Two great inspirations

A few months ago, I went to my former church, Fremont United Methodist, to cover their ceremony honoring the 50th Eagle Scout to come through the Fremont Boy Scout Troop. I usually go to Sunday School on Sunday mornings, and decided to come early and go my old Sunday School class, the Methodist Open Discussion (MOD) Class.
While it was great seeing and talking with some old friends, in the fifteen or so years since we moved away from the area, there were a number of new faces. One of those new faces belonged to a lady who was asking for prayer as she began a challenge in her life.
That face belonged to Joy Vinson. I recognized her from the years she has been at Fremont STARS, though I couldn’t claim to actually know her.
The last month or so we have been regularly contacted by Fremont STARS about different Relay for Life activities and fundraisers they have been involved with. The team’s very successful efforts this spring have seemingly picked up some extra steam in their support for Mrs. Vinson. The team’s organizer this year said she has been inspired by Joy’s courage in her fight against breast cancer, and they dedicated their efforts in her honor.
Five or six years ago, I was volunteering in prison ministry, working with the state prison in Pender County. Most of the volunteers we were working with were from the Wilmington area. A year or so in, there was a fellow from Goldsboro who began supporting the ministry.
Most of our activities were on Saturdays. We had several hours of training on Saturdays, and would go in for what we called reunions with those who had participated on the inside on Saturday nights. During many of the trips back and forth, I would car pool with this man from Goldsboro.
I came to know, during that time, a very fine gentleman named Dr. Lee Adams. He is one of the most caring people I have known, and he has been a true inspiration to me.
In his work with Boy Scouts over the years, his professional contacts, his work with the Goldsboro Family Y, and his work with his church, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Lee Adams has touched a lot of lives. Some of them I have known, and whenever Dr. Adams’ name is mentioned, faces light up. Many feel as I do about Lee.
Did I mention that he is well beyond the age when many give up work? His energy and enthusiasm deny his 70+ years. Mondays through Fridays you usually find him at his optometry office on Wayne Memorial Drive in Goldsboro.
Our prison ministry is focused around a fall weekend and a spring weekend. Lee was always very active and focused on the fall weekend, and a dedicated monthly volunteer for most of the time, but I was puzzled when spring rolled around and he said he didn’t have the time to volunteer.
I found out there was another great love in his life. He was one of the main movers and shakers for the Wayne County Relay for Life. (The humble man would often talk about fine people who served as his co-chair for the event, but year after year Lee was helping organize and get this thing done.) It wasn’t long after that that I purchased a purple bow for our Fremont office door, in support of the effort.
Under all of the caring and compassion of this fine man, there was some friendly competitive fire. He spoke with passion about all of the ways in which the people of Wayne County were coming together to support this great cause. He also spoke with some pride about how they would rally to beat out Johnston County in the amount raised, and other areas of the state.
We congratulate Relay for Life for another great event this past weekend. Also, two great warriors in the fight against cancer: Joy Vinson and Dr. Lee Adams.

Thanks, Dickie

It was one of those opportunities you needed a particular eye to see.
Most small towns are strapped to just meet the police department payroll next week. One of the great disappointments for newcomers to town boards is not making these huge, impacting decisions every month. You don’t have a large surplus of cash to play with. Mostly you are responding to individuals who are concerned that they are paying more in taxes or utility bills than they should.
It was something someone who works with small towns understands.
The one time you have a chance to make one of those big decisions is when you have a developer who wants what you have in a small town: water and sewer. There can be a big payoff for developers if they have town services. Most important is the chance to develop twice as many lots in a development because you have sewer service rather than requiring the extra land to put in a septic tank.
It was something that someone who works with developers would know.
Another great opportunity for small towns is the construction of a new elementary school. With the new school come new homes, and many families with small children want to live near a new elementary school. Check out everywhere there is a new school built and you will see new homes in the area. The price of land and the pace of development are increased any time a new school pops up.
It was something anyone in construction in Johnston County could tell you.
In order to get the benefits of town services, Johnston County Schools officials wanted to locate their school near existing lines, but on a large enough piece of property that would provide for the facilities needed for some time to come. They knew they would have to front the expense money to get the lines extended to their site. They also knew that when the growth popped up around the school and other tied into those town lines, they could recoup much of their money.
It was something that anyone who works with school construction would know.
While the school people were looking for a piece of high ground that would drain well for their construction purposes, there was something extraordinary just down the road. Near this piece of high ground was a spot not a half-mile away that was a particularly low spot. In fact, it was so low that surrounding land as far as three miles away could be served if a sewer lift station was placed there.
It was something that someone who works with sewer construction would see.
Developers will try to nickel and dime construction projects to make more money. They will try to get by with minimal expense to maximize their profit on a project and move on to the next one. If the town was to maximize the potential of this lift station, they would need to insist that developers pay the extra money to put sewer lines deep in the area so as to preserve and maximize future development.
Someone who works with housing developers would know that.
This was an unusual opportunity, as school officials were pressing hard for town services to be on a fast track to meet an accelerated construction deadline. In order to finance the extra expense to move the lift station down the road, town officials would have to sell local developers on helping finance the move, and the town would have to borrow money based on future projections. There was a lot that needed to happen in a short amount of time.
It would take someone who was on top of what was happening and sensitive to the nature of this opportunity.
The conservative nature of town boards works against investing in opportunities like this. They are better at playing it safe and dealing with what’s in front of them than buying into the future. You need a strong, convincing argument and a willingness to spend the time to win town board members over to your view.
It would take someone who cared enough about Princeton to make it happen.
I don’t want to slight many others who were involved in making this decision a reality. Town Clerk Marla Ashworth, Town Engineer C.T. Clayton, and Commissioner Eddie Haddock, along with Mayor Don Rains and commissioners Walter Martin, David Starling and Billy Sutton certainly deserve credit.
Dickie Braswell, however, saw the opportunity, showed the town the opportunity, and helped others feel confident that this was the right thing to do.
Some might say this was a “no brainer,” but some of us need help. It may take a while for us to get a firm grasp on the obvious.
Thanks, Dickie, for taking the time to help us see.

A shining moment

There were more than a thousand graduates of North Carolina State University on the floor of the RBC Center Saturday morning. I really only saw one.
As will happen, we had planned to meet friends for lunch, and the ceremony which we thought would last 1 1/2 hours went for 2 1/2, so we were rushing out and our focus was shaken.
Ah, but for a shining moment….
I did listen to the commencement speaker, and to the student speaker. And when we attended the departmental graduation ceremony after lunch, I listened to the student speaker there and the faculty speaker. While the research scientist who was the commencement speaker was a little dry, I did enjoy his point. I thought the departmental speakers were particularly relevant in their comments.
And then there was the time at the departmental when they called out “Ashley Christine Merrill” and the girl I have loved for 25 years was handed her Master’s degree. Her grandpa would have been proud.
I think this would have been his ceremony. My divorced parents maintained a respectful separation most of the time. Dad would gracefully await his time, deferring to Mother. She said since she had come for the undergraduate ceremonies for Ashley, and since she was planning to be here for her sister’s undergraduate ceremony next year, she would pass on this one. But Dad died two years ago.
We didn’t talk about my dad Saturday. I’m struggling two days later. We didn’t have to try to sort out who would go to my college graduation. It was while I was away at college that my parents’ marriage disintegrated. It was a hard time. Maybe if I had been at home….
I can’t blame my not getting through college on my parents’ problems. As Dad told me, college is a completion thing. It may not have a lot to say about how good a job you are going to do, but it does mark that you have made it through. It says something about your stick-to-itiveness. Maybe that’s a reason why I have been so committed to newspapers for these 35 years, I’m trying to prove something to myself.
Dad didn’t make it through college either. He was all wrapped up with conflict with his parents when he graduated from high school and couldn’t wait to get out of the house. Soon he was in the Marine Corps, and before he was discharged, he was married. I think he took a few college courses, and he always knew he was capable of doing the work, but there wasn’t the time for college. There was money to be made.
When I graduated from high school, there was no question that I would be going straight to college. I was not going to repeat the mistakes he made. There wasn’t even a discussion.
Having graduated from military school, there were a lot of social aspects of life I had missed out on for those two years, and my focus quickly shifted from studies to those other aspects of life. My dad’s patience and college money and marriage seemingly all ran out at about the same time. Colleges were growing tired of my charade as well.
Four years ago there was a famous commencement speaker who we didn’t care about hearing, and since Ashley would not walk across the stage, we skipped the big ceremony. Ashley wanted to be a part of this one.
It didn’t take long when the English Department banner led their graduates onto the floor of the RBC that we spotted our graduate. It rather seemed that her faced glowed with some special sort of makeup. I had little difficulty spotting her each time I looked down at the floor of the RBC.
There were ten thousand gathered parents and friends. There were signs and foam hands trumpeting their pride. I know for them, there was a shining face down there as well. I spotted a friend a few rows down and I could see the pride in his eyes.
For me, it seemed that Ashley’s chair on that row was pulled forward a foot, for nearly every time I looked down, I saw my Ashley. And several times she looked up at me.
“We did it, Dad!” her look said to me.
No, she did it, Grandpa.
Whether it be at a high school graduation in a few weeks, or a college graduation, or a wedding, or celebrating a job, or whatever the moment for you, make it shining. And savor it.

Lessons in wind resistance

A number of years ago, my wife, Marilyn, dispatched my daughter, Ashley, and myself to Lowe’s to pick up some lumber and plywood for a bookcase she wanted us to build.
I guess I should have borrowed the neighbor’s pickup, but maybe having a bit too much pride, I took off in my Escort station wagon. I figured if we tilted the plywood sheets at an angle, it would fit.
Well, guess what, it didn’t fit. I seem to vaguely recall the people at Lowe’s urging me to go back home and borrow the neighbor’s pickup. Not me, we would get them home in the Escort, or rather, on top of the Escort.
No we didn’t securely tie the plywood down with the tobacco twine Lowe’s provided. I had more sense than that. I knew that wouldn’t hold it.
Ashley and I would roll the windows down in the front seats and we would hold it down with our free hand all the way back home.
What I soon discovered was how little wind it took to make the plywood get airborne. I don’t remember how many sheets we had on the roof that night, but I remember going down back roads that we could get away with going 20 mph so our plywood wouldn’t fly all over the road.
I have to add in to this story that the rest of the family thought that Independence Day was one of their favorite movies of all times. While I had caught bits and pieces here and there, for some reason it was on Saturday that I actually sat down and watched much of it.
If you have seen it, a key part of the plot is where Will Smith is piloting a Marine fighter jet and fleeing an alien spaceship. As the alien ship is closing in, and Will is running out of gas, he suddenly deploys a parachute that covers the alien ship, blinding the alien, causing him to crash.
Sunday was the designated day for Ashley and me to move much of her apartment, including her bed, back home. Ashley has been living in Raleigh much of the time for the past two years as she is completing her master’s degree at NC State.
I still don’t have a pickup, but I have moved up to a Ford Windstar van. If you take the seats out, it’s almost as good as a pickup.
Recently I needed to get my lawnmower serviced, so I took out the seats, backed the van into the ditch in front of my house, and with a couple of boards, loaded her up. The lawnmower repair shop said that was the first time they had unloaded one from a van. Worked for me.
Well, Sunday we got up to Raleigh. Ashley has a double bed, and we brought the mattress down and got it in the van with little problem. Then came the box springs. As it was going to be challenging to get them both in, we took the more flexible mattress out and put the box springs in. It was quickly clear that both would not fit at the same time.
Fortunately, we had some wire in the van. We would wire down the mattress to the roof of the van.
I must point out that my daughter began her college career in nuclear physics, so she has some knowledge of the laws of physics. She also had not completely wiped out what she remembers as a traumatic experience, trying to get the plywood home.
I had not forgotten the plywood lesson either, and told her we would go down non-interstate roads where we could go 40 or less, as the bulky, heavy mattress would not be likely to get wind under it and fly up like the more wing-like plywood.
I assured her that fortune favors the bold. I also reminded her that if an alien spaceship locked on our rear, we could speed up and blind them with the mattress.
She continued to have doubts, but trusted her father.
We had not gone a mile when suddenly the top tie down that I had tightened slid to the rear of the rails it was mounted on. The suddenly light as a feather mattress had taken wing. I searched the rear view mirror for the alien spaceship which surely must have triggered the emergency release of the mattress. Alas, it must have been a malfunctioning emergency release switch.
No alien spaceship and fortunately no closely following cars. The wire may not have kept the mattress from seeking freedom from the top of the van, but it maintained its hold on the handles of the mattress. So we drug the mattress some distance as I reacted to new lessons in physics.
A rather nice young man in a Jeep stopped to offer help getting the mattress back on the roof, but a rather red-faced father said he thought we could handle it.
Marilyn’s original advice was to save the mattress for the next trip, so we took it back upstairs, and brought it home later that day.
I was nervous about alien spaceships all the way home, though.

NL supports bond issue

We at the News Leader urge our Johnston County readers to take the time to cast a ballot next Tuesday in support of the bond issues before the voters.
The big one of the three is the school bond, for $99 million. The county continues to try to keep up with growth that is adding seemingly more than a school’s numbers to our county each year.
Many of the reasons for supporting this school bond are no different than the last several that we have passed. At the risk of stating the obvious or repeating some things you have already heard, let me offer my take on some reasons.
When you drive past Princeton School or several of the other campuses that are particularly stressed by growth, you see a trailer park village out back. While that image is not one that is particularly appealing to us, school officials will tell you for the most part the education of students is not significantly adversely affected by having to sit in a mobile classroom for part of their day. The bigger problems are inside the building.
Hallways which are not designed for the numbers of students who are having to use them between classes become places of conflict. Extra time has to be built in because of the time it takes to get from one side of the campus to the other.
Cafeterias are stretched for more students than they are designed for. Students are sitting down for lunch in some cases at late morning so that enough lunch times can be scheduled. Media centers which are required to have a certain number of books per student are stretched for space for all of the books.
There’s a most important concept to Princeton that’s a part of the bond issue. There’s a fundamental belief that education is enhanced in a smaller school. When students become numbers who won’t get a chance to play varsity sports or be student body president or when teachers can’t have a meaningful student-teacher relationship with every student because there are too many more, there’s something wrong with that picture.
I have friends who are on staff at West Johnston, and the discipline problems they have to face in addition to the normal ones are staggering. The root of those problems come from a school with too many kids.
This bond issue doesn’t endorse building Princeton-size high schools across the county, but it does endorse staying away from mega-size schools in Johnston County.
Yes, we have something directly to gain from the passage of the school bond, as overcrowding on our campus will be relieved by the new elementary school this bond will fund. We also benefit when more students stay in school and are prepared to be meaningful contributors to our society, whether they live in Princeton or somewhere else in Johnston County. Our neighbors’ problems will be on our doorstep someday.
I appreciate the planning and the conservative approach of county commissioners. While I have heard some in the county complain that we can’t continue to pass bond issues and expect the taxpayers to pay the bill, bond issues are precisely the current taxpayers’ best friend.
With more people moving into the county buying homes, it takes several years for enough tax revenue to come in from them to pay the current costs of providing schools and other services for their children. Rather than shifting that burden to current taxpayers alone, the bond issue allows those new taxpayers to more fully participate in paying the bills they are bringing the county to pay.
Some may say there should be alternatives to property taxes, and many will agree, that is the best we currently have available.
While school officials will tell you they would have liked to have had some more money in this bond issue, they appreciate the county’s commitment to finance schools at a rate that will not require additional taxes.
Part of that commitment also extends to trying to take care of other needs in the county. As more students turn to our community college for vocational training and preparatory classes for a four year degree, we need to maintain and improve their facilities. This bond will help address those needs.
Our recreation programs in the county are volunteer driven, but they need support in helping meet the high costs of facilities and their maintenance. Certainly we appreciate the benefits of parental involvement with their children, the positive alternative to more hours of television and video games, and the fulfillment athletics can bring as an alternative to drugs and alcohol. This support is needed.
The biggest concern that county officials have is good people will not take the time to cast their ballots. Polls will open early and stay open late, and most of the time you can be in and out in five minutes.
In addition to passage, we are hopeful that we will continue to pass bond issues by a strong margin. This won’t be the last one put before voters as there are other pressing needs. We need to continue to say to the county we endorse bonds to pay for growth, and we encourage them to continue using them in this way.
Thank you for taking the time.

Let ‘em spray

Several years ago, the State of North Carolina took a hard stance against smaller towns maintaining their own sewer treatment facilities. The roots of that were the recurring problems plants were having with spills.
In their wisdom, state officials endorsed regional waste treatment facilities. Rather than individual towns, often with stretched staffs and under-funded maintenance, cities would act as processors for a number of communities.
Fremont and Eureka have had little choice but to tap into Goldsboro’s system.
Goldsboro has been a reluctant party to all of this. They have been concerned about maintaining sewer capacity to sell to new industry and for housing growth. They are also facing increasingly tougher standards to meet for the quality of the discharge they put back in the nutrient sensitive Neuse River.
The original problems with the towns’ sewer systems came from problems with infiltration and inflow. It was rather like insulating a house. Builders knew a hundred years ago that houses wouldn’t hold heating and cooling because they didn’t have insulation, but with energy costs what they were then, it didn’t make dollars and cents to spend the extra money for insulation.
Similarly, our sewer systems were designed to take our waste to facilities rather than depend on septic tanks. They weren’t designed to make sure ground water and rainwater stayed out of them. The cost of treating the waste was not significant.
Ask anyone who has paid a $100 sewer bill. There are plenty of those around. Times have changed!
In Fremont’s case, they not only weren’t designed to keep out infiltration and inflow, they weren’t designed for easy replacement when they broke or got cracked, as terra cotta pipe is very prone to do. I remember well the 15-foot hole in front of my house that opened up one day, as dirt from the 14 1/2 foot above the sewer line had washed away into the line, causing the street to collapse.
While not all the line in town is that deep, just think of the extra expense to dig up and replace sewer line that deep in the ground.
Fremont has been paying and paying. The state has been helping and helping with grants and loans, but literally millions of dollars has been going to contractors to fix Fremont’s leaking lines. The town is not out of the woods yet.
Eureka’s problems are very different, though similar. It wasn’t seventy years ago when Eureka put in sewer, more like twenty or thirty. It was suppose to be done so much better, as we knew better what we were doing in putting in sewer lines, but Eureka apparently has very significant infiltration and inflow problems as well.
A small town with few resources, no industry, and many who are not that far above the poverty line, town leaders have had no easy answers to how to pay the mounting bills. More than a few have suggested that the right answer would be for the incorporated town to disappear and let the county or someone else deal with the sewer situation. The state will have none of that.
As we have stated previously, we appreciate the work of our state legislators, and particularly State Senator John Kerr, in helping our towns deal with a difficult, some would say impossible, problem.
From our local perspective, Goldsboro has been a part of the problem, as they continue to increase their sewer rates. Adding to our financial strains, we have a hard enough time finding the money to pay for repairs, we have to pay more and more for the waste and the rainwater we are putting in the system.
Goldsboro officials will tell you they would be happy for the towns to find their own solutions to their problems and not eat up their capacity. They are just trying to provide for their citizens and the potential for growth.
A great at least short-term solution for both towns will be to allow the two to open spray fields. While much of the waste will still be going to Goldsboro, during the continuing high rainwater infiltration and inflow times that excess can be sent to lagoons to apply to hay fields.
This marks a change in the state’s stance. We need to make sure this works for all parties, including the state who has been burned by small towns who didn’t operate and maintain facilities like they should.

NL supports bond issue

We at the News Leader urge our Johnston County readers to take the time to cast a ballot next Tuesday in support of the bond issues before the voters.
The big one of the three is the school bond, for $99 million. The county continues to try to keep up with growth that is adding seemingly more than a school’s numbers to our county each year.
Many of the reasons for supporting this school bond are no different than the last several that we have passed. At the risk of stating the obvious or repeating some things you have already heard, let me offer my take on some reasons.
When you drive past Princeton School or several of the other campuses that are particularly stressed by growth, you see a trailer park village out back. While that image is not one that is particularly appealing to us, school officials will tell you for the most part the education of students is not significantly adversely affected by having to sit in a mobile classroom for part of their day. The bigger problems are inside the building.
Hallways which are not designed for the numbers of students who are having to use them between classes become places of conflict. Extra time has to be built in because of the time it takes to get from one side of the campus to the other.
Cafeterias are stretched for more students than they are designed for. Students are sitting down for lunch in some cases at late morning so that enough lunch times can be scheduled. Media centers which are required to have a certain number of books per student are stretched for space for all of the books.
There’s a most important concept to Princeton that’s a part of the bond issue. There’s a fundamental belief that education is enhanced in a smaller school. When students become numbers who won’t get a chance to play varsity sports or be student body president or when teachers can’t have a meaningful student-teacher relationship with every student because there are too many more, there’s something wrong with that picture.
I have friends who are on staff at West Johnston, and the discipline problems they have to face in addition to the normal ones are staggering. The root of those problems come from a school with too many kids.
This bond issue doesn’t endorse building Princeton-size high schools across the county, but it does endorse staying away from mega-size schools in Johnston County.
Yes, we have something directly to gain from the passage of the school bond, as overcrowding on our campus will be relieved by the new elementary school this bond will fund. We also benefit when more students stay in school and are prepared to be meaningful contributors to our society, whether they live in Princeton or somewhere else in Johnston County. Our neighbors’ problems will be on our doorstep someday.
I appreciate the planning and the conservative approach of county commissioners. While I have heard some in the county complain that we can’t continue to pass bond issues and expect the taxpayers to pay the bill, bond issues are precisely the current taxpayers’ best friend.
With more people moving into the county buying homes, it takes several years for enough tax revenue to come in from them to pay the current costs of providing schools and other services for their children. Rather than shifting that burden to current taxpayers alone, the bond issue allows those new taxpayers to more fully participate in paying the bills they are bringing the county to pay.
Some may say there should be alternatives to property taxes, and many will agree, that is the best we currently have available.
While school officials will tell you they would have liked to have had some more money in this bond issue, they appreciate the county’s commitment to finance schools at a rate that will not require additional taxes.
Part of that commitment also extends to trying to take care of other needs in the county. As more students turn to our community college for vocational training and preparatory classes for a four year degree, we need to maintain and improve their facilities. This bond will help address those needs.
Our recreation programs in the county are volunteer driven, but they need support in helping meet the high costs of facilities and their maintenance. Certainly we appreciate the benefits of parental involvement with their children, the positive alternative to more hours of television and video games, and the fulfillment athletics can bring as an alternative to drugs and alcohol. This support is needed.
The biggest concern that county officials have is good people will not take the time to cast their ballots. Polls will open early and stay open late, and most of the time you can be in and out in five minutes.
In addition to passage, we are hopeful that we will continue to pass bond issues by a strong margin. This won’t be the last one put before voters as there are other pressing needs. We need to continue to say to the county we endorse bonds to pay for growth, and we encourage them to continue using them in this way.
Thank you for taking the time.