Feature | O.Henry Magazine

Concerts, Canoes, and Community

Passion and perseverance after Saxapahaw’s storm of the century

By Danielle Rotella Guerrieri

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Last July, Tropical Storm Chantal wreaked havoc across central North Carolina, causing $500 million in storm damage. Perched above the Haw River’s east bank in a quiet corner of Alamance County, Saxapahaw was ground zero for some of the worst flooding and property damage in the state, with nearly 12 inches of rain falling in 24 hours. Since its revitalization in the late 1990s, the former mill village has been a hip and vibrant destination, drawing visitors with its rich history, Southern cuisine, bespoke artwork, specialty craft ales and bohemian counterculture. On a recent cloudy Thursday morning, my dad, Pete Rotella, and I decided to see how Saxapahaw was faring after the flood.

We start our visit chatting with the Saxapahaw Museum director, Jane Cairnes, and the man behind the town’s revitalization, entrepreneur John M. Jordan Sr., son of the late U.S. Senator B. Everett Jordan. Jordan and his sons, Mac and Carter, purchased many mill houses and the abandoned spinning mill and dye house in 1995, and renovated them into 75 apartments. They also turned the upper dye house into commercial space and a home for The Hawbridge School, a public charter school with an emphasis on community engagement, environmental stewardship and the arts. “We were competing with Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh real estate,” Jordan says. I had people living in 60 houses who needed a place to buy gas and bread, and I provided it.” Over the years, the sleepy little town evolved into a lively and progressive home for lovers of music, arts and the outdoors.

Just down the hill from the museum is the Saxapahaw General Store. After filling our bellies with a good ol’ Southern breakfast, we learn how owners Jeff Barney and Cameron Ratliff turned a modest gas station and country store into a community hub beginning in 2008. Look for gourmet grub with an emphasis on comfort food, a staggering selection of beer and wine, locally grown produce and area crafts. Thankfully, their establishment was not damaged by the storm. Just two days after Chantal passed, they announced on Instagram: “We have electricity, Wi-Fi, A/C, and our full menu available.”

Cup 22 is our next stop, an open, two-story space with black industrial railings and massive windows that welcomed neighbors and volunteers after the storm with bottomless coffees and free Wi-FI. Heather and Tom LaGarde own both the café and the adjacent Haw River Ballroom, one of North Carolina’s premier musical destinations. Known for hosting nationally and internationally renowned bands, the Ballroom has also held film screenings, workshops and private events since 2011, thanks to its large, 750 capacity that maintains an intimate vibe. Due to its location in the mill’s upper dye house, the Ballroom was left unscathed, making it an ideal hub for storm relief efforts. Saturday in Saxapahaw is another LaGarde creation, a family-friendly outdoor concert and farmers market held weekly from the first Saturday of May through late August from 6-8 pm. Held in a grassy hillside near the Ballroom, “Swan Buckets” and a Swan Venmo account collect donations that pay operating costs. The LaGardes were also instrumental in organizing widespread relief efforts last July.

Next door to the Ballroom is Haw River Farmhouse Ales, a quaint, eclectic pub with cozy outdoor seating, owned by Ben Woodward and Dawnya Bohager, who use locally grown ginger, barley, rye and other ingredients in their small-batch customer favorites, such as Odds & Ends IPA and Saxtoberfest.

Excited to explore Saxapahaw’s art scene, we walk to Riverside Collective, where we’re greeted by contemporary oil painter Katie Pape, one of the five female artists who opened the shared studio space in 2004. When the bike shop next door moved, Katie and her husband, Ian, opened an adjacent store, Saxy A GoGo. Inside, Saxy, a vintage shop, a nonalcoholic bar, a lounge and a recording studio are all connected, creating a funky, urban vibe. Along with their wide variety of art, Riverside Collective offers classes in weaving, watercolor and leatherwork, and a Monday Open Studio Night where fellow creatives can connect. (While their shops didn’t sustain flood damage, the Papes’ daughter’s preschool, Saxapahaw Village Kids, inside Saxapahaw United Methodist Church, was completely submerged. “One of my favorite stories from the flood was how Holly, the preschool’s pet chinchilla, was gallantly rescued by volunteers after the storm,” Katie says.)

With our new art carefully packaged, we mosey past more upper mill spots that dodged storm damage — Deipnon Studio, a custom tattoo shop, and The Hawbridge Lower School — before entering Leftbank Butchery. Owner Ross Flynn opened the whole-animal butchery in 2014 to provide a local outlet for area farmers who want to process and sell their meat, such as beef cows from Alamance County farms and chicken from Little Way Farm in Siler City. Before leaving, we look into Flynn’s Seam Butchery Class, which teaches ways to cut and use every part of an animal, and the Basics of Cooking Meat Workshop, an excellent way to learn techniques for braising, roasting and pan-frying cuts of beef.

With a pound of tienda chorizo in hand, we climb up a steep staircase before opening a ginormously heavy oak door to enter The Eddy Pub, a European-style gastropub serving farm-to-table food and known as “Saxapahaw’s Living Room.” With old steam valves as beer taps, a rustic wood ceiling set against expansive windows overlooking a patio and the Haw, the pub partners with local farms for their meat and vegetables and serves North Carolina-brewed beers and wines from smaller, family-owned vineyards. On the second level of the mill complex, the pub remained unscathed by the flooding. General manager and co-owner Paul Neubauer and his staff were some of the first to volunteer after the storm.

After bowls of hearty chicken chili with fresh sourdough bread, we walk up the road to StudioSax, a multicultural, creative café and vintage store opened last year by Deborah and Robert “Robo” Jones, the talented trombonist from the 90s jazzy, pop-rock band The Sex Police. Deborah proudly shares that it’s the only Black-owned storefront in Saxapahaw as she finishes setting up paints and brushes for the night’s dot-painting event. Jones then gives us a tour of the outside courtyard, which she explains was “completely filled up with water when it flooded.” Sand and dirt still line the cement courtyard, which adjoins a nearby hillside, where folks gather to hear live music and many come for sound baths, a meditative, immersive audio experience that induces relaxation.

As my dad and I leave Saxapahaw, we’re both struck by everyone’s love for the dynamic, free-spirited river community. There are still small, visible signs of Chantal’s passage, but those are nothing compared to the stories of generosity and the survival of a magical place that refuses to be washed away. OH

2026 Feature

Almost Heaven on Buffalo Lake

Mike Fowle’s boats create a ripple effect on quiet waters

By Cynthia Adams

Photographs By John Gessner

The motor catches, a muted, whispery sound, as Mike Fowle casts his boat off from Dana Smith’s lakeside dock. “It uses the most cutting-edge battery technology on the market right now,” he says, watching our surprised faces. “Lithium phosphate.”

Three of us glide across Greensboro’s private Buffalo Lake in a modified version of the 1982 vintage Pelican skiff, aptly named Almost Heaven.

Almost soundlessly.

Fowle grins. “That’s what you want.”

On a perfect spring day on the water, the most impressive aspect is what you do not hear. You do not hear the unmistakable roar of a standard-issue outboard motor. In fact, even with my hushed voice hoarse from allergies, conversation flows easily as Fowle describes retrofitting this small cedar-and-mahogany craft (outfitted with an electric motor) for owner Dana Smith.

If you think EVs on the roadways are remarkably silent, try an EV-powered watercraft. Practically noiseless — plus, it does not chew up gas, spew oil or foul the water. And the motor seems up to the task as three adults skirt around the lake’s edge, as pleased as children.

Fowle assures us the boat is sufficiently powered to carry four, smoothly cruising at the allowed 5 miles per hour.

An egret is unruffled when we slip past the shoreline, not even a wake betraying us.

With the tousled blond hair and energetic brio of a younger man, Fowle is now 44. He is a man who loves water, but is more often wending Greensboro roadways for UPS, as he has for the last 25 years.

But his spare time is devoted to twin passions: cars and boats. His latest score is a 1958 red Corvette convertible.

While delivering packages on his route, he affably notices which customers are into cars. Occasionally, he will return on his days off to take the lucky ones out for a spin in a vintage car.

Since his teenage years, Fowle has tinkered. He repairs, paints and undertakes car and boat restoration projects in his free time. Fowle learned much of what he knows from his father and the family’s wood-finishing business, which manufactured varnishes and finishes.

In 2020, he began Fowle Garage. The garage bursts with projects — a new boat he is working on awaits completion, and various car projects wait in the queue.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, he estimates having a day’s worth of tasks ahead. “I have — let’s see — there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven projects here,” he counts as he walks through the garage and grounds.

Fowle and Smith became acquainted through previous boat restorations, he notes, “when I worked at a wooden boat shop.”

Smith contacted Fowle to help him find an electric Pelican. He already knew what he would do with it.

“He had bought this new house, sight unseen, with the idea that he was going to get one of these little boats and put a dock in.”

The house Smith had bought unseen? It was exactly where he wanted to be, Fowle explains. It was on a cul-de-sac at Ascot Point, with the advantage of having Buffalo Lake at its back door. “It gave him water access.”

By coincidence, Fowle knew about such a boat for sale — the exact model Smith was searching for — and it happened to need work. He connected the owner with Smith, who then worked out the sale.

The thoroughly modernized vintage boat was ready to glide in April 2025.

But homeowners on the lake did not own land on the lake perimeter.

Enter Jess Washburn, who did.

Washburn made headlines in 2017 when he became co-owner of two Greensboro private lakes, Buffalo Lake and Lake Jeanette. (His own party pontoon was featured just last month in O.Henry.) The former, smaller lake, only 69 acres, had disallowed lake access. But the much larger Lake Jeanette, at 270 acres, allowed restricted boating access via the homeowner’s private marina. Both lakes had buffer zones; neither had historically allowed docks.

One workday, Fowle took his lunch break at home when his meal was suddenly interrupted.

“I get a knock on my door. It’s Dana and this other gentleman named Jess Washburn.”

Washburn, who also lives on Buffalo Lake, was working with various homeowner associations around the lake regarding access for residents.

Traditional motorboats and Ski-Doos were strictly disallowed. The Pelican, an electric boat, had Washburn’s attention. He had wanted to put electric boats into service on the lakes from the start, given strict speed limitations and other homeowner association restrictions.

The two men told Fowle, “We want more of these boats to go on this lake because they’re quiet.”

Electric-powered boats were a logical answer to the puzzle posed in 2017 by John Hammer, former editor of Rhino Times, concerning the fate of Buffalo Lake and Lake Jeanette after their sale by textile concern ITG.

“What do you do with a couple of lakes, particularly since the land around them has largely been developed?” he asked in his publication.

An adapted version of the Pelican proved to be Washburn’s solution.

Fowle says the new version far exceeds the original. “The idea came from Dana’s boat. I retrofitted his boat with a keel and steering system, and the electronics for the motor.”

He further modified Smith’s boat, adding a foot in length and 4 inches in width, changing the shape. Originally, he says with a laugh, it “looked a bit like a kayak.” He added stability by redesigning the keel, devising a pocket for the propeller drive unit and adding a tiller steering mechanism. “Everything was handmade to steer the rudder.”

In the eight months since Almost Heaven was altered and put into service, Fowle and his team have created a fiberglass mold for a next-generation hull. They now have the capacity to reproduce a boat adapted from the 1982 original in a matter of days.

Once encased in wood and painted, the fiberglass boat appears to be a dead ringer for an original Pelican. It’s upscaled without sacrificing the good, traditional looks of a wooden boat now that Fowle has worked his magic. And fiberglass is not prone to leaks.

You would not know the difference visually, Fowle assures us. “This has all the appeal of a yacht in a super small package.”

Fowle’s passion doesn’t wane when it comes to refining restoration projects. At present, his grandfather’s 1931 Ford Model A pickup sits in his garage awaiting repairs. He says affectionately, “I basically got it running and learned to drive on it when I was 14 or 15.”

Just for fun, he borrows his father’s 1930 Ford Model A De luxe Tudor, driving around town, honking the goose-like horn for appreciative motorists. The 1930s car earned its “deluxe” designation, with handsome detailing, tweed upholstery and upscale finishes, such as a custom-made wooden trunk on the rear. When he stops to dash into a grocery store for a Gatorade, admirers stroll over for a look and flash a thumbs up. Kept in mint condition and fully roadworthy, it recently made an appearance at a Gate City Rotary Club Great Gatsby-themed function.

Now, thanks to Fowle, Smith’s new-and-improved Pelican is proving relevant.

And it appears to be a win-win for all parties, plus water and nature enthusiasts who are equally environmentally interested.

Invariably, bottles and trash end up in the bodies of water he owns. Washburn adopted a stretch of Elm Street near his lake, where he cleans litter.

Smith and his wife, Zell, keen nature lovers, are often found trolling Buffalo Lake, fishing out ugly debris to ferry away.

“They are creating a positive impact on the environment, carting away as much trash as they can manage,” says Fowle.

Almost Heaven, agile and maneuverable, makes cleanup fun for the citizen environmentalists. It weathers the winter just fine, says Fowle, allowing the Smiths to keep it docked behind their home.

As residents and lake owners have worked through the approval process, more docks are reportedly pending on Buffalo Lake. Access remains carefully restricted to kayaking, paddleboats and quiet boats. Fowle anticipates a growing demand for more electric boats.

“Don’t you think that’s cool?” he asks, an enormous grin on his face.

It’s Almost Heaven. OH

2026 Feature

Queen of the Flowers

xx

Queen of the Flowers

For this gardener from Kazakhstan, roses reign supreme

By Ross Howell Jr.

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Before Yelena Belyayeva and her husband, Randall Bean, moved to Greensboro from Trinity, she tended lilies in her garden.

But roses were always on her mind.

“I grew a lot of lilies — they were so easy!” she says with a laugh. “At that time, I would think, ‘Oh, the rose, queen of the flowers, she is too much effort.’”

“But, in gardening, I want people not to be afraid,” she continues, “because roses are not as hard as people think.”

Yelena grew up in Temirtau, a city on the steppe of central Kazakhstan — still part of the Soviet Union until she was a young woman.

“My father was Russian and my mother was Ukrainian,” Yelena says. Though they lived in an apartment, her mom “was very, very passionate about gardening.”

Outside the city, they had what is called a “summer house.”

Along with a vegetable garden and fruit trees, she remembers her mother growing irises, daisies, peonies, lilies, lilacs and snowbush. But the plains of Kazakhstan were harsh.

“My mom had a few roses, but we had to cover them,” Yelena says, noting that they didn’t fare well in the cold or snow.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t like the garden work as a kid,” she confesses, smiling, “but I enjoyed the beauty, not just of the flowers, but of everything in nature.”

After high school, she attended Moscow State Forest University, where she dreamed of becoming a forest ranger.

“I wanted to be among the animals and woods,” Yelena says.

Since no forestry positions were available when she graduated, she returned to her hometown to take a job with the Temirtau Winter Garden, a public botanical garden conservatory of tropical and subtropical plants in a very cold place.

“Most of the work was indoors, but it appealed to my passion,” Yelena says.

Eventually, a close friend in Kazakhstan who had met and married an American, suggested that she knew someone who would be a perfect match for Yelena — her husband’s best friend, Randall.

But communication between the two was a challenge.

“I studied English when I was in school but I was not so good,” she explains. “My teacher said, ‘Yelena, you will never learn English.’” She smiles and shakes her head.

“But Randall bought one of these portable electronic translators and that is how we corresponded at first,” Yelena continues.

Following a two-year courtship, the couple married in Kazakhstan and moved stateside to Trinity in 2006 with Yelena’s 10-year-old son. (He went on to attend N.C. State and lives in Raleigh now.)

When Randall’s father, who had been living in the same Greensboro house since 1955, decided to move into assisted living, Yelena and Randall relocated to his old residence.

The house sits on a lot that’s nearly an acre in size. Randall’s father grew vegetables for years after his wife passed away, though he had neglected the vestiges of her flower garden.

“Mama Sarah had azaleas, camellias and big boxwoods,” Yelena says.

She also found remnants of candytuft and a row of peonies that she estimates are around 40 years old. And, while Randall remembers his mother growing roses, none of them were still living when Yelena began tending the garden.

“So all 200 of the roses are mine!” she quips. “I have been collecting them for more than 10 years.”

Starting with the original flower beds, Yelena kept “extending, extending, extending” — and digging holes to plant her roses. The work was difficult because of the heavy clay soil and the big roots of old trees.

“Randall even bought an augur, but that did not work so well,” she says.

And for several years, she was working full time.

Now that she is retired and the garden is established, Yelena finds that she still spends at least six hours a day in the garden for 11 months of the year.

“With our seasons, there is no break for gardeners,” Yelena explains. “We just finished raking leaves from these huge oak trees in January and in February. I’m already planting my first roses again.”

She smiles.

“But I love it,” she muses.

Yelena prefers planting roses with bare roots. And while she put in her newest roses this February, she believes the best time planting time for Greensboro is the first week of March.

“You can find all kinds of information about when and how to do it,” she says.

A source Yelena especially recommends is Witherspoon Rose Culture in Durham (www.witherspoonrose.com).

“I have several roses from them,” she says. “They give you everything you need.”

For the first year after planting, Yelena concentrates on keeping the new rose well watered. Depending upon the type of rose, she may use a systemic treatment to help prevent disease.

The greatest potential cause of disease in our area?

“It’s the humidity,” Yelena responds.

To promote blooming, she will fertilize her roses two or three times during the growing season, though she doesn’t like putting fertilizer in the ground. She prefers fertilizers she can spray onto the foliage.

“It’s easier for me and the plants absorb it faster,” Yelena explains.

To counter Japanese beetles, destructive pests that usually appear in June to feast on rosebuds and flowers, she has discovered a commonsense solution.

“This is what I learned from an Instagram friend in Japan,” Yelena says. (The friend grows 1,500 varieties of roses in her garden!)

After the first wave of blossoms in May, Yelena pinches back the new buds as they appear for at least two weeks and closer to a full month.

“Every morning, I go out watering and I pinch the buds,” Yelena continues. “If you have five bushes, it’s not a big deal, but for me? Well, it’s a lot!”

So, when the Japanese beetles appear, their salad bar is closed, as it were. They move on for the most part, leaving Yelena with healthier roses. The downside is that a wave of blooms is lost, but she assures me she can still count on two or three more waves in a typical season.

I ask Yelena about which types — tea rose, grandiflora, floribunda, climbers, ramblers — seem to be best suited to her garden.

“You know, it’s more about, who is the father of the roses?” she replies. “Oh, what is the word?”

Yelena consults her phone to translate.

“The breeder!” she says, nodding happily. “Kordes in Germany is my favorite. They breed very healthy roses.”

As we walk about, Yelena shows me the abundance of plants in her garden.

“I have 80 peonies,” she says proudly.

I spot tulips, hydrangeas, creeping phlox, cone flowers, azaleas, hostas, zinnias, columbines and ferns. She shows me a robust vegetable garden along with cherry trees, crabapple trees and pawpaws.

“I don’t plant peaches anymore,” Yelena says. “We have so many squirrels, I just gave up.”

And, as you’d expect, there are roses everywhere, many cascading over trellises that Randall installed for her.

“This is a rambler called Peggy Martin,” Yelena says, pointing out an enormous rose bush. “She is absolutely gorgeous when she’s blooming.” The thornless rose variety is named after an avid gardener in Louisiana whose property stood under seawater for two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. The rambler was one of the few plants in her garden that lived.

“I guess because she is a survivor, she can grow crazy big!” Yelena says, laughing.

She points out two more roses that cascade from a trellis.

“This one is a climbing rose called White Lady Banks and you see next to her the yellow, also a climber.” I comment on the clusters of smaller flowers.

“Yes, the flowers are smaller than Peggy Martin,” she replies. “But the big difference between the ramblers and the climbers is that the climbers keep blooming all through the summer — the ramblers only bloom one time a season.”

But that one time? “It is spectacular!” Yelena adds.

She shows me how she prunes the ends of the roses to increase the cascading effect as they grow.

“There is a woman on Instagram from Italy,” Yelena continues. “She plants her climbers and ramblers close to her trees so they grow all the way over them!”

When I ask her if she has irrigation for the plants, she answers that it wouldn’t be economical to use city water, since she has so many roses and the beds are so spread out. Recently, she added three barrels to collect rainwater. She also carefully mulches her roses with pine bark nuggets to help them hold moisture. If the summer is very dry, she waters her roses by hand.

“But roses are hardy,” Yelena says. “You must choose the right variety from the right breeder, but once they are established, roses are very strong!”

“The beauty, the joy to see them and smell their flowers,” she muses. “Every year, I plant more and I think, ‘OK, it’s enough.’ But it’s never enough!”

Once again, Yelena smiles, surveying her garden. OH

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.

You can follow Yelena Belyayeva on Facebook and on Instagram @belyayevayelena.

2026 Feature

Adventure Awaits

Adventures Await

A globe-trotting couple creates a child-centric house of fun

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Betsy Blake

“Last week we got a phone call about a little girl,” says Ashlee Wagner, lounging on her plush living room sectional while her two daughters, 7-year-old Lowina and 4-year-old Lizzie, play nearby. Her husband, John, is busy helping Lowina find the Beyoncé song she’s looking for on her device.

Lizzie twirls in a Disney princess dress, lost in magical reverie, while Lowina’s ears perk up at her mother’s words. “Mom, are we getting a new sister?”

“Yes, baby,” answers Ashlee. Lowina cheers enthusiastically.

“You know how there are little girls who dream of getting married and getting pregnant?” Ashlee asks. “I was never that kid.” Her own father and his siblings were all adopted and she knew that, when it came time to start her own family, she wanted to adopt.

John, who owns his own State Farm Insurance Agency, jumps feet first and wholeheartedly into Ashlee’s plans. “I think I feed into her sometimes, and that’s probably why we’re so wild with everything going on in life,” he says. “But it’s fun.”

When the Wagners bought their traditional, brick house in 2017, they imagined filling the New Irving Park home with kids. “That was always the plan,” says Ashlee, who owns her own travel company, Just Another Wagner Adventure. Just as they kicked off their adoption journey, they got to work renovating — first, the first floor, followed by the pool and backyard, then the basement and, finally, upstairs. “We basically built this house to be our forever dream home,” muses Ashlee.

“I want to keep this house forever,” says Lowina, who officially became a Wagner just before she turned 3. With renovations underway in 2019, John and Ashlee initiated that first adoption, but what is already a lengthy process was stalled even more by the COVID pandemic. Finally, in January 2022, the couple headed to South Africa to bring home Lowina.

Of course, a few months before that trip, one that was to last about six months, life caught them by surprise. “I found out I was pregnant,” says Ashlee. When they finally returned to the States in the summer of 2022, they brought home both Lowina and her infant sister, Lizzie, who was also born in South Africa — a bond Ashlee is thrilled all three of her girls will share. And the place her soon-to-be-three girls will be lucky enough to grow up in together? Well, the Wagners are determined to turn it into an at-home adventure haven that would exceed any child’s wildest fantasies.

They started renovations with the living room and kitchen, which open to one another, adding white, shaker-style built-ins and revamping the fireplace with a simpler look that features a thick, rustic slab mantel. The small “U”-shaped kitchen was reconfigured to fit an island and banquette seating. “I always had that dream of, you know, you’re washing dishes and you look outside.” Over the banquette, a painting by artist Amira Rahim, aka “The Color Poet,” adds a vibrant splash to the otherwise neutral space.

The walls on the main level are coated in various shades of gray and filled with accessories and art from their travels all over the world, a passion that slowly turned into an avocation. (More about that later.) In the dining room, a grid of eight square photos glows with the oranges and yellows of global sunsets from various destinations. One photo that Ashlee took using a tripod shows the silhouette of John and Ashlee caught in a kiss, the sun’s orb illuminated behind her while hot air balloons in the distance fleck the sky.

Nearby in the den, long, wooden shelves line an entire wall. Ashlee points to various tchotchkes and lists the countries they’re from: “This is Egypt or Jordan. That is Tanzania. Lolo, where did we get this?” She asks her oldest. “Was this Mexico or Honduras?” Their souvenirs include a Day-of-the-Dead-inspired cat, a beer stein, artisan-made glass elephant bookends, a strand of beads featuring evil eyes. “We have evil eyes kind of hidden everywhere to keep the bad spirits out.”

When it’s time to go upstairs, the girls race ahead, shouting, “My room’s cooler!”

“My room first!” says Lowina. What color is it? “You’ll see when you get there.”

“Oh, Lowina,” Ashlee says with a laugh. “Silly girl!”

All of the bedrooms, including the primary, are painted in shades of blue or teal, with the girls each having pink accents. Lowina’s features a giant map of the world, a lace teepee, blush scalloped curtains, a muted-rose rug and a pair of twin beds adorned in — you guessed it — pink. Does Lizzie sometimes bunk with big sis? Nope, says Lowina, the other bed is where the family’s two cats sleep.

Though she’s younger, Lizzie’s bed is a queen. Her room, says Ashlee, used to have a tent bed and a “true safari theme.” But, as the family prepares for a longer stint of summer travel as well as another period in South Africa, she’s planning to rent the home short-term and is leaning into practicality. A large stuffed giraffe still stands in the corner and a circular, golden-yellow lion pillow rests on a hanging chair.

Just down the hall from their bedrooms, the girls share a bathroom and — wait for it — an indoor jungle gym. Ashlee and John have created a bunk room, where the twin-on-top and full-on-bottom beds have been built in. And, on another wall in that space, sits a large, wooden playset, complete with rings. “Come look at my trick,” cries Lizzie as she hangs upside down.

Lowina, not to be outdone by her little sister, performs a Little Mermaid-style hair swoosh move while Mom walks into her own bedroom, adjacent to the bunk room, which was originally part of the primary bedroom. Ashlee and John reconfigured the two rooms on that side of the house, creating the bunk room and adding a large walk-in closet with French sliders. On either side of their bed, Ashlee hung funky lanterns they found in Turkey and, on the front-facing wall, they added built-ins and a window seat. A hands-on couple, they did much of the work upstairs themselves and hired J&K Builders to do what they could not.

On the basement level of the home, where they continued working with J&K, yet another play gym keeps the girls busy. “Mommy, I’m going to slide!” Lizzie exclaims, landing in the middle of a ball pit as lightweight balls in aqua, red, lavender, pink and orange fly.

Nearby, a projector hangs from the ceiling, aimed at a blank, white wall standing in as a screen. “This is our movie area,” says Ashlee. Another comfy sofa provides the perfect space for a family snuggle sesh while they watch modern and classic Disney hits together. Lizzie opens a large trunk that serves as a coffee table. Inside, it’s filled to the brim with more princess dresses and costumes — time for an outfit change!

A kitchenette, bedroom and bathroom take up the rest of the basement space, plus a little bonus. “Yeah, I got a sauna,” says Ashlee. “I thought, why not?” Sometimes, Mom needs a quiet space to escape.

From the basement sliders, the girls are ready to run outside as dappled afternoon sunlight shadows the lawn. The backyard, just as she’d once dreamed, can be seen while Ashlee stands at her apron sink. There, she can watch the girls play in their treehouse, gaze at the peaceful surface of the pool or watch John and his sticks at work on the putting green.

Yes, a putting green. John’s a big golfer and, while he’s got his own bucket list of course destinations, he wanted to bring a bit of The Masters look to his own backyard. So, the couple dug in, adding an abundance of azaleas, mimicking the look of Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia. In fact, while they worked with Summit Landscaping Innovations alongside Guilford Pools on all hardscaping and the pool, John and Ashlee did all of the planting.

Tucked alongside the back fence, a modern-looking treehouse sits high, nestled among a few trees. Ashlee looked at some ideas on Pinterest and John ran with it, building his kiddos a dreamy, lofted playhouse. While a ladder will get you up, a tunneled slide is definitely the way down. A jungle gym extends to the treehouse’s left and, nearby, a disc swing gets plenty of use. “Mama, go fast!” shouts Lizzie as her mom pushes her.

“They like to go really high,” says Ashlee. After all, the sky is the limit. “I want to raise my kids to where they can go blow the world open if they want to.” OH

Go Your Own Way

John and Ashlee Wagner met in the fall of 2008 as freshman at UNCG. “In Business 101 class, funny enough,” says Ashlee. John sat right behind her. Soon after meeting, the two began dating. But, midway through the first year, John decided to “retire from school” and returned home to Wilmington.

“John’s been a rebel his whole life,” quips Ashlee. “He likes to defy what the norm is.”

A year and a half later, Ashlee visited friends in Wilmington. “And somehow John pops back up and we’re dating the next week.”

In 2014, after Ashlee earned her bachelor’s degree in business administration, the Wagners tied the knot in Ocean Isle, honeymooned in Cancun and then, months later, took a bigger, second honeymoon in Ireland. That same year, Ashlee accepted a new role at an executive search company. Finally, John says, “Finances felt stable,” and the honeymooners found themselves bitten by the travel bug, booking two big trips a year.

“Each trip was three or four countries,” says John.

“And what’s crazy is,” says Ashlee, “I think we’ve only been to 40 countries.” OK, that’s a lot, she acknowledges with a laugh.

But, notes John, referencing a world map that graces their wall, a pin in each place they’ve visited, “There are still so many places we haven’t even touched.”

In 2022, once she was back at home with her daughters, Ashlee began contemplating what she wanted out of life. Now as a VP, she was working some 80 hours a week. Plus, she notes, being a woman in leadership in the South comes with its own set of challenges. She asked herself, “If my kids were in this environment, what advice would I give them?” The answer was clear: “My advice would be to quit and go do something you love.”

Friends and family had been telling her all along that she should think about pursuing a career in travel, but a voice in her head kept talking her out of it.

But now, with four —soon to be six — little female eyes on her, she says, “I decided I was just as worthy of that advice.”

Today, she runs her own company, works with John a bit and even manages some properties they have acquired over the years as well as some for local, woman-owned Nomad Vacation Rentals. With a flexible schedule, the family jet-sets all over the world and roadtrips all over the U.S. Plus, she’s got the freedom to now be the mom who goes on field trips or helps out in class. “I can do whatever I want,” she says, “and that has been very fulfilling.”

“That’s why I have my own business,” notes John, who says their Greensboro home is his eventual retirement plan — meaning, he’ll sell it in 20 years or so and travel the world, perhaps buy a new property, maybe in another country. Though Ashlee says they created it to be their forever home, her wheels are always turning, too. “My dream would be running a safari.”

“Tomorrow’s not promised,” he says. “You can always earn money tomorrow. Make the experiences right now.” Plus, he says, they were lucky enough as a young couple to purchase “all the toys I ever wanted,” silly things like drones that end up in a closet somewhere. “I’d much rather book the plane ticket.”

Last summer, the family of four, plus their two large dogs — their cats stayed behind — traveled much of the United States in a 20-foot camper. “Wild,” says Ashlee. Once again, this summer, they’re hitting the road for one more long-term adventure as a family of four. And soon, they’ll be headed back South Africa, returning to the States as a family of five.

2026 Feature Story of a House

Poem June 2026

A Swift Thought

A car engine rattling.

A busted radio preaching the end

of the world. That soft, hazy sun racing

behind the horizon, peaking only for the

thought of crashing. The Earth’s breath,

hot and fast, blowing the trickled sweat

from my hairline to my forehead. A swished

whiskey hits the adrenaline, causing

a swerve left, then right. The radio speaks,

“Blazing temperatures bring hysteria!” I turn it

off without a care in the world and without a

second to spare.

— Joi Floyd

Joi Floyd is the assistant editor of O.Henry magazine. Should you wish to contact her, just look for a woman writing under a tree — or email her at joi@ohenrymag.com.

2026 Feature Poem

Poem May 2026

POEM

FLOATING

A hawk drifted over as I backstroked

through the neighborhood pool.

It glided more effortlessly

than I’d imagined possible,

circling and diving on the breeze

without thrash or beat of wing,

so I puffed up my chest

and floated awhile, wondering

if he’d spy me and swoop down

to make a meal of my laziness.

Maple seeds helicoptered

into the depressions

between ripples, bobbing expectantly.

Drowned, fat caterpillars

littered the blue between lanes.

There are graveyards

where the bones rest

less tranquil than that afternoon,

but I ripped it into lines,

and still I am ripping it into lines,

looking for sad, explosive meaning,

proof that I skimmed

that particular magnificence

and didn’t go under.

— Ross White

2026 Feature Poem

Ahoy Mateys

AHOY, MATEYS

Ahoy, Mateys

By Maria Johnson

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

On many a fair-weather evening, as the sun paints the sky around Lake Jeanette with neon pinks and purples, you can make a sport of watching cars on Bass Chapel Road as they slow down on the low-slung bridge near the marina.

Heads swivel as drivers stare at a curious vessel that bobs on the lake’s rippled surface. Red brake lights flash as motorists try to stay in their lanes while making sense of their water-borne fever dreams.

Before they reach the other shore, most passers-by give in to the delirium. They honk. They wave. They smile at the floating fantasy that Jess Washburn and his crew have cobbled together over the past few years.

Built on the frame of a disabled pontoon boat that’s tied to a motorized sister craft, their creation is basically a freshwater tiki bar with sandy-toed touches: torches ablaze; a carnival’s worth of multicolored LED lights; a tin roof; faux potted palms; plastic skeletons in swabby garb; grass-skirt fringes fluttering in the breeze; a glowing, 40-inch flatscreen TV; a mind-the-wake-and-take-your-best-shot dart board; and a seriously tall but not-seriously-plumb bamboo flagpole draped with a couple of Jolly Rogers that threaten absolutely no one.

The overall effect is Gilligan’s Island meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Cheers.

“After a long day at work, when I’m kinda stressed out, I get out there, and I can immediately relax,” says Captain Washburn. “I know I’m gonna see my friends, and I know I’m gonna get a good laugh.”

When he’s not combing the internet for pirate-adjacent accessories, Washburn works as a salesman for Greensboro-based Morrisette Packaging. He also buys and develops older industrial buildings, and perhaps most important to his nautical dreams, he owns Lake Jeanette itself.

Eight years ago, his company, Lenoir Warehouse Group, bought the 270-acre lake in North Greensboro, along with nearby Buffalo Lake, which covers a meager 105 acres by comparison.

Cone Mills Corp. created both reservoirs — Buffalo in 1922, Jeanette in 1943, according to a state inventory of dams — to provide water for its White Oak plant, which wove denim for the U.S. military among other customers.

Eventually, Cone sold its holdings to International Textile Group, which decided to shed the private lakes, by then surrounded by pricey homes.

Washburn had lived on Buffalo Lake for eight years. He was afraid an outside investment group might buy and develop what had been his duck-filled backyard.

So the perpetually tanned outdoorsman, who literally looks at life through the aquamarine lenses of his Maui Jim sunglasses, jumped on the urban watering holes.

He already had a pontoon boat docked at Lake Jeanette, where he enjoyed fishing and taking friends on cocktail-hour cruises.

His imagination churned with what could be moored even closer to home.

“I wanted a tiki boat on Buffalo Lake for the longest time,” says Washburn, who was inspired by the tiki-themed water taxis that slosh tourists on booze cruises up and down Taylor’s Creek near Beaufort, N.C.

Alas, Washburn’s modest lakefront dock wouldn’t support such a dream on Buffalo Lake.

Lake Jeanette, with its well-concealed marina, was a better fit. But tearing down a perfectly good pontoon boat to make a floating tiki bar did not make sense, even to a repressed pirate.

Five years passed.

Arggg.

Then a friend made Washburn an irresistible offer: Washburn could have the friend’s dilapidated pontoon boat in Virginia if he would make the trip to retrieve it.

Washburn huddled with four friends, who all loved hunting, fishing and spending time on the water.

Rodney Hazel, a real estate agent who had been Washburn’s pal since they were students at Chapel Hill, was gung-ho.

So was Todd McCurry, a textile company executive.

Ditto medical device salesman Ben McAlhany.

The crew towed the junker boat to the Greensboro home of master carpenter Kevin Crowder and turned his backyard into a boatyard.

They commissioned Crowder to create a pirate’s den in the spirit of Peter Pan’s nemesis, Captain Hook, which is to say, a youthful idea of a slightly dangerous good time.

But first, Crowder ripped off the rotting deck and replaced it with inch-thick, marine-grade plywood. He added floats under the frame for stability.

Above deck, he built in a cabin big enough to house a bar with bench seating, plus a small galley where an outboard motor would have been.

As the watercraft took shape, the crew and their mates dragged in building supplies, some donated, some discounted.

Washburn got his hands on some sheet metal for the roof and walls. He wangled some AstroTurf, left over from a Wake Forest University lacrosse field, for the deck.

McCurry rustled up some outdoor fabric for seat cushions.

Hazel donated a large bell that he found in a store in Ocracoke.

Washburn salvaged pine pallets that would become the boat’s shiplap siding and freestanding bar. He also bought a solar-powered generator to provide electricity for the mini-refrigerator-and-freezer that had once occupied his son’s dorm room. He found pre-lit, solar-powered palm trees online.

McAlhany contributed a gas grill in the interest of keeping the crew stoked with hamburgers and fajitas.

“We’d get out there every night and say, ‘This would be cool. Let’s try this.’ People would come by and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got just the thing for you,’ and they’d send a little something,” Washburn says.

The crew briefly considered adding a hot tub to the party barge, but nixed the plan because of the required maintenance.

They hauled the mostly-finished boat to Lake Jeanette in the spring of 2023. The most treacherous part of the voyage was the traffic circle on Bass Chapel Road.

“We had a real old, kind of a sketchy trailer, and it was rocking back and forth. We went about 5 miles an hour. People behind us were not too happy,” Washburn says through a Cheshire Cat grin.

The crew breathed a sigh of relief when the boat reached the marina, eased into the water and stayed on the surface.

“We weren’t real sure it was going to float because we had a lot of weight on it,” Washburn remembers.

The boat gained weight, in the form of decor, as more friends came aboard.

Mic Cardone handed over a deluxe dartboard with its own cabinet.

Mark Ruffin donated an autographed snapshot of Jerry Garcia, the late leader of psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead. Ruffin’s brother had been an attorney for Garcia.

Kelly Harrill chipped in a wall-mounted TV that streams internet-based shows via cell phone hotspots.

“It was a community effort,” says Washburn.

At night, as bats pin-wheeled over the water, he hung out on the boat and surfed the web, ordering skeletons, string lights, pirate flags and grass skirts.

“Everything is from Amazon,” he says.

These days, crew members — minus McAlhany, who recently moved to South Carolina — take the tiki boat out as often as five nights a week.

They sip adult beverages, puff cigars and watch deer, ducks and a pair of bald eagles that nest along one of the lake’s coves.

They fish for bass, crappie and perch. Washburn is proud that the lake supports a diversity of marine life.

A few years ago, he asked the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, based at N.C. State, to study the health of Lake Jeanette, which spills over a dam and eventually into Lake Townsend, a source of drinking water for Greensboro.

“They were amazed at how pristine Lake Jeanette was,” he says.

The crew also likes to stargaze, keeping watch for constellations and shooting stars, as well as Starlink, the satellite communication system, which appears as several fast-moving lights in a row.

“It’s really nice at night. It’s beautiful,” McCurry says quietly.

Sometimes, the vibe on the boat is philosophical. More often, it’s social.

Crew members gather on board to watch golf, NASCAR and football. In the fall, when it’s nippy, they pull the curtains around the cabin, fire up propane heaters, and toast the night away.“

Rain, snow, sleet, hail — we’re gonna say, ‘Yes!,’” says Hazel.

“The rain sounds good on the roof,” Washburn pipes up.

Side-by-side, the tiki boat and its sister vessel can float a party of 16 passengers. Guests leave their graffiti-like marks, with Sharpies, on the tiki boat’s wooden surfaces:

“Let’s have a painkiller party on the U.S.S. Washburn.”

“Go for the flip. Just do it!!”

“Let’s Have One More!”

A barrel stuffed with pirate costumes stands ready for anyone who wants to harrr it up. When the crew gets rowdy, they open a valve to shoot a water cannon. Another water stream appears to emanate from the pelvis of a skeleton that sits on the cabin roof, his legs dangling over the edge.

“Our kids come home and say, ‘Where was this when I lived at home?’” says Hazel.

Short answer: When the younger kids move out, the older kids take over.

Washburn doesn’t deny there’s a strong current of adolescence running through his 61-year-old veins.

“I grew up building forts and treehouses,” he says, reflecting on his childhood in High Point. “Maybe I have a little immature kid in me.”

His playfulness is a hit with other boaters and with revelers at the lakeside gazebo. They wave the tiki boat over for pics.

“It’s an Instagram moment,” says Hazel, who favors a photo-ready skipper’s hat when he’s aboard.

Soon, people might have more selfie opps.

Washburn is considering building a second tiki boat for Buffalo Lake if he can get a larger dock.

Also, his crew is agitating for inclusion in the annual Greensboro Christmas parade.

That would require a trailer big enough to get the boat downtown and then pull the craft through the streets.

Then there’s the issue of Santa.

Would he ride with naughty pirates?

And what would he wear?

Black beard?

Blue beard?

White beard?

Washburn ponders.

His imagination scans the horizon for what could be.

“Yeah, a white beard,” he muses. “Maybe we dress him as Hawaiian Santa. We don’t want all the kids crying. No sword. But maybe . . . ”

Chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil? Santa could toss them from a treasure chest.

“Yeah,” Washburn enthuses. “YEAH!”

Ho-ho-harrrrr.

2026 Ahoy Mateys Feature

Unsung Heroes?

UNSUNG HEROES?

Unsung Heroes?

Searching for valiant ancestry at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse

By Billy Ingram • Illustration by Harry Blair

Looking back on the “Spirit of ’76,” it’s important to consider how, almost five years later, the outcome of the Revolutionary War was ultimately decided following a cataclysmic clash of opposing foes “fighting like demons” in a hail of bullets and thrusting bayonets at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

This year we recognize our nation’s Semiquincentennial and, while the celebration isn’t bombarding us with the patriotic fervor that accompanied the 1976 Bicentennial two-year bacchanalia of red, white and blue infecting every corner of society, we can take pride that this region played a seminal role in securing our independence from the King of England.

On a Saturday morning in March 2026, Revolutionary War buffs packed into a theater located inside Guilford Courthouse National Military Park’s visitors center. They’ve gathered for the First Annual Descendants of Battle of Guilford Courthouse Veterans Symposium, where ancestors of that conflagration take to the stage, regaling the audience with examples of their forefathers’ acts of bravery. One speaker, John Forbis, a former mayor of Greensboro, proudly traces his lineage back to Captain Arthur Forbis of the Carolina Militia, mortally wounded after refusing to relent to the enemy. A stone monument was dedicated to his heroism at the Military Park in 1887. Eric Wilson shares the valorous record of his maternal fourth great grandfather, who fought courageously here as a member of the Virginia militia

Kevin Graham, former president of the Lower Cape Fear chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, speaks of his ancestor, Zachariah Jacobs, a free-born person of color (indigenous and African American) who also fought gallantly at Guilford and exhibited outstanding combat prowess years earlier at the Battle of Brier Creek and other consequential confrontations. Jacobs was one of an estimated 44 Black men and women who took up arms against British tyranny at Guilford Courthouse.

Yes, oftentimes, wives, with children in tow, followed along after their husbands and furnished crucial behind-the-lines support. Their fortitude under fire can’t easily be dismissed.

A little further into the park, with a massive granite obelisk dedicated in 1910 to Peter Francisco for a backdrop, a ceremony brimming with dignitaries honors the man known alternatively as “Francisco the Giant” and the Revolution’s “One Man Army.” A 6-foot-6 hulk of a man whose legend is Bunyanesque, almost Asgardian in Yank mythology. He is remembered as a fearsome warlord who swung his mighty 5-foot broadsword (gifted to him by General George Washington, natch), carving his way through walls of human flesh. A movie is in the works where Hollywood will undoubtedly portray Francisco extracting that sword from a stone.

Still, who would want to contest, as Francisco descendant Travis Bowman states succinctly to the assembled on that Saturday, that “250 years later, every American continues to benefit from his sacrifice and we owe a lasting debt of gratitude for the freedom secured through his bravery.”

Honestly, I never found the history behind our nation’s founding to be all that inspiring, nothing more than, at least for me, pointless memorization of a litany of names and dates that perpetually pushed my snooze button. However, hearing these heartfelt testimonials from proud Americans with such courageous kinfolk piqued my interest.

I’m attending these tributes with my brother Hank and his lovely wife, Hope, she being authentic DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). Hank has become something of an amateur genealogist lately and I am totally impressed that he has actually uncovered the names of two bloodline associations of our own to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse that I am certain will burnish our family’s long tradition of military service. Fighting on both sides of the Civil War, in both World Wars, up to and including a recently retired Naval officer, many of their formal military portraits as cadets and commanders are hanging prominently around my home. I’m imagining the possibility of being invited to speak at next year’s gathering of patriots.

I spend the remainder of the day at nearby Country Park, where reenactors have pitched neatly packed rows of white linen tents and teepees made from hemp. Throughout the camp, simply-clothed reenactors spend waking hours outside toiling at various tasks then sleeping inside at night. The scent of rice bread baking in a clay oven wafts through the air, served piping hot with marmalade schmears. Campfires billow under boiling caldrons while lines are being cast for catfish. The dedication to period correctness and determination on the part of the participants for recreating life precisely as it was in 1781 is impressive, their time tunneling lasting an entire weekend, as if perfectly content to live out the rest of their lives in the modest manner of their humble ancestors. I shudder to think.

Following an Earth-and-ear shattering battlefield recreation animated by cannon blasts and powder flumes, I return to the 21st century and delve into my relatives’ activity surrounding March 15, 1781, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Within minutes, I realize there will be no hereditary accolades, no patriotic prawn or bragging rights; potential speaking engagements are clearly out of the question.

Under orders on that fateful date, Great Grandfather four times over on Dad’s side, 31-year-old Lt. Colonel William Goldston, and some 150 North Carolina militiamen were dispatched on horseback. Traveling from Chatham County toward Guilford Courthouse, they were to deliver critical firepower for Continental forces. Arriving at Holt’s Mill in Orange County, the detachment detected reverberations of cannon fire echoing from their destination some miles ahead. Who knows what went through their heads, but they didn’t run toward the cannons.

In fact, Goldston’s garrison swung into (in)action, pitching tents and camping in place for a few days. Maybe fishing for largemouth bass, bagging a buck or two, who knows, but those fairweather warriors were well away by the time Cornwallis and his ragtag regiment came marching unopposed towards Chatham. No record exists of any resistance or subsequent sabotage on old Grandad’s behalf to impede the Redcoats’ furtherance.

It gets far worse.

Days later on March 23, Cornwallis’ troops trudged into Chatham County for a few days respite at Ramsey’s Mill while the general retired to the home of Major Mial Scurlock, where my mother’s great-great-great-great granny, Sarah Scurlock, curtsied deeply, practically prostrate, one imagines, welcoming the British Lord to his new temporary headquarters. There, in my ancestors’ home, he most certainly formulated plans for annihilating rebellious rabble after resupplying in Wilmington.

Hardly paragons of American patriotism as I had anticipated, at least where Guilford Courthouse was concerned. In all fairness, Granddad Goldston did distinguish himself in a number of earlier skirmishes and successfully routed Redcoats from Raft Swamp in September of 1781, North Carolina’s last battle of the war. And Scurlock’s namesake, Mial Scurlock, an uncle many times removed (somewhat of a scourge according to recollections), fought and died at the Alamo in 1836. Alongside John Wayne, one supposes. So there’s that.

Perhaps Grandad Goldston and his civilian militia were wise in surmising, with another 20 miles ahead to Guilford Courthouse, they were too late to be of much help. Or not.

Directly after the battle ceased, the rain began and wouldn’t stop for casualties or the mortally wounded. Both forces dispersed, shivering in the cold, damp days of late winter. Granted, small details stayed behind, tasked with burying the 180 or so dead — but could do nothing for the estimated 600 wounded Colonists and British Loyalists alike left littering a war-ravaged, damp and dreary landscape. No bandages, medicines or shelter for those felled by 3/4-inch lead musket balls that grew larger passing through the human body before pancaking and spinning, creating gaping exit wounds. A smallpox outbreak vastly worsened conditions. Over the ensuing weeks, huddled haphazardly across the adjacent Hoskins Farmstead for what scant comfort could be extended by overwhelmed and ill-equipped Quakers, everyone watched helplessly as lifelong friends perished in the worst weather conditions possible, lifeless legionaries sinking inexorably into wet, red, Carolina clay.

Not long ago, I found myself waiting for the green at the intersection of New Garden and Battleground. On the southeast corner (the wooded area) rests the restored living quarters of the aforementioned Hoskins Farmstead, precisely where it stood in 1781, overtaken by Lord Cornwallis for choreographing his opening salvos in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. The clapboard cabin sits alongside a less-traveled but spirituous spur of the Great Wagon Road, where, in 1778, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians Joseph and Hannah Hoskins settled, seeking a peaceful existence away from the horrors of war waging in the north. Just three years later, they’d find themselves in a literal crossfire of clashing cultures, left burdened with an immeasurable number of casualties and scores of corpses being consumed by deforested beasts foraging for food.

Standing on the very patch of land where blood, sweat and torrents of tears watered our tenacious tree of liberty, where war’s inevitable carnage and catastrophic consequences became mournfully necessary for the precarious establishment of our nation, I’m in awe of those fearless men and women of yesteryear who made it possible. Although my ancestors regrettably failed to contribute to this great cause on that fateful day, we salute those who fought, as well as those who sacrificed everything, so that 13 former colonies could emerge as united states.

The Lost Battle That Won the War

As our nation celebrates 250 years since John Hancock swept his John Hancock across the Declaration of Independence in 1776, what better time to remind ourselves that declaration and realization arrive on different tracks, aspiration and actualization on divergent timetables. The momentary exuberance of ’76 was followed by five years of merciless bloodletting, the Revolutionary War being a civil war pitting neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. North Carolina, in particular, had one of the highest concentrations of Loyalists who sided with the British. Revolutionaries were a distinct minority here.

For insight into how the war affected the Piedmont region, I turned to Robert Bemis, heritage trades interpretive specialist for the State of North Carolina, an immersive historian with a wealth of local knowledge about the Revolutionary War. Year round, Bemis and his team are deployed to our state’s many historic sites to demonstrate skills — blacksmithing, woodworking, brickmaking — that 17th- through 19th-century settlers mastered for surviving. “I do it all,” he says. “The joke in the family is, Joe takes great photographs, I do everything else.” (Robert’s brother, Joe, is a well-respected wartime history photo-illustrator you may recall reading about in O.Henry.)

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse is the very definition of a pyrrhic victory (for the Brits), a winning battle that can result in losing the war. I asked Robert Bemis if the Revolutionary War was mostly a series of losses for the Colonists that ultimately led to victory? “Sort of. The war was a series of defeats. You can make almost a direct correlation between the American Revolution and the French in the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars.” Goldurn, I’m in the intellectual weeds already . . .

“To put it in modern parlance with a great analogy,” Bemis references Red Dawn, the 1984 Patrick Swayze movie where Russians invade a small Colorado town — now I’m in familiar territory. Wolverines! “Very similar situation, where you have an overwhelming force of much better troops, but they’re fighting on somebody’s home territory. It’s a matter of logistics and supply lines.” While the English were well-rooted with bases in major cities, Lt. General Charles Cornwallis’ army, “was 2,100 dudes out in the middle of North Carolina prior to significant roadways. These were professional soldiers, but they’re concerned with basic survival. Where am I going to procure food? What do I need to cut down as far as firewood? How am I going to make the brush into shelter?”

On the Colonists’ side, Major General Nathanael Greene’s Continental Army was growing in strength and numbers while circuitously cat-and-mousing Cornwallis across the state in 1781, finally amassing around a decade old settlement known as Guilford County. “Guilford County had a literal courthouse,” Bemis says, explaining how the battle gained its name. “It was the seat of the county, a fairly small building. Whenever there was any kind of legal issue, [folks] would go to Guilford Courthouse.” Having scouted the area during an earlier stopover, Greene reasoned the untamed, hilly thickets could prove a strategic advantage, provided he could lure Cornwallis in.

On the afternoon of March 15, 1781, the British swept towards Greene’s three-tiered defensive position, spread out over highest ground alongside New Garden Road, where his militia rained volleys of musket fire down on the Redcoats. “The 23rd Welsh Fusliers,” Bemis remarks about Cornwallis’ superior conscripts attacking an entrenched army twice its size, “these were crème de la crème-quality troops who had been battle tested before. They were excellent fighters.” The first line of militiamen disintegrated quickly, many fleeing back to their homes rather than counter such an onslaught. Redcoats let out cheers advancing, victory seemingly in their white gloved grasp.

The second line of skirmish had gunmen positioned behind the ranks to discourage desertion. They were far more effective. The tide turned decisively for the Continentals after William Washington’s cavalry launched an unanticipated assault from the right flank, fronted by the dreaded Peter Francisco, this being the site of arguably the warrior’s most fabled feat. With one leg bayoneted to a horse, Francisco brought down his fearsome broadsword on an attacker so forcefully, so swiftly, that the Brit got split lengthwise from his crown on down.

When it became apparent that the Patriots would apparently prevail, swarming ever closer to capturing Cornwallis and his officers, the British general did the unthinkable. He wheeled forward heavy artillery cannons loaded with grapeshot, ordering gunners to train their muzzles on the center of the melee where soldiers on both sides were engaged in ferocious close combat. In firing so indiscriminately, Cornwallis slaughtered his own men along with opposing forces, winning the field of battle after two-and-a-half grueling hours but suffering devastating consequences.

British forces never fully recovered from the ruinous butchering wrought upon them on that fateful afternoon at Guilford, leading to Cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown in the fall, less than seven months later. It’s why, 250 years later, the memory of Guilford Courthouse Battleground, the scene where an estimated 80 Patriots died and 185 were wounded, is now a national landmark.

2026 Feature Unsung Heroes

The Greener Way

THE GREENER WAY

The Greener Way

The Downtown Greenway paves the way for pedestrians, pedalers, plant lovers and pollinators

By Cassie Bustamante • Portrait Photograph by Bert Vanderveen

Greensboro’s Downtown Greenway is coming full circle this month. Literally. After a quarter century of planning, meetings, compromises, digging, planting and construction, Trip Brown is thrilled that his exercise-fanatic wife, Christine, can finally hike the completed, long-awaited, 4-mile trail that loops around Greensboro’s center city, reflecting that what goes around comes around: “One time, one of our major supporters said, ‘Look, what are you all waiting on? Just put the asphalt down and be done with it.’” But that wasn’t good enough for Brown, who spearheaded the Greenway volunteer committee, and others involved who wanted so much more.

“Well, guess what?” he continues. “The asphalt is almost like a minor part of it. Now you get the beautiful green and all the planting and everything.”

For the board chair of Brown Investment Properties, “everything” ultimately included more than 35 public art installations that explore Greensboro’s culture and history, from textiles to civil rights. Plus, a please-pick-the-fruit orchard, 187 bio retention cells and gabion baskets (more about them later), restored stream beds, and countless features that, together, are a thoughtful invitation to move your body while engaging in a thriving, sustainable ecosystem that squarely puts the “green” in both this innovative greenway and Greensboro.

I begin my walk around on an early spring day at Greenway’s Meeting Place, one of many public art installations found along the trail. Hints of pink are emerging on early blueberry bush blooms. Nearby, fig and other fruit trees are just starting to come back to life after their winter’s nap. Soon, strawberries will be shooting up from the earth. If, later in the year, you’re out on a stroll and pass by this orchard, you’re welcome to help yourself to the plump, juicy figs beckoning from easy-to-reach branches. “You’ve got to come early though,” says Franklin Bowman, Downtown Greenway’s crew supervisor and one of my guides, “or they’ll be gone.”

“We recommend, you know, save some for others,” chimes in Matt Hicks, the City of Greensboro’s botanical gardens superintendent, who oversees the crews that maintain the city’s four botanical gardens, four municipal cemeteries, landscaped areas of LeBauer and Center City parks, and, of course, the Downtown Greenway. The orchard is just one of many ways the Greenway aims to foster sustainability. I continue walking just a few yards away to High Grove and discover sculptural works that artist Allie Crawford created from found metal pieces, such as a pulley, plus asphalt-milling paths bordered by granite curbing taken from the city’s former guttering system.

Hicks, who graduated with a degree in horticultural science from N.C. State, points out just how rare it is for a city’s downtown to have so much lush green compared to concrete gray. “[The Greenway is] preserving those natural areas that aren’t often seen in an urban environment.”

When High Grove is in full bloom come late spring and summer, its pollinators and herbs will be a feast for the senses, lush with greens, reds, pinks, purples and yellows — every color of the rainbow, says Bowman. Take a deep breath in as you jog by and you might just catch the scent of rosemary. Perhaps you’ll stop and grab a sprig for that potato salad you’re bringing to your neighbor’s cookout.

On the opposite side of the sidewalk, several “rectangular gardens” line Smith Street. What, exactly, are those?

“I’ve been waiting for four years for someone to ask me that,” quips Bowman.

He explains how these shallow, landscaping depressions, aka bioretention cells, work. Each cell is planted with trees and plants and, when storm water rushes in from the street, “Mother Nature takes control,” filtering the water back into the ground and turning contaminated and often polluted storm water into water almost clean enough to drink.

“That’s a big deal,” he adds. “And I hope you put a little thing in your magazine about that because Greensboro should be really proud of that in my opinion.”

In total, there are 187 bioretention cells filtering water for our city’s inhabitants and, according to Downtown Greenway project manager Dabney Sanders, they are “the maintenance crew’s worst nightmare — so high maintenance, but so important environmentally.” Because storm water often carries with it debris, the bio cells often need attention.

Picking up a cup here, a cigarette butt there, Bowman says, “We spend a couple hours, three hours every day, picking up litter.” His small but mighty team consists of three full-timers and two rosters. He side-eyes Hicks, quipping, “I’m hoping my supervisor will give me three more rosters. I want that on record, please.”

Hicks, without missing a beat, says, “We’re looking at actually looking for volunteers.” Between gardening and trash cleanup, there’s always plenty of work to be found.

Heading south along the Western Branch towards Market Street from Smith, we pass the College Branch Stream, where volunteers often work to keep the water and its surrounding banks clean. Plus, crews have worked doggedly to restore it structurally, returning the water to its natural flow — so flora and fauna in the stream bed aren’t flushed away — and eliminating further erosion. Grasses blow in the cool spring breeze and young, freshly-planted trees will soon mature and offer shade. “There’s been a great blue heron hanging out there,” notes Sanders about her last four visits to the Western Branch. “It’s really neat to see that.”

An art installation nearby, created by UNC alumni Thomas Sayre, pays homage to the stream. Cairn’s Course, as it’s called, was created by using earth cast molds dug into the land adjacent to the stream, forming “stones” that were stacked like cairns often spotted on wooded hiking trails. Terrazzo stepping stones in that area depict the types of aquatic life you might find in the College Branch Stream.

Continuing south, the Friendly Avenue underpass becomes more visible. Bowman mentions that he put the bottles up. What bottles? “Wine bottles, and messages in the bottles.”

Sure enough, embedded in the underpass wall are gabion baskets — durable, wire-mesh structures, often filled with rocks and used as retaining walls — housing numerous bottles. Hicks says it was a way for the Greenway to honor donors who gave a certain dollar amount. They “had the opportunity to put a message on a metal tag that went in a wine bottle” and now the bottles collectively front the pass-through. What is it they say? One man’s empty is another man’s art.

“You ever been to Morehead at Five Points?” Bowman asks. Just after crossing Spring Garden is the garden that is Sanders’ personal favorite, according to Bowman, and it’s a bit off the beaten path, full of trees and vegetation. “It makes you think you ought to be somewhere else. Not just a hop, skip to downtown.”

Also along the Morehead stretch, you’ll find the Greenway’s first sustainability-minded project, solar-powered lighting. You might say it was a light bulb moment, turned on by a 2011 Federal Energy Block Grant. “It was the first solar-powered lighting the city had ever done,” says Sanders. Those initial lights were replaced two years ago with new, improved technology and functionality. Now, the lights have a bit of sensitivity to them; while they’re usually pretty dim, as foot traffic approaches, their light brightens.

Not only do solar-powered lights conserve energy, but they do less harm to the animal kingdom as well. The City of Greensboro annually partners with the T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon Society’s “Lights Out for Birds” program in both spring and fall. The initiative requests that residents turn off nonessential lights that can disorient migrating birds. You get the added bonuses of energy conservation and less light pollution.

As the loop wraps around the south side of the city and turns north along Eastern Way, the Greenway’s pollinator garden comes into view. On this early spring day, it’s quiet, green shoots just emerging from hibernation. This garden, planted in Woven Works Park, uses the environmentally-friendly method of sheet mulching, where layers upon layers of leaf mulch and organic material kill unwanted weeds and grasses without damaging soil quality.

Soon, it will be buzzing with activity as bees and butterflies flutter through. “I did see monarchs last year,” notes Bowman. “And that’s a big deal if you keep up with that.” Monarch butterfly populations have been on the decline for several years but, in 2025, experienced a bit of a rebound. “I hope they come back,” he adds.

In the last of the gardens, LoFi park, permaculture gardeners David Mudd and Justin Vettel, who also designed High Grove, once again took a sustainable approach with their planting style and materials. “That’s kind of in their DNA,” says Hicks.

Of course, as it sits right in front of local brewery Joymongers, he quips, “It has become essentially Joymongers’ front yard.” With kids often running amok while nearby parents sip craft beer, the grass they’d originally planted took a beating. But never mind. Now, it’s all turf and planted beds.

Sanders would love to see even more gardens pop up because they’ve really resonated with nearby residents and greenway walkers alike and provided the Downtown Greenway plentiful opportunities for the community to learn and work together. “It’s just a real nice way to physically get people engaged with it.”

In fact, on May 4, you can attend a pollinator gardening workshop at Woven Works, perhaps drawing monarchs to your own yard. (This is one of numerous programs the Downtown Greenway offers for free.) Through both visibility and education, Sanders says that she wants the Greenway to serve as an example of what’s possible for the environment. “You don’t really see those actual environmental benefits in the short term. It’s super long term.”

Finally, you can get a taste of what’s been thoughtfully cultivated over the last 25 years. So, go ahead, venture out and enjoy the fruits of the city’s labor. After all, berry season is near.

Paving the Way

When Action Greensboro, a nonprofit that serves as the city’s primary economic and community development group, was formed in 2001 and Susan Schwartz was named executive director, the Greenway wasn’t even yet on the organization’s radar. “We had five or six areas that we were focused on,” recalls Schwartz, who now serves as executive director of the Cemala Foundation, “and one was Center City revitalization.” (The Cemala Foundation was founded in 1986 by Martha and Ceasar Cone II, former Cone Mills president and chairman, as a means to continue supporting their community long after their own deaths.)

Action Greensboro enlisted Cooper Carry, an Atlanta-based architecture firm “with a focus on connecting people to place,” to come up with a master plan — a grand plan that included the creation of Center City Park and relocating the home base of the city’s minor league baseball team, the Greensboro Grasshoppers, from Yanceyville Street to Bellemeade.

On a visit to Greensboro, former firm principal Richard Flierl toured downtown with city employees, who, Schwartz says, just happened to know about an old, overgrown, hidden underpass and bridge, where a road had once ended. They showed it to Flierl. A seed was planted in his mind and he envisioned what could grow into a connective, biped loop encircling the city’s downtown. Businesses would swarm and the path itself would connect it to hundreds of miles of trail, making Greensboro a central hub.

Flierl left Cooper Carry during the project, but, Schwartz says, “He really did give us a great foundation for how we could be telling Greensboro’s story and, at the same time, adding the public art.”

Still, it took a while for that little seed to germinate. Action Greensboro formed a volunteer committee, spearheaded by Brown Investment Properties board chair Trip Brown. In 2003, Brown, with community leaders Walker Sanders, president of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, and Skip Moore, then president of the Weaver Foundation, traveled to Norfolk Southern Railroad headquarters in Roanoke. There, they initiated a railroad corridor negotiation that would end up taking 16 years.

Then, in 2004, the Cone Health Foundation pledged $500,000 to fertilize that fledgling seed. Soon, a preliminary design was revealed to the public and the city council adopted it.

Roots firmly taking shape in the ground, the Downtown Greenway brought on Dabney Sanders as its project manager in 2007. She’d previously been working as an Action Greensboro special projects consultant.

“She had this interest in plants and trees . . . and both of us like public art,” recalls Schwartz. “It’s just a little marriage made in heaven.”

In 2008, The Cemala Foundation pledged the Downtown Greenway its first significant gift: $1.5 million. Three more pledges, each at $1 million, rolled in from the Bryan Foundation, the Weaver foundation and the Cone Health Foundation.

Finally, eight years after its inception, that little seed broke ground in 2009.

Of course, all along, organizers knew a nice side effect could be eliminating some automobile emissions as people used it to walk to work. In fact, Brown recalls being interviewed for a local news station when the first phase was just about to open. He touted it to the reporter as “an alternate means of transportation for work.” Lo and behold, a man came walking the path toward the camera crew. “In a couple minutes, he was there,” recalls Brown, “so they went over and asked him what he was doing on the Greenway, and he said, ‘Well, I’m walking to work.’”

Brown lets out a chuckle. “I am still wondering if somebody set that up,” he quips. “It was too perfect.”

But, somewhere in that planning, as Sanders and her team worked with consultants on the design details, the idea of sustainability blossomed. “It quickly rose to the top as a real opportunity we had here in this very urban environment,” she says.

“We think about that a lot now,” she adds.

“It came on early enough that we could really think about it the whole way through,” says Schwartz.

There’s no doubt that the Downtown Greenway contributed to the center-city momentum that drew new businesses to downtown, especially those adjacent to the Greenway, including The Greenway at Fisher Park and The Greenway at Stadium Park luxury apartment buildings, Joymongers Brewing and restaurants such as Machete and Sage Mule. Deep Roots Market relocated to its current spot on North Eugene, adjacent to the Greenway. Plans are underway to connect the Greenway to the Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway, with an expected completion by Summer 2029.

But, in the end, the Downtown Greenway grew into something more than anyone could have imagined.

Of course, Sanders quips, “We gotta quit saying it’s the end. It’s really the beginning.” OH

2026 Feature The Greener Way

A Place Like Home

A PLACE LIKE HOME

A Place Like Home

Montagnard families and Special Forces veterans preserve a vanishing culture

By Ross Howell Jr.

Photographs by Liz Nemeth

The 101-acre land tract off Highlands Drive outside Asheboro is typical of the Carolina Piedmont. Through the sloping fields and rolling woodlands, Toms Creek meanders, feeding into the Deep River.

But as you follow a winding, gravel road past a couple houses, a picnic area and a meeting house, you arrive in front of a memorial flagpole, an outdoor stage and a brightly-painted “longhouse,” a 6,000-square-foot wooden structure built in the traditional style of the Rade people, a tribe of Montagnards indigenous to Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

This piece of land is anything but typical.

It’s held in trust and administered by Save the Montagnard People, Inc. (STMP), a charitable organization that the late George Clark led as president from 2000 until his passing in 2022. Without his tireless efforts, this place wouldn’t exist.

His widow, Phyllis Clark, a member of the STMP board of directors, has invited me out to meet some of the organization’s leaders.

Yung Buonya worked closely with George for years and was elected STMP president upon his death. Now in his 60s, Yung is retired and lives in Greensboro.

He’s been a very effective advocate for STMP. He’s convinced donors to provide truckloads of gravel for roads on the property. He’s persuaded others to donate the telephone poles used as pilings for the longhouse as well as the lumber used in its construction.

“I came to North Carolina in 1994 with my wife and two sons,” Yung says. His sister-in-law — half-Montagnard, half-American — acted as the family’s sponsor.

“We were able to leave straight from Vietnam,” Yung says. “We never had to stay in a refugee camp.”

“This is one place on Earth where the Montagnards can bring their children and grandchildren and show them how their ancestors lived,” says Phyllis. “The communists are tearing down all the traditional longhouses in Vietnam.”

“The land is held free and clear, and can never be sold,” she continues. The mortgage was paid off by 94-year-old Richard “Bear” Shorten, who deployed to Vietnam with Special Forces in 1961.

Phyllis muses, then adds, “George raised money to help the Montagnards pretty much until his last breath.”

Why would one man be so dedicated?

In 1967, George, then a 21-year-old from Kansas City, had been deployed to the Central Highlands of Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His job was to recruit and train Montagnards to fight the North Vietnamese troops streaming south along the Ho Chi Minh trail, which ran right through Montagnard homeland.

While he had excellent training and equipment, George was still a stranger in a strange land.

There was a language barrier, for one thing. Most of the tribes spoke Rade or maybe a little Vietnamese. And he had to learn how to navigate a matrilineal tribal society. Women owned all property, including land, domestic animals and family longhouses raised and framed with enormous, hand-hewn logs.

The transport and construction equipment for this heavy work? Elephants.

Crossbows of unique tribal design were the weapon of choice when Montagnard men hunted the forests for food delicacies such as monkey, python and water buffalo.

But George found the primitive Montagnards to be quick studies and willing soldiers.

“They were so fascinated by jumping out of airplanes,” George told VFW Magazine in 2019. “They would laugh and laugh after jumping out of a plane.”

Once, in a fierce firefight, Montagnard men shielded George with their bodies so he would not be hit. On another occasion, George jumped from a boat to swim to Montagnards who were pinned down on shore by heavy enemy fire and was wounded in action.

When he returned stateside after three years in the Central Highlands, George could not put the Montagnard people out of his mind.

He knew that the new communist regime would target them after U.S. forces left in 1975.

“When we pulled out of Vietnam,” George explained to VFW Magazine, “those villages were screwed, and we knew it.”

Some Montagnards continued to fight for an independent territory in the Central Highlands. But, as historian Lauren Elizabeth Raper writes, early in the 1980s, thousands laid down their weapons and sought refuge in Thailand, “where they hoped to make contact with the United States and ask for asylum.”

In 1986, a contingent of 209 Montagnards who had made their way to a Thai refugee camp were transferred to North Carolina.

That was the year that George and his buddies in the Special Forces Association and the Special Operations Association — after much jawboning with the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg — put together the framework for what would become STMP.

“The Montagnards were set up in three places — Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro,” says Sam Todaro, an STMP director. He completed Special Forces training in 1966 and deployed to Vietnam, where he trained Thai and Laotian elite troops.

“We picked this piece of land in Asheboro because it’s kind of in the middle,” Sam says. “When the Montagnards came, they found vegetation that’s just like what you find in the Central Highlands.”

“Even the dirt’s the same color,” he adds.

Various church groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals pitched in to aid the immigrants. And STMP continued to step up in big ways.

In 2007 George and Sam learned about a desperate situation at a Montagnard refugee camp in Cambodia and made their way to the site — a risky venture, to be sure.

Y Drim Kbuor is 44 years old, works as an electrician in Greensboro and serves as a STMP director. He remembers very, very well the day in 2007 when George and Sam arrived at what was called “Camp 3.”

Drim and his wife, brother and sister-in-law had been transferred to the camp and were there for nearly a year.

“Camp 3 was the last one you went to before you were shipped back to Vietnam and executed,” Phyllis murmurs.

“That was a very hard time,” Drim says. “People were afraid, crying.”

“George and I worked around the clock,” Phyllis says. She emailed furiously on her computer while George phoned congressmen and senators — anyone he thought might assist them.

“We were disappointed by the politicians who wouldn’t help,” Phyllis concludes.

But they were able to get many Montagnard families out of the camp.

“NGOs help the Montagnards find apartments and houses, but after six months, the funding runs out,” Phyllis says. “We’re the long-haul guys. Something happens down the road, we’re the ones who stand up for them.”

STMP helps provide coats, clothing, shoes, housewares — whatever a family might need.

“In fact,” Phyllis continues, “I’ve gone to yard sales and told people, whatever you have left afterward, if you’d like to donate it, we’ll take it, because we know people who can use it.”

George’s determined charity escapades are legendary.

When a worried sponsor called to say a group of new Montagnards refused to come to the doors of their apartments, George harvested chickens from his flock and hung them in sacks on the doorknobs. When he went the second day, the chickens were gone, so he hung sacks of vegetables Phyllis had prepared from their garden. When he returned the third day, “The Montagnards threw open their doors to see what he had brought!” Phyllis recalls, laughing.

“That’s how I started working with George,” Sam says. “I was helping with security and I saw this guy going to and from the apartments and thought maybe he was harassing the Montagnards.”

“So I called George out and, when he told me what he was doing, I decided to work with STMP,” Sam adds.

When I ask Craig Colao what brought him to the organization, he grins.

“Sweet potatoes,” he answers.

Craig relates that one day a friend asked him if he thought the Montagnards might like some sweet potatoes.

“What’s a Montagnard?” Craig responded.

His friend, who lives near the STMP property, told Craig about their activities. So Craig gave George a call.

That year he helped George haul two tons of sweet potatoes to distribute to the Montagnards in the area. This went on for a few years, until the farmer who had been donating the potatoes passed away.

“Then I just started fixing up things around here,” Craig says.

Gary Fields is a native of Asheboro who lives nearby. When he served in Special Forces from 1965 to 1968, he was stationed well south of the Central Highlands and had no interaction with the Montagnards.

About 15 years ago, he heard about what George was doing and paid a visit.

“I really enjoyed talking to other vets. So now I help keep the grass cut and clean up the woods,” Gary says. “That longhouse is really impressive, isn’t it?”

Yes, it is. Yung, Drim and I walk down to the longhouse for a closer look.

Yung and his wife have a third child, a daughter, who was born in the States, but everyone’s grown now — one in Asheboro, one in High Point and one in Greensboro.

“When we came, my sons were young,” Yung says. “They don’t remember.”

He nods his head.

“That’s why keeping this land is very important, to preserve our culture,” he adds.

Yung and Drim have put in countless hours together working on projects. The most recent one is still in progress — a monument to Montagnard freedom fighters and U.S. Special Forces. A long-term goal is the construction of a cultural center and museum.

Drim has three sons, all born in the States. Two are teenagers.

I ask him what his boys think about this place.

“Oh, they love it,” he says.

“But they have no idea about our customs and how we lived in Vietnam,” Drim adds.

Yung nods at what Drim is saying.

“We have to tell the children our story,” Yung says. “If they don’t know where they come from, they are lost.”

“This land saved me,” Drim whispers. “I will never forget.”

2026 A Place Like Home Feature

Category: Feature

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