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VOLUME 95. NUMBER 9
THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1982
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By GARY STEWART
Editor
As a little girl in her native North Dakota and as
a teenager and high school student in Kings Moun-
tain, Frances Goforth’s main desire was to entertain
people.
So, it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream when
she went to New York in 1943 to perio on
Broadway.
After 38 years as an actress and writer, Ms.
Goforth has returned to the home on 206 East King
Street, where she grew up and is now living with her
sister, Mildred Myers.
Her acting days are a thing of the past, but she
says shell continue to write “as long as I live.”
She has co-authored several successful Broadway
and off-Broadway performances with Howard
Richardson, a college classmate at UNC-Chapel
Hill, and many of their plays have been adapted for
movies and television.
It was Richardson who gave her her first oppor-
tunity to act, and from the word go, she knew: what
she wanted in life.
Richardson wrote “Dark of the Moon” while
working on his masters and Ph.D. degrees at Iowa
and produced it at the Cambridge, Mass., Summer
Off Broadway!
Frances Goforth Returns Home After Successful 38-Year Career....
ty clerk at the Kings Mountain City Hall.
“He called me and said if I'd get a ticket and come
up there, he’d give me a part,” she said.
That was. all the coaxing she needed.
Lee Shubert of New York went to Cambridge to
see the play, liked it and bought it. He chose five
people from the cast to take to New York with him,
and Miss Goforth was one of the five.
“Dark of the Moon” was a folk-lore type play
about a witch boy in the mountains of North
Carolina who wanted to be human.
“He (Shubert) thought I was a wonderful
actress,” Miss Goforth said. “He didn’t know I was
“a Southerner speaking in my native tongue.”
The play opened on Broadway in March of 1944
and has been popular ever since. “Just about every
big star has had a part in it,” she says.
When Miss Goforth made her debut on Broad-
way in that play, her mother, the late Mrs. Dee
Goforth, and her sister, Mildred, were in the au-
dience, and that gave Frances a special boost.
“The play was to begin at 8:30 and they arrived
there an hour early,” she recalled. “Mother was real-
ly excited and couldn’t hardly wait, but Millie, who
was 14 at the time, was upset because all she wanted
to do was go shopping.”
ming in theatres in Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts
and Pennsylvania. = .
The first play she helped Richardson write was
“Catch On the Wing”, a small-town comedy which
has been re-written 17 times, and is to begin in
Kingsport, Tenn., in May. She hopes to be there
opening night. :
Several other successes followed. At least one of
their plays has been performed somewhere every
summer.
Except in the curly years acting and writing were
professional hobbies for Miss Goforth. From 1953
until last fall, she worked days at Saks Fifth
Avenue, New York’s most exclusive retail store, in
the maternity shop.
“lI owe a great deal to Saks,” she said. “They
allowed me to stay with them and pay my bills
while I studied my profession. They granted me
many leaves of absences.”
During her 38 years in New York, Miss Goforth
lived in a hotel. She wrote for about two hours each
night, and full-time on Sundays and Mondays, her
back-to-back off days.
Two of her plays have been used as “openers” for
rejunevated theatres in Tennessee. “Evening Star”,
a comedy-tragedy .about aging people which she
=
hE eT a S
Theatre, Miss Goforth recalled.
At that time, she was employed as an assistant ci-
"Miss Goforth toured with: “Dark of the Moon”
with 10 different summer stock companies, perfor-
Turn To Page 7-A
FRANCES GOFORTH
..Home From Broadway
Grover Clerk To Fight
New Residence Policy
By GARY STEWART
Editor
Grover Town Council Mon-
day night voted 4-1 to require ci-
ty employees to live in Cleveland .
~ County effective July 1.
~The action, which was not
discussed, came quickly after
Mayor Bill McCarter asked for a
motion to adjourn following the
close of the agenda items.
When McCarter said if there
was nothing else “I'll ask for a
motion to adjourn”, newly-
elected Commissioner Jim
Howell made the motion. It was
seconded by Dennis McDaniel
and, after no discussion, was
passed. Vickie Smith cast the
lone no vote.
. The town employs three full-
time persons, including Town
Clerk Gloria Horton and
policemen Mike Brown and
Derek Johnson. Mrs. Horton is
the only one that does not live in
Cleveland County. She lives
about 100 yards from the North
Carolina line in Cherokee Coun-
ty.'S.C.
One part-time employee, gar-
bage collector Marvin Turner,
also lives outside the county.
GLORIA HORTON
Mrs. Horton said following
" the meeting that she plans to
fight the decision. A five-year
employee of the city, she was
fired in late 1979 by a previous
administration, and then rehired
in early 1980 after she filed a job
discrimination suit which was in-
vestigated by the N.C. Human
Relations Council. During the
investigation, the town rehired
Grover Bloodmobile
Visit Set For Friday
The Cleveland County Blood-
mobile will be in Grover Friday
from 10:30 until 4 p.m. at the
First Baptist Church.
The visit is for community
and industrial donors.
Mrs! Martha Scruggs, Blood-
mobile Program Director, said
the mobile lab from the
Charlotte Blood Center will be
there to process the first 80 pints
of blood into platelets for cancer
and leukemia patients. Blood for
that purpose is desperately need-
ed, she said.
The goal of the visit is 100
pints. Donors will be processed
in the church basement.
Bennett Brick Files
Petition Of Bankruptcy
Bennett Brick and Tile of
Kings Mountain announced Fri-
day that it has filed a voluntary
petition for reorganization under
Chapter 11 of the Federal
Bankruptcy Code.
The petition was filed in the
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Western District of North
Carolina. Under Chapter 11, a
company may continue to
- operate its business under the
protection of the court while for-
mulating a plan to pay its
creditors.
Langdon M. Cooper of
Mullen, Holland and Cooper
P.A. of Gastonia, attorney for
the firm, said the filing was a
result of substantial losses in the
last three quarters. He said the
company was a victim of the
economic condition in which the
building industry finds itself to-
day.
“Given time to formulate a
plan of reorganization, and some
upswing of activity in the
building industry, and including
a possible sale of some of the
company’s excess real estate
holdings, this could be a suc-
cessful reorganization with all
creditors ‘receiving substantial
payment,” he said.
Bennett Brick, originally a
proprietorship operated by the
late C.T. Bennett, has been in
operation here since 1942. Since
Bennett’s death in 1959, the
business has been conducted by
Dorus L. Bennett and C.T. Ben-
nett’s two sons, C.T. Bennett Jr.
and John D. Bennett. The com-
pany employed 44 people and
had an annual payroll of approx-
imately $500,000.
Lodged
Mrs. Horton and the suit was
dropped.
“I plan on taking this further.”
Mrs. Horton said. “This came as
a complete surprise. It (Howell’s
motion) came out all of a sudden
“out of the clear blue sky and
“without any discussion was pass-
ed. It made me think it had to be
discussed by them prior to the
meeting.”
North Carolina Open
Meetings Law prohibits a ma-
jority of an elected to group to
meet together to discuss
business. The Grover Board did
go into executive session during
Monday’s meeting, but did not
follow the Open Meetings Law
procedure in doing so.
Midway of the meeting; Com-
missioner Ronald Queen made
the motion “to go into executive
session.” The motion passed
unanimously, but after returning
from the session, the board did
not announce what was discuss-
ed. Asked after adjournment,
McCarter said it was
“personnel.”
However, the Opening
[0
Meetings Law states that “a
public body may hold an ex-
ecutive session only upon a mo-
tion made and adopted in an
open meeting. The motion shall
- state the general purpose of the
executive session and must be
approved by the vote of a ma-
jority of those present and
voting.”
Queen’s motion was made and
approved in open session, but he
did not state the general purpose
of the executive
Turn To Page 7-A
County
Election
Will Stand
After more than a year of ser-
ving as “unsworn” members, of
the Cleveland County Board of
Commissioners, Coleman
Goforth, Hugh Dover and Jack
Palmer will probably soon take
the oath of office.
The North Carolina Court of
Appeals Tuesday upheld an
earlier Superior Court to let
stand the 1980 commissioner
election, which was challenged
by Bobby Crawford, one of three
write-in candidates sponsored by
the Association of Cleveland
County Taxpayers (ACT).
Crawford and two other write-
in candidates—-John Caveny Jr.
and Duran Johnson-ran under
sponsorship of the ACT as a pro-
test to property tax revaluations
in 1980.
Turn To Page 10-A
session
WINTER AGAIN -
Last week's high
temperature reading of 80 degrees gave way
to snow and ice on Friday and Bqturday, The
Photo by Gary Stewart
iced limbs and buds of a soon-to-bloom
dogwood tree reminds us that there may still
be some winter weather ahead.
Another Winter Blast
Just when the temperature
rose to 80 during last Wednes-
day afternoon, and Kings Moun-
tians began looking toward spr-
ing, Old Man Winter returned
Friday with another blast of
cold, snow and ice.
Snow began to fall early Fri-
day morning and by the time it
ended late that night, approx-
imately three inches had fallen in
the area.
There were no major
casualties because of it, but, as
usual, it did result in some ag-
gravation. Kings Mountain
Police reported five minor snow-
related accidents and many
citizens of the area were without
power for several hours because
of broken tree limbs which fell
onto power lines.
Ted Huffman of the City
Public Works Department said -
his crew cleared streets from one
until seven o'clock Friday, and
spent most of the day Saturday
working to restore power in
many areas of the city.
Problems at a sub-station on
York Road resulted in a loss of
power from 2:15 a.m. until 5:15
a.m. Saturday in the areas of
~ Southwoods, Phifer Road, and
West Gold Street.
PRECINCT MEETING
The annual meeting of the
East Kings Mountian
Democratic Precinct will be held
Thurs., March 11 at 8 p.m. in
Room 111 (Mountaineer Room)
of the Kings Mountain Com-
munity Center on Cleveland
Avenue. All registered
Democrats in the. East Kings
Mountain precinct are Jirged to
attend.
Problems at the sub-station on
North Gaston Street resulted n
power outages for many citizens
. in the North Piedmont area,
Cansler Street, Deal Street and
Sterling Drive between 4 and 9
p.m. Saturday.
Huffman said the city receiv-
ed numerous reports of limbs on
power lines throughout the day
Saturday.
Kings Mountain police were
called to ‘the scenes of four
automobile accidens in a one
hour period late Friday after-
noon.
The rash of wrecks began: at
5:05 p.m., when cars driven by
Geraldine Melton of Gastonia
and Michael Phillip Jones of
Kings Mountain collided on
Ridge Street. Ptl. James Camp
said Ms. Melton stopped to
make a right turn on Ridge and
Jones couldn’t stop. He reported
$50 damage to the Melton car.
At 5:30, cars driven by Jill
Whelton of Margrace Road and
Gerald Wayne Rikard of Cansler
Street collided on South Bat-
tleground. Officer Don Ivey
reported $700 damage to Ms.
Whelton’s car and $1,500 to
Rikard’s.
Five minutes later, cars driven
by Lee Matthew Gibson of
Gastonia and Charles Frederick
McKee of Gastonia collided at
the intersection of Highway 74
and Canterbury Road. Ivey
reported $300 in damages.
At 6:05, cars driven by
Vanilla Parker Henson and R.V.
Degree, both of Kings Moun-
Turn To Page 3-A
KM Students Compete
In High-Q Tournament
Kings Mountain Senior High
School participated in Super
Saturday qualifying round for
the HIGH-Q tournament of high
school scholars, at Central Pied-
mont Community College,
Saturday, February 20.
Teams from 45 high schools in
20 counties each answered over
75 questions on everything from
anatomy and physiology to rock
’n roll to kick off the third an-
nual HIGH-Q, sponsored this
year by WBTV, CPCC, and
North Carolina National Bank.
The 16 highest scoring teams
advanced to this Saturday’s
(February 27) Round-of-16.
Winners of those eight matches
will go on to the seven matches
televised by WBTV on Sunday
afternoons in March and April.
Those matches lead to the April
25 championship broadcast live
by WBTYV, in which the winners
earn $2,000 and the runners-up
$1,000 in scholarships for their
schools.
Kings Mountain’s HIGH-Q
team is coached by Mrs. Brenda
Neal. Team members are Pam
Hatch, captain; Carl Greene,
Clayton Ollis and Bob Smith III,
and with alan Lawrence as alter.
nate and Laura Hendrixon as
scorekeeper.