. “By the end of session one, the kids were already exchanging cell phone numbers, so that was a ‘win,’” she said.

One of the goals of the leadership program is to bring students from different schools together. Wilkerson said she’s already fielded calls from Kerr-Vance Academy to be included in next year’s program.

Jayden Watkins said, “I had the chance to go behind the scenes of Henderson, learn history about our city that I hadn’t learned before but most of all understand how each person in our city is important…Every position matters because every person’s job is important to make our community work in unity!”

For participant Kate Seifert, the program contributed to her growth in leadership skills, community awareness and empathy toward others.

“The Student Leadership Institute gave me the opportunity to connect with other students while learning about the inner workings and hidden aspects of Henderson and Vance County,” Seifert said. It was incredibly inspiring and eye-opening to see firsthand all of the people who work behind the scenes to help our town to grow and thrive.”

She said she especially enjoyed the health and community day, when the group toured the Boys and Girls Club, the SAM Child Advocacy Center, Maria Parham Health, Henderson YMCA, and Abria’s Chase Foundation. “Throughout this day, I gained a deeper understanding of services in Henderson that help us stay connected, healthy, and supported as a community.”

Watkins said the program has helped him “discover the greatness that lies within Henderson. Most teenagers like me when I was younger, don’t think Henderson is a place we want to live in after college,” he said.

But, he added, Henderson “needs my generation to bring the greatness to the forefront by evolving as leaders.”

Here is a list of students by school who completed the program:

Henderson Collegiate

Jenifer Aguilar

Kameron Bullock

Mya Fisher

Jayden Watkins

Faith Wimbush

Vance County High School

Alajiah Alston

Choice Puryear

Harold Timberlake

Vance Charter School

Noah Bean

Joshua Jones

Kate Seifert

Bridger Stewardson

Crossroads Christian

Anderson Boyd

Rebecca Fowler

Ava Wade

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TownTalk: Diamond Unique’s Domestic Violence Story

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Victims of domestic violence suffer at the hands of people who supposedly care for them – whether it’s physical or emotional abuse, or both, the suffering is real. But victims who make a plan to get out of a dangerous situation and then do so triumphantly call themselves survivors.

Once they choose survivor over victim, the tide turns and healing begins.

Just listen to Diamond Unique’s story, and you’ll hear what a survivor sounds like. She’s put the past behind her and she’s ready to share her story with others, in hopes of inspiring others who find themselves in similar circumstances.

The name Diamond Unique is not the name she was given at birth, but it is the name she goes by as she pursues a career as an actor, podcaster and author.

She reached out to WIZS to tell her story, “to let everyone know that I am a living testimony.” By sharing her story on various social media platforms, this single mother said she wants others to know they aren’t alone in their struggles.

Diamond said she thanks God for delivering her from her abuser. “Without the Lord, I would be nothing,” she said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. As she lay in a hospital bed, with a concussion from that last attack, she said God sent her a message: “You have a message, get your voice out. Let people know the real meaning of domestic violence.”

And now she’s using Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Tik Tok to do just that. She said she’s got 20.8K Tik Tok followers, which she describes as “amazing…incredibly empowering.”

Domestic violence robs people of their self-love, their determination, Diamond said. “It makes you feel less than who you are,” she said. She felt like a nobody.

After she had gotten away from her abuser, she said “I could finally lift my head up and know that I was a person who made it through.”

She wants to send a message of empowerment to others through her acting and her video posts; she wants others who are suffering at the hands of abusers to know that there is more to life than their current situation.

Diamond is working on a book that chronicles her life and her experiences. The title is “Woman Behind the Bruises.” She doesn’t have a publication date yet, but she anticipates it will be out soon.

Find Diamond Unique on Facebook and Youtube; you’ll find her on Tik Tok and Instagram as Miss Pretty Ambitious.

Listen to the entire interview here.

SportsTalk: Biedenbach Reflects On David Thompson

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Eddie Biedenbach knows basketball and he knows NC State basketball.  He also knows David Thompson.  Thompson was a key player in for the Wolfpack in 1974 when they defeated Marquette for the national championship.

NC State University recently unveiled a statue of Thompson placed at Reynolds Coliseum. Biedenbach, who played for Everett Case and Norm Sloan at NC State in the mid to late 1960’s, was an assistant coach when Thompson was leading NC State to that national championship.

“No one knew much about him,” Biedenbach said of Thompson when he first started to recruit him for the Wolfpack.  He had seen film but seeing him in person was a different matter.  “I called Coach Sloan at halftime,” Biedenbach said of the first time he was Thompson play.  He was, needless to say, very impressed.

“He had no weaknesses.  He was a team player,” Bidenbach added on SportsTalk Wednesday. “He had everything it took to be a good player,” he said.  “He played the game like it was supposed to be played,” Biedenbach continued.

Biedenbach said today’s game is different from what it was 50 years ago when Thompson was leading the Wolfpack. Dunking was not allowed and there was no three point shot or a 30 second shot  clock. “He could play today’s game,” Biedenbach said of Thompson.

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Cooperative Extension with Wayne Rowland: Clothes Moths

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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.

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TownTalk: The Story Of Drewry

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ACC basketball fans may know it as the hometown of the 1980’s Duke player David Henderson.  History buffs may know it by its earlier name of Enterprise. But anyone who remembers Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! may be able to recall that it is the teeny community of Drewry that, in the 1940’s had an old-fashioned well. Right in the middle of town.

“There was a town well in the middle of the crossroads,” Pace said, which caught Mr. Ripley’s attention. The well remained there until about 1947. “When the state paved the road, they took it up,” he said.

Leave it to local historians Mark Pace and Bill Harris to discuss in detail a community that straddles the present-day Vance/Warren county line.

“Before Kerr Lake came along, you could drive from Townsville to Drewry in seven minutes,” Pace said. Its first name was Cedar Fork, according to Pace, North Carolina Room specialist at Oxford’s Richard Thornton Library. In the 1840’s and 50’s, it was known as Enterprise. But when the Roanoke Valley Railroad came through, it was renamed because it was Drewry Marrow who took care of the railroad there.

By 1881, Drewry held the distinction for being the smallest township in Vance County in terms of size and population, Pace said. It later melded with the Middleburg township.

“There was a time when Drewry was actually a thriving little community,” he noted. “It wasn’t a bustling metropolis,” but there was a café, two barber shops – one for Blacks and one for Whites – a school, butcher shop, school, dry cleaners, fire department and railroad station. It was the halfway point for the railroad, which went back and forth between Manson and Townsville.

In 1940, Drewry was the very first precinct to report results in the Nov. 6 Presidential election. All votes were cast and counted by 8:53. In the morning. The 24 registered voters “all got together and agreed to cast their votes at the same time,” Pace said. “FDR won 100 percent of the votes” cast at Walston’s store in the Drewry precinct.

But folks in and around the Drewry community were interested in politics well before 1940.

A schoolteacher from Virginia named George Sims moved to the area in the 1750’s. He wrote the Nutbush Address, a treatise that pointed out how politicians of the day were abusing their rank and privilege at the expense of the common man. Later, when Samuel Benton (a founding father of Oxford) wrote the Halifax Resolves, there were echoes of Sims’s address. “And the Halifax Resolves was one of the documents that Thomas Jefferson used for a template for the Declaration of Independence,” Pace explained.

“For such a small place, it has an interesting history,” he mused.

Hear the full Around Old Granville segment at wizs.com.

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Henderson Tobacco Warehouse

TownTalk: Juneteenth Is This Sunday

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The second annual Juneteenth celebration at the Henderson Tobacco Warehouse will take place Sunday, June 19 and organizers are planning for a triple play that day to honor churches, fathers and the day when the last enslaved people got news of their freedom in 1865.

Alex Green, vice president and director of operations at Acquest Group, said several area churches and other nonprofit agencies have teamed up for a joint outdoor worship service they’re calling “Worship in the Streets.”

There will be live gospel music, praise dancers and choral performances as well as children’s activities such as a bounce house and face painting for the community to enjoy between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., Green told John C. Rose on Wednesday’s TownTalk.

Acquest Group is developing the tobacco warehouse project, located at 203 Zene St. and Green said she’s excited to bring back the Juneteenth celebration to the area.

“We’ve got a lot of local partners that we’re working with…celebrating Black fatherhood and families,” she said of the Sunday event. ReBuild Communities Inc. will be hosting their annual fashion show as part of the celebration, and the non-profit Manhood is helping with the giveaways and prizes. “Manhood is focused on trying to provide services to young men in the community, especially in the areas of counseling and mental health.

“We’re really excited to showcase them and partner with them,” Green said.

In addition to celebrating families and Black fatherhood, Green said Sunday’s celebration also will include a focus on the church. Among the churches partnering for the event are A Place of Deliverance, Holy Temple Church, Greater Zion United Church and Kesler Temple AME Zion Church.

Green also said the work of the Flint Hill Kittrell Vance Community Development Corp. has been instrumental in the work at the Zene Street project, which is designed for mixed-use retail and office space.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Green said, “but we’re really close to starting construction soon.”

Acquest Group, a commercial and residential development company, set its sights on Henderson in 2014 with plans to transform the former tobacco warehouse at 203 Zene St. into a hub of community activity.

“We see so much potential… and so many good people trying to work for the community and dedicating their lives to the betterment of this community,”

Green added.

“It’s always community first. It’s always people first,” she said.

 

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The Local Skinny! Home and Garden Show 7-28-21

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Thank you for listening to WIZS Radio.  Your Community Voice!!

Farmers market and beekeepers update on the show today.  Also, electric fencing around gardens, mosquito mitigation, fall turnips and collards as well as yellowjacket nests.

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