Newspapers / The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, … / Feb. 3, 1994, edition 1 / Page 13
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1 1 nH/>r l"VlO Cl 1 n THE BRUNSWICKftBEACON Qi L41 lv lv J LI 1\Zj OLII1 q ? INSIDE THIS SECTION: Plant Doctor, 4 Sports, Pages 6-12 ?<{ ? ? : . t *w THIS VICTORIAN STYLE feeder, like many of the others, has its opening fitted with a copper background to keep pesky squirrels from gnawing on it. in? i i ll^tr STAFF PHOTOS BY FRir CARIZON DEAN CHESSER, a U.S. Postal Service retiree from Charlotte, shows the "bird sanctuary" he created on request from his wife, Pat. The unusual bird feeder is one of several of Chesser's creations nestled in the trees around the couple's Sea Trail home. ^ '?-?SI INTRICATE STYLING and attention to even the smallest detail typifies the birdhouses and other woodwork that has been a life long hobby for Chesser. How Tweet It Is... Building Open-Air Mansions For Feathered Friends ? BY LYNN CARLSON I have four children, and they're all good with their hands," Dean Chesser says. He sounds as if that's some kind of mystery. When you take a walk around the cozy Sea Trail Plantation home of Dean and wife Pat. you can't help marveling at how their talented hands have touched every corner with things lovingly built or sewed or painted or grown?things beau tiful and utilitarian, things fashioned from mate rials and ideas old and new. They could be poster children for an Asso ciation of Well-Adjusted Retirees. They laugh a lot, praise each others' skills and aren't a bit sorry they left the hubbub of Charlotte when Dean re tired from the U.S. Postal Service. They've ex plored the entire region around Brunswick County and can give you a quick rundown on good antique stores and restaurants within a 50 mile range of Sunset Beach. Pat sews costumes for her ballet-dancing granddaughter. She forages for muscadine vines to make wreaths she adorns with herbs she grows and dries herself. In front of a sliding glass door overlooking the golf course is a tray of tiny green shoots peeking past soil?something Pat is sprouting from seeds. Dean jokes that she's forgotten what kind of plant it is. Dean's woodworking shop is a small room off the garage, where works in progress include a corner cupboard and a combination shelf/towel rack Pat has ordered for one of the bathrooms. The most famous products of Dean's workshop are his birdhouses, particularly the "bird sanctu ary" on one side of the house. It sits on a forked WISTERIA vine decorates a three-hole house with perches. piece of petrified wood, a putty-green miniature "Church in the Wildwood," its steeple reaching toward heaven from the tin roof that came off an old barn. "That one stops people on the golf course," Dean said, explaining that he copied it from one Pat admired in a store. A few family members, good friends and chari ties have been rewarded with one or more of Dean's birdhouses. He has no interest in selling them; he just makes them and gives them away. He loaned one to the Sunset Beach Beau tification Committee to place atop the first town Christmas tree, then he gave it to a neighbor who admired it. "I don't have much design imagination, but I can copy ones I like," he explains. Throughout the Chessers' yard, birdhouses perch atop poles, are posted on the sides of tree trunks and hang from limbs. You have to really look to see them all. since many of them just blend into the surroundings. "There are a lot of birdhouse fanatics," he says, adding that he can't remember a time before he had this hobby of working with wood. Each birdhouse is different. There's a round one, an A-frame and one that looks like a minia ture gazebo. One is a dormered grey Victorian looking creation, complete with "gingerbread" details. Another has three holes, each with a perch below it, and a wisteria vine encircling it Most of the feeders have copper shields at their openings to keep the squirrels from gnawing out the holes to get at the birdseed. (When you have a lot of birdhouses and like to plant things in your yard, you learn about the infinite tenacity of the squirrel population, the Chessers explain.) On this midwinter day, with visitors strolling around the lawn, the birds keep their distance. But in just a few short weeks, the first fat robins of the year will stop by for a vacation at Chez Chesser, which in bird judgment must be one of the plush est resorts on the spring tlyway. Summit Looks At 'Children in Crisis/ ChaUenaes Community BY SUSAN USHER Mobilizing all of a community's resources to meet the needs of chil dren and families in crisis. That was the challenge speaker Linda Hyler put to a medley of county agency and public school personnel gathered Wednesday morning at Brunswick Community College for a summit conference on "children in crisis." "I assure you this is the begin ning," Assistant Brunswick County Schools Superintendent Oscar Blanks Jr., who coordinated the event, said afterward, saying Hyler's challenge to move from talk to ac tion has already been accepted. "It takes a whole village to raise a child," he told participants at the start of the conference. "These agen cies can't do alone. 'Hie schools can't do it alone." In planning the summit meeting, he said, "everybody ! talked to said we need to do this; and our princi pals said it should be our top priori ty. This is a way to help educate our students at a higher level." "We will probably use some part of Communities In Schools and adapt it to Brunswick County; it's very flexible," he said. "We'll be tapping Linda llyler and the re sources she has available." Those re sources include research, training, and helping coordinate start-up of a program. Hyler is director of North Caro lina Cities/Communities in Schools, a non-profit organization that helps communities take a methodical ap proach in identifying and meeting the needs of young people in danger of failing in school or in life. ITie structure is simple: a public/private partnership is created that involves the schools, the business communi ty, social service providers, parents, churches and civic organizations. Typically the targeted services are delivered through the local schools serving as resource centers. The strategy typically focuses on dropout prevention with a twist: keeping kids not only in school, but succeeding in school, by providing a human support system that address es the personal and family needs that helped create the problem in the first place. In North Carolina, said Hyler, 72 percent of all prisoners dropped out of high school. If the juveniles who appear in court, 85 percent either have school attendance problems, are truant or are drop-outs. More than 130 communities na tionwide are using the Communities or Cities in School approach to take collective responsibility for their children, including more than 20 in North Carolina. In southeastern North Carolina, Onslow County and the City of Clinton in Sampson County are developing CIS pro grams. "We need early intervention." said panelist Michael Reaves, presi dent of Brunswick Community Col lege. "We have children in crisis now, but if we don't do anything about that we will soon have youth in crisis; if we don't do anything about that we will have citizens in crisis, and then we will have leaders in crisis." Wednesday's meeting was a start ing point for working together. It al lowed service agencies from the Brunswick County Sheriff's Depart ment to Southeastern Mental Health to tell educators, and each other, what their agency has to offer chil dren or those who work with chil dren. For some participants, both on the nine-member agency panel and in the audience, the conference provid ed a forum for airing frustrations and a wish list for needed resources and services. The summit also of fered a glimpse of how those ser vices might Ik- delivered more effec tively by working together. Facilitator Dudley Flood, director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators, cautioncd the group not to be satisfied with having talked about the problem they share. "I have been dismayed to find that too often we come to this point and think we have done what we can do," he said. "But this should only be a start. You have to ask yourself, Brunswick County, 'Are you com mitted?'" STAFF PHOTO BY SUSAN USHER LINDA HYLER (left), director oj North Carolina Cities/Commun ities in Schools, listens intently to (iail Novello, a Union Ele mentary School guidance counselor, following the "Children in Crisis" conference last week.
The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, N.C.)
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Feb. 3, 1994, edition 1
13
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