Personal and oral histories (133)

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.)