Page 2C
The Kings Mountain Herald
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sew
Continued from Page 1
She also owned and operated a garment specialty
shop on King Street making bridal and bridesmaids
dresses. Her first design from her home was her daugh-
ter’ wedding dress.
Dora’s husband, the late Harold Bridges, died 40
years ago and Dora started sewing to raise her family of
two boys and a girl. Her youngest child was nine when
Mr. Bridges died and Dora put her talent at the sewing
| machine to work. “I had made the children’s clothes and
done some sewing at home,’ said Dora adding
] “After the children were grown I just kept on work-
ing and met so many nice people and was able to expand
my workplace.” Five years ago when she learned about
ior center she jumped at the chance to show off the hand-
iwork of seniors. She also has displayed a few of her own
handmade items.
Dora Ross Bridges, daughter of the late George and
Ada Ross, was born in Belmont and raised on a farm in
a family of seven girls and three boys. As a young girl
she learned how to use a sewing machine from her
mother, also a talented seamstress. She double dated with
friends in Gastonia and met her husband, who was orig-
inally from Shelby. The Ross family has lived in Kings
Mountain 50 years on Wells Street.
Pattern making is simple for Mrs. Bridges. She uses
a grader and specifications, of course, sizing the prod-
uct - a dress neck, shoulder, arm holes etc.
The family includes three children: Charles (Butch)
Bridges and wife, Yvonne, David Bridges and wife,
Joann and Beverly Small, all of Kings Mountain; six
grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Bridges is active in Shelby Missionary Methodist
Church. Family and church are priorities.
“I have been really blessed,” said the friendly Kings
Mountain homemaker who enjoys greeting members and
newcomers to the Senior Center Gift Shop. Whether
they re shopping for Christmas, birthday, get well, baby
shower gifts, earrings, cards and purses, she invites them
to browse and enjoy pleasant surroundings. Bridges is
eager to share gift ideas for men, women and children of
all ages and she knows the history of each piece.
an opening for a part time job in the gift shop at the sen- |-
filial duty of J ohn Wilson, J r.
Four Square Gospel
Church founder
tends family plot
By THOMAS LARK
BELMONT—It’s a grave respon-
sibility. «
Quite literally. It’s the filial duty of
John Wilson, Jr. of Fort Myers, Fla.
Several times a year, the native Bel-
monter returns to his hometown to
tend the graves of his parents, Rev.
John Terrell Wilson, Sr. and Virginia
Jones Wilson.
Along with other members of the
Wilson family, they’re buried in the
historic Greenwood Cemetery, adja-
cent the First Presbyterian Church of
Belmont.
“I owed it to my daddy,” said Wil-
son, 58, wiping a tear from his eye,
“and to my grandmother.”
Removing a pressure-washing de-
vice from the bed of his well-main-
tained pickup truck Saturday
afternoon, he noted that the day would
have been his father’s 82nd birthday.
As he gently cleaned the late pastor’s
tombstone, Wilson told the story of his
family.
Like so many of the South’s mill
villagers, Lawrence and Fannie Wil-
son came down from the mountains to
work in the cotton mills more than 100
years ago. The future pastor grew up
in Belmont’s Eagle Mill Village (now
gone).
Like most men of his generation,
Rev. Wilson served in World War II.
He was a veteran of the United States
Navy.
After ‘being ordained in the
Foursquare Gospel Church, Wilson
would take his family from town to
town and church to church.
. He served many flocks, including
those at the Foursquare Gospel
Church of Kings Mountain, which he
himself built about 45 years ago; at the
First Foursquare Gospel Church of
East Gastonia; at Second Foursquare
Gospel in Concord; and at Foursquare
Gospel churches in Raeford and
Smyrna, Ga.
“Dad went all over the world,” his
son said, recalling evangelistic cru-
sades as far away as Alaska and even
England, as well as radio and televi- .
sion preaching engagements.
But despite all this traveling, the
pastor never forgot his roots.
“You could take Daddy out of Bel-
mont,” said his son, “but you couldn’t
take Belmont out of Daddy. 3
Refusing to take a salary from his
churches, Rev. Wilson instead went to
work as a trucker and in the cotton
mills of the Southern towns in which
the family dwelt.
John Wilson, Jr. recalled life as a
small child in Belmont.
“We bought all of our groceries at
the old Stowe Mercantile,” he said. “I
like to go back to those times. Money
was always tight, back then. We were
the poorest of the poor.”
He remembered a time at the old
mercantile when he randomly stole a
piece of bubblegum. His grandmother
was with him, and she forcibly re-
turned the lad to the store, making him
give back the gum.
Then Grandma Fannie tanned his
fanny.
“And I thank God for it!” said Wil-
son, smiling but still grateful for such
firm correction.
On another occasion, Rev. Wilson
caught his son smoking a cigarette.
“When he was done with me, I was
smoking alright!” Wilson recalled
with a laugh. “Daddy raised all of us
right.”
And those kids raised up right were.
seven in number: besides John Wilson,
Jr. and wife Jean, residents of Fort
Myers for 11 years now, there are sis-
ters Sherry Wilson of Gardner, Lynn
Crawley of Gastonia and Kim Emory
and Chris Deese, both of Rocky
Mount; and brother Mark Wilson of
Marietta, Ga. Younger brother Kent
Wilson died in 2005.
Several times a year, John Wilson
returns here to see sister Lynn, his
aunt, Rachel Faircloth of Cherryville
and other local kinfolk. He’ll always
pay a visit to Greenwood and pay his
. respects to his parents and other fam-
* ily members now at rest in the ceme-
tery’s well cared-for grounds.
“I made a promise to maintain this
part of the cemetery from here on
out,” he said.
Need the gravestones of your loved
ones cleaned? Wilson said he would
use his pressure-washer for a small fee
or even for free.
Why? Because of the duty of re-
membering the dead—an important
Christian tenet instilled in Wilson by
his father.
“Dad wasn’t perfect,” he observed.
“He had his faults. But he was a man
of God. No doubt about that.”
To learn more, John Wilson said he-
encourages folks with kin buried in
Greenwood to call him at 239-948-
2615.
Photograph by Thomas Lark
Wilson gets to work with his pres-
sure-washing device.
Who's To Blame For Those Pesky Gray Hairs?
(SPM Wire) Can you blame a
sity, "the DNA in [our body's] cells
events per day,"
said Emi
new findings about gray hair may
lifetime of annoying jobs, unruly
kids and family emergencies for
your silver-streaked head of hair?
It turns out that those ever-mul-
tiplying graying hairs that tend to
crop up with age really are signs of
stress, reveals newesearch recently
published in the science and med-
ical journal, "Cell."
However, the stress in question
is stress on cells in your body, not
necessarily the family ‘and work
stress over your lifetime.
According to researchers at
Tokyo Medical and Dental Univer-
is under constant attack" from such
damaging agents as chemicals, ul-
traviolet light and ionizing radia-
tion.
"It is estimated that a single cell
in mammals can encounter approx-
Nishimura, who led the new re-
search.
It turns out that stress does dam-
; age to the DNA in stem cells that are
responsible for the coloring in our
hair, among other things.
According to the researchers, the
lead to advances in understanding
other symptoms of aging. They sup-
port the "stem cell aging hypothe-
sis," which proposes that DNA
damage to long-lived stem cells can
be a major cause for the symptoms
that come with age.
imately 100,000 DNA damaging
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