Personal and oral histories

by Cecelski, David S. I visited 95-year-old Clarence Alston at his home in Navassa, a town a few miles from Wilmington. Today Navassa is a quiet, mainly African-American community fringed by rivers and marshes. Alston [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I often visit Karen Willis Amspacher on Harkers Island, east of Beaufort. Karen is one of the nation's leading authorities on America's maritime heritage. She also has deep roots on Harkers Island. A [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Born in Stantonsburg, in Wilson County, in 1935, James Applewhite is one of our nation's most acclaimed poets and an English professor at Duke University. At his home by the Eno River, he told me [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. In the glow of Hollywood's Golden Age in the 1930s and '40s, Jan Applewhite was among the farming people who flocked to the first movie theaters in Eastern North Carolina. Weary of the Great [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Watts Auman's peach orchard and roadside stand are just outside of West End, in the pine barrens of Moore County. I try to get by there at least once a summer. Auman grows 18 varieties of peaches, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I had been hearing about Ben Averett's annual Brunswick stew for years. Every October since 1967, Averett has scrubbed out a 25-gallon black iron wash pot, built a hardwood fire under it and prepared [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Maude Ballance on Ocracoke Island to talk about history and food. Born on Ocracoke in 1932, she is one of the island's finest cooks, and, in my experience, there is no better way to [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Betty Ballew grew up in one of the most beautiful valleys by the Blue Ridge Parkway: the North Fork, just north of Black Mountain. Earlier this century, thousands of Appalachian families were [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On the day she passed her bar exam in 1974, Karen Galloway, now Karen Bethea-Shields, was named co-counsel in the first-degree murder trial of Joan Little. It became one of the most controversial [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. The Primitive Baptists were once a central part of our state's religious life. Renowned for the austere beauty of their churches and the stirring harmonies of their congregational singing, they [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Agan, Kelly. Grace Collins Boddie was a highly successful military professional and became a lawyer in an era when these roles were reserved primarily for men. She earned the rank of Lieutenant Commander in [...] (from Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.)

by Cecelski, David S. Richard "Doc" Borden was a Navy corpsman at Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. He was barely 18 years old and weighed only 118 pounds. [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Gretchen Brinson at her home in the Promised Land neighborhood of Morehead City. In the opening months of American involvement in World War II, German submarines sank more than 140 [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I spoke with Hattie Brown as we walked through the old graveyard in Goshen, a black farming community in Jones County. She had a story for each of the dead. Her most striking memories were her [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. At 86, Dr. James Everett Brown still opens his veterinary office seven days a week. He has been looking after the animals of Rich Square, a little crossroads town in Northampton County, since 1943. [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On the Outer Banks the other day, I was listening to small-plane pilot Dwight Burris and charter boat captain Ernie Foster telling stories about Hatteras Island. The two old friends were talking [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Mary Cannady was 50 years old in 1965 when three civil rights activists were killed in Alabama. The deaths of Jimmie Lee Jackson, the Rev. James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo shocked the nation, including [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. The great fire of 1922 burned 40 city blocks in New Bern and left thousands of people homeless. It was the most destructive fire in the state's history. Dorcas E. Carter, one of the few people who [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Lennie Christianson is 103 years old. We talked at her home in coastal Tyrrell County, not far from where she grew up. She spent her childhood in an isolated farming and logging community called Gum [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I was walking up the street in downtown Hertford when I saw an old, black-and-white photograph of a young beautician in the window of Marta Colson's hair salon. It was Colson's mother when she opened [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Before I first visited Velma Coltrain, she let her daughter-in-law send me a long, hand-written description of her life on a farm near the little town of Robersonville, 90 miles east of Raleigh. Mrs. [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Listening to her, I felt almost dazed at how much has changed in one woman's lifetime. I couldn't get used to the fact that she was born the year that Thomas Edison patented his motion-picture [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On a recent trip to Currituck County, my family and I visited some of my favorite parts of the North Carolina coast. We explored the broad marshes of North River, picked apples on the remote shores [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Born in 1919, Dan "D.T." Dale has fond memories of growing up in Fuquay-Varina. He remembers the bustling tobacco market, the crowds that used to visit the town's mineral springs, and a happy, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I met Kenny Davis during the recent commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Wilmington race riot of 1898. A century ago, on Nov. 10, 1898, a white mob massacred many blacks and seized the city [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. The Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station opened near the remote crossroads of Havelock in 1942. Originally known as Cunningham Field, it included a vast industrial complex where civilian tradesmen [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Agan, Kelly. Gladys Lunsford Dimmick joined the U.S. Naval Reserves program Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (known as WAVES) during World War II. The WAVES program was established on July 30, 1942 [...] (from NC Office of Archives and History.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with 97-year-old Lila Edwards at her home in Louisburg, 25 miles northeast of Raleigh in Franklin County. She laughed often and relished telling old stories of whimsy and folly, as if it [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Jim Ellis in Fountain, a small town 70 miles east of Raleigh. A retired tobacco farmer and country preacher, he grew up there between the two largest tobacco markets in the world, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Lois Epps Jones in High Plains, an Indian community north of Roxboro, in Person County. Her great-grandfather found refuge in High Plains during the Cherokee Removal. Now she is one of the [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Mary Everett belongs to one of the state's oldest book clubs, the End of the Century Book Club in Greenville. For its 100th anniversary celebration last year, Everett studied the club's minutes, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by . Many NCpedia biographies include links to autobiographies, memoirs, and personal narratives written by the biographical subject. And others contain access to interviews and oral histories. These [...] (from Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.)

by Cecelski, David S. Evelyn Zaytoun Farris grew up in small-town North Carolina listening to love stories in Arabic and savoring the flavor of Lebanese dishes like kibbeh and koosa. Her family was part of the great [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Alfred Fisher in Pamlico County, three hours east of Raleigh. Now retired from his job as a chemist at a Weyerhaeuser pulp mill, he is active in the county historical society and has been [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Karl Fleming recently visited Morehead City to talk about his riveting new memoir, "Son of the Rough South." Raised on a tenant farm in Eastern North Carolina and in the Methodist Orphanage in [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Joe Floyd served aboard the U.S. Coast Guard lightship Relief in the 1950s. Anchored far offshore, the Relief carried a bright beacon that warned sailors away from "the Graveyard of the Atlantic," [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Two months earlier, on Feb. 1, 1960, four black students at North Carolina A&T sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter at a Woolworth's Department Store in Greensboro. They politely requested [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. In 1961 the great American poet Robert Frost recalled the story of his tramping days along the North Carolina coast. The 87-year-old poet was at a party in his honor in Chapel Hill when playwright [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I talked with Marta Galvez at her home in Morganton, a small city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I remembered Morganton as a quiet furniture-making town, the sort of place that didn't [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Kenneth George may be only 30 years old, but he has 10 generations of pottery making behind him. He and his grandmother operate the famous Cole's Pottery in Sanford. The first Cole potter moved to [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Denise Giles has come a long way since the days when she was homeless in Fayetteville and peddling her own blood to buy groceries. Getting off the streets and out of 18 years of alcoholism, she [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Hildred "H.O." Golden at his home in the remote fishing village of Stumpy Point, on the far edge of Pamlico Sound. He has been a commercial fisherman all his life and, by reputation, one of [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On a hot summer morning I found 86-year-old Wesley Goodwin standing amid corks and twine in his backyard net shop. Born and raised on Cedar Island, he has long lived nearby in the fishing village of [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Born in 1916, Capt. Eugene W. Gore worked his way up from kitchen boy to become one of the first African-American captains in the great menhaden fishing fleet of North Carolina. I talked with him at [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by . Gouge, Barbara Courtney by State Archives of North Carolina and the North Carolina Government & Heritage Library, 2018. 18 Aug. 1920-21 July 2005 Barbara Courtney Gouge joined the U.S. [...] (from NC Office of Archives and History.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with George Graham in East Arcadia, a rural community in Bladen County, where the Cape Fear River is deep, fast, and still a hundred miles from the Atlantic. Shad fishing is a way of life [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Gary Grant in Tillery, a rural, African-American community in Halifax County, 100 miles northeast of Raleigh. Raised in an experimental resettlement community in Tillery in which FDR's [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Late on a recent Saturday night, the boardwalk at Carolina Beach, 15 miles south of Wilmington, was hopping. Beach music filled the night air. Children were playing gleefully in the arcades and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. When I visited his home in Hillsborough, Allan Gurganus and I talked about his growing up years in Rocky Mount, 50 miles east of Raleigh. Best known for his acclaimed novel "Oldest Living Confederate [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. At her home on Harkers Island, Madge Guthrie told me about Christmas when she was a child during the Great Depression. Renowned for its fishing and boatbuilding traditions, Harkers Island is east of [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. When I'm feeling down in the dumps, I like to meet my brother by the quiet blackwater creeks along the northeast Cape Fear River, two hours southeast of Raleigh. We spend the day paddling our canoe [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. When I interviewed Otis Hardy last year, he was the pastry chef and baker at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh. He was also serving two life sentences at the Wake Correctional Center. He had been in [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Christmas serenaders don't visit Rockyhock anymore, but their spirit can still be heard at David Harrell's music jamborees. Every Friday night, he hosts a crowd of country, bluegrass and gospel [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with master plasterer William M. Hill at his home in Clinton, an hour southeast of Raleigh. At age 77, he is renowned for his painstaking restorations of some of the state's most historic [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I recently visited Helen Hoggard to learn about old-fashioned hog killings. Born in 1917, she grew up on a farm in Bertie County, 120 miles east of Raleigh. Pork was the cornerstone of Southern [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. During the 1930s and '40s, the Rusty Williams Tent Show was a legendary traveling band of vaudeville and minstrel acts that brought delight to small towns all over North Carolina. Recently I had the [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited gravedigger Lennis Ipock at his home in Newport, a small town in coastal North Carolina. For nearly 30 years, he dug graves by hand for the Bell-Munden Funeral Home in Morehead City. He was [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Ammie Jenkins in Spring Lake, in Cumberland County, 50 miles south of Raleigh. She is one of the state's most dynamic advocates for black farming and landownership. As the founder and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Recently, Dr. Henry Vanderbilt Johnson Jr. shared a story with me about an unsung little moment in our state's civil rights history: a cafe brawl in Engelhard, a fishing village in Hyde County. The [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Ann Johnson has been a ferocious advocate for the state's elderly for more than 40 years. As the executive director of the Durham County Coordinating Council for Senior Citizens from 1966 to 1990, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Joe Johnson a couple of blocks from the abandoned textile mill that was the town of Erwin's lifeblood. For nearly a century, Erwin Mills made denim cloth, and the town proudly called [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Historian Alice Eley Jones and I recently got into her Jeep and went in search of herring -- or at least the history of herring fishing. We were in Murfreesboro, her hometown. Herring have been an [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I recently joined Marvin Tupper Jones at his family's annual reunion and fish fry. We were in Pleasant Plains, part of an extraordinary, 9-mile-long swath of land in the state's rural, northeast [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Marvin Jones started working for the Export Leaf Tobacco Company in Wilson in 1946. At that time, Wilson was the largest bright-leaf tobacco market in the world. The buying, processing and selling of [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. As a boy in Kinston, Halie Kelley delivered telegrams to what was one of the most notorious red light districts in America, Sugar Hill. Folks used to say it was the wildest place between New Orleans [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Kingsberry-Burt is a survivor of poverty, child abuse and teen pregnancy. She is a community activist, a minister, a poet, and she fixed me the best fried chicken I've ever eaten. She is also a [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Harry Kittner is one of the last congregants at Temple Emanu-El, in the small town of Weldon. This synagogue was the heart of a Jewish community that once thrived in Eastern North Carolina but has [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Rudolph Knight is the caretaker of Tarboro's African-American past. Even as a child, he treasured his elders' stories about the Eastern North Carolina town, especially the stories from the 1880s and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I interviewed Carl Lamm in his broadcast studio at WMPM-AM in Smithfield. Legendary as "the voice of Johnston County," Lamm has been a part of country music radio since 1946. He has been a disc [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I met Joe Lewis in Louisburg, the county seat of Franklin County, 25 miles northeast of Raleigh. A vigorous 81-year-old who still breaks and trains horses, Lewis has never considered himself a civil [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Historian David Cecelski wrote a popular oral history series called “Listening to History” for the Raleigh News & Observer from 1998 to 2008. With the support of the Southern Oral History Program [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On April 9, 1968, 16-year-old Fred Lockamy and four of his longtime friends decided to strike back at the Ku Klux Klan by burning down its local meeting hall. They lived in a black neighborhood in [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. On the night of Jan. 18, 1958, Welton Lowry and hundreds of other Lumbee Indians surrounded a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton, 90 miles south of Raleigh in Robeson County. The Lumbee launched barrages [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Martha MacLeod near Aberdeen, in Moore County, in a home built by her great-grandfather 200 years ago. Hers is the story of the Highland Scots, their great migration to the Cape Fear [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Eddie McCoy stands at the heart of historian Tim Tyson's stirring new memoir, "Blood Done Sign My Name." The book tells the heart-rending story of the 1970 racial murder of a black man named Henry [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. McDonald's Drugstore has been on Ninth Street in Durham for more than 80 years. When I interviewed John McDonald, I asked him how things had changed over all that time. I guess I expected him to lay [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. They called it "Operation Dixie." From 1946 to 1953, a labor union movement swept through the state's tobacco fields, lumber mills and textile factories. It was part of the largest labor organizing [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Late one summer night last year my daughter and I found John McNeill Sr., age 87, sitting alone on his deck by the shores of Lake Waccamaw. He was listening to romantic songs from World War II coming [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. E.R. "Mitch" Mitchell is the proprietor of Mitchell's Barbecue Restaurant in Wilson. Barbecue is one of the most cherished of all Southern foods, and Mitchell's is one of the few places that still [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I almost gave up on Bessie Mizell. Every time I passed through the remote swamplands of Tyrrell County, nearly a four-hour drive east of Raleigh, I tried to coax her into telling the story of the [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Dennis Moody has been laying souls to rest since 1932. When I visited him at the Moody Funeral Home in the small town of Mount Airy, in the lovely foothills of Surry County, he described how funerals [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Athenia Moses will soon be honored by the Goldsboro-Wayne County branch of the NAACP for something that she did more than half a century ago. At a banquet on Feb. 11, the NAACP will recognize her and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Ike Murray at his family's machine shop, Durham Brazing and Welding Works, in downtown Durham. He and his brother, John, now run the business that their father founded 83 years ago. Demand [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Loraine Carter Nelson recently sent me a lovely memoir recalling her childhood growing up with eight brothers and sisters in the Blue Ridge Mountains. That was near the village of Democrat, 17 miles [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Hoover Jones, a private in the U.S. Army, has been missing in action since the first months of the Korean War in 1950. Last year the Army informed his family that his remains may have been [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Maceo Parker: These Kids are Fantastic by David Cecelski. "Listening to History," News & Observer. Published 6/13/2004. Copyrighted. Reprinted with permission. See also Maceo and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Myrtle Peele remembers when books were rare and precious things. A bookmobile librarian for 40 years, she was part of a heroic generation of women who first brought books to the general public. They [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I met Mayor Delia Perkins at the town hall of Princeville, a historic little town next to the Tar River, 70 miles east of Raleigh. Founded by former slaves in 1865, Princeville was the first town in [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. They call him "Big Norm" in Bertie County. His name is Norman Perry Sr., and he's 82 years old, tough as old leather, and passionate about big swamps, hot-nosed dogs and coon hunting. He has been a [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Leila Pigott and her husband, Dallas, owned a fleet of shrimp trawlers and a shrimp packing house in Southport when hurricane Hazel struck Brunswick County on Oct. 15, 1954. With 150 mph winds, Hazel [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Agan, Kelly. Gladys Moore (later Pittman), originally from Pitt County, North Carolina, joined the U.S. Army’s Women’s Auxilliary Corps (WAAC) in 1943 and became a radio operations and Morse code instructor for [...] (from Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Sallie Powell in Elizabethtown, in Bladen County, in the state's southeast corner. In the era of segregated schooling, she was one of a remarkable generation of African-American teachers [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Sallie Powell in Elizabethtown to learn about an all-but-forgotten landmark of African-American history: the swimming beaches and campground at Jones Lake. Created in 1939, Jones Lake State [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. A native of Rocky Mount, 60 miles east of Raleigh, Henry Ramsey Jr. has had a distinguished career as a lawyer, law school professor and judge in California. He was also dean of Howard University Law [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Hazel Reece is one of the finest quilters of our day. Her quilts have won many awards and honors, including a Best of Show at the N.C. State Fair. One of her quilts graces the N.C. Museum of History [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Eppie Rhodes at her home in the Southwest community in Onslow County. Her family lost its land to make way for the construction of Camp Lejeune in 1941. It happened across the country: [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Tibbie Roberts at her home in the coastal town of Morehead City. Born 92 years ago across the river in Beaufort, she has been a women's rights activist all her life. She was a pioneer for [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Elizabeth Sanderlin is 98 and going strong. She was born and raised in Moyock, a coastal village in Currituck County, a land of seaside farms and freshwater marshes just south of the Virginia line. [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Elmer Vanray "E.V." Wilkins was a legendary educator and black political leader in Roper, in Washington County. I recently visited with his daughter, Bunny Sanders, to learn more about his life and [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Judith Shaw was born and raised in New York City, but every summer of her childhood she visited her father's hometown of La Grange, 75 miles east of Raleigh. She loved the little town that calls [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. During a half-century of midwifery, Lovie Beard Shelton brought thousands of babies into this world. She grew up on a farm in Nash County. Her mother paid her tuition at Atlantic Christian College [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. One night last summer, Terry Shinn visited my family's campsite next to the French Broad River, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The tall, soft-spoken stranger lived just up a short path, in the faded [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Mary Lea Simpkins grew up around one of the state's oldest grist mills, the Yates Mill just off Lake Wheeler Road south of Raleigh. For more than 200 years the Yates Mill ground meal and flour for [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Dr. James Slade is the sort of impossibly old-fashioned doctor who still makes house calls and has never thought about joining an HMO. For 35 years he has been practicing pediatrics and general [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Odell Spain and I talked as we drove around Goose Creek Island, a broad, marshy peninsula surrounded by Pamlico Sound. Born in 1931, he grew up there in Hobucken, once a bustling fishing community, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. One of my favorite historians, Lu Ann Jones, recently showed me an oral history interview so interesting that I just can't resist sharing it, with her permission. It's the story of Ardathy Spikes, a [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Agan, Kelly. Lillie Lenora Crocker Stanley (who went by "Lenora") was was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve program Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (known as WAVES) during World War II. [...] (from NC Office of Archives and History.)

by Agan, Kelly. Connie Marie Badgett Steadman grew up in Locust Hill Township in Caswell County, North Carolina. Her father, Cortelyou Badgett, was a gospel singer and choir director, and she grew up singing gospel [...] (from Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.)

by Cecelski, David S. I interviewed Don Stith at the old firehouse in Warrenton, about 60 miles northeast of Raleigh. He is straight talking, brash, always moving. Above all, he is dedicated to volunteer firefighting -- [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Rachel Stotesbury and her neighbors will lose their land and homes if the Navy builds its new Outlying Landing Field (OLF) in Washington County. She lives in Wenona, a quiet farming community roughly [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Milton Styron in Davis, an old fishing village on Core Sound. He was a commercial fisherman for more than half a century. By all accounts, he was one of the best, a man who could make his [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Edward Tie was one of Raleigh's first Chinese immigrants. He traveled to America, by himself and almost penniless, when he was only 11 years old in 1935. When he retired, he was the owner of a [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Mel A. Tomlinson was one of America's most brilliant dancers in the 1970s and '80s. Raised in Raleigh's Chavis Heights public housing project, he became a star in Agnes de Mille's Heritage Theater, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I talked with Allan Troxler in the garden behind the Blevins House, a group residence in Durham for people with HIV/AIDS. A 51-year-old Greensboro native, Troxler started this bountiful garden eight [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Horace Twiford at Sailors' Snug Harbor, a retirement center for merchant seamen in Sea Level, not far from the Outer Banks. Twiford grew up on Roanoke Island in the 1920s. Like many a [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. In 1963, when the Rev. Vernon Tyson was pastor of Jonesboro Methodist Church in Sanford, he invited Dr. Samuel Proctor to preach for what was called Race Relations Sunday. Proctor, an [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited with Pota Vallas at her home in Raleigh. She is a radiantly beautiful 92-year-old and the matriarch of the city's Greek community. Her father, Gus Vurnakes, is remembered as Raleigh's first [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I talked with Case and Ellene Van Wyk in the Dutch farming settlement of Terra Ceia. Located on broad, low plains beyond little Washington, in Beaufort County, their community was once the southern [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Charles Wales has been going to Nags Head all his life. Born and raised in Edenton, he spent the summers of his youth there on the Outer Banks in a time before electricity and running water, when [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Nobody can skin a snake, make friends with a bear or navigate a swamp at night better than Ray Wells. Though he has made his living as a timber cruiser, fish spotter, heavy-equipment operator, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Mary White in her hometown of Belvidere, a predominantly Quaker community in Perquimans County, in northeastern North Carolina. She was one of thousands of mostly young, single women who [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Rene Whitney at her home in Delta City, 20 miles northeast of little Washington. At 85 years old, she remembers when the community was not much more than a dusty, windswept field workers' [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Margaret Wicker is probably the last surviving witness to the Coal Glen mine disaster of 1925. Her family owned a farm next to the company town of Coal Glen, in southern Chatham County. She was 7 [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Dr. Annie Louise Wilkerson at her home in Raleigh. We had been planning on talking after she finished radiation therapy for a recurrence of cancer, but she called me up one night and said [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. Joyce Justice Williams grew up sharecropping on a farm near Wake Forest in the 1960s. Her father, J.C. Justice, was a carpenter and often worked away from home, so her mother Josephine and the [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I interviewed Mabel Williams two years after her legendary husband's death. They both grew up in Monroe at a time when lynchings were common and many things that we take for granted were marked [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. In September of 1957, a Martin County teenager named Willis Williams had the courage to tell the truth about the death of an African-American college student named Joe Cross. His story shocked North [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. When Alethea Williams-King moved to Blounts Creek, she was impressed how deeply her neighbors cared for an old plank building that used to be the community school. It was the Ware Creek Rosenwald [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. One of the great pleasures of my life has been getting to know Sonny Williamson and his wife, Jenny. Born and raised in Sea Level, a remote fishing village in Carteret County, Sonny had a short [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited Nancy Grady Wilson at her home in the Wesley Chapel community, in Duplin County, 80 miles southeast of Raleigh. A retired elementary school teacher, she is legendary there for making [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Agan, Kelly. Eleanor Elaine Thompson was born on June 5, 1921 in Salisbury, North Carolina.  She was in the fourth class of WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) who graduated from the civilian military [...] (from Government & Heritage Library, State Library of North Carolina.)

by Cecelski, David S. In Hallsboro, in Columbus County, Ray Wyche gave me a tour of one of the state's oldest country stores, Pierce & Company. A retired postmaster and journalist, Wyche worked at the store as a boy, [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)

by Cecelski, David S. I visited David Yeomans at his fishing camp at Cape Lookout, on the far southern end of the Outer Banks. A native of Harkers Island, on the other side of the sound from the Cape, he is one of the [...] (from Listening to History, News and Observer.)