November 23, 2009
He was the consummate clothier. His best advertisement was himself, Floyd E. “Flip” Rees. Customers drove — even flew — great distances to buy from his clothing store, F. Rees Co., on Mount Airy’s Main Street. For independent...
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November 16, 2009
The next time Jim Wall attends a high school football game, his hanky will be used only to mop his brow or blow his nose. No more tossing it into the air, then stepping off penalty yardage.
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November 9, 2009
It was as if Uncle Sam stepped into the Hurley living room, pointed a finger and declared: “I want you, you, you, you, you, you and you.” Off to war went the seven Hurley brothers from Trinity, ages 19 to 36. All survived — two just bare...
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November 2, 2009
The title was a cinch: “Darling, the truth shall set you free.” The rest wasn’t. How do you capture in a scholarly paper the essence of a woman who was a first in many ways, whose style, dress, personality and flamboyance filled courtroo...
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October 26, 2009
If a woman you barely know called to ask if you would like to go with her to a distant city, how should a gentleman respond? By saying: “Heck, yes.” Soon after such a phone call in 1929, Robert D. (Dick) Douglas Jr., of Greensboro, strapped hi...
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October 19, 2009
Did you hear about the man who walked into a skate shop and ordered an ice cream cone? Sounds like the start of a joke? It’s not. It has happened twice in a week’s time at GDS Skate Shop, a store that just opened in the 1600 block of West Lee...
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October 12, 2009
Take a seat on a park bench — if you can find one — and listen to the stories of Jack Fuquay and Soapy. Fuquay was for real. He and his homeless buddies — all without roofs by choice — tormented police and merchants for decades on...
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October 5, 2009
Get hit by one acorn and you barely feel it. Get hit by several dozen at one time and it’s “Ouch!” Mark Stewart was feeling the pain in 1979. A crowd of protesters from Carolina Action, a community-organizing group in low- to moderate-in...
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September 28, 2009
Everyone knows the calm voice of an airline pilot with an airplane in distress. Bill Beerman had that coolness under fire. A reporter called him a month ago to ask him about old Lindley Field, now Piedmont Triad International Airport, where Beerman learne...
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September 21, 2009
The story has been told and sung a million times, the wreck of Old 97, which plunged off a trestle north of Danville, Va., on Sept. 27, 1903. Among the 11 dead was the locomotive’s fireman, J.A. Clapp of Guilford County. What most people don’t...
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September 14, 2009
Susan Midgett did in less than an hour what several dozen others tried to do many years ago when they took the plunge but failed miserably to accomplish. Midgett, featured in a story last May about her effort to raise money to build a medical-dental clini...
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September 10, 2009
Frank Batten Sr., whose love of newspapers led him to found Landmark Communications, the media chain that owned the News & Record, died Thursday in Norfolk, Va.Batten, who retired as Landmark chairman in 1998, was 82.He is survived by his wife, Jane......
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September 7, 2009
GREENSBORO — History remembers Prince.From 1885 to 1908, the stately white horse pulled the Eagle Hose Co. fire wagon. Legend says firefighters rewarded him with whiskey after each fire run.Prince, a fire department history book says, was “th...
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August 31, 2009
The news broke last August that Kisco Senior Living had bought for $9.9 million the former Pilot Life Insurance headquarters, once one of North Carolina’s architecture and landscape marvels. Resembling a prep school, the buildings and grounds have b...
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August 24, 2009
GREENSBORO — Jefferson Davis reportedly said “an inch is as good as a mile” after Yankees nearly blew up his train in 1865 near Greensboro.Try telling that to Sergio Garcia — obviously the favorite from all the “Go Sergios&rd...
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As Labor Day approaches, Clyde O’Ferrell’s labors are over, sadly. No man loved a hard day’s work better than O’Ferrell, who died last week at 83. In 1996, he lost the lease on his business, Scott Seed Co., which his father founded...
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August 23, 2009
GREENSBORO — A solution could be at hand to the Sedgefield Country Club’s need for a real par 5 hole. The two existing holes are too short, some at this week’s Wyndham Championship say, and offer no challenge for players with juice...
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August 22, 2009
GREENSBORO — Don’t even ask which room was Arnie’s when he played in golf championships of old at Sedgefield Country Club. It’s gone, along with all the other rooms that pros, celebrities and people with connections partied and sle...
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August 21, 2009
GREENSBORO — David Finch, who seems as if he’s been on the fairways here since the Sam Snead era, was headed for the buffet table Thursday to fuel up.A hot, heavy-lifting afternoon loomed for the CBS camera operator, who’s 56. But, as...
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August 20, 2009
The Sedgefield golf community, home of the Wyndham Championship, started in the late 1920s as a place to play for golfers and fox hunters.More than 80 years later, the golfers remain. Gone are the hunters, horses and hounds.The Sedgefield Hunt, organized...
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August 17, 2009
For years, the plot never varied. A developer bought a tract with an old house or building dear to the surrounding community. Down came the structure. The Arbor House on West Market Street and Reedy Fork Ranch house on U.S. 29 North are examples. But dest...
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August 10, 2009
The Army Corps of Engineers wanted to know if what’s now Piedmont Triad International Airport had a weapons range during World War II. The corps placed a full-page ad in the News & Record several months ago seeking information about such a range...
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August 3, 2009
The Yankees got one of Miles O. Sherrill’s legs, but not his gusto for rebuilding post-Civil War North Carolina. Most of his life was spent in Catawba County and Raleigh. But his last years were in Greensboro, where his son-in-law owned a photograph...
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July 27, 2009
Trade you a Kennedy half-dollar for a 1963 North Carolina tercentenary coin? If a trade were possible, it could result in a nifty profit, especially if the Kennedy coin were one minted many years after the first in 1964. A modern Kennedy half-dollar is wo...
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July 20, 2009
More than 100 years ago, James Albright wrote “Greensboro, 1808-1904: Facts, Figures, Traditions and Reminiscences,” and it’s still used by researchers. Anyone who has ever written knows the sickening feeling when a reader cries “E...
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