THE
ERQUIMANS
P9/C9******CAR-RT LOT**R 008 A0001
PERQUIMANS COUNTY LIBRARY
514 S CHURCH ST
HERTFORD NC 27944-1225
"News from Next Door”
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6, 2018
Flag retirement ceremony, 6
75 cents
SUBMITTED PHOTO
A truck is engulfed by flames during the Winslow Oil Company fire in
1978.
Program recalls historic fire
BY PETER WILLIAMS
News Editor
It’s been 40 years, but the im
ages of the 1978 Winslow Oil
Company fire in Hertford have
not faded for Ed Leicester.
He’s 63-years-old now, but he
was a young man back then. He’d
been on the Hertford Fire Depart
ment for about seven or eight
months when a spark apparently
ignited fuel stored at the company
at the foot of Covenant Garden.
“”I was young and I didn’t know
what to do except what people
told me to do,” he said.
Images from the blaze will be
shown June 16 at 6 p.m. at the
Perquimans County Recreation
Center. The Perquimans Masonic
Lodge is sponsoring the event.
Leicester and Parker Newbern
will be talking about the blaze.
“The alarm came in about 7:55
a.m. and I was home sick with the
flu that day,” Leicester said.
It was Jan. 10 and it was bit
ter cold. Leicester remembers he
hadn’t put something over his car
windshield to prevent ice from
forming, so he drove to the fire
off Grubb Street with the driver’s
side window of his car rolled
down and his head sticking out.
The front-page story in the Per
quimans Weekly that week said
some 100,000 gallons of fuel oil,
50,000 gallons of kerosene and
between 35,000 and 40,000 gal
lons of gasoline was being stored
at the site. In all, nine of the 11
tanks there were destroyed.
Reid Oil next door was spared
the destruction.
“They had a corrugated metal
on their building and had it not
See FIRE, 2
Grant
to help
trailer
cleanup
BY PETER WILLIAMS
News Editor
Property owners with
abandoned homes in Per
quimans County may now ■
get a little help with remov
ing eyesores and having the
metal recycled.
For the first time ever,
Perquimans has been ruled
as eligible for program
through the N.C. Division of
Environmental Quality that
oversees the program.
Homes that are in mobile I
home parks and those dam
aged by fire are not eligible
for the program, said Ernie I
Swanner, the code enforce
ment officer for Perqui
mans.
At most Perquimans can
get $10,000 this year. That
will be divided up into 10
grants for property owners.
Swanner said there are
plenty of vacant mobile
homes in the county that
need to be removed.
“There are at least 30 and
I’m still gathering more in
formation on others. There
were 12 so far that are going
to go, one way or another.”
Swanner said not all old
mobile homes are an issue.
“If you’re living in a trailer
that is 50 years old and it’s
still livable, that’s not both
ering me.”
But he mentioned one
that had been vacant and
people stripped the walls
and other things off.
Swanner, who wrote the
grant to get the state funds,
said he has to get at least
eight homes removed or the
county won’t be reimbursed
for anything. There is a lot
of paperwork.
The county has a contrac
tor who has offered a price
for cleanup, and they have
to document how it was
done and where the scrap
went. The contractor can j
keep any money they get by
See TRAILER, 2
STAFF PHOTO BY PETER WILLIAMS
Members of the 2018 graduating class of Perquimans County High School got to walk the halls of Hertford
Grammar School and the three other schools in the district last month. Graduation is this Friday.
PCHS to hold graduation
BY PETER WILLIAMS
News Editor
More than 120 students will walk
across the stage Friday for Perqui
mans County High School gradua
tion.
Twenty-nine of them had already
completed their classwork early and
graduated early, but they will still
participate, said Principal Wayne
Price. The ceremony starts at 7 p.m.
on the school’s football field
It’s Price’s goal that next year
some of the graduating class will
walk across the stage at a commu
nity college after earning an Associ
ate’s degree before they ever walk
across the stage in Hertford. The
school is implementing a program
that encourages students to be dual
enrolled.
A teacher stands on a chair to get a good picture of seniors marching
‘It opens doors for kids and we the halls at Hertford Grammar School last month.
have some very strong students,”
Price said.
“It’s a good thing for students, and
a great thing for parents. When you
can graduate high school with 62
college credit hours, you .can walk
into a university as a junior.”
It’s great for parents because they
don’t have to pay for two years of
the tuition at a more expensive uni
versity.
Graduates got a chance to don
their caps and gowns last month
and take a final walk through the
local schools that help get them to
STAFF PHOTO BY PETER WILLIAMS
this point in their educational ca
reer. They started the senior walk
and Hertford Grammar School and
went on to Perquimans Central and
Perquimans County Middle Schools
to show younger students what a
graduate really looks like.
Price said it’s an outstanding pro
gram, not just for the graduates and
the younger students, but the teach
ers who get to see the fruits of their
labor.
“I’ve spent almost all of my ca
reer at the elementary school level,
and I can tell you what it means to
see teachers who might have taught
them in Kindergarten and Pre-K see
them walk it reaffirms to teachers
how important what they do is.”
Out of a graduating class of 122,
this year there were 43 PCHS stu
dents taking college classes. Next
year Price hopes to have 100 stu
dents doing that. That’s 100 students
out of pool of237juniors and seniors
in the school next year.
See PCHS, 2
Donation
to help
deputies
BY PETER WILLIAMS
News Editor
Perquimans County Sher
iff Shelby White knew the
value of having laptop com
puters in patrol cars even
before he was appointed
to the job more than a year
ago.
But he also knew it would
be expensive and he didn’t
have the money in his bud
get when he took office in
early 2017.
The department has 15
patrol vehicles. White priced
the cost of getting just four
new computers and eight
mounts for the eight road
patrol deputies. The price
tag from one vendor was
$24,000 and the price from
another was $25,000. The
idea is once the mounts
were in place, deputies
could swap out the comput
er at the end of their shift so
another deputy could use it.
But that way White fig
ured it was a start if he could
get it in the county budget
tins year.
Then the sheriff was
speaking at a Ruritan Club
meeting earlier this year and
found out Elizabeth City was
going to replace their police
laptops with a new version,
the GETACH. Elizabeth City
is going with a new system
and the old laptops wouldn’t
work.
So White contacted Eliza
beth City Police Chief Eddie
Buffaloe to see if he could
buy some of their old com
puters to outfit the Perqui
mans Department.
The highway patrol has
had computers in their cars
for years.
“There was nothing
wrong with them, they were
just going to go with a differ
ent style,” White said.
Buffaloe looked into it
and in May brought it to
the Elizabeth City Finance
Committee. The city coun
cil agreed to contribute
15 Toughbook computers,
mounts and some printers
See DONATION, 2
Memorial bricks help Veteran’s Memorial continue to grow
BY PETER WILLIAMS
News Editor
More than 10 years after
it was completed, the Per
quimans County Veterans
Memorial still truly isn’t fin
ished.
The walk leading up the
monument on the Perqui
mans County Courthouse
lawn still has room for more
engraved memorial bricks.
The bricks were originally
a fundraiser to raise cash to
build the monument. Now
brick sales generate a few
dollars to the fund to main
tain and beautify it.
Ken Rominger, a mem
ber of Post 126, said the
late County Commissioner
Shirley Wiggins had been
working on the idea for a
while. Wiggins herself was
a 20-year veteran of the U.S.
Navy.
“She (Wiggins) bought
a brick for every service
member in her family,” he
said. “The idea was we’d sell
bricks to help pay for it. We
had some seed money.”
About 500 bricks have
been sold, and the monu
ment has long been paid
off.
Now Rominger said any
excess money from the sale
of more bricks goes toward
maintaining the monument,
including changing out the
flowers about four times a
year.
Once the Perquimans
County Commission signed
off on the idea of a monu
ment in 2007, work went
quickly. The hitch was the
county wasn’t going to pay
for it, but it would agree to
letting it be placed on the
courthouse green.
A committee was ap
pointed that February and
held its first meeting on
March 27. There was a sec
ond meeting a few weeks
later and a public forum on
April 19 and the design was
approved.
By Veteran’s Day that No
vember, the monument was
erected and a dedication
was held.
Veteran memorial brick
applications, for eligible
See BRICKS, 2
STAFF PHOTO BY PETER WILLIAMS
Perquimans County is still selling engraved bricks
for the Veteran’s Memorial. The cost is $50 and any
surplus is used for the upkeep of the memorial on the
countryhouse lawn.
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