Tag Archive for: #wizsnews

SportsTalk: Coach Bunn Talks Vance Charter Softball, Friday’s Game

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Could this be the year that Vance Charter’s Softball team advances beyond the quarter finals?  Head coach Brian Bunn would like to think so.  This is the third trip to the quarter finals for the Knights. With a team heavily laden with seven seniors, Bunn and his team will have the chance to advance tomorrow (Friday) at Oxford Park when Vance Charter takes on Perquimans County. While Perquimans is obviously a good team to have made it this far in the playoffs, they are young and Bunn hopes his team’s experience will pay off tomorrow.

“It’s been an awesome, awesome experience,” Bunn said of working with the seniors. “It’s a coach’s dream, these seniors to lead the team,” Bunn continued. The Knights have taken that experience and used it to go undefeated in the conference this season and those seven seniors have a combined 47-10 record over their varsity career. One of the reasons the Knights have been so successful is they aren’t easily rattled.  “No matter what happens, they keep their composure,” Bunn explained.  Bunn said, while the girls on the team have a lot of fun, they also know when to get serious and practices can get quite intense. Six of those seven intense seniors will be moving on to play at the college level next year.

In addition to senior leadership, Bunn says scheduling non-conference powerhouses like East Alamance and East Wake has helped toughen up his team and contributed to the Knights winning twelve of the last thirteen games. The Knights hope those winning ways continue.

Tomorrow night’s game at Oxford Park between the Vance Charter Knights and Perquimans Co. gets underway at 5pm and tickets are only $7.

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TownTalk: Kaleah Padgett Helps Daughters Who Have Lost Mothers

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Kaleah Padgett has degrees in sociology and in Biblical and religious studies, both of which provide useful tools, but it’s the personal experience of dealing with the loss of her mother that she draws from as she helps other women struggling with their own mothers’ deaths.

Padgett formed Our Motherless Daughters about five years ago, and until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the group met monthly at Perry Memorial Library. Now Padgett is leading more than 100 women via a Facebook page.

“Hopefully we can have start having meetings again soon,” Padgett told John C. Rose on Thursday’s Town Talk. It also is her wish to find a central location to gather, making it easy for women to walk to the meeting.

Padgett said her mother died 12 years ago, on Padgett’s own birthday.

“Having that happen on my birthday was very, very hard,” she said. Over the years, however, the sadness of grief has transformed into a “great celebration of life,” with each birthday that comes.

“My mom gave me life on that day…and she went Home on that day,” she said. The profound grief she still feels over the loss of her mother is an emotion that others in the group feel as well. But Padgett said the skills she learned through her education help her provide spiritual support and emotional support as she talks with the other women in the group. And she also has experienced the loss herself, which can also be a source of comfort to the group’s members.

Padgett said she was lucky because she had wonderful family support when her mother died. “A lot of people don’t have that support,” she noted. “I wanted to reach out…and let them know they are not alone in this process.”

Everyone grieves in a different way, she explained. It is something that she continues to process, but the feelings remain. “It lessens and it gets better, but it never goes away. Grief is also a part of the healing process as well,” she said.

In addition to starting up the in-person meetings again, Padgett said she has a second goal of identifying a location for a community garden, where women in the group can select a flower to plant as a way to remember their mothers. Each flower can represent a mother that is still missed by her daughter.

Call Padgett at 919.426.7396 to learn more about the support group, or find the group page on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/204678233602493.

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The Local Skinny! Around Old Granville: Tiny Broadwick

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She was a little bit of a thing, but Georgia Ann “Tiny” Broadwick achieved some larger-than-life accomplishments in her day.

All of 4-foot-8 and 85 pounds, Broadwick had been married, given birth to a child and had jumped out of a hot-air balloon by the time she was 15, according to Mark Pace, who shared details about the Granville County native’s life and career on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of The Local Skinny!

She was born in 1893 to tobacco farmers, but her parents moved to Henderson when she was 7 and went to work in the local cotton mill.

She went to see Charles Broadwick’s air show near Raleigh and the rest, as they say, is history.

Pace said she faced trials and tribulations in her early years. “She Literally lived life on the edge,” he said. But when she saw Broadwick’s show, she walked up to him and said “I want to jump out of a balloon.”

Broadwick took her in, became her mentor and basically adopted her. They toured the country for many years and Broadwick was known as the “world famous jumping doll,” Pace said. At age 15, she became the first female to jump from a balloon and then an airplane.

Broadwick wowed the public with his airborne acrobatics, but he also had an eye for business. He associated himself with pilot and aviation Glenn Martin – the Martin of what would become Martin Marietta – and it is during that association that Tiny Broadwick really got her name on the map.

Charles Broadwick was pitching his parachute idea to the Army and Tiny demonstrated how they could be used. During her first jump, the static line got tangled up – that’s the line that literally tethered the parachutist to the airplane – she decided to ditch it on her final jump and essentially did a free fall. But she had a cord attached to the parachute that she herself could deploy, and in so doing she invented the ripcord.

But Broadwick didn’t get a patent on the ripcord, so they missed an opportunity to make money from it.

She died in 1978 at the age of 85 and is buried in Sunset Gardens in Henderson. Her great-granddaughter, Bonnie Young Ayscue, wrote the foreward for a recently published book that includes stories of Tiny Broadwick. The book, published in March 2022, is titled “Ladies of Skydiving A Comprehensive History: Volume One The Early Years” by Robert V. Lewis.

 

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Candidates For Sheriff Determined In May 17 Primary

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Robert Fountain and Vance Johnson will face off in the race for Granville County Sheriff in November, each coming out on top in their respective races in the May 17 primary elections.

According to the N.C. Board of Elections, 8,325 voters cast ballots in Granville County for the primary, from a total 39,851 registered voters in the county.

Fountain, a Democrat, beat Democratic challengers Ronald Smith Sr. and Keith Daniel. Fountain had 2,847 votes for 65.75 percent of the vote, versus Smith’s 761 votes and Daniel’s 722 votes.

In the Republican primary, Johnson beat challengers Robert Morris and Clinton Owens. Johnson got 2,192 votes for 58.91 percent of the vote compared to Morris’s  1,340 votes –  just over 36 percent and Owens’s – 189 votes for just more than 5 percent of the vote.

Fountain and Johnson will face each other in the November 2022 election.

Two seats on the Granville Board of Education were decided in the Tuesday primary:

Incumbent David Richardson beat challenger Taylor Frederick to keep his District 7 seat. Richardson got 484 votes for 52.72 percent and Frederick garnered 420 votes, or 45.75 percent of the votes cast.

In District 5, Danielle Hayes narrowly defeated Samantha Harris 652 to 608. Hayes goes 52.42 percent of the vote compared to Harris’s 47.95 percent.

NC Coop Extension

CPR Workshop En Español For Farmworkers

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-Information courtesy of Warren County Cooperative Extension Service

The N.C. Cooperative Extension in Warren County is hosting a CPR workshop for Spanish-speaking farmworkers in the area.

The workshop will be held Tuesday, May 31 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Warren County EMS building, located at 890 U.S. 158 Bypass in Warrenton.

The workshop will provide instruction in Spanish to farmworkers that will teach them the basics of CPR and resuscitation procedures.

For more information, contact Matthew Place, Warren County livestock agent, at 252. 257.3640.

Granville County Middle School Get $5K Grant To Boost Library Collection

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– information courtesy of Granville County Public Schools

Butner-Stem Middle School is one of 300 schools in 44 states across the country to receive a $5,000 grant through the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries. The foundation has awarded $1.5 million in library grants this year,

Many of the libraries will use the funds to update and diversify their collections, according to information from Granville County Public Schools Public Information Officer Dr. Stan Winborne.

The foundation supports school libraries with the greatest needs with the goal of encouraging all students to develop a love of reading and learning. Since its inception in 2002, it has awarded more than $19.5 million to more than 3,300 schools across the country.

BSMS Principal Ashley Clark is very proud of Media Center Coordinator Cathy Littleton’s dedication to expand the library collection at Butner-Stem Middle School and is excited about the new books that will be in the hands of students in the coming months, Winborne said.

Grant applications for the 2022-2023 school year will open in late 2022. Visit laurabushfoundation.org to learn more.

The former First Lady recently shared her 2022 summer reading list, which includes recommendations for young readers through middle schoolers. Selections feature books on adventure, humor and discovery.

“The books on this year’s summer reading list were selected to encourage children to keep reading over their summer break,” Bush stated. “Local libraries are a wonderful resource for our communities, and I hope children and parents will visit their local library to borrow each of the featured titles.”

One of the 2022 Summer Reading List books was written by Giovanna McBride, the daughter of Mrs. Bush’s former chief of Staff, Anita McBride. Gigi at the White House was published by The White House Historical Association and follows a young Giovanna as she tours the White House. Inspired by the Laura Bush Foundation, Anita McBride and her husband Tim McBride have donated copies of Gigi at the White House! to every elementary school that has received a grant since 2002.

The George W. Bush Institute’s Education and Opportunity work, which houses the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries, is generously supported by The Allstate Foundation. The Laura Bush Foundation is managed as a restricted fund at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.  More information can be found at laurabushfoundation.org. The Laura Bush Foundation is managed as a restricted fund at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas.  More information can be found at www.bushcenter.org.

 

 

Granville Board of Education Set To Meet May 20 To Discuss Drawing Down Lottery Funds

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-Information courtesy of Dr. Stan Winborne, public information officer for Granville County Public Schools

The Granville County Board of Education will meet for a special called meeting on Friday, May 20, at 2:30 p.m. to review and approve an application  for Granville County to draw down North Carolina Education Lottery funds.  This meeting will be conducted electronically, with members of the public invited to view the live stream. To join the live stream meeting, please use the following link:  https://live.myvrspot.com/st?cid=MDhkZj

 

Investigation continues in report of armed suspects inside local Walmart

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Henderson police continue to investigate following a report Tuesday of possible armed suspects inside the local Walmart. So far, no arrests have been made in the case.

Police were called to the Walmart, located at 200 N. Cooper Dr. at about 4:15 p.m. on a report of possible armed suspects inside the store.

The first officers arrived on the scene at 4:17 p.m. The store was evacuated while a search of the building was conducted, according to information from Chief Marcus Barrow. Upon review of surveillance video, it was determined that three individuals suspected in the incident had left the store before the first officers arrived.

The store since reopened as investigators follow up on leads.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the police department through Facebook Messenger, the P3 app, Crime Stoppers, or by calling our main line 252.438.4141.