June 26,1996
-m.
m
SOUTHPORT, N.C
VOLUME 65/ NUMBER 44
50 CENTS
North Brunswick, which
won state 1A championship,
paces all-county team - 1C
Festival
to begin
Monday
It’s time to take to the streets of
Southport, as the people of this region
prepare to parade through its thor
oughfares, take to its waters and light
up its sky.
The 1996 N. C. Fourth of July Fes
tival -- the state’s official celebration
of Independence Day -- begins Mon
day.
The modern-day N. C. Fourth of
July Festival is a Southport tradition
that dates to the years immediately
following the war for independence,
when residents of this city - then
known as Smithville - would wel
come visitors from outlying areas of
Brunswick County to join in celebra
uuu ui uur iidiiuii s Dirm.
Historian Lawrence Lee wrote of
an early July 4 celebration: “It was
an occasion of patriotism and merri
ment, and perhaps the highlight of the
day was the banquet generally held
and attended by the prominent men
from throughout the county. The feast
always closed with a series of toasts.”
Tbday the N. C. Fourth of July Fes
tival in Southport is a week-long fam
ily celebration with a parade, fire
works, crafts, great food, clowns,
street players, pretty girls and musi
cal entertainment to suit all tastes.
Yet, even though the festival has
grown from its humble beginnings in
immediate post-revolutionary times,
the spirit of patriotism the founding
fathers of Smithville brought to their
celebrations remains alive in
Southport today. A special tribute to
the U. S. Constitution and a natural
ization ceremony will be held to
honor America at Festival ‘96.
The program of the 1996 N. C.
Fourth of July Festival is included in
the “Cape Fear Coast” supplement to
thisThe State Port Pilot edition. The
newspaper will publish one day early,
on Tuesday, next week. Any last
minute schedule changes will be
noted in that edition.
C f pi . rnoio oy jim narper
5>ate alter their auto was smashed to the top of a five-car pileup on Howe Street (see photo, page 6) last
r riday, honeymooners Stephanie and Michael Mellon of Shelby retrieved a feu personal items from the vehi
cle, including the bride’s wedding bouquet.
Nancy Maguire is spearheading the
iiniith Island Land Trust campaign to
purchase development property and pre
serve the Cape Fear “point” in its present
state.
Trust hopes
effort gets
'the point'
By Jim Harper
Staff Writer
Nobody who has visited Cape Fear - on Bald Head Island ii is
own as the point — has failed to imagine how it would be to
preserve that prominence forever; to keep it as lonely and lovely. as
tresh and fair as it is even today.
Development, though, has been underway on Bald Head for o\ er
two decades, moving inexorably closer to the cape, and plans has e
been laid to parcel out the tract at the island’s tip for residents and
numtemd3 ** dayS °f ^ unsP°iled> pristine point seem
But now a substantial group of citizens and property owners -
fired-up and focused by a come-lately from Washington DC is
making moves to acquire the 93-acre point tract, or as much of it as
possible to keep it in its natural woods-and-dune state and make
mamiest the dream that every visitor holds
Nancy Maguire the moving force, currently sits in the vtce
president s chair of the Smith Island LandThist, and while it is hard
to find wrong people on the island, she has certainly al l ,I rated
herself with some of the nght ones: Griff Weld, chairman of die
See Effort, page 9
BCAE
By Holly Edwards
Feature Editor
The Brunswick County As
sociation of Educators has
dropped its lawsuit challeng
ing the board of education
decision to eliminate weekly
half-day planning sessions.
While the board of educa
: tion called the Wednesday
early-release policy academi
cally disruptive, BCAE mem
bers maintained the time was
needed for staff development
and implementation of each
school’s Performance Based
Accountability Plan (PBAP).
The early-release policy
was part of each school’s
PBAP program. The BCAE
asserted in its lawsuit that the
See BCAE, page 6
Drain on pock^v^ok
Beach council
testing waters
of own system
By Richard Nubel
Municipal Editor
Will Long Beach remain a cus
tomer of the Brunswick County wa
ter system beyond this year?
Town council last week appropri
ated $150,000 to answer that ques
tion. And if the answer is “no,” l.ong
Beach has about $600,000 immedi
ately available to invest in providing
its citizens water from another source.
Mayor Joan Altman said this week
the initial $150,000 appropriation will
go to fund an engineering study aimed
at determining if it will be cheaper for
Long Beach to dig its own wells and
treat groundwater for customers than
it is for the town to continue purchas
See System, page 13
‘We don’t see the
kind of planning at
Brunswick County,
based on our
experience, that will
put us in a place of
greater comfort ten
years from now.’
Joan Altman
Long Beach mayor
Martin Marietta
Temporary
perhaps, but
finally a 'win'
dj icrrj rope
County Editor
Although the victory against Mar
tin Marietta Aggregates might be tem
porary, it’s what Southport-Oak Is
land area residents hope is one step
toward eliminating the threat of a
mining operation in their backyard.
“It feels great to win one," said
Robert Quinn of Southport, spokes
man for the Brunswick Mining
Awareness Committee, as he stepped
outside the hearing room where the
N. C. Mining Commission dealt an
unanimous blow to the company’s
permit to dig for limestone on l,tKK)
acres near Bethel Church Road. ITie
vote caught him by surprise.
His committee’s junket to Raleigh
last week provided the first win in
three years of battling the corporation
through several permit hearings and
Ill CUUI l.
“We have spent three years with our
lives on hold,” added Patricia Price,
a school teacher from Southport.
Faced with setting a precedent on
permit extensions, the mining com
mission instead followed the recom
mendation of Charles Gardner, direc
tor of the N. C. Department of Envi
ronment, Health and Natural Re
sources, to pull the plug on Martin
Marietta’s pending permit filed in
December, 1993. Assured of denial
by the state since no new supporting
data had been filed or questions an
swered that Gardner’s office posed
nearly two years ago, Martin Marietta
officials withdrew the permit Thurs
day but indicated they plan to refile
at a later date.
“It’s embarrassing to note,” said
Quinn, “they had not informed the
public nor (the mining commission)
that they had not performed any of
the studies.”
Paxton Badham, Martin Marietta
vice-president for land and environ
mental services, argued a pending
court decision against Brunswick
See Win, page 10
‘It isn’t a matter of
like or dislike. It is a
matter of fact that
you can’t guarantee
I won’t lose my well
water if they are
allowed to operate
1,000 feet from my
home.’
Suzanne Osborne
Bethel Church Road
Forecast
Hot and humid are what we have
in store for the rest of the week and
weekend. Temperatures will be in the
upper 80's and low 90's with heat in
dex readings up to 110.
INSIDE
Opinion *«*«*..*, 4
Police report ... 8
Obituaries . . . . .15
Church. .. ..... 4B
Pilot TV.m
Plant Doctor ... SB
Classifieds ...., 1C
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