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www.shelbyinfo.com Our 42ND Year • Issue No. 37 • September 11, 2025
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Continental Divide brings free concert to POPS Submitted by Jean Gordon & Michael Howard
... featuring Forest City’s Chris Cole, former KMHS Band Director On Friday, September 26, Forest City and the POPS Pavilion Concert Series welcomes home one of its own: home grown and highly accomplished musician Christopher “Chris” Cole, who will perform with the highly acclaimed band Continental Divide. Chris and Continental Divide have long anticipated this special opportunity to perform in Chris’s hometown for friends, family, and a Rutherford County audience which has waited patiently for this opportunity to see Chris perform with Continental Divide and hear this band’s unique sound. Chris grew up in Forest City and graduated from East Rutherford High School where for many years he was a pillar member of East’s
outstanding marching bands, playing trumpet and other brass instruments. He attended Western Carolina University where he earned a B.S. and Masters in music. For the next 42 years he taught high school band at Kings Mountain High School and Piedmont Charter School. His marching bands, and various other music groups he taught, performed to local, national and international audiences earning many prestigious awards. Chris and his wife Sarah reside in Kings Mountain. In 2011 Chris was inducted into the North Carolina Band Masters Hall of Fame joining his grandfather, Dee C. Cole, who was inducted into the Band Masters Hall of Fame ahead of him in 2003. The Cole family is well known in Forest City and Rutherford County for their musical talent and musical contributions to the community over many previous decades. Chris’s grandfather, Dee C. Cole, who began his music contributions to the county in the 1910s, is honored, and his legacy remembered, with a special memorial gazebo on the grounds of the former Cool Springs school on Main Street,
Chris Cole will perform in his hometown of Forest City.
Chris Cole will perform with the highly acclaimed band Continental Divide on Friday, September 26. (Photos provided) Forest City (now Rutherford County Schools Adminstrative Offices). The plaque refers to Mr. Cole as Rutherford County’s “Music Man” and the “Father of School Bands.” Over the course of five decades, Dee C. Cole was responsible for establishing school bands in seven Rutherford County in communities. He also directed several bands and orchestras surrounding areas and taught thousands of students the art of music. His efforts to garner support for Rutherford County school band programs is unprecedented. In addition to the North Carolina Hall of Fame, Dee C. Cole was inducted into
CHRIS COLE the Rutherford County Schools Hall of Fame in 2013. Chris remembers his grandfather well and credits his grandfather with his own
musical passion and success. His grandfather was a great teacher, inspiration and the finest example for Chris and See CONCERT, Page 5
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