Features

At 1 p.m. on Friday, the stage in the multi-purpose room at Carver Elementary School was filled with a long line of brand-new bicycles and helmets. What’s more, bikes and helmets lined portions of the walls to the right and left of the stage, as well. But, by 2 p.m, the bicycles were disappearing fast, as students wheeled them out into the parking lot and, with the help of their parents, loaded them up to take home.

FAISON — Don’t let the name fool you. It’s billed as the Faison Farmers’ Parade, but the celebration will be much bigger than a parade. It’ll be an all-day affair, with music, food, vendors, a 50/50 raffle, and a Kids Zone filled with numerous free activities for the younger set. The event’s sponsor, Faison Improvement Group (FIG), is pulling out all the stops to make Saturday, March 15, a great day for the town, its citizens, and the many visitors they hope will show up to share in the fun.

KENANSVILLE — Since 2022, Duplin County has received almost $1.4 million to help fight opioid abuse. Another $3.2 million is on the way, spread out in annual payments (of differing amounts) through 2038.

DUDLEY — Here’s an unlikely statement about a rock: “It does its own thing now.”

Leora “Sam” Jones was just having fun playing backyard basketball with her childhood friends growing up in Mount Olive.

In Greenland, climate change looks like a rapidly melting ice sheet. In Southern California, it looks like raging wildfires. Off Australia’s coast, it looks like degradation of the Great Barrier Reef.

One evening, with a storm looming on the horizon, Roberta Best brought her car to a quick stop when she came upon a lonely, velvety-black kitten. Best stopped her car, scooped up the tiny ball of fur, took him to a vet and had him neutered, and has been caring for him ever since. She christened him Storm and she’s praying for the day when the right person will adopt him and give him a loving home.

KENANSVILLE — With the start of a new year, many of us resolve to “do better,” sometimes pledging to eat healthier, exercise regularly, or spend less. One area of self-improvement we might want to consider is improving our digital skills — and East Carolina University is making it easy and affordable (free!) for people in eastern North Carolina to do just that.

WARSAW — Just inside the door of the Duplin County Veterans Memorial Museum is one of the museum’s most important items, according to Museum Curator Earl Rouse: It’s a thick, loose-leaf notebook containing the Roll of Honor, an ever-growing list of U.S. military veterans who lived in Duplin County at some point in their lives. It’s important to Rouse that the list be as complete as possible, and to that end, he spends 10 to 15 hours a week, scouring online obituaries and cemetery records, searching for men and women whose names deserve to be added to the Roll. He estimates that when he began working with the museum approximately 10 years ago, the list had no more than 2700 names; it now contains 10,725. He figures there should be about 15,000 total on the Roll — so he continues to look.

FAISON — As he reflects on his first year as mayor, William “Billy” M. Ward II admits, “My biggest surprise is just how much goes on even in a little, tiny town,” he says. “I mean we’re doing the same thing that they do in Raleigh, the same thing they do in Charlotte, it’s just a smaller scale. Our budget’s not as big, but as far as what we do, we do the very same thing they do.”