Tag Archive for: #hendersonnews

Food Bank Teaming Up With Schools, Henderson Family YMCA For Summer Food Distribution During July

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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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Cooperative Extension with Jamon Glover: Supporting Father Involvement Ep.2

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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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TownTalk: Around Old Granville – Annie Carter Lee

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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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TownTalk: Fourth of July Fireworks Coming to Kerr Lake

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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:

  • Bun on the Run – burgers and hotdogs
  • King’s Southern Style Cooking – shrimp, fish, pork chops, fries, hush puppies
  • RJ’s Grill – Cheese steaks, chopped pork, chicken wings and fish
  • Kim Hudson’s loaded baked potatoes, nachos, lemonade and cold drinks
  • Frostbites – a variety of ice treat and ice cream to help keep you cool
  • DP and C – carnival treats like candy apples, funnel cakes and deep fried candy bars.
  • Kernel Craze – gourmet popcorn in all different flavors
  • De Tocho Morocho – offering Hispanic-inspired foods and drinks

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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Home and Garden Show

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On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.

  • The Vance County Regional Farmers Market is now open on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 8am to 1pm. Today they have tomatoes, snapbeans, beets, cabbages, yellow squash, zucchini squash, red irish potatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and peaches.
  • The Evolution of Extension Event is this Thursday, on June 26th from 12pm-4pm at the Vance County Cooperative Extension’s Office.
  • Keep hydrated with water during these hot days.
  • Check soil for moisture before watering plants.
  • When you go on vacation, have someone harvest your vegetables while you are away.
  • Check squash for squash bugs and look for egg casings.
  • Water your tomatoes at the bottom of the plant not overhead to prevent leaf diseases.
  • Do garden chores early morning or late evening.
  • If you have extra vegetables, share them with someone who can’t raise a garden.
  • Service your lawn mower according to the owners manual.
  • Continue your fruit tree spray program according to the label directions of the product that you are using.
  • Keep your garden journal up to date.
  • Check houseplants dust weekly with a soft cloth.
  • Check storage areas for mice.

The Vance County Cooperative Extension is located at 305 Young St, Henderson, NC 27536

The Vance County Regional Farmers Market is located at 210 Southpark Dr., Henderson, NC 27536

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TownTalk: Henderson Kiwanis Club

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The Henderson Kiwanis Club celebrated its 100th anniversary a couple of years ago – that’s quite an accomplishment for any group, and this local civic club is staying active as it begins its second century of service to the community.

Kiwanis Club President Danny Wilkerson said the local group has had several different long-standing fundraisers over the years – peanut sales and azalea sales, for example – but the club’s biggest fundraiser is the annual golf tournament.

This year’s tournament at Kerr Lake Country Club brought in a little more than $10,000, Wilkerson said on Tuesday’s TownTalk.

“It’s the most money we’ve ever made from a tournament,” he said. “We were just so excited about it that day,” he added. The 17 teams on the course that day, as well as a variety of sponsors and enough volunteers to have everything run smoothly, added up to a record-breaking year.

But the club doesn’t hang on to the money for long. “We take it in and push it right back into the community,” Wilkerson said, “to help the needs of the kids.”

The Kiwanis motto is Serving the Children of the World, and that’s a motto that Kiwanians take to heart. “It’s all about the kids,” Wilkerson said.

The local club established two scholarships at Vance-Granville Community College in memory of Robert Turner and Bob Harrison, and Vance County Schools Superintendent Dr. Cindy Bennett was a guest speaker at a recent club meeting.

The club provides gifts for needy children at Christmas and support youth organizations like the Boy Scouts of America, Boys & Girls Club, the Salvation Army, local library and more.

What the club needs, however, is more members. It’s down to fewer than a dozen, but Wilkerson said anyone is welcome to attend their meetings, held at 6 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of the month at Henderson Country Club.

He knows young parents have a lot of responsibilities raising their own families, which has affected membership in many organizations besides his own.

“We’ll feed you and hope you stick around to become a member of the club,” Wilkerson said. “We really want to attract some younger people to carry the torch forward.”

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The Local Skinny! Children’s Theatre Camp Show ‘Once Upon A Mattress’ Opens Friday, June 27

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The Children’s Theatre Camp is in its second week of its two-week program at McGregor Hall, and Mark Hopper said that 54 campers are in rehearsal now for the production of Once Upon A Mattress that will be performed this weekend.

There are three shows for the public – Friday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday matinees that begin at 3 p.m. The shows last about an hour, the perfect length for families with young children.

“It’s a great family-oriented show,” Hopper said, “and the duration makes it great for any age.” There’s singing and choreography – with plenty of comedic shenanigans and campy jokes, he said, that are sure to keep the audience entertained.

Jo Ellen Nowell is directing the youngsters as they prepare to put on the show about a very loud princess named Winnifred and a Queen’s attempts to find a suitable wife for her son, the Prince.

This is the fifth year for the Children’s Theatre Camp, Hopper said on Tuesday’s segment of The Local Skinny!

Charlotte Davis is cast as Winnifred and Hopper called her work “phenomenal.”

“We’ve got some unbelievably talented kids on that stage – 54 of them,” he said.

There will be a daytime performance on Friday, June 27 especially for campers at the Henderson Family YMCA and Recreation and Parks, Hopper said.

Hopefully, more young people will see others their age on stage and realize that it’s something that could be an option for them one day as well.

“We wanted to make a camp that was affordable,” Hopper said, while offering access to high-quality material, staff and equipment that McGregor Hall performances are known for.

For $100, rising 3rd graders through rising 11th graders could participate for eight hours a day and then, “at the end of two weeks, produce a quality show,” Hopper said.

Purchase tickets here: https://mcgregorhall.ludus.com/index.php

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