Month: August 2017

Story of a House: Rose Cottage

Rose Cottage

James Tufts’ first foray into vacation homebuilding, once again a showplace

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

A rose is a rose is a rose . . .

However, Rose Cottage looks and lives very differently than when it was built by James Tufts in 1895 — among the first of about a dozen. This house, intended as a rental, then sold in 1905 for $1,050, had few neighbors and a clear view to the Carolina Hotel and nascent Pinehurst village. Its tight floor plan, consisting of seven rooms, a small sun porch, and one bathroom, begged expansion accomplished by subsequent owners over the next three decades, culminating, circa 1940, with the colorful Razook family. F.R. Razook, a Lebanese immigrant, and his wife Rose had established a haute couture ladies’ boutique in Blowing Rock, N.C. They followed the money to Pinehurst, Palm Beach, Manhattan and Greenwich. While the Great Depression wiped out some clientele Razook’s thrived on survivors. Gen. George Marshall’s wife (with a home in Pinehurst) reportedly purchased the gown she wore to Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation from Mme. Razook.

However, by the 1960s, this rose had faded. The younger Razooks came down for holidays only. Modernization stalled after 1940. Gorgeous heart pine floors slumbered beneath ratty broadloom. Critters overran the attic. The layout had been chopped into a warren of small rooms of indefinite purpose. The kitchen was a period piece and the bathrooms . . .

***

Lisa and Bill Case — retired lawyers who married in 2008 — weren’t looking to rebirth a landmark. They knew what such projects entailed after living in the German Village section of Columbus, Ohio, a revitalized neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. Bill first visited Pinehurst with his father, on a business trip in 1964. He brought Lisa, a new golfer, with increasing frequency, telling her during a Thanksgiving jaunt, “You have to play No. 2.”

Slowly, as retirement took shape, Pinehurst looked promising — not only for golf. “We were footloose, could go anywhere, but we kept coming back here,” Lisa says. They liked the climate and population potpourri. However, this time Lisa wanted a sleek modern residence, “No curlicues, easy to keep clean.” A Realtor gave them the tour; they passed Rose Cottage without going inside. Yet the charm of the old place caused them to ask for a walk-through.

They returned to discover the house a mess, old and tired from not being occupied. But quality materials, location and antiquity left an impression.

“Bill’s eyes were like saucers,” Lisa recalls.

Options were discussed and decisions were made during the 8-hour drive back to Columbus.

“As long as you give me rooms for guests and a kitchen that I love . . . ” Lisa said, having recently remodeled hers. “We could see ourselves living here.”

They took the leap in 2013 with a lowball offer. Their Columbus house sold in a day. Down they came with one dog and two cats, hired a designer and builder, rented a condo for the duration.

Bill: “I thought we’d gut the bathrooms and kitchen and do the rest later,” which, as it happened, was like being a little bit pregnant. Their builder wisely advised a “one fell swoop” plan, to avoid tearing the place apart twice.

And tear it apart they did, moving interior walls, combining cubbies, creating spacious bathrooms and storage, opening up the staircase with a transom and handsome banisters all without altering the footprint.

***

The result begs questions, reveals surprises. What purpose, the room just inside the front door? Larger than a foyer — likely a parlor before the enormous solarium was added. To the immediate left, the dining room with an off-center fireplace could have been a ground floor bedroom for grandma, as was common in houses of that era; formal dining rooms weren’t required since the first Pinehurst cottagers ate communally. Windows at the end of the dining room suggest a small sun porch. Ceiling beams, now painted white, could be original or an addition. Then, in a bay window area connecting dining room to kitchen, the Cases created a conversation nook/butler’s pantry/bar.

As stipulated, much attention went into Lisa’s kitchen. “We splurged on the soapstone counters,” she admits. They are black, the walls throughout a soft, soothing grey, the cabinets white. Color pop comes from her unusual red gas range and dishes in a variety of bright primaries. French doors open onto a brick patio, which they added.

The real main floor knockout, however, is that 30×20 foot solarium, a veritable fishbowl with three complete window walls not covered by shutters, shades or drapes. Here, the Razooks held high society soirees. Now, Bill’s stringed bass fills a corner, silent but decorative.

“People look in . . . we wave to them,” Lisa says.

Upstairs a narrow hallway, sloping from age, leads to three bedrooms with niches and windows set low on the mansard walls, creating a treehouse effect. Nobody knows why the Juliet balcony off the master bedroom lacks a door. Obviously, it wasn’t planned for sitting. “We crawl out the window and decorate it for Christmas and July 4th,” Lisa says.

Ever the conservationists, Bill and Lisa created sliding pantry doors from original hinged, moved the porcelain kitchen sink into the laundry room, made free-standing cabinets from removed built-ins and salvaged old knobs for pegs. Since no clawfoot bathtub survived, Lisa chose a reproduction.

Because all but one room is moderately sized, the house doesn’t feel like 3000 square feet, “But we use every inch,” Lisa says.

Across the garden, a former carriage house/garage has become Bill’s man cave, repository of baseballs and books, where he researches and writes. Bill appreciates history and its icons: he owns a mint-condition 1954 Mercury used in the Johnny Cash film bio Walk the Line. A Waring blender with glass canister has been converted to a lamp. And on the walls hang a continuation of golf course art, both paintings and photos, appearing throughout Rose Cottage. “We marshaled at St. Andrews in 2015,” Lisa says proudly. Other wall décor includes their “happy place” beach in Scotland, archival photos and documents relating to Rose Cottage, personal mementos, and a Columbus landmark — the Wonder Bread factory sign.

The couple’s furnishings — his, hers and theirs — stretch the eclectic concept. An heirloom sideboard looms over the dining room like a frigate. A round English-manor hall table centers that mysterious front parlor. On the mantel stands a trophy dated 1941, won by Bill’s mother at the (prophetically) National Rose Show. Lisa found fertile hunting grounds in Moore County consignment shops — everything from an ornate French chateau desk reproduction and carved settee to tables and chairs with contemporary Scandinavian lines. When pushed to feature a color, as in the master bedroom, Lisa chose “cat’s eye” green, a pale avocado evocative of bygone days.

“Doing the outside is my next project,” says Lisa, who completed a Master Gardeners’ course. As yet, neat plantings neither overwhelm nor detract from the house itself. Lisa is learning what grows well in this warmer climate. “I’m thinking about a pollinator garden, but so far, it’s a work in progress.”

All in all, Lisa and Bill have adapted the prototype Pinehurst cottage to active retiree living: original wide baseboards and doorframes meet recessed lighting. Long halls become gallery space. The black-and-white magazine kitchen co-exists with a Welsh cupboard. An exterior painted the white and money-green, popular mid-20th century, gives no hint of what lies within.

Bill and Lisa are pleased. “We’ve learned ‘porching’ . . . sitting outside with a bourbon at four in the afternoon, watching the world go by,” says Lisa. “Our neighbors are wonderful. This house has good vibes.”

With one ghostly exception: “I was lying in bed and Bill was watching TV. I swear I heard somebody standing by the bed. She whispered, ‘This is my house.’”

To which Lisa rightfully replied, “Oh no, this is MY house now.”

Golftown Journal

Random Walks

The pleasures of carrying the load

By Lee Pace

Perhaps it was prophetic that the very month I signed a deal with UNC Press to write a book about the joy of playing golf by foot and foot alone I was presented by the golf gods, neatly wrapped with a ribbon and bow and sweat band, a case study illustrating my renegade approach to the game.

We teed off at 8 a.m. on July 22 at Finley Golf Course in Chapel Hill, me walking with my bag slung over my shoulder along with three riders. Did I feel antisocial by leaving a single in a cart? Certainly not, as why should I accede to his preference of riding in lieu of my own desire to walk? I did tell him, incidentally, I’d help with the cart if he got stuck in a jam.

My two primary goals every time I peg it up are to get some exercise and break 80. Studying the golf course and reveling in nature come next. Enjoying the companionship of my playing partners is important as well — all the better if that’s split three ways while walking along rather than spending four hours-plus with one guy in a cart. Betting? Lame jokes? Pounding beverages? Way down or even off the scales.

One of golf’s earliest appeals was its health-giving benefits, the player walking some four miles over varied terrain with his strength and endurance key elements of the sport. Too often today that component has been lost, with many golfers playing in a default mode of mandatory riding in motorized carts.

“Such uninterrupted exercise, cooperating with the keen air from the sea, must, without all doubt, keep the appetite on edge, and steel the constitution against all the common attacks of distemper,” Tobias Smollett wrote in a 1771 novel of the golf experience in the Scottish town of Leith.

So I knew on this day with the temperature at 76 degrees when we teed off and forecasts for highs in the upper 90s that breaking 80 would be a challenge indeed. Beating the golf course and beating myself were all that mattered. Yet I’d played two weeks earlier, same morning tee time, nearly but not quite as hot, and shot 80. My game was coming into mid-summer form as it always does and, if I’d just make a full turn in good posture and not get quick at the top, I felt I could shave a couple of shots and land in lucky-70s nirvana. I was heartened that day two weeks earlier by having clipped two shots off my front nine total on the back — indicating fatigue was not an issue.

“All I can say is — stay hydrated,” the starter counseled on the first tee.

I stood 5-over on the 13th tee, having slaked several bottles of water, a Powerade at the turn and seeking shade when convenient. Some of that shade I found to the left of the 17th fairway when we were looking for a wayward tee shot. I enjoy taking photos of my collection of lightweight, simplistic carry bags juxtaposed against interesting architectural features for social media posts, so I took a quick snap of my bag in the cool shadows (out in the sun it was 92 with a heat index reading of 105) and later posted it on Twitter.

“Surely you’re not walking,” responded one follower.

“I am amazed and aghast at the same time,” another wrote.

To me, it was just another day at the golf course. And it was with no small amount of satisfaction that I played the last five holes plus-1, penciled in a 78 and enjoyed my favorite hamburger afterward in recovery mode. (And look, I’m not stupid; I’m not saying I’d have walked and lugged if my tee time had been at 1 p.m. that day.)

To hell with Mark Twain, who supposedly once said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Poppycock. To me and a passionate and resolute minority, “Carts are great golf ruined.”

“I’m pretty much a traditionalist. I feel walking is the way the game is meant to be played,” says Spartanburg’s Todd White, a top mid-amateur who played in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at Pinehurst in May. “There is so much to enjoy between shots if you’ll just take the time to do it. To me, a golf cart takes away quite a bit from that. In a cart, you rush to your ball to sit there and wait. If you’re walking, you can experience the environment.”

“Walking No. 2 in the evenings is such a peaceful experience,” says Pinehurst member Jason Richeson, a member of the club’s Executive Golf cadre that meets every Tuesday for twilight golf on No. 2. “There’s hardly anyone else out there; you’ve got the sun setting through the pines. It’s amazing. It’s almost a surreal atmosphere.”

Mike Harmon is the director of golf at Secession Golf Club in Beaufort, South Carolina, which opened in 1992 as a walking-only course (they have two golf carts for players with doctor-verified health conditions). The club has an excellent caddie program and will allow members to carry their bags late in the day. Harmon often goes out with a Sunday bag and nine clubs.

“Obviously walking is the healthy way to play,” he says. “I always play better walking, and I nearly always play just nine clubs just putzing around the club. You find out how well you’re swinging when you have nine clubs. You have an 8-iron shot but you’ve got to pick the 7 or 9. You have to figure that one out.”

I never begrudge others their preferred method of playing. As golf architect Tom Fazio notes, the invention and proliferation of the golf cart has been in large measure “very positive” for the game.

“I’m not sure we’d have had the growth in golf and as many people playing if not for the golf cart,” says Fazio, who’s designed and built five Sandhills area courses. “We have built courses in hilly terrain, in mountain areas that wouldn’t be accessible if not for the cart. I’d bet there are a couple thousand courses in America that would not be there if not for carts. On a grand scale, you’d have to put a plus for golf carts.”

Yet in the next breath, Fazio will admit to moving heaven and Earth to hide the visual pimples of paths on his golf courses, and that his No. 1 golf experience is playing Pine Valley Golf Club — where no carts are allowed. In other words, he’ll build what the market dictates.

The market, certainly, will be limited for my forthcoming book. The vision is some 200 pages, coffee-table format, the content built around stories of courses and clubs across the two Carolinas where the course is walkable and a healthy walking culture exists. It’s an acquired taste, as they say, but fortunately the astute numbers-crunchers at the venerable Chapel Hill publishing house are confident the readers and buyers are there.

Case in point is Jay Mickle, a Southern Pines farrier who grew up playing McCall Golf & Country Club in suburban Philadelphia in the 1960s. Carts were not part of the equation.

“Carts were high-society, resort stuff,” he says.

He moved to the Sandhills a decade ago and is a regular hoofing it about Pine Needles and Mid Pines — once walking 18 holes at Mid Pines as a twosome in one hour, 55 minutes — and relishes the late afternoons. One twilight we were walking from the tee on the 15th at Mid Pines, the setting sun at our backs and filtering through the trees to cast a golden patina on the furrows within the ancient fairways.

“It’s the magical time of day,” he says. “This is perfect.”

Mickle notes that many northern courses add an upcharge to ride, while it’s typical in the Carolinas to add it to the greens fee.

“People think, ‘I paid for it, I’m going to take it,’” he says. “Well, they can take it to their grave when their arteries are all clogged up.”

I might not get a better quote than that over the next two years, but I’m sure going to try.

Send Lee Pace an email at leepace7@gmail.com if you share his passion for walking golf and have a story to tell.

2017 Department Sporting Life

The Kitchen Garden

The Root Doctor

How a Pinehurst endodontist created a produce paradise

By Jan Leitschuh

As a successful health professional, he deliberately chose to live here, in the heart of one of the nation’s foremost golf-mad regions. He and his wife found a graceful, red-brick house off the traffic circle, one that backs right up to the National Golf Club.

But while “keep your head down” might be common advice in the Pinehurst ‘hood, Dr. Jim Corcoran is looking down at green beans and garlic, not golf balls. When he speaks of cabbage, it ain’t deep rough. His garden spot has nothing to do with a tee shot. This Pinehurst endodontist does not golf for leisure. He grows vegetables. Passionately. Wholeheartedly. Pulling roots or performing root canals, here is a man who enjoys working with his hands.

Step through the tall pines, past a child’s dream of twin tree houses, the playground for his brood of three. Open a trim gate to a garden where luxurious foliage overruns neatly-aligned, raised beds. Vines crawl up a side fence line, blueberries hedge the back, and hanging gutters of strawberries fill up the vertical space. A resident Eastern box turtle patrols, eating bad bugs and discarded strawberries. “This is a working turtle,” Corcoran says proudly. Calmness descends, quietude sings. The effect is peaceful — and productive.

Welcome to the green retreat of a busy professional. Not a golf ball in sight. The garden is a restorative, neatly fenced, 30-foot by 40-foot horticultural meditation on the nature and cycles of life.

“It’s as much therapy for me as it is for the vegetables,” he admits. He’s a fan of Dawn Patrol: “I’ll get up early on a weekend and come out here with a cup of coffee and putter. When the kids wake up, they know to come out here and find me.”

It’s also a peaceful space for cultivating privacy and marriage. As a member of Pinehurst Endodontics, “I work just on the other side of the traffic circle,” says Corcoran. “I’ll come home for lunch, and Amy (his wife) and I bring our meal out here, sit down in the shade, and talk.”

Not that the produce itself isn’t also welcome. In season, says Corcoran, “I love to steal my wife’s salad bowl every night and come out here, and fill it up with blueberries. I leave it on the kitchen counter, and the kids grab a handful for snacks until it’s gone. And then I fill it up again.”

Tomatoes climb skyward, and potatoes, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins spill over the sides of this modern-day Victory Garden. Herbs grow neatly in pots at the back, along with a few creative bonsai. The soft greenness disguises the hard work and daily discipline within.

“I’m still very much a novice at this,” he says modestly, amidst the verdant abundance that is his backyard garden. But despite his protests to the contrary, he’s evidently no duffer. “I’ve had good teachers,” he insists. “My neighbor. Joe, and dental patients that are gardeners — I’ll pick their brains.”

“More than anything,” he says, “having a neighbor like Joe made the difference, encouraging us to come out here and do this.”

That would be Joe Sullivan, the garden mentor next door, Corcoran’s horticultural Bagger Vance helping him find his “authentic swing” in the garden.

Sullivan’s elegant, diverse and well-planted backyard adjoins the Corcorans’. “He’s like the Irish version of Clint Eastwood, “ says Corcoran with a chuckle. “He’s super-cool.”

It all started when Corcoran was helping Sullivan clear out a tree that blew down in a hurricane near the back of their joint property line. Looking at the newly available sunlight, Sullivan said, “You should have a garden here. Do you want to get a garden together?”

So Corcoran pulled the pine straw away and turned over the sand beneath, planting peppers and tomatoes into his new little bunker.

How did that work out? “Best weeds I ever grew,” he says with a grin. “Maybe I got one small tomato.” It was, in his view, an unplayable lie. “I decided to work with Nature.”

A handy sort, Corcoran installed some raised beds in 2012. Pressure-treated 2×10 inch pine, stained brown, made attractive beds 20 inches high. He determined the spacing between boxes by trundling a wheelbarrow through his staked-out beds. Aisles were filled with pine straw mulch to squelch weeds.

Now, seven boxes worth, his raised beds range from a small 6×8-foot bed to a longer 6×22 feet. “Six feet is about the length of my reach, so that became the bed width,” he says with a laugh. Simple, practical planning, grounded in reality, became a theme.

Quality soils were brought in by a family pickup truck — he estimates 15 trips — that he and son Robert unloaded into the beds. Hard work and discipline. Forget golf — who needs a gym when you have a garden?

“The garden is great for the kids too,” he says of his three children. “They see the hard work and then the results.”

That hard work sometimes entails delayed gratification. Three years ago, the family went to the beach. The garden was peaking, lush with almost-ripe harvests. Upon his return, Corcoran immediately went straight to the garden. When he didn’t come back inside, Amy came looking. Jim was standing among green nubs. “The deer had mowed it all down. They had eaten absolutely everything. Amy got worried because I was gone so long.”

After some experiments with rabbit fencing, last year Corcoran took a mulligan and put up a 7-foot deer fence and installed gates. The deer are at bay at last.

Corcoran’s strawberries — plants donated by neighbor Sullivan — grow in rain gutters from Lowe’s Home Improvement. No slouch with a drill, the endodontist-gardener drilled holes in the bottom for drainage, then lined the gutters with landscape fabric, and filled them with quality soil. “Irrigation is the key there,” he said of the shallow containers hanging vertically, and so installed a simple system to deliver water. The raised beds were also irrigated.

This spring, neighbor Sullivan issued the challenge to young Robert: “Let’s have a pumpkin-growing contest.” Generously, Joe shared some seedlings of plants that he said would grow to 300 pounds. But the Corcorans have a twist — they also found a packet of prize-winning pumpkin seed stock from Weeks Seed Company, some of which have grown up to 1300 pounds.

“That’s our secret weapon,” says Corcoran, chuckling.

“And Miracle Grow,” adds Robert.

“And Miracle Grow,” agrees his dad. “Lots and lots of Miracle Grow.” They plan to switch to potassium as the flowers set and start making pumpkins, then trim down to one pumpkin per vine, the best one, so the vine can pour all of its nourishment into what they are sure will be their prizewinner.

Corcoran is no stranger to hard work and discipline.

He was in combat operations in Operation Desert Storm at age 19, then stationed at Fort Bragg for a year, exposing him to the glories and beauty of the Sandhills. Following a three-year stint as an airborne ranger, stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia, he went to college on the GI Bill, completing undergraduate studies in three years at the same time he was working construction 30 hours per week.

“Part-time construction worker, full-time student,” he jokes.
Dental school was on an Army scholarship. From ‘97-’01, he attended University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry where he met his wife, Amy. They moved to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on active duty for his residency. A second residency to study the specialty of endodontics followed in 2003 at Fort Bragg.

“That’s where my wife and I really fell in love with the Sandhills,” he says. Later, he taught endodontic dentistry to general dentistry residents at Fort Campbell for another three years.

“I got out and came running back here,” he says. In June of 2008, he joined Pinehurst Endodontics. He loved the small but vibrant towns in the area: “It’s such a fantastic place. A small town, family, friends, great schools, the talent here, and quality of medical care. And I don’t even play golf!”

He is, however, an avid runner. During a marathon in Myrtle Beach at roughly the 18-mile mark, a man ahead of him fell. As Corcoran approached, it was clear the man was having a heart attack. Corcoran began CPR, an exercise he performed for a full 11 minutes until the ambulance arrived.

“I broke his ribs with the CPR,” he says, ruefully. But the man, a veterinarian from Knoxville, Tennessee, survived his coronary blockage and eventually connected with his Good Samaritan for an emotional phone call.

Garden drama happens on a much quieter scale. Plants flower, fruit and bear. They are pulled and laid down to compost. It’s his happy place.

“Gardening is a lot like dentistry,” he says, “finding the right therapeutic dose to get the results you want. Everything worthwhile in life requires effort. It’s a wonderful thing for my children to experience, to see the hard work and then results.” The freshest produce around.

Retreat, role modeling, and fresh veggies. Such, he feels, is his horticultural equivalent of a double eagle.

Jan Leitschuh is a local gardener, avid eater of fresh produce and co-founder of the Sandhills Farm to Table Cooperative.

2017 Department Kitchen Garden

The Comeback Kids

There’s no place like home. Even if it takes moving away to discover it

By Casey Suglia • Photographs by John Gessner

Something about home calls you back. Maybe it’s the sweet scents of the kitchen during the holidays or when spring blooms at the top of its lungs. Backyards lock away memories as if they were bank vaults, and porches welcome them in like old friends. We’re not the same place we were a quarter century ago though our collective history lingers in the pines like an autumn fog. If success is passion, it can be found in many places, wearing many faces. But, it seems, it’s never quite as cherished as it is at home. The people portrayed on the following pages grew up here, built a life there, then came back to us. They have used their wings and kept their roots. They’re The Comeback Kids, fresh from working for companies large and larger, in cities big and bigger. Yet, their lives led them to where everything began.

Anthony Parks spent his childhood in the early 70s riding bikes and skateboarding in downtown Southern Pines. Now, he’s the one who watches the kids go by — or, more often, stop in. His father, Harry, owned the gas station on the N.E. Broad and Connecticut Avenue. Many a day included a trip to the Ice Cream Parlor, the Broad Street institution (then and now) Anthony owns 30 years later.

After graduating from The O’Neal School in ’93, he attended college at the University of North Carolina—Greensboro where he studied business. “I had a plan that I would come back and run the family business,” Parks says, who worked at his father’s convenience store from the time he was 10 years old. “But after two months of being away, I knew that I was definitely not coming back. I liked being in a bigger city and being close to things.”

First in Greensboro, then Winston-Salem, Parks found himself learning the ins and outs of the restaurant industry from local entrepreneurs, Chris Lester and Kayne Fisher who opened Natty Greene’s Brewing Company in 2004. After two years of running restaurants, he decided Winston-Salem wasn’t the optimal place to raise a family and began to miss the pace of small-town life.

Anthony returned to Southern Pines in 2002 with the intention of opening a pub. But when Karen and Larry Daugherty, the owners of the Ice Cream Parlor, heard that Parks was looking to run something, they thought he would be the perfect person to succeed them. He bought it and immediately fell in love with his customers. Parks regularly sees people he grew up with bringing their kids into his restaurant. “You never know who will walk through the door,” Parks says. “It was too perfect of a full circle.”

Although Anthony’s back, some city influences still show. Parks helped begin the First Friday concert series and stays active in the community and local business associations, preserving the town that means so much to him.

“I owe everything to this town,” Parks says. “It’s important for me to give back.”

Amity Aldridge moved to Southern Pines with her family when she was in the second grade and spent her childhood jumping on the trampoline in the backyard of the family home on Indiana Avenue, just around the corner from the house on Ridge Street where her mother, Emily Matthews, grew up. A ‘94 graduate of Pinecrest High School, she studied marketing at the University of North Carolina—Wilmington where a friend and a plan led her to Atlanta, Georgia.

“I had set my sights on New York City,” Amity says, “so I was ready to be in a large city. When you’re from here, you can’t wait to get out. But, living in a big city made me appreciate my small town.”

In Atlanta, she worked for the furniture company Havertys in their media and marketing department before moving to Raleigh in 2000 to work at the Tate Advertising Agency and to be closer to family. She met her husband, Freddie, and through clients of the Tate Agency made a connection with her future employer, Carolina Canneries Inc., where she’s worked for the past 14 years.

The job with Carolina Canneries allowed Amity to locate wherever her heart desired and that place was Southern Pines. In 2004, she and Freddie moved back and started a family. Amity and Freddie are parents to three daughters, 10-year-old Georgia and 8-year-old twins, Harper and Lyla.

“We made the decision to start having kids and felt strongly we wanted to be closer to my parents,” Amity says. “I wanted them to grow up in the same place and in the same way that I did.”

Quite literally. In 2006, Amity and Freddie moved back to the same house on Indiana Avenue in Southern Pines where she grew up.

“The height charts from when I was a kid were still in the home and the same trampoline was still in the backyard,” she says. “It was weird but very cool. We renovated it and made it our own.”

The family outgrew the childhood home, but remain surrounded with memories. Her daughter’s kindergarten class at Southern Pines Primary School was the same room where Amity went through the 5th grade.

As ready as she was to be in a big city, she’s comfortable being out of one now.

“It’s a trade off,” she says. “I love running into people I’ve known my whole life and supporting the businesses of people I grew up with.”

Angela Sanchez’s love of food and wine took her all across the Southeast but, ultimately, would lead her and her partner, Chris Abbey, back home. Sanchez grew up on her family’s farm between Carthage and Whispering Pines and graduated from Union Pines High School in 1992. She studied Political Science and American History at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill but dreams of attending law school changed during a trip home.

“I worked part time in a small wine shop in the Village of Pinehurst during my summers,” Sanchez said. “When I graduated I felt that I needed to work before going back to school.” At her boss’s urging, Sanchez applied to be a distributor for a wine and beer company in the Raleigh area. Working in a fully stocked warehouse, she was thrown headlong into the scene, selling wine and beer to restaurants and bars throughout North Carolina.

At a party thrown by a mutual friend Sanchez met Abbey, a ‘90 graduate of Pinecrest High School. The rest is history. The two moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2002, where Sanchez continued to work as a distributor and Abbey worked at the Medical University of South Carolina in the gastroenterology lab for almost 12 years.

“It was a beautiful place to live,” Sanchez said. “But the dynamics changed, and we knew we needed to be back home. There was a pull to get back here.” They wanted to be closer to family and found a way to make that happen — a Southern Whey. The original owners of the Southern Pines cheese shop and provisions store on N.E. Broad Street wanted to sell, and Abbey had gone to school with one of them.

“There was also a desire to own our own small business and not work for anyone else,” Abbey says.

Abbey and Sanchez customized the business to their personalities. Fresh eggs, cheeses, and provisional goods from farms and businesses both local and across the state are sold in their display cases.

“It is fun to educate people on what we do,” Sanchez says. “We love to support local items, make things in-house, and see people coming in just for that.” Sanchez’s family farm, which is still going strong, contributes flowers, eggs and vegetables to be sold at Southern Whey.

“We love being a part of the change in the community and seeing that change,” Sanchez said. “We’re so happy to be close to family and be a part of the farm.” Sanchez and Abbey started doing seasonal pop-up dinners, highlighting local produce, chefs, and their talents.

“It is a way for everyone to show our life experiences, the things we’ve done over the years, and put it out together,” Angela says.

Marc Subin took an educational tour of the Southeast and a professional one of Manhattan, before finding the perfect match in his past. The son of recently retired orthopedic hand surgeon, Dr. Glen Subin, and dermatologist Dr. Diane Subin, Marc grew up in Pinehurst playing competitive tennis with his older brother, Eric, and younger brothers, Bert and Brian.

“I really enjoyed growing up here,” Marc says. “Looking back, this was the perfect place.”

After graduating from The O’Neal School where he played varsity tennis, Marc spent a year at the University of Miami in Florida before transferring and graduating from Clemson University. He followed that with a degree from the Charleston School of Law.

“I went from a class of 99 students in high school to being one of 10,000 in college,” Marc says. “There wasn’t much of a culture shock but Charleston just felt bigger.” New York definitely was.

In the fall of 2013, Marc passed the New York State Bar and joined his older brother at their uncle’s law firm, Subin Associates, LLP, a group of personal injury lawyers who have been in the business more than 50 years.

“I wanted to go to New York City and experience what my life would be like there in my 20s,” Subin says.

Working for a personal injury litigation firm in a Broadway office was far different from sitting in a classroom off Airport Road. “My days were very busy with no downtime,” Marc says. “I was doing different things but spending my time in court all day. Up there, 9-to-5 doesn’t exist. There is so much going on all of the time and such a high volume of cases coming in.”

After being in Manhattan for three years, Marc was ready for a change and moved back to Pinehurst in 2016.

“I had grown accustomed to being from a small town and started to miss North Carolina and the parts of home that suited me. I’m spending more time outside, living a slower pace of life,” he says. “I will never complain about driving again.” In February, Marc took and passed the North Carolina State Bar and has joined the firm of West & Smith LLP.

“I envision myself being here for the long term,” he says. “The experience I had in New York will help me here. This is a great area to practice law, and I am excited for the future.”

2017 Feature

Simple Life

Old No. 7

Two aging road warriors strike out in search of the American past

By Jim Dodson

As summer’s end approached, I hit the road for research on a new book, though I wasn’t sure how far I might get — or where I might end up.

The start of any book project brings with it a humbling sense of vertigo, a feeling that the road ahead will be challenging and possibly full of wrong turns and maddening dead ends. But this particular project held special meaning because it’s a book I’ve been thinking about, in one form or another, for almost 40 years.

It’s a book about a road.

But not just any road — the Great Wagon Road.

You may or may not have heard of it. But if you happen to be a Southerner with deep roots in the region, you may well be here because of it.

The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, as it was called early on, became the most traveled road in Colonial America. It ran from Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia, and was the road that opened the American South to exploration and settlement and pushed back the western frontier.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the road was the way to a new life for tens of thousands of Scots-Irish, German and English settlers — Amish, Moravians, Quakers and Presbyterians — who landed on our shores seeking a fresh start in a new world. Daniel Boone hunted along the road, and Thomas Jefferson’s daddy named and surveyed it. A young captain named George Washington served as an Indian scout along the GWR and no less than three major wars, the French and Indian, American Revolution and Civil War — four if you care to count the Whiskey Rebellion — were fought along it’s meandering way. Fittingly, the ingenious Conestoga wagon that carried later generations of settlers across the Great Plains to settle the Far West was created by German artisans by the Conestoga River near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Both wings of my family came down the GWR in the mid-18th and early 19th centuries respectively. My pretty blond mama’s sprawling German clan (the Kessells), hopped off around Hagerstown, Maryland and settled along the south branch of the Potomac River on the West Virginia side in the early 1800s. Half a century earlier, my daddy’s Scottish and English forebears (the Tates and the Dodsons ) filtered down the road over the Dan River through Walnut Cove before settling in the Hawfields near Mebane, where they formed churches and grist mills and made furniture. A few of them even went on down to Wilmington and the Cape Fear region.

I first heard about the Great Wagon Road four decades ago when a pretty girl named Rebecca Robinson and I stayed out all night on a date and wound up attending the sunrise service at God’s Acre in Old Salem. The Moravians originated the service in 1732 in Saxony. While standing among the ancient gravestones of that famous Moravian — men separated from women, a democracy of death, as has been described — we struck up a conversation with an older gent who turned out to be a professor of history at nearby Salem College. When I happened to mention my family name, he smiled and commented that my forbears, like his, probably came down the Great Wagon Road about the same time” in the late 1700s.

He explained that the GWR subsumed the remains of the so-called Great Indian Warrior Trading Path used by the Iroquois tribes such as the Cherokee, and other nations, including the Catawba and Tuscarora Indians until the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744 opened the western frontier to European settlement, pushing the native peoples farther into the mountains.

Cities such as Lancaster and York in Pennsylvania; Winchester, Roanoke and Lexington in Virginia; (Winston-)Salem, Salisbury, and Charlotte in North Carolina, and Camden in South Carolina, began either as trading post river fords or market towns that owe their origins directly to the Great Wagon Road.

Thirty-five years after that sunrise service, during the year I served as the Writer in Residence at Hollins University (which happened to lie along the GWR in a vale just north called “Big Lick,” now Roanoke), my fascination with the road was powerfully rekindled. I began moseying along Virginia’s winding and beautiful U.S. Route 11 and found all sorts of surviving references to the Great Wagon Road in various forms — place names of inns, family farms, townships, churches, battlefields and no shortage historical roadside standards.

On my trips home to Maine up Interstate 81, I realized that I was, in fact, traveling the same path my forebears had followed once upon a time in America, on the Great Wagon Road.

By the end of my time at Hollins, I’d resolved to someday drive the Great Wagon Road’s 700 miles in order to investigate how a young nation was born and how my native South grew up along what may be the most historic road in the land.

Someday finally arrived when I loaded up my own Great Wagon and set off for Philadelphia just after dawn one morning in late July.

My Great Wagon happens to be a vintage 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate wagon, an iconic American road car that automotive historians consider the last true production American station wagon built before Detroit switched to making SUVs.

Almost on a lark — or was it the sweet hand of Providence? — I bought it a decade ago from a nice lady in Pinehurst whose widowed papa had recently given up driving and had to “let go of his baby.”

Well-maintained Roadmasters, I soon learned, can fetch a tidy sum and are greatly in demand among collectors of vintage automobiles.

This one turned out to be a gem.

Its odometer had only 59,000 miles on it. The lovely fellow who’d owned it actually kept velvet on the dash. The seats were comfy and roomy, like leather La-Z-Boy recliners. It’s famous Dynaride suspension system made the vehicle glide over the road like a dream, and a 350-horsepower V-8 engine was the same one Chevy put in its Corvettes. The air conditioning system could have cooled a deli meat locker and the killer cassette audio system had the acoustics of a concert hall.

True, there were a few tiny dents and peeling paint in its fake wood grain side panels — but hey, there were in mine, too. We were perfect for each other.

I bought the car an hour after driving it.

Our four kids were amused and maybe a little embarrassed when they laid eyes on my newly acquired land yacht that Christmas.

“It’s so, well . . . big,” said one son with a
wary chuckle.

You should give it a nickname,” suggested another, the family comedian. “How about The Beast?”

I didn’t care for The Beast. The car was nothing if not an iconic work of American automotive art, an aged beauty whose name said it all — Master of the Road.

One ride in it, however, and they all changed their tunes. Three of the four asked to take the car to college. Not on your life, I said, though I did consent to let them drive it whenever they were in residence.

My work colleagues were also amused.

The publisher of this magazine suggested I call her the “Dirty Pearl,” as if my beloved land yacht were an old pirate ship.

That nickname was cute but never seemed quite right to me.

While researching the Roadmaster’s distinguished automotive history — it’s the car that basically helped Buick survive the Great Depression and became the symbol of 1950s suburban America — I discovered a website that listed the Roadmaster Estate wagon among “Top Ten Best Vehicles for the End of the World,” capable of handling “nuclear winter, economic collapse or a zombie takeover.”

My 1996 Roadmaster was No. 7 on the list. The photograph was even identical to my Great Wagon — “The Modern American Power Wagon Exemplar,” noted the editor of Popular Mechanics, in effect the Conestoga Wagon of Vacationing America.

I finally had the perfect nickname.

My Great Wagon, after all, had survived the lives of two large and rambunctious American families, three teen drivers and decades of moving everything from entire households to countless garden shrubs, not to mention made dozens of beach trips and backcountry camping expeditions with a large canoe lashed on her roof. My Great Wagon was nothing if not a proven survivor.

So this summer, after 21 years of life and 159,000 miles, following a tune-up from Clark the mechanic who has faithfully looked after the old gal for years, we set off together up the Great Wagon Road to begin the first leg of our long journey from Market Square in Colonial Philadelphia to Augusta, Georgia.

Old No. 7 handled Philly’s congested tourist traffic like a summer breeze off the Delaware and cruised west on the Lincoln Highway as if she were right off of the showroom floor.

After Philadelphia, where I walked in the footsteps of our founders and boned up on my heroes Jefferson and Franklin, the Old No. 7 led me to an expert on Colonial furniture making and allowed me to dine with a historian of Amish life. Among other things, I dropped by America’s oldest farmer’s market (1745), explored four famous battlefields, hiked in a state park, visited the nation’s first commercial pretzel maker, learned about the birth of the Conestoga wagon and watched the sun rise on Cemetery Hill where Lincoln gave his deeply moving Gettsyburg Address on a November afternoon in 1863. My notebook runneth over.

After five days out, we came home to rest a bit before resuming the next leg of the long road from Winchester to Old Salem later this autumn. The Road’s original travelers sometimes took four or five months to reach their new homes in the Southern Wilderness. Old No. 7 and I hoped to finish our travels in about the same amount of time.

According to her odometer, we covered 179 miles of the Great Wagon Road, which by my reckoning means there are many more miles of great discoveries to come.

Contact Editor Jim Dodson at jim@thepilot.com.

2017 Department Simple Life

Stephanie & Jon Davis

STEPHANIE & JON DAVIS

While visiting his family for Christmas, Southern Pines native Jon Davis proposed to Stephanie Hillman at the holiday gingerbread display in the Carolina Hotel. After an eight-month engagement they said their vows at Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church. For the elegant, flower-inspired wedding, the bride found creative ways to incorporate her beloved golden retriever, Teddy. The signature cocktail of the night was “The Teddy,” and guests parted with party favors of popcorn, one of the pet’s favorite treats. Personal touches, like wrapping the bouquet in satin from Stephanie’s grandmother’s wedding gown, added sentimental accents. The veil was borrowed from her sister, and has been worn by all the women in the family. Having special pieces from her family made the day even more perfect for Stephanie.

Wedding Planner: Casey Harris, La Fête Planning & Design | Photography: Anagram Photo | Ceremony: Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church | Reception: Pinehurst Country Club | Dress: Custom Modern Trousseau | Shoes: Kate Spade and Sergio Rossi | Flowers: Meristem Floral | Hair & Makeup: Makeup for Your Day | Cake: The Bakehouse | Entertainment: East Coast Entertainment’s Liquid Pleasure Super Show

2018

Brittany & Alex Buckley

BRITTANY & ALEX BUCKLEY

After meeting at a 2016 NFL playoffs party held by a mutual friend, Brittany and Alex Buckley started dating and quickly knew they had stumbled upon a special relationship. Both sports lovers and entrepreneurs, it didn’t take long before they started parent introductions. At the start, Brittany, a Pinehurst native, resided in Charlotte, while Alex lived in Raleigh. The couple now live in Southern Pines, where Brittany runs the dance school Carolina Performing Arts Center. The Buckleys planned a classic, blush and ivory toned wedding at Community Presbyterian Church. Bridesmaids were gifted a day at the Pinehurst Spa, while groomsmen received engraved grill sets.

2018

Shyane & Greg Mello

SHYANE & GREG MELLO

A rarity in the history of grooms-to-be, Greg Mello took charge of wedding planning while his future bride was busy with college and clinicals. The Mellos started dating their junior year at Pinecrest High School, and the high school sweethearts chose The Fair Barn, where their prom was held, for the ceremony and reception venue. A memorial table was included among the rustic décor, with pictures of friends and family who had passed but would have been in attendance. Shyane’s bouquet was comprised of a Native American feather to acknowledge her Lumbee Indian heritage. The planning process was quite the learning experience for Greg, but the Mellos both agree it was the fairy tale wedding they had dreamed.

2018