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Thursday, March 15, 2001 KINGS MOUNTAIN he Heral Vol. 113 No. 11° Since 1889 : from wild plants ' 1B KM will continue merger By GARY STEWART Editor of The Herald The Kings Mountain District Schools Board of Education Monday night vowed to stay the course in its fight to prevent the merger of the KM, Shelby and Cleveland County school systems. Members spoke out at their monthly meeting at the District Office in response to the Shelby School Board's passage of a res- olution of support of merger at its meeting last week. The Shelby Board said since efforts by the three school sys- tems to come to an agreement on redistricting had failed, it had no alternative but to sup- 10-digit dialing begins today BY ALAN HODGE Staff Writer Beginning Thursday, the long awaited and once delayed mandatory 10-digit telephone dialing experience in the 704 area code will officially begin. ‘The procedure 1s due to the'in- stallation of a new 980 area code being overlaid in the 704 region. What the new rule means i that any call placed in the old 704 region will have to be di- aled using both the area code and phone number- all 10 nu- merals each and every time, even if the call is to your next door neighbor. The reason for the January 10 delay in implementing the 10- digit dialup was due to several alarm companies being behind on getting their equipment pro- grammed to deal with the pro- cedure. The new 980 area code was put into place in response to the fast growing use of cell phones, vices. Even though local calls will have to be made using the 10-digit method, dialing the nu- meral “1” isn’t necessary. Folks who try to dial after Thursday without using 10-digits will get a recorded message telling them to try again with the area code. The Charlotte area isn’t alone See Dialing, 2A ‘port the merger plan and re- quest that county commission- ers return the supplemental funding to the levels that were in effect prior to the State Board's adoption of the plan. Since last July, all schools have been funded at 16 cents per $100 property valuation. Prior to that, Shelby’s rate was 22 cents, Kings Mountain's 19 cents, and the county’s 10 cents. There has also been some concern in Shelby that the County Commissioners’ loan of $1.9 million to KM Schools so they could build a new 5-6 grade school would drive up the cost of merger. But Kings Mountain School Board Chairperson Shearra Miller in- “...They (Shelby) do have an alternative if they're willing to look at it. They could give up their charter.” -Terry McClain KM School Board dicated to the Board that former board member and current commissioner Ronnie Hawkins had told her that is not the case. Hawkins has received a second letter from Harry Wilson, Staff Attorney for the State Board of Eduction, indicating that the cost of merger is determined by the cost of operating the three “systems during the five years previous to the State Board's adoption of the plan, which was ~ in June 2000. The money promised to Kings Mountain by the current Board of County Commissioners was in 2001. Even though attorneys’ fees are expensive, Board members Stella Putnam, Melony Bolin, . Wm AND SHE DIDN'T HAVE TO BUY A SINGLE MAGAZINE Terry McClain and Miller spoke out against stopping the merger fight at this time. “I've had several calls about Shelby’s stand,” Putnam said. “I certainly respect the other boards. They're doing the best they can for the children they represent. But it seems like merger is all we've been doing since I've been on the Board. I don’t know anything else. I hope we can move forward and make the decisions to the best of our ability for our children. The people want us to continue this quest that we are on.” Bolin said the people have spoken loud and clear on nu- merous occasions. She recalled that over 500 people spoke out fight against merger at Commissioner Willie McIntosh’s town meeting at Barnes Auditorium; that hun- dreds of people from all over the county protested the county commissioners’ merger plan in “a meeting at Shelby’s Brown Auditorium; that the people overwhelmingly voted the com- missioners who approved the plan out of office; and that a bus load of parents went to Raleigh to appeal to the State Board of Education to deny the plan. “1 feel like people all across Cleveland County are opposed to merger,” she said. “My opin- ion is that the majority of See Merger, 2A By GARY STEWART Editor of The Herald Kings Mountain District Reception today to honor McRae and the children were still in the house and they went with us. Certainly, we're leaving Kings Mountain with a lot of Ss ALAN HODGE/THE HERALD : Kim Franks of Kings Mountain was the recent winner of over $30,000 from Publishers Clearing { House. The notice of her good fortune came via the e-mail she’s holding. KM’s Kim Franks wins $31,000 in Clearing House Sw ! BY ALAN HODGE pagers, and other electronic de- : Staff Writer During its flights, the fickle i finger of fate can land where i you least expect it. That's one . i explanation for the recent good { fortune that Kim Franks and { her husband Terry of Kings i Mountain experienced when : they won $31,000 in the i Publishers Clearing House i Sweepstakes. “It was completely unexpect- ed,” Kim Franks said. “It was out of the blue.” Actually, the prize money was out of the Internet. Back in October, Franks was sending some on-line Halloween greet- ing cards when she saw a box to * enter the Publishers Clearing House contest. With a simple click of the mouse, she put her name in the hat. Months went by and the contest entry was all eepstakes but forgotten. Then, came the fateful e-mail a few weeks ago. “I saw on my e-mail that I had a legal notice that I had won,” said Franks. “I get a lot of junk e-mails so I didn’t even wake my husband up to tell him.” The next morning, Franks brought a copy of her e-mail to Bethware School where she’s a See Franks, 2A . Ethel Childers to note 94th birthday BY ALAN HODGE Staff Writer When Ethel Childers of Kings Mountain celebrates her 94th birthday on Sunday, one thing she won't look back bn fondly from the “good old days” is the cotton fields. } “1 like living now a lot better than back then,” Childers said. “1 don’t miss that cotton patch agall”s "oc Born in 1907 near the South Carolina line below Kings Mountain, Childers was raised on the farm of her parents John “and Mary Jane Farris. Days on the land meant hard work and plenty of it. : “We worked all day long,” said Childers. “We sold our cot- ton to the gin in Kings Mountain.” FIRST NATIONAL BANK Celebrating 127 Years According to Childers, the spot where the gin stood was near where the downtown gazebo now sits. Even though she wasn't fond of the cotton fields, Childers still has pleasant memories of other aspects of farm life in the early part of the 20th century. “1 liked working in the veg- etable garden,” she said. “We had fun too. Sometimes we would have a dance and my mother would push the furni- ture out of the way so we could have room.” One exciting event that hap- ‘pened to Childers still sticks in her crystal clear memory. The episode involved an ornery farm horse that saw Childers and her mother coming and de- cided to give chase. and hit him in the head,” she re- called. “He ran way back up in the field after that.” Other high adventures that Childers recollected included the time she saw her first car. This momentous event includ- ed the Model T’s owner John Stewart and her husband Emmitt. “Mr. Stewart bought the car but couldn’t drive,” she said. “My husband drove them both to Grover.” Other thoughts that Childers has carried with her through the years include her sister dy- ing of typhoid fever and losing anephew at Corregidor during the opening days of World War II. As time went by, Childers had her own family of five kids. anced work and care. “I took them with me to the cotton fields and set them in the shade,” she said. “I made them mind.” : Though she worked for a spell in the textile industry, Childers has mostly been a homemaker. Baking cakes has been one of her trademarks. Other chores she said she . performed in her wifely duties was washing clothes in a big iron pot and carrying water up- hill from a spring. With leisure time on her hands at last, Childers is cur- rently staying with her daugh- ter and son in law Mick-and John Caldwell in the El Bethel community. She also gets fre- quent visits from friends such : Tuesday. He Schools will host a reception honoring Supt. Robert McRae Thursday from 4:30- 6:30 p.m. at First Baptist Church. Dr. McRae’s last day as Kings Mountain's superinten- dent is next DR. MCRAE | will become i superintendent of Randolph cesetes County Schools on April 2, end- ing almost 15 years as head of the 4,000-plus student KM sys- tem. McRae spent almost 20 years here altogether. He served as principal of Kings Mountain High School from 1979-1983, went to Randolph County as as- sistant superintendent, and then returned to KMDS in 1986 as superintendent. “We certainly leave with mixed emotions, and my leav- ing should in no way be inter- preted as any kind of displea- sure with Kings Mountain,” Dr. McRae said. “I just simply got an opportunity I felt like was too good to turn down. I'm ex- cited, but even with that we leave with mixed emotions and we leave a lot of family and friends here. Even though we had good friends when we left the previous time, it was a little bit of an easier move in that we hadn’t been here quite so long eT fond memories.” McRae said after Tuesday he and his wife, Jackie, will take a few days off and then move to. their new home in Randolph County on March 27. They plan to return quite often, though, because their daughter, Juli, and her husband Tim Moore and their son, McRae, will continue to live here. Their other daugh- ter, Molly, lives in Rock Hill, SC. Kings Mountain Schools came along way under McRae’s leadership, especially in the academic areas, but he gave all the credit to his em- ployees. : " “I just have a great admira- tion for the work the employees of this system have done,” he said, “especially in the instruc- - tional area. I also haye a great appreciation for the'support the community gives the school system.” Success in the ABCs testixig program, major building pro- grams at all campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, ex- pansion of services to families, and success of athletic teams were among the system's ac- complishments. “The results of the ABCs is as gratifying as anything,” he said. “Our accomplishments there stack up to anybody's and I give all the credit to the people in the schools.” He said a late 1980s bond al- lowed the schools to expand on every campus, and expansion See McRae, 2A ALAN HODGE/THE HERALD This Sunday will mark Ethel Childers 94th birthday. One thing - “My mom picked up a rock Her method of raising them bal- See Ethel, 2A Silaere Says she doedl ¢ mise about the good old days is Kings Mountain Gastonia Shelby Bessemer City 300 W. Mountain St. 529 New Hope Road 106 S. Lafayette St. 1225 Gastonia Hwy. 704-739-4782 704-629-3906 704-865-1233 704-484-6200 Member FDIC
The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.)
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March 15, 2001, edition 1
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