Newspapers / The State’s Voice (Dunn, … / June 15, 1934, edition 1 / Page 8
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A UNIQUE It^ School Problem—Falcon Youth Not Sharing in Public High School Fund* . Falcon is a unique community. On ’ a, recent visit I asked Mr. J. A. Cul fcreth, superintendent of the Orphan age and leading spirit of the •com munity, to jot. me down sqme of the facts about the community and its velopment, arid its present school prob • Tern—a problem that deserves the at tention of the school authorities of the State. When the data arrived, I • found it made vsuch an interesting story that I decided to run it prac tically without change, merely sup plying subheads. Mr. Culbreth is a man of business training. He was cashier of the First National Bank of Dunn during its prosperous days. He knows what he is talking about. For one of Cumber land county’s best school buildings to be deserted right in the heart of the village would be a serious blow to the Falcon community. But if you read the article, as you should do, you will get the whole disturbing situation at first hand. The Story of Falcon and It« Present School Problem Falcon’s Beginning The name of the place was formerly Starling's Bridge, so named because of the bridge over South River at the crossing here on the.Fayetteville and Smithfield road. The activities of the place centered about a large turpen tine distillery and country store run by Captain J. L. Aultry and William Culbreth, which was later purchased and continued by Culbreth, while Autry acquired and continued, in his name, the firm’s business in Sampson County at Clement. The name of the place was changed to Falcon, as the name of the post office established here, became there was already a postoffice in t ’ State by the name of Starting’;.J^idge. There was no significance or < uder ation given to the new name ■ ether than to find a name jlifferin..' from other postoffices in the State, and the name was suggested from the end of a little box on a shelf in the store bearing the name “Falcon Pens 1 Religious Activities Carry Fame Far Later activities and developments were based upon religion, education and the social uplift and welfare of society. The place was eventually .given a town charter, and the little town hits become known to the world.. in plaC&s even where the large cities of 0ur great State are not known. There are two denominational churches in the town: Antioch Bap tist Church, which was located here from the .beginning of the town's his tory, and the. Falcon Pentecostal Holiness Church, which was organized about thirty years ago. The Falcon Work; as it would be distinguished, however, from denominational re ligious activities, has always been, and is still an inter-denominational and independent movement. There is an organization known as The Falcon Camp Meeting Association, and any body is eligible to membership in the association’ who approves, of the wTork that is being done, regardless of what denomination he may be a member of. and is willing to contribute $1.00 an nually to the expense of running tne annual camp meeting. The member ship in this association would repre sent all the prominent denominations of the South, yet does not concern itself with the church relationship of any of its members, or in any way, taVe the place of church membership. Teh-Thousand Attend Meeting The Falcon Camp Meeting has been held annually for thirty-five years in succession, the meeting this year, from August. 16th to 26th, constituting the thirty-fifth annual session. This -camp meeting has an average annual attendance of approximately 10,000 people from most of the States of the nation', and ^ -sometimes visitors from other countries. , Out of the activities of this camp meeting there originated The Falcon ■Orphanage, which has been running tel twenty-five years, and has cared for 225 orphan children during that time. The orphange has an average population of fifty, a physical plant worth about 40,000.00 which has been built and supported by free-will offer ings from its friends, and its own fatm, garden and dairy. It has no so liciting agents in the field, no organ ized group to assume financial respon sibility for it, either religious or fra ternal, and yet its needs have been ,sufficiently supplied to perform a most creditable work through faith in God and, the voluntary loyalty of a great host of friends. How the High School Originated The Falcon High School also grew out of the camp meeting, seven and one-half acres of ground being do nated for the purposes of development by a friend of the work. This school has been running for thirty years, first as a private school, but it later was placed under County' and State supervision, and became a State ac credited high school. Seven years ago, the original building used for school purposes was burned, ajid a modern ten-room school building, with a 50x80 auditorium was built by pri vate subscription, and we have a school property equal to any State owned property costing $40,000.00. When the town of Falcon became a special tax school district, and the County and State school authorities MAYOR GEORGE ISELEY of Raleigh, N. C., Now Serving His Third Term. supervised the school and paid our teachers, we co-operated to the extent of furnishing adequate buildings and equipment free of rent, and main tained the standards of State require ments without the use of any busses. We stood at the head of rural schools of Cumberland County for average at tendance, and conducted the most eco nomical school in the county. The County authorities abolished our school three years ago, and ordered consolidation of the entire school with ttvo other schools through the use of school busses, with all the dangers of such transi>o*rtation involved. We made appeal to the State Equalization Board to restore our- school, and the Board kindly granted our request, proving its good judgment and wis dom. High School Abolished Again Last year the State Education Com mission, in re-districting the schools and revolutionizing the whole system, abolished our high school again, and consolidated our high school with an other that ranked- fourteenth in com parison with the other rural schools of the county, while we stood at the head of such schools of the county in our rank. Wfe made several efforts to get the State Commission to restore our high school, making every con ceivable proposition consistent with reason and fairness, even to the ex tent of proposing to deed our $30, 000.00 privately owned property to the StaJ;e or County if they would give us the high school facilities nedeed and , assume $4,000.00 which we owed on the property. Mr. J. O. Carr, of Wilmington, who was our District member of the Commission, would not yield to any persuasion.or. reason pf- , fered by us or any of~ on* friends j and other members on the Board, of course, did not feel Uke over-riding the action of the District member. Sacrifice Too Great We lost the benefits due us by the State in the new responsibilities as sumed by it under the new school law, as the abandonment of our school property would, you see, not only have meanfc-ihe loss of our high school fa cilities, provided without cost to the State, by private subscription and years of effort and sacrifices; but would have left our buildings to de cay unused, and us without any ground of appeal to our friends for funds to pay off the balance due to our creditors. We might have suf fered the loss of our thousands of dol lars already spent, but to sacrifice our credit by defaulting our debts, and our reputation for honesty and worthiness of trust by those whose confidence had been won by years of efforts and sacri fices, was entirely too great to allow. There was nothing left for us to do, but to undertake to operate a private high school at our own expense in or der to preserve our efforts of the past, and to provide high school facilities for our orphange and community. We undertook to finance the * school through the orphange, and the loyalty and co-operation of the community was almost 100 per cent ' and our friends elsewhere responded in a won derful way. We maintained a stand ard eight months high school at a cost of over two thousand dollars, provid ing for our regular orphange and com munity population, together with about ten other fine young girls and boys that had been so handicapped in their earlier years that they would have .1 Mrs. Iseley to Left. . Mrs. George Iseley, Recent Manager of Pou Congressional Campaign. been embarrassed in attending their community schools. In this service it was our privilege to extend our or phanage activities to educate some fine young men and women, whose lives and citizenship will make val uable and worthy contributions to so ciety. We made no charge for any thing in connection with our high school work, but every beneficiary of the school, whether directly or indi rectly benefiitted, was permitted to contribute voluntarily to the orphan age in cash or provisions, and be credited with the contribution as a gift rather than a charge. An $80,000.00 Investment The camp meeting grounds and two buildings, one, a brick veneer audi torium 120 feet square that will seat three to four thousand people, and the other, a 48-room 3-story frame building for roomers at camp meet ing, are conservatively valued at $15, 000.00. The total investment in build ings and equipment for the camp meeting and the other departments of the work that have developed from it, easily represents an expenditure of $85,000.00, and the support of the work during the life of ouy operations for the past thirty years means that our friends have, contributed at least $200,000.00 to carry on the work. The camp meeting has brought to North Carolina and Cuml>erland County thousands of fine people who would never have seen this part of our PPUfttr&JUliL hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent and invested in religious, educational and moral Activities that have made the world a Ptofii fevm % U&m ' - -r- ••*£• tribut&l largely to the development of our locality from outside sources; and . yet our efforts and their results do not seem to be "appreciated by some peo ple as they deserve to be. The Community Pays School Taxes We have a fine community of law abiding citizens, r and have exerted such influences upon a wide area of our great State, that our efforts have made large contributions to morality and character' building, and have re tarded crime and reduced the expenses of criminal prosecutions in our State. We. .have- paid the levy of taxes im posed upon us in all forms, except none of as have to pay income taxes; and these taxes have contributed fa the general school, fund of the State to help other community schools. And after furnishing our own adequate school building and equipment without cost to the State or County, and offer ing to them without cost for rent, it seems most unfair and unjust to abol ish our school for consolidation with another of so much lower rank, involv ing the cost of transportation and risk of same, without saving the State a penny, and probably increasing ex penses. • The action of the Education Commission 'last year did not reduce the cost to the State one penny in the operation of the high schools in this end of 4he county, and at the same time imposed upon us and our friends the unnecessary expense of more than $2,000.00 in addition to our taxes. Aroused by the recent ways of law. lessness, leaders are §3g?ected to offer to the next Texas .legislature bills sim plifying and speeding up procedure in criminal court cases. '^"(Continued From Pap Seven) asthe relief agencies are con cerned. That kind of cattle, will one. day find that their source of free rations has dried up. Thftt will be a sad day for those sluggards who will do nothing either for themselves -or for those. who in the long ■ run must foot the bill1 for their : fyee provender.? No-able-bod ied man or woman who has no helpless dependents should re ceive a cent of relief funds dur ing the next three months. ; A little time put in cultivating a garden, if with' only a hoe, will provide much < of the . food needed. And there will be plenty of farm, work for sev eral months. Uncle Sam will have need of every cent he can raise to feed and warm the needy when there is no chance for them to help themselves. Are You Interested In How Far You Can See Clouds? You have perhaps wondered .-how far distant looming thun der heads were. Of course, the distance any cloud may be seen depends upon its height. Also, the height from which one views the clouds ha£ its effect. Well, Wednesday evening, just out from Siler City, while re turning to Dunn, we saw five thunder heads lifting them selves. .in the southeast. I re marked to the driver that Dunn was probably having different - weather- from the fine sunny day up in Chatham. I could scarcely conceive that those clouds could be more remote than Dunn. But when we reached Dunn we were still miles and miles from the cloud. I Judge that it must have crossed' lower Sampson — say by Ingold and over by Turkey and- into Duplin. That cloud must have been 60 to'75 miles away as the crow flies. By high way it is 68 to Siler City from - probably as much as 25 miles further on beyond Dunn. At Jonesboro the thun der heads loomed almost as high as^ they did anywhere on the journey* :_.
The State’s Voice (Dunn, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 15, 1934, edition 1
8
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