Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / May 21, 1987, edition 1 / Page 4
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Optnfon Page IK BRilSWlCI^^A^ " I Carolyn H. Swenll PubttMhw Mwnrd M. Swentt Editor Susan Uaher IVrtBu Editor R^otte Megivrjv dJocioto Editor Craig Sport, Editor y/ic* M,nmser V«cella Gore A Suean Barefoot. .AdvortUing Reprmeittativo, Tnnunie Galloway & Dorothy Brennan Typetettor, BUI Mcf^an I Pronoun Brenda Clenunons Photo Tochnician ^n^e Sprinkle AuUtant Prtnnun Clyde and Mattie Stout, Phoebe Clemmons dmdation Page4>A Thnrfday, May XI, 1987 Considerate Guests Are Twice As Welcome Visitors to the South Brunswick Islands, welcome! We wish you perfect weather, a safe suntan, and a hearty appetite for our great seafood. It’s a pleasure every year to see you come, just as a host and hostess enjoy opening the door of their home to special guests. We take pains to make our beaches, golf courses, restaurants, shops and roadways attractive for you, and to provide for everything you want while vacationing. You’re pretty important, after all. You make possible our growing economy, new jobs, and the satisfaction of being a distinctive resort area. May we ask a favor in return? As you enjoy the South Brunswick Islands area in all its springtime glory, please treat it as if you were partners with us in owning it. Our dune systems are fragile, our strand can quickly become trashy and even dangerous, and accomodations can deteriorate rapidly if you’re a careless guest. We hope you won’t destroy the dunes, leave litter, fires or glass on the beach, or damage your living quarters. Take time to look over island regulations and abide by them. Teach your children respect for them, too, and for houses and furniture that must serve many other families. If we both do our part to maintain this bit of paradise, it will give pleasure to all of us for years to come. And you’ll look forward to returning for another visit. We’ll look forward to that, too. Write Us The Beacon welcomes letters to the editor. All letters must be signed and include the writer’s address. Under no circumstances will unsigned letters be printed. Letters should be legible. The Beacon reserves the right to edit libeloos comments. Address letters to The Brunswick Beacon, P.O. Box 470 ShalJotte, N.C. 2S4S9. When Is Someplace A Real Community? Sharing a meal together the other day, Don and I were talking about community, or rather, our sensing of a lack of community in our lives and that of others, even though Shallotte and ShaUotte Point come closer to Ailing the biU than other places we’ve lived. A friend had taken mild offense, suprisingly, at hb reference to Mayberry in his guest column for the Beacon. We thought Andy Griffith and the folks in Mayberry were everyone’s favorites. Some folks may view them as small-town hicks and nosy old ladies sticking their noses into oUier folks' business, but not us. Like much of America, we're at times nostalgic for the best of another, apparently simpler, day. Most of the unsophisticated folks in Mayberry seem to have hearts of gold and a genuine sense of com munity, a concern for the common good of their fellow townspeople that outweighs selfish in^mlses. They seem to want to do WHAT’S RIGHT. In Mayberry, neighbors take time to visit neighbors in the eveiUngs and on weekends. The rockers on the front porch aren’t for show, they’re put to good use. It’s a town where families take time to dine together and where peo ple greet one another by name on the street and ask after folks. And it's a town where the stores probably close down on Sundays so people can go to church and ^nd time with their families. There’s no shift work, so both parents get to see their children in the school play. Judging from the show’s continu ing popularity, a lot of others must enjoy this view of a simpler life, must share our nostalgia for the good quaUties of a culture that is rapidly disappearing. As we bustle from job to home to dvic meetings and tee-off times, we subconsciously long for something that apparently is no more: com munity, where iitdividuals collective ly are more and better than they ever could be iridividually. It’s like the popularity of public radio’s “Lake Wobegon Days,’’ or One thing that Coach Redwine, er. State Rep. David Redwine, arid I seem to share is a fondness for col lege football After all, there is nothing like riding to Chapel Hill on a cool fall, Saturday afternoon to watch the Tar Heels play In Kenan Stadium. However, Redwine is an Blast Carolina University graduate. He seems to be proud of his Pirates, those ugly things dressed in purple and gold with braids in their long black hair aiKl beards. If Redwine has his way, those ugly Pirates will be invading beautiful Kenan Stadium at least every other faU. A House biU that would require the “Big Four" schools (UNC, N.C. State, Wake Forest and Duke) to play East Carolina in football each year is currently being sponsored by Red wine in the N.C. General Assembly. Redwine is begging the House to force teams to piay his pitiful Pirates. The silly bill has already been ap proved by the House Higher Educa tion Committee in a 12-7 vote last Coach Redwine Calls A Silly Play Terry Pope week. Now the bill will head for the entire House floor for a vote. According to the bill, ECU would alternate game sites each year with the Big Four schools. That means the Pirates would invade Chapel Hill every other year while the Tar Heels would have to travel to Greenville every other year as well. There is some speculation that the bill is in trouble because of possible lost revenues from the Big Four schools. The Big Four loses money when they must play at smaller schools with smaller stadiunss that have fewer ticket sales. The move should help Blast Carolina’s sagging football program. It's ironic that what might have been a strong point for the bUl (to place a greater emphasis on rivalry Instead of revenues) may now actual ly kill it After all, rivalries are good for the game. But all sports fans should know the feeling of being shunned by the big ger guys. It happens all the time. UNC-Wilmin^on has difficulty scheduling the Big Four schools to piay basketball in Wilmington because of possible upsets and because of lost revenues. The only Big Four team to have played in Wilmington’s Trask Coliseum is Wake Forest, which in 1979 won by just three points. Big time college football is a very big business, too. Perhaps It has become too big a business. Scandals and iiKidents of cheating have struck several major universities In recent years, showing that schools have forgotten that it is all just a game. Redwine and the House Higher BlducaUon Committee have gained state headlines recently with a bill that might have nothing to do with “higher education,’’ but it does make From Th© Som© AAud Ho!© Elvery summer someone seems to get very excited because of sharks. It may be because a Asherman pulls in a sand shark and leaves it on the beach for the birds to eat. Or it may be someone sighted a shark while swimming in the surf. Or someone on land sees a fin and yells, “Shark!" More than likely it is because of the horror stories and horror films about the great white shark and its cousins. True, there are occasions when sharks attack and someone is hurt, even losing an arm like the girl recently in Texas. Bill Faver Why is there such a shark mania? Why do we dread them? Almost panic when we hear of one or sight one? No doubt the publicity and the fear of what we do not know con- Susan Usher the late-show classic “It’s A Wonder ful Life,’’ starring James Stewart He sacrifices for years for family, friends, the business, while sticking to his principles, his belief in famUy, his Christian woric ethic. He’s on the verge (rf losing it aU when an angel shows Fred the dif ference that he, one man, has made in other’s lives because he cared. And, as we expect, Fred and his wife go smiling into tomorrow. Because private lives had joined for public good, their world is a better place. Today, as columnist Norris Frederick noted recently in The Charlotte Observer, we no longer prosper and suffer together as rural communities once did, our fates tied to the land or some other commonaU- ty. Instead many of us have “com munities” defined no longer by geographic location, but by corpora tion, economic segment and lifekyle. Many have retreated to private lives tied together only by the quest to material wealth, he suggests. “It’s not that we as a people are evil,” he writes, “but we And ourselves adrift between nostalgic desire for life in a small town of the past and a world today whose only conception of the common good is economic competition, which will br ing increased material wealth—but for what erid?” What’s missing more and more, he suggests, is a vision ctf true ctmununi- ty. Not the worst of the past, racism, oppression and the Itice, but the things that cause us to look fondly at snnall-town life: Caring, moral fiber, values and personal conviction that translate into a working together for common good. !-4>n Mcniorial 1 )ay, The 1 )’A asks yoir to recall sacHfices ^ made in deiense of, [ the Ck^nstitution. i tribute to our emotions about sharks. Perhaps it will help us to realize sharks are among our oldest “relatives,” far outdating man as a species. Notebooks kept by anthropologist Loren Elsely contain some writings on the sharks and how in Cambrian times they parted from what was to become man, “It was the hour of the shark; no one knows where it began but the bat tle grew: the fishes were multiply ing, building up toward some tremen dous biological explosion. They had acquired jaws...The sixty-foot tiger shark and the most deadly jaws in the world were buUt from models that first raced out of river mouths 400 million years ago. “Over the land the shadow of a million year drought deepened...climate swung from tor rential rain to...trapped marshes and drying lakes...Ash^ in mudholes began to learn how to breathe air... “I like to think It was there in a dy ing stream bed that we parted: the ganoid Osh with the beginnings of the lung that would enable it to creep on slow fins up the mud banks toward the future and our gray-nosed brother, which never developed an air bladder, turning downward toward the sea. It was the last time that we met to know each other, but we both survived...We hate that grim sea-roving fin and the death it car ries. We are from the same mud hole, devising death with the same mud- puddle brains.” (Quoted In Natural History, June 1987). Surely no one of us would advocate carelessness with sharks. We need to know about them, respect them, and give them space just as we expect to have a place we can enjoy along the special coastline where land and sky and sea converge. us focus on where our priorities are when it comes to college athletics. Bills on alcoliol sales and the shag dance we can handle. Coach Red wine, but don't force an ugly Pirate on us. I also have news for the big guy: Come on, Redwine. Bring your Pirates to Chapel Hill. And bring your House biU with you. You can even do the sliag if you want But we'll still wlilp you, fair and .square! LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Pick Up, Sell Roadside Trash To the editor: Our representative, David Red wine, has been active lately trying to get liquor for golf courses, tax money for sand (oceanfront renourishment), and some ball games for Eastern Carolina Univer sity. My neighbor, Vem, says David might start representing the majori ty of us after the summer season is over. Vem also had a good sugges tion on paying for oceanfront renourishment. He said if the county or state would pick up all the paper and aluminum cans along the Brunswick County roads and sell the paper and aluminum cans, they would have enough money for the sand renouri.shment. P.J. Johnson Shallotte No Leash Law In The County? To the editor: Our family enjoys vacationing along the Brunswick County coastline. On Satiu^y, May 9 at Sunset Beach, we were forced to leave in a great hurry. A couple had brought their dog with them on the beach only to walk the dog to the edge of the surf and wait there while it defecated into the water. This was done near the pier where the area was very crowded. Are their not laws against negligent pet owners in this county? Does Brunswick County not have leash laws—even in neighborhoods? On numerous occasions we have been chased and harassed by dogs whle walking on the streets and on the beach. Is there not some ordinance about cats? There seems to be far too many in the Seaside area. They are con stantly walking on our cars and scratching the paint I do so appreciate you allowing me to air my complaints in your fine publication. Mrs. Pat Clark Charlotte Was If Worth Real Heroes Don't Moke Headlines III® It was good to see Julia Seibert again last week, her round, pink face just as radiant as a schoolgirl’s, though she’s pushing 70. That joy she once radiated around Brunswick County through her inter national projects is now bestowed on Raleigh folks, but I remember her well. Julia is a modest, self-effacing woman who nevertheless speaks up to humanity wherever it is, its endless variety a source of fasclna- tics* to *iSra So she practices a gentle persua sion on the rest of us, nudging us to get acquainted with other cultures and with people whose color and language and religion are different from ours. We can discover, she in sists, new worlds to learn about, and dell^tful friends in the bargain. It’s no academic matter to Julia. She’s traveled to nearly every conti nent and lived in the homes of people of many nationalities. They’ve visited hOT, too, in her Long Beach cottage and now in Raleigh. When poUtical tensions mount to episodes of violence overseas, it’s personal to Julia, because she'll have a friend there. This loving little lady became a heroine in my eyes, because she’s planting seeds of human understan ding in a world that aches for such a harvest Yet Julia Seibert has never been mentioned on anyone's front page, nor received prestigious awards that got media attention. Her heroism Mar/orie Megivern flows quietly, like a mountain stream, from a relentless devotion to her personal quest for brotherhood. A day or so after I saw her at the Moroccan taste-in last week, I heard about another hero of sorts, living right under my nose as I travel bade and forth to work. Ironically, the man described glowingly to me in a phone call. Is one whose property I derided in a recent column. L.A. I^ewis owns the salvage yard on U.S. 17 that features upward of SOO vehicles in various stages of deterioration. To me they constitute a blight on the landscape, but of course it’s his business, literally. However, while Lewis may present an unattractive sight for ocean highway travelers, he apparently goes about doing good in oth^ ways. My informant relayed several in stances of his readiness to help strangers in need, often at con siderable trouble and expense. He has come to the aid of stranded travelers, found housing for the needy, given money right out of his pocket Even that ugly yard. I'm told, is a boon to car owners needing spare parts. And the gentleman’s reward for his kindness is a rusty public slap at his busiiKss. I’ll take Mr._ Lewis’s heroism on faith, trusting my anonymous caller who resented that slap. If his admirer is truthful, it’s another instance of good deeds done secretly all around us. As we Ignore folks like Lewis, we pay homage to the likes of ptoessioiul athletes, rock stars and politicians, heavUy promoted on television. The unseen. Invisible heroes are everywhere. Some perform their grace-AUed acts In classrooms, some at hospital bedsides, and nuny, many more in their own homes, day after day. It Is the greatest paradox that the Seiberts and Lewi^ of the world receive no pay or recognition for what they do. However, every hero I’ve known has found a happiness probably unknown to Madonna or Mick Jagger, or even Ronald Reagan. But heroes are hunun and like to know once in a while that their con tributions to society are appreciated. So, jot a thank-you note to your chUd's teacher, U this Is one of your quiet heroes; tell your minister or doctor or neighbor he or she is great. Heroism deserves an occasional pat on the back. And thanks, Mr. Lewis. I’ll try to look more kindly on your salvage yard. To the editor; During the last election, a hue and cry arose throughout the land to single out and punish those among our number who deposit their waste in fuU view of the rest. Our elders passed a law to deter the scoundrels, our high sheriff vow ed persistent and hot pursuit, our local media cheered the whole crowd on, and I waited confidently to view the list of the convicted. Maybe there’s a secret court in the county—I’ve yet to read of one single convktiQn. CouW be we all decided it just wasn’t worth all the trouble after aU. Jesse Clemmons Supply THE BRUNSWICKAIKACON Established Nov. 1,1962 T elephone 754-6890 Published Every Thursday At Main Street Shallotte. N. C. 28459 ' SUBSCRIPTION RATES IN BRUNSWia COUNTY One Year $7.50 Six Months $4.00 EUEWHERE IN NORTH CAROLINA One Year $10.00 Six Months $6.00 ELSEWHERE IN U.S.A. One Yeor $12.50 Six Months $7.00 Second class postage paid at the Post Office in Shollotte, N. C. 28459. USPS 777-780. J.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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May 21, 1987, edition 1
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