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The Road to Peppers Creek
Ruth Lawrence, state supervisor of Negro Elementary Schools, reported, after a visit to Mitchell County in 1950, that she observed 7 boys and girls “learning their lessons” in a church at the foot of an unidentified mountain. She reported that this was the only black...
Miss Dorothy and her Books
Dorothy Lee Anderson was born in Bakersville on November 15, 1929. She was the youngest daughter of Lee and Dora Masters Greene. She grew up in Bakersville and was a graduate of Bowman High School. In 1950 she married Milton A. Anderson Jr. According to an Asheville...
Roy Williams: Western North Carolina Legend
The legendary basketball coach announced his retirement on April 1, after 48 years of coaching. Roy Williams was born on August 1, 1950. His family lived in Spruce Pine at the time of his birth, however he was born in Marion Hospital as Spruce Pine would not establish...
Robert G. Young Was an Educator of Merit
Robert George Young was born 6/19/1926 in Mitchell County, the son of Frank B. Young (1894-1986) and Isabella Wilson Young (1897-1982). His great- grandfather was Greenberry Young (1822-1898), an early resident of the Young Cove community in Mitchell County. ...
W.G. Honeycutt – A Mitchell County Hero
Veterans Day is a holiday created to celebrate our real-life heroes. When we think of heroes, they often seem larger than life and we tend to forget they are real people. One real-life hero from our very own Mitchell County was WWII Veteran, William Gibbs Honeycutt...
James Oliver Young: World War II and Christian Hero
James Oliver Young was born to William Patrick Henry and Dora Sina Buchanan Young 31 August 1910 in the Clarissa community on Cane Creek. His siblings included Ethel Eve, Robert N, Moses Lafayette, Josephine Leah, and Paul Edward Young. After graduating from Bowman...
Honoring Mitchell County’s WWII Heroes: Arthur Ray Buchanan
Speaking of Ray Buchanan, folks will say admiringly with a shudder, “Oh, yes, he was a survivor of that awful Bataan Death March.” This does not come close to what 17-year-old Arthur Ray endured for 3 and a half incredibly brutal years. Ray was born in the Clarissa...
Brad Ragan ~ Spruce Pine’s “hard-driving, cigar-chomping businessman.”
Bradley Eugene Ragan was born 14 May 1915 in Coleman, Georgia, the son of W.E. and Lillian Brown Ragan. Ragan was the founder and Chairman of the Board of Brad Ragan, Inc., (BRI) the “largest tire retreading company in the world” and “parent company of Carolina Tire,...
“One of our most cherished teachers” ~ James B. Blevins
The 1963 Senior Class of Bowman High School dedicated their annual to “one of our most cherished teachers, James B. Blevins.” Until his untimely death at 37 from complications of multiple sclerosis that year, which attacked him only 2 years before his passing, he was...
Robert B. Phillips – Educational Giant and Farmer
Robert Blalock Phillips was born 10/30/1902 in the Snow Hill community of Mitchell County. He was the son of W.S. (Woodfin Squibb) Phillips (1874-1952) and Sophia Blalock Phillips (1876-1906). He had 4 older siblings, and his mother gave birth to another child prior...