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$ “News from Next Door” THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2021 $1.00 @SCAN ME PAGE A3 Gooden to become Edenton’s next town manager PAGE A7 Hunter, Per quimans cruise past Manteo in season opener PAGE A6 Navy sailor following in Hert ford parents’ footsteps Chamber to keep building, county removes Hunter artifacts Chamber, county unable to agree on purchase price BY REGGIE PONDER Staff Writer The Perquimans Coun ty Chamber of Commerce building is no longer for sale. The Chamber had placed its building on the market and county officials had ex pressed interest in buying the structure for use as a heritage museum. But the end result of the negotiations between the Chamber and Perquimans County is that the Chamber has taken the building off the market and the county has acquired all memora bilia, merchandise and fur nishings associated with the Perquimans Visitor Center and Jim “Catfish” Hunter Museum. The museum and visitor center previously operated alongside the Chamber of fice in the Chamber building. County Manager Frank Heath said last week that county officials will discuss what to do with the newly acquired items. “We will be working on a permanent location for the items in the months to come,” Heath said. Steven Young, the Realtor who handled the marketing of the Chamber Building and also a member of the Cham ber Board of Directors, said in an interview last week that the Chamber had been in negotiations with a num ber of entities — including Perquimans County — and the upshot was the Cham ber decided to remove the property the market. He said county representatives also decided to remove from the building all museum artifacts, visitor center mer chandise, and furnishings associated with the museum and visitor center. Young and Melanie Met zler, who is vice chair of the Chamber board, said the or ganization is excited to be remaining in its centralized location. Metzler said it is important for the museum and visitor center to operate as distinct entities from the Chamber. “We needed to separate that out,” she said. Celebrating the legacy of Catfish Hunter and welcom ing visitors to the communi ty are functions too import ant to be relegated to the limited amount of time that Chamber staff were able to devote to those operations, she said. Young and Metzler said the Chamber is open to as sisting Perquimans County in any way it can during the See MUSEUM, A3 THE DAILY ADVANCE A large assortment of memorabilia is shown on display at the Jim “Catfish” Hunter Museum in this file photo from 2018. Perquimans County has removed the memorabilia from the Perquimans Chamber of Commerce building. School bells ring Two dozen plead: Leave Confederate monument as-is REGGIE PONDER/THE PERQUIMANS WEEKLY Rowyn Lamb, 6, a first-grader at Central Elementary School, is all smiles as she walks toward the entrance of the school Monday for the start of the 2021-22 school year. The Perquimans County Schools is starting the new year with 92 more students than last year, Superintendent Tanya Turner said. Perquimans schools off to smooth start Turner: School district's enrollment largest in 5 years BY REGGIE PONDER Staff Writer Perquimans County Schools Superintendent Tanya Turner said the first day speared to go smoothly at all schools in the district “I think everything is go ing well,” Turner said Mon day morning. Turner said the district’s first-day enrollment was 1,703, an increase from last year of nearly 90 and the highest it’s been in five years. Turner said Perquimans has only one teaclting po sition vacancy right now, which is at Perquimans County High School. She said she’s glad mos(.teaching positions are filled. Theanda Sealock has two children at Central Elemen tary School this year. Jaylin is a first-grader and Jaycob is a second-grader. Sealock said she believes the school district did a good job navigating the pandem ic last year and will do well again this school year. “I think that they made the right precautions last year to be able to be a little bit more relaxed this year,” Sealock said. Tm very hopeful that this year will be even better.” The Perquimans Coun ty Schools is encouraging mask-wearing in school facilities but not requiring it The policy follows the guidance outlined by Gov. Roy Cooper several weeks ago on mask-wearing to pre vent the spread of COVID in schools. Sealock said the Perqui mans schools had good procedures last year regard ing quarantines and other COVID-19 protocols. See SCHOOL, A3 Perquimans board takes no action on recommendations BY REGGIE PONDER Staff Writer Perquimans commission ers took no action Monday, Aug. 16, on a study panel’s recommendations about the future of the Confederate monument after two dozen residents urged the board to leave the monument as it is. The two recommenda tions from the monument “working group” were to add interpretive signage around the monument and approach the private owners of a mon ument to Union soldiers on King Street about relocating it to the courthouse lawn, where the monument to Con federate soldiers is located. But the overwhelming majority of those addressing commissioners during a pub lic hearing Aug. 16 favored neither option. Brenda Huddleston, who said her great-great-grand father served in the Union Army, told commissioners she had thought “long and hard” about the panel’s rec ommendations. “I do not wish to discount the feelings of anyone on ei ther side of this debate, but I must strongly disagree with placing signage around the monument,” Huddleston said. “I do not want us to disparage its true purpose: a marker for the Confederate war dead.” John Long also described the monument as a grave marker for soldiers who died in the Civil War — many of whom he claimed didn’t want to go to war — and stands as a signifier that the war is over. Long also criticized the proceedings of the working group that county commis sioners appointed to make the recommendations. “The committee was a di saster,” Long said. “They did not do a good job.” Rod Bowman said he was speaking in memory of Pri vate Alexander B. Bell, his great-great uncle who served in Company C of the 5th Vir ginia Regiment. Bell was held as a prisoner of war in Dela ware and died of starvation, Bowman said, adding “his remains are buried in an un marked grave somewhere in Delaware.” “I ask you to leave the monument ‘as is’ as a memo rial for Alex and all the other soldiers who never came home from that war,” Bow man said. Aubrey Onley also said the monument needs to remain at the courthouse because it’s important to honor all dead soldiers. Onley said the monument to Union soldiers on King Street also is impressive and he has enjoyed stopping and admiring it He said he would like to see something done to See MONUMENT, A3 Auditor: Report not legal advice BY REGGIE PONDER Staff Writer A state auditor’s finding that Hertford Town Council should have removed Councilman Quen tin Jackson from office was based on “auditors’ recommendations” and was not a legal recommenda tion, a spokeswoman for State Au ditor Beth Wood said Friday. The office does not issue legal 89076 47144 " 2 Vol. 87, No. 34 WWW.PerquimansWeekly.com @2021 Perquimans Weekly All Rights Reserved recommendations, according to the spokeswoman. A report released Aug. 17 and based on a special investigation performed by Wood’s office states Jackson should have been re moved from office after he plead ed guilty to assaulting another council member in December 2019. The report doesn’t refer to Jack- son specifically by name; it refers to him throughout only as “the for mer mayor pro tem,” which was his title at the time covered by the report. Jackson took issue with the report and said he would discuss his objections in greater detail at a See AUDITOR, A3 ARHS: Third doses for those with weak immunity system Booster shots for Pfizer, Moderna won’t be available until Sept. 20 From staff reports Albemarle Regional Health Services began accepting ap pointments this week for persons in the eight-county region with compromised immune systems to receive an additional dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vac cine. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services INSIDE More than 70 percent of those who contracted COVID-19 since July 1 are under the age of 50, Page A2 recommended last week that persons who are “moderately to severely immunocompromised” receive a third dose of one of the two vaccines. The third doses are not booster shots, ARHS cautioned. Although booster doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine have been ap proved by both the Food and Drug Administration and the Advisory Committee on Immu nization Practices, they will not be available until Sept. 20, ARHS said. Persons who are not immuno compromised won’t be in line for a booster dose until eight months after they’ve received their sec ond dose of vaccine, ARHS said. The additional doses ARHS is now administering. are for per sons whose immune systems are weaker, making them “espe cially vulnerable to (contracting) See CASES, A2
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