Tag: Feature

Where She Sits

WHERE SHE SITS

Where She Sits

Fiction by Randall Kenan
Illustration by Gary Palmer

They were in the little dining room off the kitchen when he finally told her. He paced about, motioning with his hands.

She just sat there, staring down. Feeling nothing. Maybe. Or just plain tired.

“I can’t do it anymore, Sandra,” he said.

Sandra said nothing. Slowly, she moved her hand over the oilcloth, steadying herself.

“I don’t care what your family says about me,” he said. “I don’t care. I can’t . . . I’m not . . . I’ve got to . . .”

She might have asked Dean about the children. But the idea that he would come up with some sleazy nonsense only made her feel a wave of nausea. Sandra put her head down.

Dean stopped behind her. She could feel the tension in the air; without seeing him, she knew he was clenching and unclenching and clenching his fists. He did that when he was angry. “Did you hear me? I’m leaving.”

Sandra raised her head. “Then go.”

He stood there for the amount of time it takes a frying egg to turn white and walked from the room.

Sandra reached out and caressed the table, and remembered. Not so much remembered as allowed a flood of images, past scents, past sights, to overtake her, fill the void she was now harboring. Each image evoked something like a feeling. So much took place in this room, upon this very surface. Not merely the food served, or the homework fretted over, or the cards played, or the beer spilled, or the puzzles arranged. Moments occurred right here. And now, in this instance of illusions shattered, of dreams wrecked and a heart frozen, these moments seemed to simmer before her, behind her eyes, and she could only hold on to them, to find some strength.

She had inherited this very table from her great-grandmother. Made of pine, by whom she did not know, it had been oiled, dented, dusted, polished, chipped, varnished, battered, peed upon, burned, broken, mended, hammered, nailed, or some such for decades. If it could feel, she knew she’d feel the way it felt now . . .

“Sandra? Damn it! . . . Where is my . . .”

The first true memory of her grandmother had been watching her across this expanse, on the other end, smiling and slicing with pride a piping hot blueberry pie. No, child, wait for it to cool. And so many mornings, days, nights, her mother at that same end: What you doing out so late? Sandra! An A in math! Now that’s good. Girl, don’t you ever raise your voice at me. I’ll knock the taste out your mouth! You heard about Uncle William, didn’t you? . . .

“Sandra, can’t find my . . .”

As if he actually expected her to come in there and help him to pack, to leave; as if any of this fault rested on her shoulders; as if she was expected to go along to get along; as if she would be unreasonable to go into the kitchen, get a butcher’s knife, and chop him into seventeen billion little pieces.

She ran her hand out against it again, against its smooth flatness, as if to absorb some of its stolid solidity.

Here, she served him his first taste of her cooking: catfish, greens, mashed potatoes, corn bread; here, she told her mother she was to wed the man who made her legs feel like overcooked spaghetti and her heart feel like butter. Here, where she tended him, listened to his tales of boring sales meetings and petty office feuds, and where he entertained his buddies (when not in front of the TV); here, where she fed and consoled and interrogated first one, then two daughters; here, where she slowly watched the shoals of her marriage erode, grain by grain.

Oh, if it could talk . . .

“Sandra.” He stood in the door. She didn’t want to look up at him. She had nothing to say.

“Good-bye.”

She did not look up, as he turned, wordless, and walked down the hall. As the door clicked behind him, she held fast. He may go, but some things would remain. A part, a piece, a fixture, a witness. Even now. OH

The Playhouse

THE PLAYHOUSE

The Playhouse

Fiction by Max Steele
Illustration by Mariano Santillan

The professor was standing now before the doors of the American Embassy. He was early for an appointment with an old frat brother, a legal attaché who would help him procure a fast Mexican divorce. There was no urgency really in getting a divorce. It was simply that he could not concentrate on a permanent separation. When he tried he would end up in a hot soapy shower thinking about putting on freshly starched cotton clothes. Someone should have warned him in Raleigh not to drink on the plane. Here he was in Mexico City, a mile high, still a bit dazed.

Three blond children, not more than five or six years old, obviously embassy kids, a little girl and two little boys, were playing house in and around a sort of blueprint design of squares and rectangles drawn with green chalk on the sidewalk. A solid block of taxicabs, more than the professor had ever seen, was passing on the Paseo de la Reforma.

Something about the broad boulevards and the taxi horns reminded him strongly of Paris, where twenty years ago he had spent his one sabbatical. The next year he had met his wife, who often reminded him that he had never taken her to Paris as he had promised. Or done any fun things. There was never enough money on his salary, she accused him, to do any fun things. In the late autumn air the feeling of déjà vu was so strong that he felt it was a dream, or a forgotten passage from a novel he was living through.

The two boys were now standing near him whispering, and the little girl was in the chalk-line house, busily sweeping, putting things on shelves, getting pots out of a stove only she could see, and washing dishes in the silent sink.

At a signal he did not notice, the small boys, giggling and full of themselves, marched slowly to the front of the house and knocked on the door. “Knock. Knock.”

The little girl seemed genuinely surprised. She came through the house, untying her apron and opened the door, drying her hands on the apron.

“Oh, there you are!” She was quite annoyed. “Late again, as usual. And furthermore you have brought a perfect stranger home to dinner.” Oh, she was vexed. “Without even asking. Without even calling!”

“Yes, my dear,” the little husband said proudly, full of his secret. “I would like for you to meet the man who owns the merry-go-round.”

As the boys entered the house, the professor glanced at his watch. He was still five minutes early. Enough time to walk to the far corner.

As he strolled up the dark gusty boulevard, he could still hear the high laughter of the children, and at the sound of their thin, excited voices his heart almost broke. After all, how were they to know (for they were still children), how could he have known she would run off with the man who owned the merry-go-round?

2024 Feature The Playhouse

Poem August 2024

POEM AUGUST 2024

Steadfast

A lone tree fell in my woods

But it didn’t hit the ground

Or make that debated sound

It fell into the steadfast embrace

of another tree

With its outstretched branches free

They lean into each other

The broken and the strong

The living and the gone

It’s only with a passing breeze

And a creaking, crying bough

That they make sure we hear them now

— Kayla Stuhr

Kayla Stuhr is a Scottish visual artist, writer, and award-winning filmmaker.

2024 Feature Poem

Memento Mori

The affirming life of Leslie Deaton

By Cynthia Adams

Photographs by Amy Freeman

“The ache for home lives in all of us,” wrote poet Maya Angelou. “The safe place where we can go as we are . . .”

For Leslie Deaton, sanctuary is a Dutch Colonial in the historic Fisher Park district. “My story is one of breath-stealing tragedy, but also love in its wildest form, of soul-crushing pain and new mercies every morning,” she says. On leave as a Northern Guilford High School counselor, she’s fighting cancer while drawing comfort from her beautifully realized retreat.

The home, a slate-gray charmer, tells a visual version of Deaton’s story. This is a place of meaning, its well-appointed rooms say. Of warmth. Of joy.

As she found it only a few years ago, it was move-in ready, which was a particular boon, after a sensitive and full restoration by Dunleath residents Camilla Cornelius and Stephen Ruzicka.

“The house was built in 1922; it looked great,” she praises. Cornelius, who formerly housed a counseling practice there, presented Deaton with four pages of itemized renovations, including specialty faucets.

It was a turnkey home with curb appeal, given the on-trend gray exterior with crisp white trim. “So perfect for me,” Deaton adds, having bought the property in August 2020, “in the heart of COVID.”

She made the move well before she became ill, and a year before she lost her only child, William Walton Finch, at age 23.

“Losing my son . . . ” she falters, explaining. “He took a Xanax that was pressed with Fentanyl on July 28, 2021. I believe that is why I have cancer. I just could not endure it.” She pauses. “The love of my life. My only child.”

Her son graduated a semester early from N.C. State University with magna cum laude honors, she adds. Nothing fit.

She sighs raggedly. Tears fall.

Deaton understands those tears are therapeutic and necessary. Ironically, she has seldom been able to enjoy much leisure time at home prior to her illness, given a busy professional life.

Fueled by her longtime work with young adults, she has continued to speak to students and anyone who will listen about the lethal threat street drugs pose to young people, even after a shocking diagnosis last year.

She believes “the trauma of losing Will opened me up to invasion. Losing a child is a different type of loss.” Losing an older child is no less challenging, she says. “It’s different.” Two people in her life who lost children subsequently “ended up with breast cancer.”

In February 2023, she chose to share her son’s story with 700 students, parents and educators at Northern Guilford. She was joined that night by Amy Neville, a California parent who lost a 14-year-old son.

“Tragedy would hurl me without warning into a spotlight I never in a million years asked for but felt required to assume in order to tell the most soul-crushing story of my lifetime.”

Publicly, she drew back the curtain on pain following the loss “of my sun, my moon and all my stars — my beautiful son and my only child.” The title of her presentation? One Pill Can Kill.

In a televised interview with WFMY-TV, Deaton shared the nature of her personal trauma. “I got the absolute worst phone call of the human experience. I was informed that I lost my child to a horrific poison, Fentanyl,” she explained

She met Jane Gibson at Authoracare while grieving.

“I was touched by the love and the pride she shared with me about her son,” says Gibson, a recently-retired staff member. “And despite her great sorrow, she was not crawling away into a hole.” Even though it was a busy time in the academic year for her and her students, it was clear to her that “she would find healing by providing counseling support for these teens. What an amazing, loving woman!”

As long ago as 2022, Deaton began experiencing persistent stomach pain. Late that year, nagging back pain worsened.

“I was trying so hard to resist painkillers,” she recalls. “To honor what I’d been so vocal about.” Instead, she bought a new mattress to help her back, still suspecting she also had a stomach ulcer.

“Then we got new office chairs. Each member of our counseling department had back complaints . . . But guess what? I still had agonizing pain.”

She turned to Ibuprofen, Tums and a heating pad in order to make it through the work day. “One morning in May [2023], our well-intentioned counseling secretary stood at my desk and said, ‘I’m not going to move until you call the doctor.’”

Deaton eventually capitulated, seeking help. When a radiology interventionist proposed a nerve block to alleviate back pain, she tried it.

It helped briefly. Then her pain roared back.

During follow-up, her blood work was normal. But an endoscopy and a CT scan detected a large mass in her pancreas.

Deaton was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer on May 31, 2023. “I was told to get my affairs in order while I still had cognition.” When she learned her diagnosis, she was at home alone. It was a phone call “that cruelly propelled me off my axis once more.”

“Yes, I know I have a terminal diagnosis, but I don’t know what that means,” she says calmly, gazing out a kitchen window. “I could be in a car wreck today,” she says unemotionally. Outside, colorful plants await planting in a garden she plans to call “Will’s Garden.”

She makes plans and continues home projects.

“I’ve not asked my life expectancy from my doctors, and the reason I haven’t is, I feel it’s a guess, at best. I’m focused on today. Today is a gift,” she muses. Shortly after her diagnosis when she realized she wouldn’t be going back to work in the fall, she recalls deliberating over “this silly little rug from Ballard Design. And my friend, Jane Harrill, was here. And she said, ‘You’re going to be here a lot. If that rug gives you happiness, get it.’”

Harrill is Will’s former kindergarten teacher, explains Deaton, as well as an artist. She helps Deaton following treatments.

Deaton’s close, longtime friend, Todd Nabors, who met her at First Presbyterian church, agrees with Harrill.

“We’re the same age,” he says. “We’ve been friends forever.” They see each other nearly every Sunday. Deaton admires his aesthetic and relied upon his point of view when it came to her home.

Nabors, who works for furniture company Thayer Coggin and also consults on design, offered similar advice. “Beauty matters,” he told her.

And so, Deaton ordered the sisal rug.

Deaton has always found “feathering her nest” therapeutic. Years ago, she frequented Summer House, a home decor shop. There she met Kaylee Phillips.

Phillips, who now works in antiques and collectibles at Carriage House, says, “She collects beautiful things. And along the way, she collects beautiful friendships.”

“Beauty does matter to me. And surrounding myself with joy and cheer is a medicine of sorts. It’s a therapy. It’s treatment,” says Deaton. There’s sorrow here, too, of course: the elephant in the room, as the expression goes. Yet there’s an aura of peace, too, and light. It streams through the house’s many windows.

At home, the gentle colors of a spa surround her.

Along those lines, she has selected a fabric with which she wants to reupholster an upstairs den chair. The room is softly feminine, accented with the pastel art she collects. Inside sit her desk, a vintage French chair found at Carriage House, along with a television, chaise lounge and cushy seating. After treatments — a more aggressive regimen of chemo and radiation began in April — she often rests here.

She cocoons here in the beautiful room, sometimes tossing a toy to her dog, Charley, whom she shares with her dad, and Virginia, her cat.

She resists staying in bed when under the weather, and refuses to recover in pajamas but prefers regular clothes. To be as normal as possible. “When I go to treatment, they say, ‘We love seeing what you come in wearing.’” Deaton takes pride in this, saying it is a form of self-care.

Even while wearing yoga pants, she stacks delicate beaded bracelets along her arm — many are gifts from devoted friends.

She refuses to give in or stop making an effort.

This applies equally to her personal environment.

She has just chosen a new fabric by Elliston House for a favorite bedroom chair. “The company is owned by [Greensboro residents] Morgan Hood and Ally Holderness. And I just admire them for taking that leap of faith,” she says of their venture into business.

“At times I’m tethered to that chair.”

She chose Elliston House for Roman shade fabrics in the same space and the company’s wallpaper to line a breakfront she uses for storage. She’s deliberating another Elliston House fabric for an often-recovered armchair.

She, perhaps, values art and personal mementos above all else. Art is present in every room, as are personal touches. Many of the works she’s acquired have been created by local and regional artists.

Winston-Salem artist Carolyn Blaylock is a favorite. She collects North Carolina artists Bee Sieburg, Libby Smart, Sharon Schwenk, Sue Scoggins, Helen Farson, Amy Heywood, Yvonne Kimbrough, Crystal Eadie Miller and Murray Parker. She describes their styles as “warm and inviting.” She treasures pieces by artist (and fellow educator) friend Harrill.

Virginia artist Martha Dick and Georgia artist Lisa Moore are also part of her collection.

Favorite places and influences?

Deaton admires the Carolina Inn, in the “most classic of ways.” (She’s a UNC-Chapel Hill grad.) She loves “going room to room and seeing the differences.”

Home magazines are a constant source of inspiration. She again mentions former home decor shop Summer House. “It had a great influence. I loved it.” She uses painted pieces acquired there, including chests and breakfronts.

Once, a man delivered something to her prior home and exclaimed, “You’ve shopped at Summer House!”

“Everybody who’s ever encountered her loves her,” says Phillips, musing about the friendship that originated in that store. “We’ve all become friends with her. It was deepened due to the connection with our children,” she adds.

Often, too, Deaton finds Randy McManus’ floral shop “very therapeutic for me.”

She picks up a small plate displayed in her den, found in a Pawley’s Island shop in 2019.

“It simply says, ‘Tell stories.’ It’s funny because I didn’t buy it initially, but it popped into my mind several times before our departure, so I scooped it up on our way out of town, never dreaming of its significance, completely oblivious that it would ultimately become my life’s theme song.”

Deaton still considers her home a creative outlet and she now has time to contemplate every detail. She considers a colorful pink Elliston House lampshade. (Pink is a favorite color. There is even a pink Keurig coffeemaker on the kitchen counter and a pink leopard print sisal on the kitchen floor).

She just replaced the upstairs bath’s colorful mirror with a high gloss white-framed one. Satisfied, she says it calms the effect of a lively wallpaper.

This is part of “living my life,” she explains. Design, color and beauty bring her great joy.

When Deaton walks into her son’s former bedroom, her voice is softer. “His special, special things,” she says quietly. “I just had to totally redo it . . . ”

She pauses, as if she is seeing the room as it was before it became a guest room, adding a white Matelassé coverlet, crisp linens and French blue accents. One wall displays diplomas, pictures and mementos from her son.

Everything in here is something about Will, she says.

After his dad left when he was young, Will and his mom had years together. “We had such a unique and special relationship. I weep. And I will never stop weeping. I tell people, I do not cry over my cancer, but I cry over Will.”

She reads aloud framed stickies he wrote to her, struggling with her emotions.

“I have beautiful portraits of him,” she says of her son. “I am so thankful.”

Friends who know of Deaton’s loss and health issues have donated wallpaper, fabrics, bedding, a specially monogrammed neckroll with Will’s initials from Matouk bedding — even a special commission by Triad artist Amy Heywood.

“She gave that [painting] to me. Came into the home, looked at all my art. And that’s what she created.” Fresh flowers appear at her doorstep. Letters with donations arrive from strangers.

“Never did I dream when I redid this room that so many different people would be using it to stay with me,” she continues, lingering in Will’s former room. She is pleased when they tell her they find peace here.

If memories of Will are the dominant focus of her home, the underlying theme is serenity.

The lighting fixture in her room was a gift from a friend. “It’s a very visual comfort,” she says. “It’s so beautiful at night.” This is a real place of sanctuary, she repeats.

She picks up and cuddles Virginia, the blue-eyed rescue cat. “She has a little dot on her nose,” Deaton says delightedly. She imagined her “walking up Virginia Street. to find me.”

Deaton rehabilitated her. She is epileptic, Deaton says, and takes phenobarbital; once, a well-meaning friend almost gave her Virginia’s medicine. She winces, but smiles, quipping, “Wonder what that would have been like?”

The downstairs rooms are tasteful yet casual with cream-colored walls, accented with French finds, collections and artwork. The eating nook off the kitchen had original benches and table, which she decided to keep but stash in storage. It was original, and Deaton says she didn’t want “to be disloyal to the Ruzicka’s renovation.” While she would “never get rid of it,” she stored it in the basement so she could add a table that better worked for her 6’3”-tall son when he lived with her.

Each room in her home sparks a return to the subject of her son.

Will chose to enter treatment at Fellowship Hall, she says quietly, standing in the breakfast nook where they ate together when he was staying here.

He had completed treatment for addiction. Will had just qualified for Navy Seal training, “when this all happened.” Deaton would never know if it was his first relapse either. At the time, her son was living in Charlotte and doing incredibly well, according to his roommate. He had, for months, endured miles of running and swimming. “He doesn’t fit the mold,” she stresses.

Nonetheless, Deaton extols the virtue of a recovery program. “But when you are 22, and everything about socializing is a drinking event . . .”

Alcohol, she explains, lowers our inhibitions. “And opioids are the worst. Instantly addictive. I’m not minimizing alcohol,” she stresses, “but it’s a different beast.”

“It’s a tragic, tragic story,” she says. “An incredible, stinging hurt and [emotional] pain followed him,” she says. “But Will was definitely trying to find a way to deal with that pain. And he went at it the wrong way.”

“But he was always outstanding, and he will always be my greatest accomplishment,” she says.

Coping with extreme pain, Deaton has had to learn how to handle her own fears regarding painkillers. She credits the Palliative Care Program at Cone for guidance.

“Dr. Beth Golding took me under her wing and has gotten control of my pain,” says Deaton. Controlling pain enables her to walk again, go to the grocery store, to do chores. “Transformative,” she adds.

She recalls Dr. Golding saying “we don’t see thriving in pancreatic patients. But you are doing life.”

With Deaton’s pain lessened, she occasionally found diversion working a few hours at Watkins Sydnor, a home store. Earlier last year, she even managed 5-mile walks from Fisher Park to Irving Park, feeling completely energized.

“For me, time with my friends is what matters. It’s not about stuff. Funny, because this article is about stuff, in a way. But what this disease has taught me is that time together is all that matters.” OH

2024 Feature

Dog Is Love

Sedgefield Presbyterian Church laps up its new congregational canine

By Maria Johnson
Photographs by Mark Wagoner

It’s been several weeks since 79-year-old Sue Lucado could make it to church.

She had a cold.

She had guests.

She had COVID.

It’s been one thing after another, but she’s here, at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Presbyterian Church, this Sunday morning. She steps into the vestibule and receives an unusually robust welcome.

She is sniffed

She is licked.

Her shoelaces are tasted.

In an instant, Lucado’s expression changes from somber to smiling.

She leans over and sticks a hand into the mass of apricot curls dancing around her feet.

Two gleaming brown eyes look up.

Two floppy ears emerge.

A finger-length tail covered with wispy tendrils thumps the carpet.

The furry swirl slows enough to reveal Chloe Grace, the church’s 3-month-old, 8-pounds-and-gaining, congregational dog.

Genetically speaking, Chloe Grace is a cavapoo, meaning she’s part poodle, part King Charles Cavalier spaniel.

Spiritually speaking, she’s heaven-sent.

“She’s the most beautiful thing,” Lucado gushes. “Bless her heart!”

The good news about Chloe Grace reached Lucado a couple of weeks ago, when she cut the pup’s picture out of a church newsletter, stuck the picture on her refrigerator, and made an announcement to her own beloved dog, Katie, a Yorkshire terrier.

“I said, ‘Katie, we have a little friend at church,’” she says.

Now that Lucado has met Chloe Grace, she is smitten.

She takes a program from human greeter Paul Durant, who owns the dog with his wife, the church’s pastor, Rev. Kim Priddy.

“You know me and dogs,” Lucado tells him. “I like them better than people.”“Don’t tell anyone, but me, too,” Durant confides playfully.

Lucado nods, still smiling, and finds a pew.

Priddy, the shepherd of this flock, swiped the idea of a pastoral pup from a friend, Rev. Michelle Funk in Pennsylvania.

Funk, who got a church dog last year, had toyed with the idea of a congregational canine for years. Using a therapy dog for church work made sense to her, but when she pastored a church in Burlington, N.C., a few years ago, she had two beagles.

“Neither of them was church therapy dog material,” Funk says in a phone interview.

“You know beagles. They follow their noses. They’re very loving, but they have a mind of their own.”

Then, in 2022, she was called to her current church, Heidelberg Union Church in Slatington, Pa.

The time and place seemed right.

One member trained seeing-eye dogs and often brought the trainees to church. A past member had attended with his personal service dog, who sometimes sat in on messages for the children.

“Dogs in church was not a new concept in this congregation,” Funk says.

She resurrected her hunt for a four-legged staffer. Her research turned up a handful of pastoral pooches nationwide. The cavapoo breed, known for being warm, intelligent and hypoallergenic, was a popular choice.

Funk visited a reputable cavapoo breeder and brought home a 4-month-old pup that her family — fans of the Harry Potter franchise — named Muggles.

At a pastoral retreat last year, Funk told Priddy about taking Muggles, in his first week on the job, to see a church member who was living at home under hospice care.

Funk placed Muggles in the woman’s lap. As the woman stroked Muggles’ soft coat, she opened her heart. Words poured out.

Muggles knew what to do. He relaxed, stayed put and let the woman talk.

She was scared of dying, she said. She had things she wanted to do in life. As faithful as she was, she wondered if God would be present at her passing.

Funk reminded her of Jesus’ words on the cross: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

She reassured her that fear and doubt were normal.

She prayed with the woman.

It was clear to Funk that Muggles had helped the woman tap a vein of emotion that she, the pastor, might not have been able to reach alone.

The story lit a fire in Priddy, who’d grown up with dogs and owned dogs when her three children were young.

“I knew that dogs made people happy, but when Michelle talked about her visit, I realized the potential of reaching church members in a new way,” she says.

She ran the idea past her husband, Durant.

“I said, “As long as it’s for a purpose . . . ’” he recalls.

Historically a “big dog person,” he agreed to getting a smaller, more portable cavapoo — with a mature weight of 15 to 20 pounds — for the church gig.

Priddy pitched the plan to her session, the congregation’s ruling body. She told the story of Muggles.

If she got a similar dog, she said, she would bring the dog to work, take it to visit sick and homebound members, and have it certified as a therapy dog as soon as possible.

The idea was consistent with other forward-leaning projects that Priddy has backed to improve the church’s outreach, relevance and membership — an Earth-care committee; a yoga class that meets during the Sunday school hour; guest speakers on the war in Gaza.

Like many mainline churches, the Sedgefield congregation has shrunk over the last several decades. Today, riding an uptick following the doldrums of COVID, there are about 85 active members. About half are seniors. Many live alone.

A dog, Priddy hoped, would comfort those who missed touching and holding another living being.

She also aimed to delight children in the church’s preschool program and signal to potential members that the congregation was open to new ideas.

The session agreed unanimously.

On a Friday in March, Priddy and her husband brought their 8-week-old bundle of joy home from a breeder in Charlotte.

That Sunday, they toted the puppy to church.

Priddy invited church members to vote on a name for the dog by dropping dollars into red Solo cups bearing the names suggested by children of the church.

After the service, $125 in votes were tallied. The top two vote-getters were Chloe and Grace.

“Helllllllo, Miss Helen,” Priddy singsongs as she steps through the door of an apartment at the River Landing retirement community in Colfax. “I’ve brought all kinds of guests today.”

Across the room, church member Helen Boyer, 98, sits in a recliner with her feet up, watching daytime television.

“Where’s Amazing Grace?” She calls out in a bright voice. “I call her Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace is better for a church dog.”

Priddy leads the pup into the studio, detaches a leash and lifts the dog into the chair with Boyer, a stalwart church member who attended services regularly until she gave up driving about seven years ago. These days, she watches on YouTube or, if her daughter is with her, on Facebook Live.

“Get up here, Amazing,” says Boyer, whose manicured fingers slide into the pastoral pup’s curly coat and begin massaging. “How are you, missy? It’s been a while.”

Soon, Boyer is talking about how she misses the dogs she used to own — what good company they were and how they kept her on her toes. One dog, Suzy, a Doberman, lived with her when she moved to a cottage in the retirement community 20 years ago.

Suzy died about 10 years ago, but Boyer still feels close to her.

Literally.

“She’s over there, in that drawer,” Boyer says, pointing to a bureau that holds her beloved dog’s ashes. “She’s going to be inurned with me.”

Chloe Grace is not impressed. She nibbles Boyer’s unguarded toes.

“No biting!” Priddy says, removing her charge.

Priddy pulls out a bag of treats and hands some to Boyer. For a tasty price, they finish their visit peacefully.

In closing, Priddy scoots closer to the recliner and offers Boyer a hand in prayer. She thanks the Lord for this time together, for Boyer’s devotion to the church and for the opportunity to talk about their dogs.

Ask almost any question about Chloe Grace, and the answer is probably “yes.”

Has Chloe Grace had any accidents at church?

Yes, but none in the sanctuary. As of this writing.

Did Chloe Grace participate in this year’s Easter egg hunt?

Yes. She quickly found a candy-filled egg, at which point Priddy and Durant pulled her from the hunt.

Has Chloe Grace been invited to children’s birthday parties?

Several. One girl requested the gift of being chased around her party by the puppy.

Do adults drop by the church just to see Chloe Grace?

Yes. The clerk of session, Karen Johnson, who is retired and lives near the church, sometimes texts Priddy to see if she has brought the pup to work. If the answer is yes, Johnson heads to the church.

Are people sometimes disappointed if Priddy shows up to a church meeting alone?

Yes. “I thought Chloe Grace would be here,” they say sadly.

Does Durant tease his wife that more people come to church to see Chloe Grace than to see her?

Yes. Priddy’s reply: “I don’t care, as long as they come.”

Does Chloe Grace attend Sunday services?

Yes. Usually, she hangs out in the back of the sanctuary with her usher-dad, Durant, and her clerk-of-session-pet-sitter Johnson.

Does Chloe Grace help take up the offering?

Yes. She has a flair for opening hearts and wallets. Someone suggested training her to stare at people until they drop money in the offering plate — and to bark if they don’t give enough.

Does Chloe Grace occasionally run under the pews, causing a visible ripple of heads turning to catch the flash of fur under their feet?

Yes. Sometimes, they step on Chloe Grace accidentally. She seems to forgive those who trespass against, and on, her.

Does Chloe Grace have a time-out spot for when she is too excited?

Yes. See the playpen in the church library.

Does Chloe Grace have an Instagram account?

Yes, @chloe_the_spc_pup. Follow her colleague, Muggles in Pennsylvania, @pupminhuc.

Are there members of the church who aren’t crazy about dogs in general, or Chloe Grace in particular?

Yes, probably. But they haven’t whined to the leadership.

Do people seem to be smiling more around Sedgefield Presbyterian these days?

Definitely. Johnson credits Chloe Grace with lifting spirits.

“She’s a ray of sunshine for people. When she greets you, how can you not have a better day?” she muses. “She doesn’t care if you’re walking with a cane or if you’re in a wheelchair, if you’re 2 feet tall or 5 feet tall, if you’re Black or white, gay or lesbian. She doesn’t care. She’s there to give you love, like God is.” OH

2024 Feature

Dog Days on the Greenways

2024 Feature

Out of the Woods

Three Team U.S.A. Olympians redefine themselves in the Gate City

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Mark Wagoner

“Woods are not like other spaces . . . They make you feel small and confused and vulnerable, like a small child
lost in a crowd of strange legs . . . They are a vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.”
— Bill Bryson, from A Walk in the Woods

This month, the City of Light will be aglow with 10,500 athletes from all over the world competing in the 2024 Summer Olympics, plus an estimated 15 million visitors.
To say the world will be watching is an understatement. But who are these athletes — heroes for a glorified moment in time — after the paddles have been stowed, the Nikes unlaced and the skates hung up for the last time? We caught up with three local Team U.S.A. Olympians, including two gold medalists, to answer that question.

Joey Cheek, Gold Medal Olympic Speed Skater

Tamara Cheek, Olympic Canoeist

Sprawled out on his charcoal gray sofa, 2006 gold-medal Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek rests one hand on his chestnut-brown boxer, Cashew, who lets out a contented sigh. Both man and dog are totally at ease in this snapshot of daily life. But, Joey, now 45, admits that was not always the case for him.

“The years after the Olympics are — ,” he begins and then pauses. Tamara Cheek, also 45 and an Olympian herself, jumps in.

“Oh, are we at the walk in the woods?” After checking on Jack, the couple’s 4-year-old son, who’s happily scooting his Paw Patrol vehicles across the floor of the nearby playroom, she explains.

A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson’s New York Times-bestselling book about his ups and downs — both literately and figuratively — along the Appalachian trail, is a metaphor for how the Cheeks and some of their fellow Olympians describe life after the games. One reviewer called Bryson’s trek “A journey of discovery and renewal.” And that’s certainly been true for both Tamara and Joey.

For Joey, the path to the Olympics began when he was a roller-blading middle-schooler in Greensboro. His parents made sacrifices to support his fledgling athletic career. He recalls a home with sparse furniture and beat-up cars. “I had everything I needed, which was also all I ever wanted.” At 16, he left home to train in Calgary and made the leap from wheels to blades.

In 2002, 22-year-old Joey made it to the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, where he won the bronze medal in the 1,000-meter speed-skating event. Four years later he returned to the Olympic rink, this time in Turin, Italy.

As he headed back, he had an inkling that this would be his last time skating on Olympic ice. Plus, he wondered, “What am I going to get from four more years of this that I haven’t already gotten?” Turns out, that thing was a gold medal — as well as a silver.

Without taking a pause, he hung the skates and hit the ground running, enrolling in Princeton and cofounding Team Darfur to raise awareness about the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Sudan. His humanitarian activism caught the eye of Hollywood star George Clooney, who invited Joey to accompany him to China via private jet to lobby the government there. In 2007, Clooney reached back out to invite him to be in a film he was shooting in South Carolina. “And to give you an idea of the hubris I was feeling at the time,” says Joey, shaking his head, “I said, ‘I’ve got a bunch of big parties I am going to. I can’t make it.’”

He was seemingly skating through life. “Nothing is indicating that this system isn’t flawless,” says Joey, “that you have not cracked it.”

The path was clear: “gold medal, ivy league, billionaire.” Upon graduation, he was off to New York City to launch a sports-streaming start-up.

But, for the first time in his life, “some of the wheels had started falling off,” he says. “And that was crippling for me. Crippling.”

So how did he get out of the woods? “A huge part of it is her,” he says, looking at his wife.

“She had me do this exercise,” he says. Tamara helped him analyze his life up to that point so that he could see the arc of his career — which, he notes, was worse than ever at that moment.

But, soon after, “the arc turned.” He adds, “And it’s only gotten better.”

Did Tamara know from her own experience? Did she have a moment of “who I am without this?” she asks, then answers. “Yeah.”

But, Tamara admits, her moment of truth was not nearly as challenging as Joey’s. Hers came when a a friend who was a philosophy major at the University of California in San Diego (where she enrolled after the Olympics) pointed out to her that when you are young, you look to institutions to assign meaning to yourself. But once you leave academia — or the Olympics — and enter the real world, you’re on your own, and meaning and purpose must be generated internally.

“You might feel a little bit lost,” she admits and, as a mom of a superhero-loving preschooler, likens it to being Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. But, in the end, what was crippling for Joey was liberating for her.

Tamara is a dark-haired beauty who bears resemblance to — and has been mistaken for — supermodel Linda Evangelista. In fact, she opens to a page in her scrapbook, a gift a best friend created for a birthday, to a torn-out page from a 2000 Esquire magazine story, titled “The Girls of Summer.” Among 10 female Summer Olympians headed to Sydney, Australia, there’s an image of then 21-year-old Tamara, strong and tanned, and wearing a white tankini as she stands in a kayak and holds a paddle in her right hand. “I definitely shunned any further movement in that direction,” she says of her short-lived modeling gig.

Where Joey says that part of the reason you strive for the Olympics is to “chisel your name on a tablet somewhere,” Tamara’s approach as a flat-water canoeist was quite different. “I didn’t really have a gold medal as a goal ever.” She adds, “I just wanted to win races.”

Until she picked up paddles, competition was a foreign concept to Tamara. She describes the progressive Waldorf school she attended as the kind of place where “no blade of grass should be taller than the next.” But, at the age of 16, Tamara recalls seeing kayakers on a lake in Seattle, where she grew up. Instantly drawn to the beauty of the sport, she quickly discovered she took to it like a fish to water.

In another photo album, she opens to an old black-and-white photo of an athletic young woman, her grandmother, who died at the age of 36. She wonders aloud if that’s where her own inherent talent comes from. “I like to think that in some way I was carrying on her spirit when I was in Sydney.”

But, according to Joey, Tamara’s superpower is her ability to pick up anything she sets her mind to and excel. He laughs and adds how it sometimes drives him nuts “because there seems to be no method and all I am is process.”

While Tamara won the U.S. Olympic trials in the K-2 500-meter sprint as well as the 1999 World Cup silver medal in the K-2 1,000-meter kayak sprint, she did not land on the podium in Sydney and decided to leave her career as a canoeist after just six years. She admits that she was likely only halfway up the arc, but she was ready to move on. “I wanted to go to school and have a life after the Olympics.”

During college, Tamara continued to work closely with Team U.S.A. Canoe/Kayak, which was temporarily without a coach. Testing the waters of her own coaching skills, she filled in, discovering it was not the job for her.

Upon graduation, she was offered a role as a marketing director in Charlotte, working for the National Governing Body for Olympic Canoe/Kayak. While in that position, she also founded her own company — a platform-that connects creative service providers with real estate professionals — directed an award winning documentary and continued to serve the Olympic movement in professional and volunteer capacities. But her favorite career moment? Being on the team that won the rights to bring the 2028 Summer Games back to the states.

It was in Charlotte, says Tamara, “where our story begins.”

Her boss, late businessman David Yarborough, who became a mentor to her, asked her to attend a speech that Joey was giving. “For some reason, I didn’t go,” she adds.

But the “subconscious seed,” as Joey calls it, was planted.

Their stars were in orbit, says Tamara.

“Circling and never knowing each other,” adds Joey.

“You can’t fight fate,” he says.

Their stars would finally collide when both were in their upper 30s and involved with the Olympic Alumni Association, now the U.S. Olympians and Paralympians Association.

On January 1, 2019, Tamara, dressed in a white puffy jacket, and Joey, in the matching black, said “I do” atop snowy Lookout Mountain in Colorado, where they lived at the time. A year-and-a-half later, Jack was born amidst a global pandemic. Eventually, in 2021, with Joey working remotely for a venture firm he’d cofounded, the family piled into their Jeep with their dog and most of their belongings and headed for Greensboro, Joey’s hometown. The plan was to stay until they figured out their next move.

But, as he looked around a room full of family, Cashew happily playing with his brother’s dog, he says it dawned on him: “We are not leaving!”

The couple settled into a home where Joey kept an office, but his work was making him miserable and costing precious time with family. “I left with no plan. And I do not do that,” says Joey.

Encouraged by Tamara, Joey headed to a Downtown Greensboro event to learn about upcoming projects.

“You hadn’t been out of your office for three years,” she says to Joey.

While at the event, Joey met Thompson co-founder and president Clifford Thompson, who, Joey says, “is very active in wanting to see a startup community here.” Things began to click into place. In October 2023, he became the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president for entrepreneurship.

And while the role is still quite fresh, Joey has big dreams for his hometown. “I want to be able to take Jackie downtown and say, ‘Look what we did in this town.’”

As for Tamara, she’s currently doing consulting work with the N.C. Folk Fest and serving on the Miriam Brenner Children’s Museum gala committee. And her community here? “Maybe I like it so much because it feels a little bit like it was training for the Olympics, like everyone is on the same page, “ she says, “that we believe in this place and we mostly want the same things for it.”

Now that these two Olympic speedsters are no longer racing to win, they have time for family, friends, community involvement. A walk in the woods these days? It’s a Sunday family hike along one of Greensboro’s many trails. And while life with a preschooler offers its own set of challenges, Joey says, “I would trade the worst day hanging out with Jack over winning medals.” He pauses and takes it a step further. “I will trade one back if it would give me one more day with him.”

Middle: Johnson works with N.C. A&T student Shadajah Ballard

Right: Johnson chats with Olympic hopeful Daniel Roberts

Allen Johnson, Gold Medal Olympic Hurdler

At 53, Allen Johnson doesn’t look much different than he did when he crossed the 100-meter hurdle finish line at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, taking home gold for the United States. His head is clean shaven these days, but his 5’10” frame remains slender and athletic. Sitting behind his desk at N.C. A&T State University’s Truist Stadium, where he has worked as director of the track and field programs since June 2022, Johnson is at ease, comfortable in his navy-blue Nike A&T-branded polo shirt and proverbial coach’s hat.

Is this where he imagined he’d be? No way. As an Olympic athlete training with coaching legend Curtis Frye, Johnson says that was not the life he envisioned for himself. “Being a college coach in track and field was the absolute last thing on Earth I wanted to do. I mean last thing.” Driving it home, he adds, “Last, last, last!”

But when his body could no longer achieve previous heights, Johnson had to take his own walk in the woods. “A part of you dies and you have to mourn it.”

As a young man entering UNC-Chapel Hill in 1989, Johnson, a D.C. native, assumed he’d major in business. “It was the ’80s,” he says with a laugh. “I wanted to get a BMW, big house, have money, live life.” His dream? His own car dealership. “I was always into cars,” says Johnson, who now drives a Tesla.

But his athleticism opened doors for him and he left Chapel Hill during his senior year, not before setting several school records that still stand as well as winning four ACC titles. (He went back to finish his degree, which he earned in sociology, in 2012, when daughter Tristine was an undergrad. He even had a class with her.) Johnson’s pursuit paid off with a full-time track and field career that spanned 17 years, from 1993 until 2010.

During that time, Johnson, participated in three Olympics: 1996 in Atlanta, where he won the gold; 2000 in Sydney, Australia, where he fought a hamstring injury and just missed the podium, placing fourth; and 2004 in Athens, Greece, where he was captain of the U.S.A. Track and Field Team but did not place. For most of that time, he had endorsements from Nike (1994, 1996–2008) and Oakley (1995–2004) to support him. But, he says, “The last two years I was kind of on my own.”

“I was going to run until the wheels fell off, which meant I was going to stay too long,” he says, confessing he ran two years too long. “In a perfect world, I would just love to get up in the morning every day and go race.” But, he admits, his body could no longer physically handle the work.

In 2008, just two years before his running career crossed its finish line, Johnson recalls seeing Marion Jones on Oprah, discussing her use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Jones likened being an elite athlete to wearing a mask, playing a part. And when those running days are over? “The mask has to come off,” says Johnson.

“You don’t feel invincible, emotionally — or anything — because you become a regular person again.”

But, he adds, “you’re reborn.”

For Johnson, an opportunity to become something new was found in the last, last, last place he ever expected.

It began organically. People came to him, seeking his expertise and offering to pay. He volunteered as assistant under Coach Frye at the University of South Carolina. “I never got paid, but I looked forward to getting up and going out there the next day to work with the people I was working with.”

In the fall of 2011, he was offered a paid position as assistant coach at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was nervous. Not only was it something he hadn’t done professionally, but it was far from the Mid-Atlantic states he’d called home for most of his life.

“That was a leap,” he says. But without risk there’s no reward. During his first year there, he led the 4×400-meter relay team to the Mountain West titles. He stayed there for five years before returning to the East Coast as assistant coach for the N.C. State Wolfpack, where he worked for six years.

While not every athlete makes a great coach, Johnson seems to have cracked the code. “You know the whole cliché, meet them where they are,” he says.

That doesn’t mean just physically. Johnson connects with his athletes on an emotional level, too. He looks for triggers, good and bad, creating strategies to handle those that arise. He helps them stay away from the negative while embracing the positive. Plus, he makes himself available. “I have a policy: If you need to talk to me, call me any time.” With a coy smile, he adds, “But try to keep it between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.”

Now, in his first head coaching position at N.C. A&T, that policy’s expanded to include staff as well. “Be ready for anything” is his daily mantra. Emails and calls come from every which way, sun up to sun down and beyond. “One thing I tell people about being a college track and field coach is the job is never done. You just pick a stopping point each day.” And when he finally makes it home, he spends time with his wife, Olympic bronze-medal-winning track sprinter Torri Edwards-Johnson, and plays with their 2-and-a-half year old daughter.

While his days can be filled with chaos, he’s got a small network of friends who are also first-time head coaches, similar to having Olympic teammates. “We all have had aspirations of being a head coach and what we thought it was going to be like,” says Johnson. And is this it? No, he says, “You don’t know what it is until you actually do it.”

It’s challenging him in a new way. But he’s got sound advice when it comes to tough times: “It’s what you do on the bad days that is going to define your success.” He adds, “It’s not really that hard on a good day. It’s hard on the bad day when you don’t feel like doing it, but you dig down deep, mentally, physically, and you get it done.”

Are there moments he wishes he could be 25 again and line up with the athletes? Of course. “But I can’t do it anymore.”

Instead, he’s found joy in helping others. As for his student athletes, he wants to make sure their college experience is happy and meaningful, and that he pushes them to move the stopwatch needle.

Plus, Johnson has been working with Olympic hopeful Daniel Roberts, who, like Johnson, is a 110-meter hurdler. Roberts won the bronze medal in the 2023 World Championships and Johnson’s goal this year is to get him the gold at the Paris Olympics later this month. “I wish I could still run — can’t — but getting to coach him, coach Trayvon [Bromell] and the other athletes, I guess for me it’s kind of a natural progression to the next phase.”

Is it the same as competing? No, Johnson admits. “But I have no regrets. I love track and field.” And while it’s the last thing he thought he’d be doing, turns out the next best thing is helping someone else reach their highest potential. OH

*At the time this story was written, Roberts was training with Johnson for the Olympic Trials, which were held June 21–June 30. We will update you on his progress in our biweekly newsletter, found at oheygreensboro.com.

2024 Feature

Poem July 2024

Cicada Rondeau

They don’t so much sing as plead

In their droning sound stampede.

I hope they find the love they need —

Something more than meet-and-breed.

Can that even be with insects —

To have sensations beyond touch?

Do they know joy as well as sex?

They don’t so much.

— Paul Jones

Paul Jones is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of the collection Something Wonderful.

2024 Feature Poem

Peace and Purpose

A spirited little girl’s art offers solace — and hope

By Ross Howell Jr.

Photographs by Amy Freeman

The home that Austin and Shelby Tew built sits outside Stokesdale at the end of a long gravel drive surrounded by 10 acres of hardwoods. It’s unique and its story is bittersweet — even heart-breaking.

And I didn’t arrive at the house in the way you’d expect.

I began the journey at the MM Interior Design Group offices on State Street in Greensboro, where I was greeted by Mark Mitchell, business administration manager. Mark walks me into the design area. Marta Mitchell, founder, president and partner of the firm, is looking at fabric samples and stops to greet me.

Marta’s firm recently reached out to the magazine about the Tew house, a project she’s been working on for some three years. She’s a stylish woman with a wonderfully calm voice and an accent I don’t recognize.

When I ask her about it, Marta tells me her family was from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. She grew up in the outskirts of São Paulo.

“I still have an accent, but I’ve been in Greensboro for about 40 years,” Marta says, smiling. She moved here with her husband, Peter, who’s now the marketing manager of the firm.

“My husband came for graduate school and was later offered a job, so Greensboro became home,” she adds. “Our two sons were born here.” It was the younger of the two, Mark, who met me at the door.

Marta explains that she had been trained as an interior designer — “we still called it ‘interior decorator’ back when I was in school,” she adds — and started the business in 1989, working alone.

“Now, we work in teams of three designers on every project,” Marta says. Her most senior staff are design directors — there are three of them, including her. They manage the work of lead interior designers, who serve as the main client contacts and bear overall responsibility for individual projects. The lead interior designers work in tandem with assigned interior designers on individual projects day-to-day.

“There are 14 of us now,” Marta says. “There aren’t many interior design firms this size.”

Typically, her firm is hired by a client before construction even begins. Marta guides me over to the design pod where Angela Austin — one of the company’s lead interior designers — has the computer-assisted design model of a client’s waterfront house up on her computer screen.

She shows me the floor plan for an attached guest house.

“Right now, I’m working on some selections for cabinetry,” Angela says. With a keystroke here and mouse click there, she shows me a variety of cabinet styles in place, some stained, some painted, along with variations on ceramic tile and its placement — as well as a floor plan with chairs and sofas.

“All of this was done before the contractor even broke ground,” Marta says.

In addition to using 3D models, renderings and video walkthroughs, Marta’s design group takes visualization to the next level — producing virtual reality tours.

Marta guides me to a large conference room.

Awaiting us are Shannon Harvey, the lead interior designer for the Tew house, and Chloe Fields, interior designer for the project. Shannon is an experienced interior designer born in Mississippi, who lived for a time in Germany. Chloe is a recent UNCG graduate with a degree in interior architecture. Marta is the team’s design director.

I sit down in a swivel chair.

“Here, this goes over your head,” Shannon says, handing me the VR headset.

And boom.

There I am, inside the Tew house.

“You can look up and you can look down and you can turn around in your chair to see more,” Marta says. She explains how the VR program brings daylight in, so what I’m seeing is more realistic than the 3D computer models.

I look up at wooden rafters and industrial-sized heating and cooling ducts hanging from the ceiling. I look straight ahead toward an enormous kitchen island in a long great room. Beyond the island is a bank of windows and doors looking out into woods.

“You can turn around in your chair to see more,” Marta says.

Now I’m looking at the entry wall of the house. There’s a spiral metal staircase leading up to a loft.

“The Tew project was really interesting,” Marta says, as I continue looking around, “because the house was already built when Austin came to us.”

Since he had work experience in construction, Austin personally completed or oversaw the building of the house, from pouring concrete to framing.

“It was empty, just walls,” Marta adds. “Then Shannon started working on it.”

Guests were always the first consideration, Shannon tells me, not the comfort of the Tews themselves. They also stressed that they were on a limited budget, so Shannon provided images of her furniture recommendations to Shelby, who searched for similar, less expensive pieces, while Austin implemented Shannon’s painting or finishing ideas himself.

“He’s so handy,” Chloe says. “He’s built dressers, beds . . . that concrete countertop you see.”

And there was another essential consideration — their young daughters, Braylen and Cora.

Shannon tells me to swivel clockwise in the chair.

“There,” she says. “The big piece of art on the wall. That’s Cora’s.” It’s a whimsical, colorful painting of hearts set among strokes of pure, bright colors with a single word: LOVE.

As we continue my tour, Marta explains some of the design elements that Shannon introduced — painting sections of the enormous wall with contrasting colors to break up the space and placing big pieces of furniture strategically for the same purpose.

When I’m set to remove the VR headset, Shannon gives me a hand.

“The Tews started building this home when Cora’s cancer was in remission,” she says. “But the cancer came back.”

Now, fast-forward with me from virtual to real — the heart-breaking part of the story — as my car tires crunch along the gravel driveway in Stokesdale.

Austin Tew greets me at the door and invites me in. He’s accompanied by a romping, blue-and-white pit bull rescue named Dolly. She brings me a couple toys to inspect, decides I’m not as interesting as I first seemed and returns to her bed.

I stand there, looking around the great room. It’s big, feeling even larger than the space I saw in the VR headset. If it weren’t furnished, you could drive a semi-truck and trailer inside and park. The concrete floor is polished. The windows are metal-framed. The house exterior is clad with white aluminum siding.

Turns out, Austin is the owner of Key Automotive Group in Stokesdale, so it makes sense.

“You see, I’m pretty industrial,” he says, smiling. “So we really had to find a designer who could think outside the box.”

“Marta was the only one who got it,” Austin adds. And got it, Marta’s team did. The house feels like a home.

Shelby emerges from her office at the back of the house. She’s a CPA with her own practice. Since it’s tax season during my visit, she’s in need of a well-deserved break and joins us.

The first room we step into is Braylen’s bedroom. She’s the Tews’ older daughter. The couple herd me through the bedroom quickly, since it looks just as you’d expect from a 10-year-old in a hurry to get to basketball practice on time.

We pass by a Jack-and-Jill bathroom to another bedroom.

“This is Cora’s room,” Austin says quietly.

Feeling awkward, I turn my eyes to a corner, where a rainbow is painted on the wall.

“Cora had picked out a rainbow and I promised her she would have one,” Shelby says.

“Marta found a pretty design online,” Shelby continues. “We got in touch with a mural artist named Lacey Crime, who painted this for us.” The artist also painted a lovely frame of flowers around the mirror in Cora’s end of the Jack-and-Jill.

“She never saw the rainbow or the flowers,” Shelby says quietly. She directs my attention to the ceiling of Cora’s bedroom. It’s covered in clouds.

“Marta picked out that wallpaper,” she says.

Austin clears his throat and we continue our tour.

As we walk, they tell me their story.

The Tews were living in Madison, just over the Virginia state line. They had gone out for dinner and Cora had fallen at the restaurant, hurting her leg. The Tews felt a small lump and thought it was from the fall, but the toddler cried through the night.

Shelby decided the next morning to take Cora to see her pediatrician. Later, she called Austin from Brenner’s Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem and said an oncologist was going to run some tests. The results showed Cora had cancer.

Wanting a second opinion, Shelby dove into research and found that one of the leading treatment facilities in the country specializing in pediatric cancer was the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

There, on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, 2019, Cora was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a highly aggressive form of pediatric cancer. She was 2 years old.

Between February and June, the Tews made frequent trips to Cincinnati. In mid-June, the doctors scheduled surgery for Cora.

“So we packed our stuff and hauled it up there,” Austin says. It would be an extended stay.

Surgery was followed by 23 days of radiation and chemotherapy.

Cora’s lab tests looked good. Doctors removed her intravenous port. She was clear of cancer.

The family returned to North Carolina and broke ground for construction of a new home on the Stokesdale land they had purchased before Cora’s diagnosis.

Then, on Cora’s second, 3-month checkup back in Cincinnati, scans revealed her cancer had returned.

“We couldn’t believe this was happening,” Austin says.

Shelby tells me that, during the grueling, 12-hour days of treatment at the hospital, she and Austin noticed how much Cora enjoyed coloring or drawing pictures to take her mind off the beeping machines and busy nurses — how working on the art seemed to give her strength. And they found that big sister Braylen — just two years older than Cora — would use painting to let her emotions out.

Despite their situation, the Tews understood they were among the fortunate, because they were self-employed.

“You’d see some kid all alone in the hospital during the day because their parents couldn’t be there,” Austin says. “They had to work to keep their jobs.”

And, as happened with the Tews, families would find insurance companies denying payment for life-saving treatments.

“You see these situations, and it’s devastating,” Austin says. “You want to find a way to help.”

They decided they would use their individual skills to create a business — Faith and Healing Arts — that helps other families struggling financially with childhood cancer.

Building on their love for their own children’s art, they’ve found suppliers who reproduce their own and other children’s art in large sizes on high-quality art paper or canvas. Austin builds the frames and mounts the art.

Already, Faith and Healing Arts has retailers selling the work of children from some 25 families. The art can also be purchased on the Faith and Healing Arts website. All proceeds from sales go to participating families.

For two years, Cora received chemotherapy at Brenner’s Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, with 3-month scans at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

All the while, she played with her sister as her father poured concrete and framed the walls of her new house.

“But it was like she knew she wasn’t going to be around,” Austin says. “She never really staked a claim.”

Cora passed away in 2021. She was 5 years old.

We pause by a group of photographs on a wall so I can have a look.

“There’s my little mini-me,” Shelby whispers. “My little Cora Grace.”

They take me to the back corner of the house and I have a peek at Shelby’s office looking out on the woods. When she sees the client messages queued up in her inbox, she realizes she’d better get back to work. I thank her for her time and we say goodbye.

In the great room, Austin shows me a grouping of Cora and Braylen’s art. Then we go through a door into the beautiful private suite they’ve built and furnished, where families going through cancer treatment can stay when needed.

Austin leads me back to the kitchen area, where along the wall there’s a commercial-sized refrigerator, lots of cabinets and a hidden, walk-in pantry. A stove and sink are located in the expansive, concrete-slab kitchen island.

He pats the slab.

“There’s a ton of concrete here,” Austin says. “And a steel bar to hold it up.”

He tells me about the concrete safe room in the house, built strong enough to withstand a tornado, where Braylen and Cora used to play just after the concrete had been poured and the framing was going up.

Austin tells me about the radiant heat system in the concrete floors, proudly showing me the utility room he designed and built — each duct, fan and pipe gleamingly clean, easily accessible for maintenance.

“All the fan motors are in here,” he says. “You turn on a bathroom fan when you’re in the guest suite, you don’t hear a thing.”

It’s a great house, a one-of-a-kind house. It’s a house blessed with peace and purpose.

Recently Austin celebrated his 40th birthday.

“We had our daughter’s basketball team’s kids and parents here, we threw corn hole in the living room, we did it all,” he says, reflecting for a moment.

“You know, an empty house sucks,” Austin says. “What matters now is to live life.” OH

For more information on the Tews’ art program to help the families of children who have cancer, visit www.faithandhealingarts.com.

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.

2024 Feature

Wild and Wonderful

Pinehurst No. 2 prepares to test the best

By Lee Pace

Feature Photo: 2014 U.S. Open Photograph by Joann Dost

A December day in 1935. A man approaches the house at 120 Midland Road in Pinehurst, notices the Scottish-style stonework and arches of Dornoch Cottage, and rings the bell.

Donald Ross opens the door and greets A.W. Tillinghast.

What a meeting of the minds of the early days of golf course architecture.

Ross, 63, the son of a Scottish stonemason, apprentice in his 20s to legendary pro Old Tom Morris at St Andrews, an immigrant to the United States who set up shop in Pinehurst in 1900 and designed notable courses across the eastern United States — from Seminole Golf Club in Florida to Inverness Club in Ohio to Oak Hill Country Club in upstate New York. His tour de force, Pinehurst No. 2, sits just behind his house.

And Tillinghast, 59, the son of a wealthy rubber goods magnate in Philadelphia, who grew up playing cricket and fell under the spell of golf on a visit to St Andrews in 1896 where he established a mentor-mentee relationship with Morris. Tillinghast’s design acumen was on display across the land as well — from San Francisco Golf Club on the West Coast to Winged Foot Golf Club and Baltusrol Golf Club in the shadows of the New York City skyscrapers.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall, to hear these friends and sometime competitors talk about their shared experiences — their formative years at St Andrews, their design philosophies, the challenges of maintaining businesses and servicing clients when travel was by train and communication by post.

Surely Tillinghast espoused, to some degree, his belief that “a round of golf should present eighteen inspirations, not necessarily eighteen thrills.”

And no doubt Ross would have looked at the 72-hole facility at Pinehurst Country Club and talked about how it had become the epicenter of golf in America. “I wholeheartedly believe in golf,” Ross once said. “A country which gets golf-minded need not worry about the honor, the integrity and the honesty of its people.”

Tillinghast’s visit came at the behest of the PGA of America and his role as a consultant with the organization which in 11 months would conduct its flagship competition, the 1936 PGA Championship, on Pinehurst No. 2. They carried their golf clubs past Ross’ masterful rose garden in the backyard, through the wrought-iron gates and onto the third green.

Ross showed his guest the green complexes that he had just converted, with the help of green superintendent Frank Maples, from their previous flattish sand/clay structure to undulating Bermuda grass, shaping the sandy soil around them into a cacophony of dips and swales. He noted the roll-offs around the greens, how they penalized shots even slightly mishit and propelled balls into the hollows nearby.

Ross led Tillinghast to the fourth tee and explained how he had just added that hole and the fifth to the routing, taking them from a previous employee-only nine holes, and had arrived at the final (and current) configuration after originally unveiling the course in 1907.

They felt the taut turf under their feet, reveling in how the drainage qualities of the sandy loam made for the ideal golf playing surface. As they went, Ross explained the choices golfers had off the tee — on the par-4 second, for example — showing his friend what a lovely view it was into the green from the left side of the fairway but pointed to the gnarly bunker complex a player had to flirt with to get there. Ross nodded to the native wiregrass that grew in profusion along the fairways and how it reminded him of the whins of his native Scotland.

Did the man known in the business as “Tilly” dip into his bag for a flask and a wee snort as he was wont to do? Did Ross grouse that this new and improved No. 2 was better than any new-fangled effort from Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie down in the red clay of north Georgia?

All of this, we’ll never know. What we do know is what Tillinghast said after his visit.

“Without any doubt Ross regards this as his greatest achievement, which is saying a great deal,” Tillinghast offered. “Every touch is Donald’s own, and I doubt if a single contour was fashioned unless he stood hard by with a critical eye. As we stood on hole after hole, the great architect proudly called my attention to each subtle feature, certain that my appreciation of his artistry must be greater than that taken in by a less practiced eye. Nothing was lost on me, and after our round together, I told him with all honesty that his course was magnificent, without a single weakness, and one which must rank with the truly great courses in the world today.”

And, 89 years later, the show goes on.

Pinehurst No. 2 would continue to be the site of the North & South Open on the PGA Tour through 1951, with Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson and Ross himself among the winners. It would host the 1936 PGA (won by Denny Shute) and the 1951 Ryder Cup (won by the Americans, 9 1/2to 2 1/2, over the team from Great Britain and Ireland).

But it wasn’t in the mix to host a U.S. Open.

Left: Donald Ross (Courtesy Tufts Archives)

Middle: The Ninth hole of Pinehurst No. 2 (Copyright USGA//Fred Vuich_

Right: A.W. Tillinghast (Courtesy USGA Archives)

Through the 1970s that union was simply impossible because Pinehurst shut down for the summer (the founding Tufts family and the staff went to Linville or Roaring Gap in North Carolina or traveled north to Maine), and the American national championship was played always in June.

When the resort went to air-conditioning and a year-round operating calendar, the idea was still problematic because of the USGA’s preference for playing courses with firm and fast greens, a challenging task on Southern courses during hot weather months. The U.S. Open was not played in the muggy Southeast until venturing to Atlanta Athletic Club in 1975, though it had already visited hot spots in Houston, St. Louis, Dallas and Fort Worth.

About the time Jerry Pate was winning in Atlanta, officials at Pinehurst Country Club began floating the idea of an Open for No. 2. The Diamondhead Corporation was five years into its ownership of Pinehurst after purchasing it in 1970 from the Tufts family, whose patriarch, James W. Tufts, launched the town and resort in 1895 as a refuge from the cold winters of New England. The Diamondhead president, Bill Maurer, conceived the World Open on the PGA Tour and the World Golf Hall of Fame in the early 1970s and wanted all the traffic, attention and accolades he could muster for Pinehurst and its No. 2 course.

It took two more decades to figure out how to bring the National Open there.

First, there was the dodgy financial bona fides of the resort and club, which eventually went bankrupt and was taken over by eight banks for two years beginning in March 1982. Robert Dedman Sr. and his Club Corporation of America bought the facility in 1984 and provided what has turned into four decades of stability, innovation and financial security, with Robert Dedman Jr. taking the baton after his father died in 2002.

Second, there was the issue of the playing surfaces.

Pinehurst and other golf courses in the Mid-Atlantic, or so-called “transition zone,” have forever been vexed over the choice for their putting surfaces between Bermuda grass, the de facto choice for Florida and warm weather climes, and bent grass, which thrives in the North. Pinehurst officials experimented with new strains of both over the 1970s and ’80s, walking that tightrope between offering smooth and playable greens for members and resort guests for 12 months of the year, and yet having the ability to get them lightning-quick while not dying in the summer for an elite competition. Pinehurst old-timers still remembered Hale Irwin and Johnny Miller taking dead aim at flagsticks during PGA Tour competitions on No. 2 in the late summer and their approach shots going splat and stopping mere feet from the hole (Hale Irwin shot 62 and Johnny Miller 63 in mid-1970s birdie-fests).

Donald Ross must have raged in his grave.

By the early 1990s, the USGA and Pinehurst officials agreed that advances in grass technology and green foundation construction would allow them to rebuild the greens and have them stand up to the world’s best players on a 90-degree day in June. The USGA announced in June 1993 that it would conduct the 1999 Open at Pinehurst. The competition was a rousing success from the perspective of ticket sales, corporate support, traffic ebb and flow, housing and, certainly, the golf course itself.

“It’s the most draining course I’ve played in a long time,” said European Ryder Cup team member Lee Westwood.

“People sometimes ask what’s the hardest course I’ve ever played,” said two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen. “Now I know.”

The Open has been contested on No. 2 twice more, and the course has played as a par-70 for each championship. The scores validate that what Ross completed in 1935 stands in fine fettle in the next century.

Payne Stewart was 1-under in winning the Open in 1999, Phil Mickelson was even-par, and Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods were 1-over. Michael Campbell won with an even-par total in 2005, with Woods at 2-over. Martin Kaymer has been low man in the three Opens, shooting 9-under in 2014, but his nearest competitors were a mile back, with Ricky Fowler and Eric Compton tied for second at 2-over.

The firm greens, the delicate chipping areas, the flow of the holes and the strategic nuances led Tom Weiskopf to venture in a 1995 conversation that Pinehurst No. 2 is a better year-round test than Augusta National Golf Club.

“Augusta National is good one week a year,” Weiskopf said. “I’ve played Augusta two or three weeks before (The Masters) and it’s a piece of cake — a piece of cake. Pinehurst No. 2 is never a piece of cake.”

The 2024 Open at Pinehurst will be the first played on the Champion Bermuda greens installed after the 2014 Open and the second of the Coore & Crenshaw restoration era. Bill Coore, a native of Davidson County who played No. 2 often during his boyhood summers, and Ben Crenshaw, the two-time Masters champion, coordinated an extensive makeover in 2010-11 that included stripping out hundreds of acres of Bermuda rough, recontouring fairways and bunkers to Ross’ design, and rebuilding the perimeters with firm hardpan sand dotted with wiregrass, pine needles and whatever natural vegetation and debris might accumulate.

“In the early days, this golf course was disheveled and brown, and the ball rolled and rolled and rolled,” Coore says. “That’s what gave it its character. There was width here, the ability to work your ball to get the best angles. Over time, that was lost. It was too green and too organized.”

“Bowling alley fairways,” Crenshaw adds. “Straight and narrow, just like a bowling alley.”

Don Padgett II was the Pinehurst president and chief operating officer from 2004-14 and the man who convinced Dedman that hiring Coore & Crenshaw and taking No. 2 back to its “golden age” from 1935 through the 1960s was the correct move. Padgett is a “golf guy,” in industry parlance, coming to the resort with a background as a PGA Tour player in the early 1970s and a longtime club professional. His father, Don Sr., was director of golf at Pinehurst from 1987-2002.

One March afternoon a decade into his retirement, Padgett is sitting in a rocking chair on the porch overlooking the 18th green of No. 2. It’s sunny and 55 degrees. The tee sheet on No. 2 is full.

“I think this is what the Tufts envisioned,” Padgett says. “If you’re from Boston, this is balmy. My dad used to say if you’re in the golf business, stand here because everyone will come to see you.”

The world of golf is coming to Pinehurst in June, and the game’s top players will find the 18 holes that so impressed A.W. Tillinghast in 1935 and will vex them in 2024.

“I think the golf course today probably presents itself as the best it ever has,” Padgett says. “It’s Ross’ concepts with modern maintenance behind it. I think he would look at this golf course and say, ‘Wow, I wish I’d had the ability to grow grass like this.’ These are his concepts with modern turf. It’s not distorted, it’s enhanced. I think he would bless it.” OH

Chapel Hill-based writer Lee Pace has authored four books about golf in Pinehurst, including The Golden Age of Pinehurst — The Rebirth of No. 2. Write him at leepace7@gmail.com and follow him @LeePaceTweet.

2024 Feature