YOUR HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER SINCE 1978 w w w. j a m e s t o w n n e w s . c o m
WeeKLy edITIOn
feBrUarY 12-18, 2025 vol 47 No 7 | 1 Section | 6 Pages
sam’s journey to recovery
By nORMa B. dennIs FreeLANCe WrIter ndworddesign@gmail.com
“You are not the darkness you endured. You are the light that refused to surrender.” John Mark Green It was any parents’ worst nightmare. Something terrible had happened to their son. Time seem to tick by slowly as they rushed through the rain to the
hospital three hours away. “That trip was the longest I have even made,” Lisa Hawley said. “When we got there, the news was not good.” Earlier in the afternoon of Sept. 1, 2023, Sam Hawley, who lived in Wilmington, N.C., at the time, had called his mother in High Point and asked how to cook salmon. “He had not been feeling well and said he wanted to start eating healthy,” said Lisa, who owns
Southern Roots in Jamestown. At 6 p.m. that evening Sam called his dad, Faison, and said he felt weird. As the two talked the conversation ended abruptly. Unbeknownst to his parents, Sam had suffered a massive seizure, but realizing something was wrong Lisa immediately called Sam’s friends and told them to check on him as quickly as possible. His parents headed to Wilm-
Photos from Facebook
sam trains for a race.
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BLACk HISToRY MoNTH Univar property sold educating Black People after the Civil war
By CaROL BROOKs FreeLANCe WrIter cab1hp@gmail.com
Photo courtesy City of Winston-Salem
(above) Waughtown Freedmen’s school
By CaROL BROOKs FreeLANCe WrIter cab1hp@gmail.com
Univar Solutions USA, LLC, a chemical distribution company, sold its 108 Oakdale Road property in December for nearly $3 million according to the Guilford County Register of Deeds. The purchaser was FNLR Compounds Matter Too LLC. The company is part of Fortress Investment Group, an asset management group, which is a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company. The transaction is a saleleaseback, meaning Univar can remain on the 6.08-acre parcel and pay a lease to FNLR but will not own any of the property. This is a means for a company to sell an asset to raise capital.
Photo courtesy Mendenhall Homeplace
men’s Association). The Bureau was established in 1865 by Congress and in addition to schooling, provided food, housing, medical aid, and offered legal assistance. Another group was the American Missionary Association (AMA), a Protestant abolitionist group founded in 1846. “There was no tradition of government responsibility for a huge refugee population and no bureaucracy to administer a large welfare, employment and land reform program. Congress and the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau were groping in the
dark. They created the precedents.” (from “The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction.”) The Quakers, as well as Moravians, had opened schools prior to 1865 to help educate Black people. During Reconstruction, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians began schools which later became colleges in North Carolina. The Freedmen’s Bureau started Freedmen’s Schools and Judith Jemima Mendenhall (1831-96), daughter of Richard Mendenhall, whose home still stands at 603 W. Main St., see sCHOOL, PAGe 2
Former rockette continues career as a dance teacher By nORMa B. dennIs FreeLANCe WrIter ndworddesign@gmail.com Holly Grubb Smith might not have been born dancing, but it did not take long for dance to work its way into her heart. At age 5, Smith began taking lessons at Ray Hollingsworth Dance Studio in Jamestown, where she danced throughout high school and college and even taught some classes there. Raised in High Point, Smith graduated from Southwest High School and received a degree in dance education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her desire, however, was to perform. “I danced on a cruise ship and at Hershey Park,” Smith said. “I auditioned for the Rockettes in three
The Triple Threat Rockettes participate in the High Point Festival (Christmas) Parade. They have won first place for a dance group for two years. different cities — New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas — before landing a job with the group in 2000. I danced with the Rockettes (at Radio City Music Hall) for six Christmas shows, returning to High Point after
The site is beside the N.C. Railway tracks just off West Main Street. It was originally Drake Petroleum Co., then Atlantic Central Corporation and Chemcentral Atlantic Corporation. The Oakdale Road property is known to have contamination issues from underground storage tanks, which require a groundwater and surface water assessment inspection each year. Attached to the sale is a 20-page Remediation and Access agreement for “allocating liabilities, responsibilities, expenses and other matters relating to the presence of hazardous substances that may be present at, on, or beneath the property.” Univar is headquartered in Illinois but was purchased by Apollo Global Management Inc., in 2023 for $8.1 billion.
Photo courtesy Guilford County GIS
(at left) Judith Jemima Mendenhall
each Christmas season.” The year 2000 was an especially exciting time for Smith. Before joining the Rockettes, she and her best friend, Kim Moser Hobson, decided to open a dance studio in Winston-Salem. Hob-
son also danced and taught at Ray Hollingsworth’s studio and attended classes with Smith at UNCG, likewise obtaining a degree in dance education.
COMPILed By CaROL BROOKs The agenda for the February meeting of the Jamestown Town Council appears to represent another short meeting. There is no new business scheduled and the only old business is consideration of approval of a Shared Use Agreement Between the Guilford County Board of Education and the Town of Jamestown. In the Council’s Community Corner, there will be a resolution honoring the service of Doug Sampson on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. Under the consent agenda, Robert Coon is expected to be reappointed as an ETJ Planning Board member and Will Grant is expected to be appointed to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee. Approval also is expected of the Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination (IDDE) Policy. The Council will meet at 6 p.m. in the Civic Center at Town Hall, 301 E. Main St. The public is invited to attend. The meeting will be livestreamed at www.youtube.com/c/TownofJamestownNC. Click on “Live.” Have an event that you think needs to be included in About Town? Email Norma B. Dennis at ndworddesign@gmail.com or Carol Brooks at cab1hp@gmail.com
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During Black History Month, it is important to look at how far the education system for Black people has come. When slavery existed, there was little opportunity for Black people to learn and most could not read or write. North Carolina and other states enacted antiliteracy laws in 1830 that made teaching any Black person — enslaved or free — to read and write a crime, but these laws often were not enforced. Some Black people continued to learn from various sources in secret, but they faced severe punishment if they were found out. After the Emancipation Proclamation, there was more opportunity for learning — but not a lot. The public, or common, school system for white children began in North Carolina in the late 1830s or early 1840s, but in 1867, after the Civil War, it took the Society of Friends, or Quakers, to make people realize that Black people also should be educated as they transitioned to a life of freedom. Run under the auspices of the government’s Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen & Abandoned Lands (or the Freedmen’s Bureau), the Bureau oversaw funds contributed by charities as part of the Philadelphia Friends (later Friends Freed-
but leased back