3\
If It's Good For
Transylvania County,
The Times Will
; ^ Fight For It.
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- Vol. 88 — No. 2
THE TRANSYLVANIA TIMES
A State And National Prize-Winning Home
Town Newspaper
SECTION
B
BREVARD, N. C., MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 1975
PUBLISHED SEMI-WEEKLY
; Your Local Government
IK!
ra-'
Development Centers Boost Tots9 Potential
243 Children Cared
For Under Program
BY
DOROTHY OSBORNE
Times Staff Writer
They begin arriving soon after 7 a.m., their
eyelids still heavy with sleep. They come, these
little ones, from all sections of the county, to be
cared for while their parents are busy elsewhere.
By 9:30 a.m., the last of them have come, and
the early arrivals have eaten breakfast and are
: ready for the day’s activities.
They win remain unui late
afternoon, the first ones
[y leaving about 3:30 p.m., the
last ones picked up by 5:30.
vT; These children, ages 2 to 5,
rb; attend one of four child
development centers in
■lb. Transylvania County,
ii operated by the county.
fj|j
[gp The four centers are
Quebec, housed in the com
jeymunity club building;
£>. Cherryfield, housed in the
l&iCherryfield Baptist Church;
[Ej! Stepping Stones, housed in the
Brevard-Davidson River
Presbyterian Church; and
i;-'; First Adventure, housed in the
r-' First Methodist Church.
l£!j
l51j Miss Elizabeth Provence is
>£ director of the program,
i;„' which also includes one day
|j~ care home, a home-based
program where home visitors
jg. work with the parents, and
Ip?.; supervision of the county head
star# program. Her staff
jcT; numbers about 40.
ilVJ
p-:-, A new center for infants and
- toddlers will open this month,
Miss Provence said, and
applications for this service
are being taken now.
pjr, The day care home,
v;:\‘ operated by Mrs. Clara
’pz- Bryson in her home located on
;-il highway 64 West, five miles
[K from Brevard, was originally
planned for parents who worx
the 4 p.m. to midnight shift at
American Thread. But the
need for that did not develop;
therefore, the home offers
regular day care.
The difference in a home
and a center, Miss Provence,
said, is that the home only
takes five children, ages two
months to 14 years.
“It has enabled us to serve
some little tinies we could not
serve in a center,” Miss
Provence said. It also means
that two or three children
from the same family can be
cared for, some of them after
school hours.
Two home visitors — a third
one will be added this month
— work with children and
their parents in the homes,
each working with about 25
children.
The home based •program is
directed toward the parent —
“to teach the parent how to be
the most effective teacher of
her or his child or children.
It’s an exciting program for
identifying limiting factors
that need to be corrected in
order for a child to be free to
develop to his maximum
potential — factors such as
medical problems, dental
problems, speech difficulties,
hearing and visual problems,
TODD HARRIS beats the drum at First
Adventure Child Development Center.
and emotional promems.
“It’s a sort of discouraging
reality, but unless you have
identified and corrected
problems by the time a child is
four, from here on out, you are
doing remedial work. All the
school can do is remedial
work. He never can catch up,”
Miss Provence said.
The staff is composed of
skilled, dedicated people,
enough of them so that the
staff-child ratio is one to
seven, so that each child
received individual attention.
Miss Provence defines a
good child development center
;isi
mmm
LOADING TRUCKS with
blocks and hauling them places
provides happy moments for Todd
MBBCTBB
Harris, left, John Gray and Bill
Cash (in front).
DRAWING PICTURES holds
the attention of Carol Osment, left,
as one which provides
freedom without anarchy,
order without rigidity. “It
takes a lot of work to have a
situation that is free and or
derly. But it is possible,” she
said.
“We work with the whole
familv. You have to help the
child in the midst of his
family. You can’t help him in
isolation. And it’s expensive.
“When you do com
prehensive child care, there is
no such thing as its being a
profitable business. This is not
to say that private operators
don’t do a good job. They do.
But they can’t do a job as
fully.”
The annual budget for the
program this year is $288,545.
A big part of it goes for
medical and dental care.
“The dental expense is the
biggest expense we have,”
Miss Provence said. “Poverty
shows up more vividly in the
mouths of people than
anything else about them.”
The program, with the four
centers, home care center,
home visitation, and head
start program, serves about
243 children.
The program, the former
Transylvania County Coor
dinated Child Care (40, was a
private not-for-profit
organization, Miss Provence
said.
It is now the Transylania
Child Development Program,
with $25,000 coming from
parents’ fees. Of the
remainder of the budget
Transylvania County provides
12% per cent; N. C. State
budget provides 12% per cent;
federal funding provides 75
per cent.
Of the federal funding, one
third comes from the Ap
palachian Regional Com
mission and the remainder
from Title 4-A money.
“We do have United Fund
money and parents’ fees and
miscellaneous private
donations,” Miss Provence
said. But that is a very small
per cent.
Fees paid for each child are
determined by a sliding scale,
mandated by the state, and
based on family income and
size of family.
The majority of children are
from homes of working
parents, but about 45 per cent
are from single parent
families.
The program is open to
Transylvania County families
with gross incomes up to
$17,000, according to Miss
Provence.
Application for all phases of
the program may be made at
the office, 90S S. Broad Street.
READING STORIES to some of the children
is Debra Gentry, right. The children, from left,
are Eddie Daugherty, Kim Simpson and Lavonia
Sharpe.
Her Concern: People
BY DOROTHY OSBORNE
Times Staff Writer
When Elizabeth Provence
came to Brevard in August
two years ago, she left East St.
Louis, a city of 85,000 people,
for a town of 5,000.
It was no chance move on
her part. Rather, it was well
planned.
“I had been vacationing
here over a period of summers
for about 10 years. 1 wanted to
retire here. After 12 years in
the heart of two big cities, this
just looked very promising to
me,” the director of the
Transylvania County Child
Development Program said.
“I was impressed with the
high calibre of citizen
leadership involved. I felt like
there was a group of people
here who had put something
together that was valuable
and needed doing, and I
welcomed the opportunity to
come help do it.
“I tell my friends that
Transylvania County has all
the problems that anywhere
has, but they come in small
enough sizes to feel like you
can solve a lot of them, and
you can help alleviate the
situation.
“In the crowded
metropolitan areas, they
come in such overwhelming
density that it just looks im
possible.”
Miss Provence, a native of
Denton, Texas, has done a
variety of social work since
she graduated from Texas
College for Women, now
Texas State Women’s
University, at Denton, with a
journalism degree.
On the same day, her
brother graduated from
Baylor University with a
journalism degree, and went
to work for the Waco News
Tribune. Today, he is
executive editor for a chain of
newspapers that includes the
News Tribune, she said.
But she did not go into the
newspaper field. She has used
her training, she said, in
writing for magazines and in
authoring two books, both
biographies of missionaries.
One, God’s Troubadours, is
about the Florida Baptist
foreign missionaries. The
other, Sawgrass Mission, is
the story of Willie King, an
Oklahoma Crete Indian who
served the Seminole Indians in
Florida.
She worked for the Florida
Baptist Convention for 16
years, directed a Baptist
Goodwill Center in New
Orleans for more than three
years. Earlier she worked at a
Baptist Goodwill Center in
Miami.
Miss Provence believes, she
said, in the infinite value of the
individual. In some situations
she believed she hleped the
individual, but could not
change the system. “Unless
you change systems, you don’t
solve human problems,” she
said.
Everyone in this area of
work runs the risk of
becoming institutionalized
and hamstrung by all kinds of
rules and regulations, she
said.
“You find yourself helping
people at the convenience of
the system that was set up to
serve them,” with little
concern “for the people who
fall in the cracks. I have found
an encouraging concern in this
county for the people in the
cracks,” she said.
In the church-related social
work, she said, “ we weren’t
tied up with political and
governmental regulations that
kept us from doing what we
want to do . Some days that’s
one of the frustrations of this
program, but we have been
able to find ways of doing what
had to be done.”
Miss Provence was reared
in a Baptist home, later joined
the Methodist church in East
St. Louis while she directed an
inner-city Methodist set
tlement house “where we
served about 800 to 1000 people
a week in a variety of groups
and services, of all sorts, one
of which was a day care
Miss Masters
Taken By Death
At Rosman
Miss Glenda Jean Masters,
34, of Rosman died Friday in
her home. Miss Masters was a
life long resident of Tran
sylvania County.
Surviving are the parents,
Mr. and Mrs. Earl C. Masters
of Rosman; two sisters, Miss
Wanda and Miss Maybelline
Masters, both of the home;
three brothers, Jerry Masters
of Brevard, Dolus Masters of
Hendersonville, and Carl
Masters of Longwood, Fla.
five nieces and a nephew.
Funeral services were held
Sunday at 2 p.m. in the
.Rosman Church of God.
Rev. Ralph Pressley of
ficiated. Burial was in the
Whitmire Cemetery.
Frank Moody Funeral
Home, Inc., was in charge of
arrangements.
^ELIZABETH PROVENCE gets acquainted
with Windy Kelly, one of the children at First
Adventure child development center.
center.”
She is a member of the First
United Methodist Church
here, where she teaches a
Sunday school class and heads
the social concerns work area.
“I like to think of myself as
an ecumenical Christian,” she
said. “I think a church must
be involved in mankind. It
must be involved in more than
preserving itself.
“I think we need to learn
that Christendom is made up
of all kinds of people from all
walks of life.”
Miss Provence and Miss
Jean Stamper, who directs
one of the county’s day care
centers, share a house on Far
Hill Terrace.
"We keep bird feeders up
and get excited about new
birds that come and the birds
that are there everyday.
“1 read. I love to read.
Camping is one of my chief
loves. I don’t do a lot of it
anymore. I love the natural
world.
“I guess people are one of
my chief enjoyments,” she
said, adding that their house is
frequently filled with friends
visiting from other areas.
Mrs. King’s Final Rites Conducted
Mrs. Blanche Hicks King,
77, of Weehawken, N.J., died
Thursday in Lexington, Ky.,
following an extended illness.
She was the widow of James
Alonzo King, Brevard native,
who died in. 1968, and who was
buried in King Cemetery in
Brevard.
She was born in Norlina and
had lived in New Jersey for a
number of years.
Surviving are three sisters,
Mrs. E.G. Glenn of Hen
derson, Mrs. Joseph Heid of
Norlina and Mrs. John O.
Wilson of Louisburg; two
brothers, Tasker Hicks of
Norlina and Everette Hicks of
Cary; and several nieces and
nephews.
Services will be held at 2
p.m. Saturday in Warrenton.
A second service will be held
at 2 p.m. Sunday in the chapel
of Moore Funeral Home. Dr.
Robert G. Tuttle will officiate.
Burial will be in King
Cemetery in Brevard.
Nephews will be pallbearers.
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