Newspapers / The Warren Record (Warrenton, … / Feb. 22, 1989, edition 1 / Page 2
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Warren flUcorii Published Every Wednesday By Record Printing Company P O Box 70. Warrenton. N G 27589 HOWARD F JONES GRACE W JONES Editor President THURLETTAM BROWN News Editor ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE IN WARRENTON, NORTH CAROLINA, UNDER THE LAWS OF CONGRESS Second Class Postage Paid At Warrenton. N C In Warren and SUBSCRIPTION . adioinmg counties Elsewhere RATES: $12 00PerVear $1500PerYear $ 7 00 Six Months $ 8 00 Six Months More Notice Needed Back in those less-than ? halcyon days when a site in : Warren County was chosen : as a landfill in which to : dispose of PCB-laced soil : from a number of counties, | the charge was repeatedly made that Warren was se lected because it had a small population, was predominant : ly black, rural and without political clout. : Whether any of those reasons entered into the decision to place the PCB dump near Afton is debat able, but the widely held per ception locally was that lack of political influence was a determining factor. Now we note that presen tations are being made in a couple of dozen counties as a prelude to the selection of a site tor a low level radioac tive waste storage facility in North Carolina. This follows a preliminary study which concluded that some 20,000 square miles of North Carolina will be con sidered when the storage site is finally chosen. Warren County land is still in the running. As a prelude to locating the waste site, the Low Level Radioactive Waste Manage ment Authority is holding 26 public forums across North Carolina before determining ; the location of a site which ; will take waste from eight : southern states. Two of those forums were ; held last week, one in Halifax County, another in Nash County. A third is planned in March in Vance County. Surely citizens of Warren, who will have no forum in their own county, should be expected to receive sufficient notification of the hearings. Such is apparently not the case. The forums in Halifax and Nash counties have been widely advertised, but only in the counties in which a forum was planned. There has been no notice to neigh boring counties that forums were being held. In fairness to the Waste Management Authority, it should be pointed out that six fact sheets and a brochure concerning the proposed waste site have been placed in area libraries. But only in libraries of those counties hosting a forum. Certainly Warren residents who subscribe to weekly and daily newspapers in neighboring counties are not ignorant of the planned forums. And surely we have a vested financial interest in seeing that advertisements of the forums are placed in our newspaper. But our con cern goes beyond monetary considerations. It is imperative that resi dents of every county which is a potential site for a radio active waste dump be given as much information as possible about the dump site selection procedures. This should mean fact sheets in our local libraries and adver tisements in the local news paper and over the local radio station. By offering forums only in large and influential coun ties, and not broadening their advertisements, state of ficials run the risk of leaving the small county resident in the dark about a highly emotional subject. After War ren's experience with PCBs, small, politically weak coun ties are perhaps overly sen sitive about any decision which could have a negative impact. The state must rea lize this and act accordingly to see that no county or set of citizens is left in the dark about plans for a radioactive waste facility. Editor's Quote Book Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage. Wendell Phillips Looking Back Into The Record February 25, 1949 A delegation of 15 or more persons appeared before the county commissioners Thursday morning in an effort to block the erection of a 35-bed hospital here at a cost to taxpayers of Warren County of $23,000 in excess of the $110,000 bond issue passed by an ;? overwhelming vote early last ' year. :? About 50 residents of Warren ? County Joined the throng of more ?: than 2,000 persons who converged } on Raleigh Tuesday to argue that : the ABC system is the best means ?: of dealing with the liquor prob ? lem in the state. 5 I ~ Mr. and Mrs. Albert Hight, of > Warrenton, announced the birth ?: of a daughter, Judy Ann, on Feb. : 19 in the Hunter Clinic. ?* ? February 21, 1$M j: A remodeling crew began work ?: here this week to transform the former AltP grocery building on i Main Street into a modem office ; building slated to house the in } aurance agency of Monroe Gard ner and Walter M. Gardner. James H. Burton, Jr., of War renton, has been named Warren County's chairman of the North Carolina Governor's Coordinat ing Committee on Aging. David Lewis Paschall, infant son of Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Paschall, Jr. of Manson, was christened Sunday night during the regular worship service at Drewry Methodist Church. February 22, 1179 Norlina has shown the highest percentage of growth of any of Warren County's three munici palities during the past seven years, according to data com piled by the N. C. Department of Administration. The blizzard-like snow which buried Warren County late Sun day, forcing schools and many businesses to close Monday, piled slightly over 10 inches here, the greatest amount of snowfall remembered by many since 1948. A 1700,000 8,000-square-foot ad dition to the Warren County Health Department has been planned to fit in with the proposed expansion of facilities at Warren General Hospital. The Warren County Scene A snow creature of unusual proportions took shape in the park ing lot of a Warrenton business following last weekend's snowstorm. The snow-sculpted dinosaur had many rivals as residents of the county tried their hand at making snowmen. (Staff Photo by Phyllis H. King) As Others See It Visiting Rich County By MARY STUART LONG In the (Roxboro) Courier-Times You probably saw the article in a recent Sunday edition of the Durham Morning Herald and were attracted, as I was, by the article about a country that had the highest average income in America. Could it be, I won dered, in New York State? or perhaps somewhere near bust ling Chicago? Or perhaps even a part of the newly rich South bor dering the Gulf of Mexico with all its off-shore oil drilling wells? Surprisingly, it was none of those. This rich county was just a dry bit of arid west Texas where the jackrabbits far out number the people. It was Loving County, with Mentone its only town, in an area of 664 square miles and inhabited by only about 100 people. That makes an average of one person to every six miles and because there are so few people they are all employed by the occasional oil well driller or rancher and that results in such a high average income. Total employment is certain ly nice but there are some things that are lacking in this county of the highest average income that we fortunate folk in Person County just take for granted. For instance, the people in Loving County for years had to travel outside the county to get drinking water. It was only this past summer that the county paid to have clean water piped from another county into the 500 gallon tank in the center of town from which they fill the large containers that they keep in their homes. Our water for homes and gardens at the turn of a spigot, beautiful Lake Hyco, Lake Roxboro, and the City Lake take on new meaning and vqlue as compared to poor, dry Loving County, do they not? Then, too, our children and all of us would certainly hate it if the youngsters here had to be transported 32 miles away into the next county to school as the poor kids in Loving County have had to do since 1972 when the town decided it was not feasible to maintain a school system there since there were only two children of school age. There are six of them now but they still travel 64 miles, going and coming, to get their education. It does make North End School, Northern and Southern Junioi Highs, North and South Elemen tary, Woodland, Earl Bradsher Bethel Hill and Person Senior High School look mighty fine, doesn't it? And although Roxboro's down town center on some days can look about as deserted as the fairgrounds after the fair has left we are still more than a little ahead of this county in Texas that has only one gas station, a courthouse, and two empty buildings that used to be a gro cery store and a restaurant. Actually, I would never have believed that article, I would just have thought it was the des parate effort of some news paper writer who had given out of facts and had to fall back on his imagination, if I had not seen that part of the country myself. I can remember the apparent ut ter desolation of west Texas when my husband and I were driving through it. No one in sight, just miles and miles and miles of nothing but sagebrush and the perfectly good paved road on which we were driving (much too fast by local speed limits, but we were the only people on the road for hundreds of miles). I also remember thinking it odd that there should be a good paved road through all of this emptiness but finally de cided that the few inhabitants had to have a fast way to get out of there when they could stand it no longer. When we finally reached the Pecos River and saw real, honest-to-goodness water flowing we felt like the children of Israel when they saw the Promised Land. So, in view of that particular trip, I do believe the newspaper story, There probably is such a place and they are welcome to it, high average income and all, for there are a number of things more precious than a fat check book! One in seven American adults? some 24 million people? cannot find their own country on a world map, says National Geographic. Is your wmM | birthday I ka this month? Come To Hundlfy's Flowers & Frinrn HIGHWAY IM NOKLINA. N.C. Show us your blrthdate on your driver's license. You will receive a beauti ful longatemmed red rose. You are eligible to register (or our ISO gift certificate Drawing will be held at 4:30 p.m. on the 30th. Happy Birthday To You Your friends at Hundley's Flowers A Frames 456-2430 Thurietta Brown All Around Us Back in the Stone Age, before there was running water or anything else considered remotely modem and I was trapped here in Warren County in my history class, I hated the subject. In those days, you see, history was presented to us as an endless collection of dates to be memorized, wars to be retained, presidents to be carved in stone in our brains and so much other boring stuff that was to be "larn't by rote" that it put a bad taste in your mouth. History, YECH! ! ! ! ! Who cares anyway? What's done is done, those folks and dinosaurs are dead, so let's get on with the real world at hand. As I got older, 1 learned that the "whys" and "wherefores" of history can make all of the difference, turning that endless succes sion of dates and events into meaningful stories of real people ? just like you and me. And as I got even older (just call me Methuselah! ), the truth real ly came home. I remember the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. (I was sitting in Mrs. Lula Newsome's algebra class at Hawkins when the announcement was made.) I remember the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. (I was a student at Duke then). I remember the Viet Nam War. (I cor responded faithfully with a guy in service there and remember very well when he came back home, having survived the ordeal.) I remember the early beginnings of space exploration. I remember when polio vaccine was administered to children on sugar cubes. But you can feel older than Methuselah when you realize that kids today in school are studying these events from their history books. HISTORY! ! ! But, I was there and I ain't dead and gone yet! The point is, history is being made every day. The Rt. Rev. Bar bara Harris has just been named the first black, female bishop for the Episcopal Diocese. Ron Brown, a Washington, D.C. attorney, has just been named the first black chairman of the National Democratic Party. That may be "big time history," but history is also being made right here in little ol' Warrenton. We've got our own "Florence Nightengale" here in the form of Mrs. Virginia Curtis Burton, known lovingly by many as "Gingerbread." She cares deeply about the sick and shut-in persons here and senior citizens and has been known to walk great distances to their residences to carry their medicines. "I also take them the fruits and other 'goodies' I know they like," she said last weekend. "Gingerbread," a familiar personality of horoscope fame on radio station WARR, still dedicates hymns and other musical selections to her friends. She also telephones them regularly? "just to check on them," she said. A woman of great wisdom, she spouts advice: "If you have a song, sing it. If you have a kind word, say it. If you have a prayer, pray it." Mrs. Burton is a native of Warren County and is the daughter of Mrs. Geneva Watson Curtis and Silas Curtis, and is the great-niece of Mansfield F. Thornton, Warren County register of deeds from 1879 until 1900. She was a member of the Class of '39 at John R. Hawkins High School and graduated in 1945 from Spralley's Beauty College in Newport News, Va. Not known to be idle, she also holds a typing certificate earned from Huntington High School in Newport News. "Gingerbread" returned permanently to Warrenton to care for her mother in 1968, when her father died, and she's been here ever since. She is a member of Warrenton Baptist Church on Bragg Street, where she sings in the choir ( "I love to sing, that's my heart! ") and serves on the flower committee. She is also a member of the ladies' aux iliary for the Warrenton Volunteer Fire Department and works part time at Ideal Florist. And "Gingerbread" goes along her way spreading joy to those who know and love her in Warren County. "So what?" I can hear you say. Well, that's what they said about Harriett Tubman as she led the Underground Railroad that brought countless slaves to freedom. That's what they said about Harry T. Burleigh, a little black boy born a mere one year after the end of slavery, who went on to sing in con cert halls throughout the United States and Europe? even perform ing before King Edward VII. That's what they said about Isaac Mur phy, the little black boy who loved horses and went on to win three Kentucky Derbies. That's what they said about Horace King, a former slave who went on to be one of the foremost bridge engineers in the south before the Civil War. That's what they said about Hattie McDaniel, the black woman who wanted to act and went on to win an Oscar as best supporting actress in "Gone With The Wind" in 1940. It's the "little people" all around us who make history in their own way. Pay attention to them. Who knows? One day your children or grandchildren may be studying tviem in their classrooms and you'll be able to say, "Oh yes, I was ;re when...." I 1 Open Under New Management Mrs. Barbara Allen, Owner OPEN HOUSE FEB. 26 2:30 P.M. till 5:30 P.M. Liberty St. ? Norllna THANK YOU The Churchill Fire Department would like to thank the County Commissioners, Firemen's Association, Fire Com missioners and everyone who has supported us in our fight to keep our Fire Department open.
The Warren Record (Warrenton, N.C.)
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Feb. 22, 1989, edition 1
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