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As always, the members started off their club meeting by standing and singing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” in strong voices. But on May 5, the song also kicked off the celebration of the Greater Whitsett Community Ruritans Club’s 25th anniversary. The group has been helping local people in need since 1984.

About 30 people, including several officers from National Ruritans, gathered for the event.

“It’s a great occasion,” said Terry Call, president of the local club.
Four of the club’s charter members — Walter Blythe, Billy Sutton, Robert Lindsay and Andy Brown — attended.

Twenty-five years ago, when God “touched the hearts of some of the people,” as Lindsay put it, those people gathered in the same room at Town Hall to form a chapter of the national group.

“It’s been a blessing and a joy ever since,” Lindsay said. “If God blesses us ... we should be willing to give back.”

Edsel Morgan , a member since 1986, has trouble remembering all the ways the club has helped. He was especially moved by people’s generosity when the club raised $2,500 for a diabetic man who’d had both legs amputated.

“The community really seemed to come together to help,” Morgan said. Often the club members don’t know the people they’re helping and never even meet them, he said.

Club members live in towns other than Whitsett, and the club doesn’t put a boundary on the area it serves. It has assisted people in Gibsonville, Elon, Burlington and Graham.

Service has included building wheelchair ramps, assisting people with terminal illnesses, buying Christmas gifts for poor families and providing scholarships to students. The club gives citizenship awards to students and residents and has added bronze plaques to the town’s war memorial to honor soldiers who served in Vietnam and Korea.

Members have fundraisers selling “just about everything you could think of,” said Sutton during his overview of the club’s history.
They’ve sold cookbooks, tomato plants, and the chicken pies that late member Nathan Simpson baked so carefully.

The Ruritans have done a lot to keep Whitsett attractive, too. For 14 years, members picked up trash along roads while the club had an adopt-a-highway contract. The club recently raised more than $4,000 to buy and install two signs for town hall — one in the front yard for announcements and the other a Ruritans sign for the side of the Town Hall building where the club meets.

The club has at least 20 members each year, except for a dip in 2004 or 2005, Sutton said.

For the celebration, the club displayed the roughly 50 certificates from the National Ruritans on the walls of the meeting room.
“These awards, they should’ve been hung a long time ago,” Call said. But the club isn’t about recognition, he said. It’s about fellowship and giving.

Call said he wants more people to know who the Ruritans are so that the club will grow and accomplish even more.

“People want to do more,” he said. “Being part of the club means you can help change people’s lives. And it doesn’t take that much time.”

Raymond Rembellas and his 18-year-old son, Daniel, attended the anniversary meeting and plan to join the club. In January they moved to the area from New York. They decided to see what the club was about because they wanted to help others in the new community and meet people.

“It was a very good choice,” Raymond Rembellas said. He and his son hope to get more young people to join the club.

The Whitsett Ruritans will host a blood drive from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on June 6 at Brightwood Christian Church in Gibsonville.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at jamie.kennedy@news-record.com or 336-449-4610.