History in the Backyard

HISTORY IN THE BACKYARD

History in the Backyard

Leaving a legacy on Pinehurst No. 2

By Jenna Biter
Photographs by John Gessner

A couple of years back, Quinn Breuer accompanied her son, Quinton, to a U.S. Kids Golf tournament in Pinehurst. One visit was all it took. “It’s the pine trees. The environment. The people. The village,” Breuer says. She asked her husband, Todd, “Can we retire here?”

Quinn has been a stay-at-home mom, but now her babies are heading out the door. Todd hasn’t retired yet — home base is in Peoria, Arizona — but the Breuers are already preparing for their golden years in the village. The empty nesters purchased a modified Cape Cod a month before the 2024 U.S. Open on Pinehurst’s No. 2 course. “Good timing, you know?” says Quinn. Their backyard abuts the third hole.

The 5,240-square-foot, five-bedroom, pass-it-down-to-the-kids legacy house lounges on a half-acre plot that sidles up to No. 2’s wiregrass. “It’s location. It’s history. It’s unique,” she says.

The house on Midland Road was built in 2005. “It’s only two doors down from the Donald Ross house,” she says, referring to Dornoch Cottage, the home that was built by and belonged to the Scottish golf architect and mastermind of No. 2. “When you walk into the backyard, it’s the flowers and the golf course and the pine trees. We don’t have trees in Arizona. We have desert.”

The couple initially purchased land on Linden Road and were finalizing plans for new construction. Todd surveyed the property on a visit. He longed for a better view, preferably a golf course. Father and son both enjoy the game. Quinton is 19 years old and plays on the golf team at South Mountain Community College, in Arizona.

The Breuers wanted something different than the lot they had. They lined up a Hail Mary and asked their Realtor to notify them if any houses on No. 2 came onto the market.
“A week and a half later, we got the call,” Quinn says, still in disbelief. “About a month later, we owned the house.”

The exterior is classic Pinehurst. The Breuers liked the village vibe and kept it that way. Its painted brick is a warm Southern cream; crape myrtles flank the front portico; and a wing sweeps out to each side. The left side extends further than the right, ending in a cupola-topped, two-car garage that connects to the house via breezeway.

Interior remodeling began right away. “We wanted it to be warm and traditional and modern at the same time,” says Breuer. Constrained by only a short list of musts and must-nots (a sectional in the family room, substantial bookcases in the study, no window treatments obstructing the golf course view), interior designer Angela Budd of Angela Douglas Interiors had enough creative wiggle room to run.

Quinn didn’t love the cherrywood floors — “too red,” she says — but they could be replaced more easily than a place on No. 2 could be found. The old floors came out and new ones went in. Just inside the front door, the white oak planks piece together in a herringbone pattern. A blown-glass chandelier counterbalances the floor and draws the eye upward. Attention fixes straight ahead on a black entry table that pops against the clean, white walls.

Like a roundabout, the table’s circular top whirls guests around the foyer, spinning them off into the rest of the home. To the left is Todd’s study. A drip painting print in the style of Jackson Pollock hangs on a wall. Pop art lips rendered by the Breuers’ daughter decorate another. Kiana, now 20, made the artwork for her dad when she was a kid. “I always think the best homes are personal,” says Budd. “They feel collected.”

Opposite the study is the formal living room. A marble surround frames the gas fireplace, and shearling swivel chairs sit in conversation with a white couch. One room removed, closer to the back of the house, guests can find the dining room drenched in a dramatic blue called Gray’s Harbor. “It’s not all blue, and I don’t do navy because it feels too nautical,” Budd says, “but this color is a nice blend between moody and elevated.” A pair of panel-ready, Sub-Zero refrigerators keep the Breuers’ wine. A bar between them doubles as a buffet for dinners when the kids are home.

“It’s a family space,” says Quinn.

The kitchen, across the hallway, underwent a light refresh. In the family room, Budd added a corner banquette for chatting, sipping and informal eating. The L-shaped sectional occupies the rest of the room.

“The house is just very . . . to me, it’s so warm, and it fits with their personality,” says Budd.

The master is on the first floor. It’s beige and green, clean-lined but cozy. The kids each have an ensuite on the second floor. French doors open onto a shared balcony that overlooks the brick-edged pool and outdoor seating, lush flowers trailing over the white picket fence, and the pinch-me-I’m-dreaming view of the fairway beyond.

“We want to hand it down to the kids, and the kids to their kids,” Breuer says. “We still can’t believe we own the house.”

Home Away From Home

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Home Away From Home

The legend and allure of the Pine Crest

By Bill Case

It’s March 1961. You’re 45 and a lifelong resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, where you’re the respected managing editor of the local newspaper, the Erie Daily Times. You’ve worked at the paper for 20 years and been its editor for five. You have an excellent relationship with the paper’s owner. The job is yours as long as you want it. And you love it.

Your wife, Betty, comes from a prominent Erie family. Her father, Charles A. Dailey Sr., owned and operated Dailey’s Chevrolet from 1925 until his death in 1958, when Betty’s brother, Charles “Chuck” Dailey Jr., took over. The Dailey family has been among Erie’s foremost philanthropists. And your kids — Bobby, age 9, and Peter, age 5 — are happy in Erie.

Bob and Betty Barrett seemed the unlikeliest of couples to pull up stakes and seek a new life. While Bob was making a good living at the hometown paper, he wanted to own his own business. He discussed the possibility of partnering with Betty’s father in a second auto dealership in Erie, but that trial balloon blew away with Charles Sr.’s death. His passing did, however, result in a significant bequest to daughter Betty. With this nest egg and additional assistance from Betty’s mother, Elizabeth Dailey, the Barretts began looking for investment opportunities. But where?

“My dad had contracted pneumonia and worried he might not live long if he stayed where he was,” says Bobby Barrett, now 74. “He thought he stood a better chance of a long life if the family moved south. The Barretts and Daileys made regular golf trips to the Sandhills after my dad started playing in his mid-’30s. He fell in love with Pinehurst.”

While walking down Dogwood Road during a March ’61 vacation, Bob happened to encounter Carl Moser, then owner of the Pine Crest, sweeping the inn’s front steps. The men struck up a conversation in which Moser indicated he would consider selling if the price was right. Bob and Betty began mulling over the idea of making an offer. While the Pine Crest was no luxury hotel, the Barretts knew that many golfers weren’t interested in cushy surroundings. The inn’s 44 modestly sized rooms provided a homey, affordable alternative to the upscale lodgings at the Carolina Hotel and Holly Inn. And it was a going concern. The Pine Crest boasted a solid base of recurring guests, migrating golfers who returned like swallows year after year. Some had been doing it for as long as the inn had been in existence, 48 years.

Built in 1913, the hotel was the creation of enterprising innkeeper Emma Bliss. A New Hampshire native, Bliss had spent the previous nine years (1903 to 1912 ) managing The Lexington Hotel — where The Manor is today — which primarily served as a boarding house for resort employees. Leonard Tufts, who controlled most business activity in Pinehurst, hired Bliss after being impressed with her surehanded management of a Bethlehem, New Hampshire, inn.

Bliss shuttled back and forth with the seasons between managing The Lexington and her inn in Bethlehem. Possessing an entrepreneurial spirit of her own, she aspired to own a hotel herself, not just manage one. In January 1913, Tufts sold Bliss property on Dogwood Road, adjacent to the Lexington. By year end, she had erected and opened the Pine Crest Inn.

The Pinehurst Outlook hailed the inn’s arrival as a “delightful addition to the list of hotels; its comfort is suggested by the charm of its exterior . . . Modern in every particular, it provides several suites with private bath; radiant with fresh air; sunshine, good cheer, and ‘hominess’.”

Bliss operated the Pine Crest for seven years before selling it in April 1920 to Donald Ross and his fellow Scot expatriate W. James MacNab for $52,500. Ross, Pinehurst’s patron saint, was hitting his stride in the golf course architecture business and supplied the money for the purchase. MacNab managed the inn.

Instead of simply returning to run The Lexington, Bliss bought that property and tore down the old hotel. In its footprint, she erected a new lodging house — The Manor, a far more upscale house than its predecessor. Neither Tufts nor Ross seemed to begrudge Emma’s maneuvering, and Bliss owned and operated The Manor until her death in 1936.

To keep pace, Ross financed several improvements at the Pine Crest. He summarized them in correspondence with a prospective buyer in 1939: “Ever since I purchased the property, I have put back every cent earned and also some additional cash in the furnishing and maintenance of it. . . . Among the improvements I made are a telephone in every room and a Grinnell fireproofing system.” Ross dropped an additional $35,000 adding the inn’s east wing.

The Ross era at the inn began winding down after MacNab died in 1942. Aging himself, Ross chose to sell the inn in 1944 to the Arthur L. Roberts Hotel Company for $65,000. The company operated hotels in Florida, Minnesota and Indiana. The company’s founder, Arthur L. Roberts, arranged for title to the Pine Crest’s property to be placed in his individual name.

In September 1950, Carl Moser came to Pinehurst to manage the Pine Crest. Moser had extensive experience in hotel management and customer service. In 1941, the native New Yorker managed the Officers Club at Fort Bragg while serving in the Army Reserve. He had subsequent stints managing hotels in Greensboro (the Sedgefield Inn), Charlotte (Selwyn Hotel) and Stamford, Connecticut.

Along with his wife, Jean, the Mosers chose to live in the Pine Crest, occupying rooms 6, 8 and 10 on the first floor. Daughter Carlean joined her parents in these cozy quarters following her birth in May 1953. Arthur L. Roberts passed away in October 1952, and the trustees of his eponymously named company began liquidating its portfolio of hotels. In June 1953, Carl and Jean Moser entered into a land contract with Roberts Hotels to buy the Pine Crest Inn for $65,000 — $12,000 down and the balance paid over time.

By virtue of the deed records, Roberts’ heirs thought they owned the property, not the company. If they were right, neither Roberts Hotels nor the Mosers had any cognizable interest in the property. To resolve the issue, litigation was instituted in Moore County in September 1953. After hearing evidence, a local jury determined that (1) Roberts was acting in his capacity “as president and agent” of Roberts Hotel in effecting the 1944 purchase from Ross and MacNab; (2) it was Roberts Hotels, not Arthur Roberts individually, that paid the $65,000 purchase price; and (3) Roberts Hotels was not “under any duty to provide for the said Arthur L. Roberts in purchasing said property.”

Roberts Hotels was declared the inn’s rightful owner. Carl and Jean Moser breathed a sigh of relief; they had been dealing with the right party after all. And if in the future they wanted to sell the inn, they could do so.

Eight years later, the Mosers were ready to entertain offers, but according to daughter Carlean, her parents did not initially consider the Barretts serious prospects. After the sidewalk chat between Bob and Carl, there was no immediate follow-up. Not long afterward, however, representatives of the Barretts — probably Betty and her brother Chuck, who had experience in evaluating businesses — came to inspect the premises. Negotiations heated up, and in May 1961, the Barretts agreed to buy the Pine Crest for $125,000.

Since the Dailey side of the family was providing the capital, it was determined Betty would hold title to the property.

Unlike Carl and Jean, the Barretts chose not to reside in the Pine Crest. They bought Chatham Cottage (now Barrett Cottage) across Dogwood Road and made it the family’s home. Over the summer, Bob moved his wife and children to Pinehurst, took a crash course in hotel management, and announced a fall reopening date of October 12, 1961.

Eight-year-old Carlean Moser was heartsick to be departing the inn. “My dad broached the subject by asking whether I thought it would be fun for us to live in our own house,” recalls Moser, now 74 and living in Washington, Georgia. “I said it wouldn’t be fun if it meant I had to make my own bed or couldn’t order off a menu like I could always do at the inn.”

To Carlean the Pine Crest’s employees were like family. Some doubled as playmates. Carl Jackson, the inn’s head chef since the Donald Ross days, was a special favorite. The burly African American would spot Carlean entering the kitchen and commence beating the pots and pans hanging over the counter. The cacophonous clanging delighted the little girl. “I nicknamed Carl “Boom-Boom,” says Moser. “He was kind and fun.”

She played with guests too. At age 6, she sat on the lap of 19-year-old lodger Jack Nicklaus, in town for the 1959 North and South Amateur (which he won). ”We sat in the lobby watching the Mickey Mouse Club on television, and I wore my mouse ears,” says Moser. “Jack was very shy then. As long as I was on his lap, no one was going to bother him.” (Nicklaus bunked in room 205 in ’59; 26 years later, son Jack Jr. also roomed in 205 while winning his own North and South title).

The inevitable pitfalls of Barrett’s unlikely career switch presented the sort of scenario reminiscent of the 1980s comedy Newhart, the long-running television show about a New York City-based author of travel books, played by Bob Newhart, who abandons his former life to operate a 200 year-old Vermont inn.

In contrast to Newhart’s neighbors — Larry, Darryl and his other brother Darryl — a coterie of dedicated employees kept Barrett on track. Foremost was Jackson, who proved to be the ultimate lifer, remaining the inn’s chef until 1997, a full 61 years of employment. Starting in 1936 as “the pot washer” in the kitchen, Jackson began preparing meals about five years later.

“I started cooking under a German lady, “he told a Pilot interviewer in 1986. “She became ill and left it in my hands.” Jackson mastered a variety of Southern-style recipes. His pièce de résistance was “Chef Jackson’s Famous Pork Chop,” 22 ounces of meat “so tender you can cut through it with a fork,” effused writer John March in his 100th anniversary piece “Legends of the Pine Crest.” The famous dish is still on the menu.

Barrett insisted the kitchen serve the best cuts of prime meat. Specially ordered steaks came from Gertman’s in Boston. Freshly squeezed orange juice graced breakfast tables. Assisting Jackson in the kitchen was his apprentice and nephew, Peter Jackson. Peter had been employed at the inn for three years when the Barretts arrived and worked in tandem with his uncle for nearly 40 years. Carl Jackson’s cousins Elizabeth “Tiz” Russell and Josephine “Peanut” Russell Swinnie were sisters and permanent fixtures on the housekeeping staff. Tiz also babysat for youngsters Bobby and Peter.

Then there was Peggy Thompson, who supervised the dining room for decades, charming the guests and making a point to know them on a first-name basis. She recruited Marie Hartsell, who labored at the inn for 33 years, first on the wait staff, then as kitchen supervisor. Though Hartsell did not fancy herself a cook, she assisted in the kitchen baking pies. Her tasty banana cream became a Payne Stewart favorite.

And Betty Barrett was a worker bee too. She assumed the duties of an assistant manager, working behind the counter, preparing menus and ordering supplies. Even Betty’s mother, Mrs. Dailey, a frequent presence in Pinehurst, pitched in, assisting with the inn’s bookkeeping.

Though it took time for Bob Barrett to find his innkeeping sea legs, his personality proved perfectly suited for his position. A natural schmoozer, Barrett easily befriended guests. A major factor was his resourcefulness in arranging golf itineraries, an aspect of the job he enjoyed. During the ’60s, independent hotels like the Pine Crest had little difficulty getting starting times at the Pinehurst resort, Mid Pines and Pine Needles — a lifeblood for the inn.

Barrett also expanded the Pine Crest’s footprint. When the old telephone exchange building next to the inn was offered for sale, he outbid The Manor to get it. The revamped “Telephone Cottage” would become a favorite lodging choice for pros like Roger Maltbie and Ben Crenshaw.

Things ran relatively smoothly for the Barretts throughout the 1960s, but that changed when the Tufts family sold Pinehurst in 1970 to Malcolm McLean. His Diamondhead Corporation promptly converted vast wooded acreage into housing subdivisions, tacking on Pinehurst Country Club memberships to lot purchases. With the ranks of new club members swelling, securing tee times by the independent hotels became a nightmare. Under the new regime, outside starting times could, at best, only be reserved three days in advance.

Barrett did find a lifeline at the resort who assisted him in coping with the new order. Young Drew Gross, the first assistant to the resort’s director of golf, greased the skids for Barrett, keeping him abreast of last-minute openings on the resort’s tee sheet. The two men formed a bond that would have lasting impact.

Despite Gross’ assistance, the early 1970s were a bleak time for the Barretts. Bobby recalls his dad becoming so frustrated with the starting time debacle he considered suing Diamondhead for ruining his business. Instead, Bob and Betty decided to get out altogether. In 1974, they sold the Pine Crest to Richmond businessman Nat Armistead. The Barretts agreed to take periodic payments from the buyer and to continue managing the inn for an interim period.

The Barretts were in the midst of planning their future when tragedy struck in 1975. Betty Barrett, just 53, died suddenly at home. The family was devastated. To make matters worse, Armistead defaulted and Barrett (now in joint ownership of the inn with sons Bobby and Peter) remained saddled with a teetering business.

Barrett rededicated himself to improving the Pine Crest’s facilities. He installed air conditioning in 1977, allowing the inn to stay open during the summer. He reduced the number of rooms in the hotel to 35, increasing the size of several, and added rooms by moving out of Barrett Cottage and converting it into an eight-room headquarters for larger golf groups. When Diamondhead exited the scene, obtaining tee times at the resort eased up and new courses, like the Carolina Golf Club and The Pit, were open for play.

A 1978 change in state liquor law provided a major boost to the Pine Crest’s bottom line. North Carolina had historically been a “brown bag” state; customers brought their own booze to restaurants, and the bartender would mix their drinks. But with passage of the new law, inns and hotels could sell liquor themselves. Originally situated in the Crystal Room at the western end of the inn, the bar was ultimately moved to its current location, just off the lobby. Bill Jones, the flamboyant personality who tended the bar, began attracting regulars to the watering hole known as “Mr. B.’s.”

While Jones’ long blond hair gave him the outward appearance of a California surfer dude, he was actually a high-voltage comedian, flashing his rapid-fire albeit caustic humor. John Marsh wrote that Jones’ “rapier-like wit reminded many of comedian Don Rickles, and it was generally conceded that you weren’t really accepted within the Pinehurst community until you had been insulted by Bill Jones.”

Adding to the atmosphere at Mr. B’s were regular appearances of renowned golf writers Bob Drum, Dick Taylor and Charles Price, all bon vivants. They formed the bar’s notorious “Press Row.” A Pittsburgh Press alum, Drum was Arnold Palmer’s muse and later a feature presence on CBS golf telecasts. Taylor was the longtime editor in chief of Golf World, and Price was the author of several noteworthy books (A Golf Story: Bobby Jones, Augusta National, and the Masters Tournament and Golfer at Large), and at one time or another wrote for every golf publication worth the ink. Bob Barrett often permitted these luminaries, as well as other notable golf figures, to imbibe on the house, or at least at a steep discount. And they made the most of it.

Just about everyone in Drum’s family worked at the Pine Crest in some capacity. Son Kevin served as busboy or, as he puts it, “the relish tray girl.” Bob Drum himself served as a celebrity bartender from time to time, standing in for Jones. On one such occasion, a customer ordered a “George Dickel.” Drum, a man of substantial girth, broke a sweat rummaging through the bar in feverish efforts to locate the whiskey. Once he was ready to pour, the guest said, “Oh, and mix Coke with it.” The thought of despoiling fine Tennessee whiskey so offended Drum he suggested the man take his business elsewhere.

Barrett considered his generosity toward Press Row money well spent. He’d been in the newspaper trade himself, and the writers did provide the Pine Crest some favorable publicity. Mr. B.’s soon began appearing near the top of ubiquitous listings for “the best 19th holes in golf.”

Jones fit right in, moonlighting a golf column for The Pilot. Despite his bluster, he was a revered part of the scene, and it was a shock when Jones passed away in 1995 at age 40.

Bobby Barrett’s wife, Andy Hofmann, who has worked in reservations for 45 years, got teary-eyed recalling Jones’ passing. “Bill said he wasn’t feeling well at work on November 13th,” she says, “went home, and by the 15th he was in the hospital. He died December 5th.”

Jones’ successor behind the bar, Carl Wood (now the owner of Neville’s in Southern Pines), was at first unaware of the local luminary discount. He recalls two-time U.S. Amateur champion Harvie Ward sitting down at the bar with a friend and ordering a Bombay. “That will be $6, sir,” said Wood. A clearly mystified Harvie turned to his companion and observed, “I think he’s serious!”

The return of PGA Tour events to Pinehurst, beginning in 1973, brought increasing numbers of golf greats into the village. Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Payne Stewart, Bill Rogers, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite are just a few of the champions who stayed, ate or drank at the Pine Crest. And their appearances led to memorable anecdotes.

Barrett made friends with the great, the not-so-great and the run-of-the-mill alike. Probably his best buddy in PGA circles was Pinehurst pro Lionel Callaway. Whenever there was a March snowstorm, Bob would call on Lionel to give golf lessons in the lobby, a tradition begun by Donald Ross, who likewise provided instructional tips to snowbound guests when he owned the inn.

Callaway’s greatest contribution to the Pine Crest is the celebrated chipping board. No golfer’s Pinehurst pilgrimage is complete without trying to knock a ball into the hole in the wooden board covering the old fireplace. Ben Crenshaw has the record for consecutive chips holed — 28. Not everyone is as accurate. The fireplace mantel has more dents than a car in a demolition derby. The glass protecting the painting of Donald Ross above the fireplace was smashed so often, it was ultimately bulletproofed.

Both of Barrett’s sons became skilled golfers. Bobby Barrett made the final field of the 1969 U.S. Amateur, competed at medal play that year at Oakmont Country Club, America’s most demanding championship test. Not to be outdone by his elder sibling, Peter Barrett would subsequently make a strong run at winning the Carolinas Open. He did win the 1974 Pinehurst Country Club championship, his 283 total edging Pinehurst mogul-to-be Marty McKenzie by one shot.

Both boys were advancing in their professional lives as well, though on different tracks. Bobby obtained professional degrees at Duke and UNC. He became a CPA catering to individuals and small businesses (including the Pine Crest). His office is located on Community Road just behind the inn. Bobby also obtained a law license but never practiced. “I never lost a case,” he deadpans.

Groomed by Bob to one day succeed him as the inn’s general manager, Peter attended hotel management school. Given his own golf chops, he related well to the younger pros, like Payne Stewart, who became a friend. It was he who created a slogan touting the inn’s no frills persona: “A third-rate hotel for first rate people.” It supplemented the inn’s other tagline, employed since the Emma Bliss era: “An Inn Like a Home!” The youngest Barrett also sold real estate.

In the course of Bob Barrett’s first 37 years of the inn’s ownership, a slew of PGA Tour events were contested at Pinehurst, but no professional major championships. So it was a thrill for the 84-year-old when the USGA brought the 1999 U.S. Open to Pinehurst. And not surprisingly, both the Pine Crest and a longtime employee became involved in the lore surrounding Payne Stewart’s epic victory. Payne ate dinner at the Pine Crest after an early round of the championship and affixed a hyper-enlarged signature on the wall of the ground floor men’s room. The passage of time has rendered the script undecipherable, but his outsized signature is replicated in the lobby.

Margaret Swindell, a mainstay behind the desk for decades (you’re a newbie until you’ve been employed at the Pine Crest for at least a decade), had a memorable encounter with Stewart prior to his final round. Swindell was working at her then-primary job with Pinehurst Country Club at the Learning Center when Payne approached her counter and requested a pair of scissors. He did not like the feel of his rain jacket and wanted the sleeves trimmed away.

Swindell and a co-worker held the jacket taut while Stewart snipped. She placed the detached sleeves in a drawer, thinking nothing more about the remnants until Stewart won the championship, and a ruckus was made afterward concerning his sleeveless rain jacket. Today, the sleeves and scissors are displayed at the World Golf Hall of Fame in an exhibit titled “Style and Substance: The Life and Legacy of Payne Stewart.”

Bob Barrett’s hope that moving South would lead to a long life came to pass. He died at age 89, two months after the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. John Dempsey, the longtime president of Sandhills Community College, gave the eulogy.

“Bob lit up every room he ever entered,” said Dempsey. “He was truly the community’s innkeeper.” Dempsey, who first met Barrett while guesting at the Pine Crest many decades ago, credits Bob for persuading him to apply for the position of SCC’s president, a job he would hold for 34 years.

Though already performing the bulk of managerial duties, Peter Barrett formally became the Pine Crest’s general manager following his father’s death. But additional leadership was required, and it came from Bob’s old friend.

Drew Gross was hired in 2011 as the Pine Crest’s resident manager. Gross had been involved in a diverse array of activities since his Diamondhead days: caddying on tour, event planning, cultivating relationships with airlines for National Car Rental, and operating a company that provided retired baseball players moneymaking opportunities. It was Gross who arranged for retired greats like Sparky Lyle, Lew Burdette, Tommy Davis and Warren Spahn to bivouac at the Pine Crest during the old ballplayers’ 1992 Pinehurst golf get-together.

Recognizing the inn’s history constitutes a major part of its appeal, Gross organized a gala centennial celebration of its founding on Nov. 1, 2013. Bagpipers played, dignitaries spoke, Hoagy Carmichael’s son, Randy, performed “Stardust,” and a bronze bust of Donald Ross was unveiled.

Free drinks at Mr. B’s are a thing of the past. Head bartender Annie Ulrich makes sure of that. The Long Island native came to the Pine Crest as a fill-in barkeep during the 2014 Open. Ulrich, whose husband, Gus, is a two-time North Carolina Open champion, loves her job. “Making one person happy is great,” she says. “But at any one time, I can make 20 people happy.” The narrow passage between the piano and the bar is now called “Annie Avenue.” Even as Mr. B’s flourishes, courses like Pine Needles, Mid Pines, Southern Pines, Talamore, Mid South, Tobacco Road, etc., continue to work with the inn booking tee times.

It is true that the Pine Crest celebrates its history — the three barstools at Mr. B’s bearing brass plaques dedicated to the long departed trio of Drum, Price and Taylor; the two Donald Ross sculptures and the painting of Ross over the fireplace; the many images of long-gone golf heroes; and the tiny monument to the succession of orange cats, Marmalade or Marmaduke depending on the feline’s gender, that patrolled the porch — but this is no museum. Stop by on a weekend night when music is playing, folks are dancing and guests are chipping, all in the snug, yet somehow uncrowded, lobby. It’s vibrant, intimate and fun.

There’s no place quite like it.

2026 Feature Home Away From Home

Poem February 2026

POEM

February 2026

Past Life

On the night you read my cards,

you told me the spiraling moth

was my dead grandfather but you did not

tell me we’d be lovers, had been lovers

since the first sound waves collided

on the ocean floor.

Now I know why I felt like crying

when you traced the lines across my palm.

Why you looked away when the fire hissed.

If you’d kissed me, I would have kissed back.

When I left the dead moth for you

in the morning, paper wings outstretched

like a faerie scroll across the Three of Swords,

I did not know I was seeing my future,

spiraling toward your light until the end.

— Ashley Walshe

2026 Feature Poem

Vinegar Valentines

VINEGAR VALENTINES

Vinegar Valentines

When matters of the heart are in decline There’s sure to be a warning sign. The postman rings twice In your fool’s paradise Delivering your vinegar valentine.

Illustration by Harry Blair

Is there an easier holiday to lampoon than Valentine’s Day? We’re betting the answer is “No.” As proof, here is a collection of “Vinegar Valentines.” The cynical, sarcastic cards began to appear in the middle to late 1800s. By the turn of the century cartoonists were creating their own lines. Most of the cards reproduced here — with the exception of our contemporary “Postman” — were published in the early 1900s.

2026 Feature Vinegar Valentines

Bird Man

BIRD MAN

Bird Man

On a mission to help save a species

By Jenna Biter

Photographs by John Gessner & Todd Pusser

“I’ve always been interested in birds,” Dr. Joseph H. Carter III says, as matter-of-fact as his graying hair and beard.

The ecologist looks out from a pair of rimless glasses. He’s reclined in a dark leather chair with a knee propped up on a dark wooden desk opposite a fireplace framed by white tiles painted with mallards and other birds. A stuffed-animal opossum stares down from a shelf. Volumes including Saving Species on Private Lands and Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas line the wall behind him. “I started my life list of birds when I was 13.”

A birder’s “life list” is precisely what you’d think. It’s a running total of all the species they’ve spotted and identified. Carter has tallied 300 and some. “It’s really not that many,” he says. Most of the birds on his list are local to North Carolina, the place where his interest took flight.

Amassing an eyepopping number — say, a thousand or more — hasn’t been Carter’s life mission. That was reserved for one species in particular, the red-cockaded woodpecker.

After earning a degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and graduate degrees from North Carolina State, Carter launched his environmental consulting firm, Dr. J.H. Carter III & Associates, in 1976, when he was 26 years old. His first contract was with the North Carolina Department of Transportation consulting on the four-laning of U.S. 421 north of Wilmington.

It was in the Sandhills, where he grew up, that Carter’s devotion to the once-endangered (now-threatened) red-cockaded woodpecker transformed into one of the largest, longest-running research studies of any one species. The Sandhills Ecological Institute, a nonprofit organization Carter founded in 1998, helps run the study and is located next to his consulting firm on Midland Road.

Carter spent his boyhood in Southern Pines distracted by the flash of feathers. “I’d be watching out the windows at school,” he says. “Every day I wrote down every bird I saw, even if it was a starling or whatever.”

After school let out, Carter continued his birdwatching exploits at home. He’d walk into the family house on the “Little Nine” — the Southern Pines Golf Club’s now fallow nine holes — and right back out with binoculars dangling from his neck, disappearing into the woods bubbling with creeks and swamps in the swaths of nature the golf course didn’t occupy.

“My first pair of binoculars were my dad’s. He was in the Navy in World War II and brought his nautical binoculars back. They were about this . . . ” Carter says, measuring a great distance between his hands, “and weighed about seven or eight pounds. I probably did permanent damage to my neck wearing those things.”

Carter began banding birds when he was out of school with mononucleosis. “I got a banding permit from the federal government and just dove in,” says Carter. In the ’60s, it wasn’t difficult to acquire a permit for yard banding. Today, a citizen scientist needs to be involved with a research project to tag birds.

Carter set up a system of feeders and super-fine “mist nets.” Attracted by the food, the birds would fly into the nets, safely and temporarily captive. Carter took measurements, weighed the birds, distinguished the sex if he could, banded them and turned them loose. “I banded everything that came to the feeders,” he says. “Every day it was sunup to sundown — band, band, band, band.”

That winter Carter tagged more than 300 evening grosbeaks, 400 pine siskins and 900 purple finches traveling from Canada in a winter finch invasion. After he recovered from his illness, his hobby remained. He zigzagged across the Sandhills banding with his birder-mentor, a woman named Mary Wintyen. After getting his driver’s license, his territory expanded: Drowning Creek, Little River, the local lakes.

“I was going to the lakes looking at the waterfowl,” Carter says. “Other kids were doing teenage stuff. I was out there crawling around in the woods, trying to find neat things. I kept up with snakes and salamanders and all that stuff.”

But neither snakes nor salamanders — not even waterfowl, northern finches or other birds — would weave through Carter’s life like the red-cockaded woodpecker, a species he saw for the first time in September 1963 near the 12th green of the golf club.

Red-cockadeds are smallish woodpeckers, slightly longer than a new No. 2 pencil from eraser to the blunt end. The birds are almost entirely black and white, but the males wear a cockade, a tuft of red feathers on each side of its head, that gives them their name. Native to forests across the southeastern United States, their homes of choice are old longleaf pines, where they’ll peck themselves cozy cavities in which to roost and nest.

“After they make a cavity, they dress up the tree, and the tree gets a reddish appearance. Then they peck what we call resin wells in the tree,” Carter explains. “Because the tree’s alive, it bleeds resin, and it eventually turns the tree white. We call them candlesticks in the forest.”

If the sap has dulled to a dirty, yellowish gray, the red-cockaded woodpeckers have vacated long ago. Carter remembers seeing abandoned cavities while crisscrossing Moore County with Wintyen. “You’d see them on the golf courses. You’d see them on the side of the road,” he says. Birds were still active but their numbers seemed to be declining, and Carter was curious.

“I’ve been interested in the red-cockaded woodpecker since I was 15. That was when the first paper I co-authored was published in our Carolina Bird Club journal, the Chat,” says Carter. He and Wintyen wrote the paper for the bulletin in 1965. They described the cavities they’d seen. Where they were. What they were like. Only one nest, possibly two, was active, and Carter didn’t know the cause of the species’ decline. At the time, it wasn’t clear.

“One thing just built on another and the woodpecker got listed as an endangered species,” he says.

Congress protected the bird under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. It was around then that Carter graduated from UNCW and applied to NC State for his master’s degree. Initially rejected, he decided to plead his case in person and pitch his plan for a sweeping study of a the red-cockaded woodpecker. “Survey everything, tag all the trees, catch all the birds, band all the birds, and then just track what was going on to answer some of these questions: Why are the birds decreasing? How many are there? All the basic demographic questions you need to answer,” Carter says, outlining the elephant-size task.

The secretary for the head of the Zoology Department was out, but Carter could see that the head of the department himself — Dr. David E. Davis — was in his office, seated just around the corner. “He spoke, like, six languages. He could lecture in Russian. He’s way, way up there,” Carter says. “I asked if I could talk to him and he said yes. I sat down. I didn’t know I was supposed to be scared of this guy. He listened, thanked me and sent me on my way.”

Later Carter got a phone call from an ornithologist he knew at NC State. So long as he could finish his master’s in a year, he was in. He began surveying Southern Pines, Pinehurst, McCain, the northern part of the Sandhills Game Lands and the western part of Fort Bragg. “It was getting a population estimate as well as being able to characterize the habitats they were in. You know, how old were the pines? How dense were the pines? How much of a midstory, scrub oaks and whatever?” Carter says. “So I did all that and then I graduated with my master’s degree.”

Banding the birds would have to wait until a sprawling study was funded. “We started banding in ’79,” Carter says. The grant secured money for red-cockaded woodpecker research across 400 square miles of the Sandhills. Originally the study lived at NC State. Eventually it moved to the Sandhills Ecological Institute, which was founded and runs — with the help of Carter — to study and preserve the longleaf pine ecosystem.

Through decades of bands-on-birds, boots-in-field research, scientists could finally answer the whys behind the red-cockadeds decline, a mystery that long ago grabbed the attention of a self-admitted obsessive teen. Loss of habitat was one factor: Across the centuries, tens of millions of acres of longleaf pine had been logged. Moreover, the policy of total fire suppression, adopted in the 20th century, was harming the biodiversity of the still-standing longleaf forests.

In retrospect, Carter knew something was off since the time he was just a curious kid exploring the woods with his dad’s old binoculars. There were no birds to see where turkey oaks and vines and shrubs crowded a pine forest’s midstory. But the aha moment didn’t come until years later when Carter surveyed Fort Bragg’s blast sites, where fire was the way of things. “All of a sudden, you can see to the horizon. There is no midstory,” Carter says, a touch of awe warming his gravelly voice.

There were woodpeckers all over the place. There were songbirds all over the place. To Carter, it was like discovering Atlantis. “You can’t have a longleaf pine forest without frequent, low-intensity fire, and its cycle and its nutrients.”

By the end of the ’80s, the red-cockaded woodpecker population had leveled, and there was potential for an uptick. Sometime around then, Dr. Jeffrey Walters, who had been involved with cockaded research since early days, secured funding to determine whether drilling artificial cavities into trees could boost the woodpecker’s numbers. As it turned out, it could, and Carter’s firm still drills artificial cavities today. You can even spot one of his company’s nests on Pinehurst’s No. 2 golf course.

Thanks to conservation efforts, the red-cockaded woodpecker was downgraded from federally endangered to threatened in October 2024. There are now an estimated 7,800 active clusters across 11 states in the Southeast — up from an all-time low of roughly 1,500 in the early ’70s when the Endangered Species Act became law.

As a threatened species, red-cockaded woodpeckers are still protected by the act. According to Carter, they are a “conservation-reliant species,” and their numbers will drop if management ceases.

Carter pushes back from his office desk. His cast of characters watch attentively from their fireplace tiles and shelf as he prepares to leave. “It’s a labor of — I hate to say labor of love, that sounds tacky as hell,” Carter says, “but it takes people who are willing to basically dedicate their lives to projects like this. Whether they’re studying elephants or bacteria or whatever, it takes folks like that. We’ve all benefited from each other and the sacrifices that we were willing to make to keep these things going.”

2026 Bird Man Feature

No Day at the Beach

NO DAY AT THE BEACH

No Day at the Beach

George Washington’s 1791 Southern Tour

By Warren L. Bingham

As the hero of the American Revolution and a man of action, George Washington knew his presence mattered. Shortly after becoming president, he planned to visit all 13 states, “to see and be seen” while promoting the new Constitution and the federal government.

By 1791 Washington had made trips to the Middle and Northern states. That spring he would conduct the Southern Tour, traveling to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Except for brief visits in the 1760s as a landowner in North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp, Washington had never been south of Yorktown.

The Southern Tour was the most challenging of Washington’s journeys. The president would leave from the nation’s temporary capital, Philadelphia, and be away over three months to reach the farthest points in South Carolina and Georgia. Roads were bad. Crossing water was often an adventure. Inns were few and far between, and the standard unreliable. Horses required proper provisions. Bad weather, clouds of dust and even highway robbery loomed as threats — though one supposes the prospect of holding up Washington and his traveling party would have required an extraordinarily witless band of criminals.

Nonetheless, the 59-year-old Washington and eight traveling companions embarked on the Southern Tour on the first day of spring of 1791. Cabinet members Thomas Jefferson and Henry Knox escorted the entourage from Philadelphia to Delaware. Washington left a detailed itinerary with Vice President Adams and his cabinet members if they sought to get mail or messages to him.

Washington was paid a whopper of a salary as the first president, $25,000, but he covered his own expenses for his residence, office and presidential duties, including travel. He paid his household staff and secretaries from his earnings.

The presidential entourage included seven servants from his Philadelphia home, two of them enslaved men on loan from Mount Vernon. William Jackson, a longtime secretary of Washington’s, served as top aide on the trip. Jackson, an officer during the Revolution and a Charlestonian, was young and single, making him ideal to take along on the journey. The trip was considered too arduous for a lady, so first lady Martha Washington remained at home, even though she was a veteran of some wartime camps.

Transportation included the president’s own cream-colored coach and four, a baggage wagon pulled by two horses, and a few extra saddle horses. Washington’s personal mount, Prescott, a tall white parade horse, made the trip. Quite aware of looking presidential, Washington, who stood 6 feet, 2 inches tall, made a dashing impression riding high in Prescott’s saddle. Folklore suggests that a greyhound named Cornwallis accompanied the travelers, but alas, the presence of the hound is likely a myth.

Washington was a planner, and he immersed himself in the journey’s details. He consulted with his secretaries and gentlemen travelers to understand the roads and inns of the South. The president decided to go south along the fall line and the Coastal Plain and to make the return north through the Piedmont, the higher land between the Lowcountry and the mountains. He charted a route that gave him a good feel for the region, though he specifically wanted to visit Charleston, South Carolina, then the fourth-largest city in the country and a place of influence and affluence. Georgia’s two notable places were Savannah and Augusta, so he was going no farther south than those towns. Atlanta didn’t yet exist.

The trip from Philadelphia to North Carolina was a memorable one. The travelers endured near-calamities while crossing both the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis and the Occoquan River in Virginia. Stops in Fredericksburg, Richmond and Petersburg went well, however, and represented Washington’s typical reception. The president was feted by dinners, dances and cannon salutes. Upon his arrival, parades ensued, church bells rang and choirs sang. Eighteenth century drinking was impressive and many toasts were offered — usually 13 (one for each state, of course) with a few more thrown in for good measure.

Hosts dressed up in their finest clothes, and women wore sashes adorned with words of tribute such as “Long Live Washington!” Some towns were lit up with torches, candles and bonfires, a prospect that would have alarmed any self-respecting fire marshal, had such public safety civil servants existed then.

Elected officials, Masons, ministers and veterans of the Revolution were received by the president. He sometimes attended church services and occasionally had the luxury of riding Prescott around town simply to see who he might see.

Traveling between the larger towns wasn’t easy. Local militias often escorted the president, stirring up a choking dust. The inns along the road were often “indifferent,” a term Washington used to politely describe barely acceptable accommodations for man and beast.

On Saturday, April 16, 1791, nearly four weeks after leaving Philadelphia, wind, rain and lightning filled the air as the president and his party made their way into North Carolina. Washington wrote:

The uncomfortableness of it, for Men and Horses, would have induced me to put up; but the only inn short of Hallifax having no stables in wch. the horses could be comfortable & no rooms or beds which appeared tolerable, & every thing else having a dirty appearance, I was compelled to keep on to Hallifax.

At the end of this stormy day, Washington crossed the Roanoke River, arriving in Halifax around six in the evening for his first true taste of North Carolina. Any visit Washington had previously made to the Great Dismal Swamp hardly counts — it’s like saying you’ve been to Dallas after changing planes at DFW.

It’s not certain where Washington lodged during his two-night visit to Halifax, but it was probably Eagle Tavern. As much as practicable, he refused private lodging during his presidential journeys, either paying his way or agreeing to stay in community-provided accommodation. At times during the Southern Tour, however, there simply wasn’t a suitable public place available. Of course, the horses had to be properly cared for and fed — and some public houses weren’t even reliable enough for that.

Halifax was home to several notable North Carolinians, among them, Congressman John Baptist Ashe, future Gov. William R. Davie, and Willie Jones, who had led North Carolina’s opposition to the Constitution and was no fan of the federal government. Indeed, Jones suggested he would receive Washington as a great man — but not as president of the United States.

Though Washington was greeted politely and treated respectably in Halifax, there’s no doubt that the presence of Jones tempered the enthusiasm. After all, Washington was in town for only two days, but the locals had to live with Jones long after the president was gone.

Samuel Johnston, an Edenton lawyer and the squire of Hayes Plantation, wrote in a late-May letter to James Iredell that “the reception of the president in Halifax was not such that we could wish tho in every other part of the country he was treated with proper attention.” In 2011 — with the specter of Jones long dead and buried — Halifax commemorated the Southern Tour on Historic Halifax Day.

When he reached Tarboro, Washington was impressed by the bridge — a rarity in 1791 — over the Tar River. Apparently, the number of cannon in Tarboro was in agreement with the number of bridges. Washington wrote, “We were received at this place by as good a salute as could be given with one piece of artillery.” Reading Blount, a veteran of the Revolution and a member of the state’s prominent Blount family, led the president’s entertainment.

Washington made his way from Tarboro to Greenville along roads that no longer exist, but his route probably tracked near today’s Route 33. In Greenville, the president, ever a farmer, was pleased to learn about local crops, including tobacco, and was intrigued by tar-making and its commercial value. Nonetheless, Washington wrote that Greenville was a trifling place. Greenvillians shouldn’t fret; the president would say the same thing about Charlotte.

After a night near present-day Ayden, during which Washington worried about the horses going uncovered without stables, the travelers passed near Fort Barnwell en route to New Bern. Likely edging out Wilmington as the largest town in North Carolina in 1791, New Bern turned out smartly for Washington. Mounted militia and town leaders met the president’s party several miles outside town to act as escort. The city provided a new but never occupied home for the president’s stay, the John Wright Stanly home, which still stands and is part of today’s Tryon Palace complex.

On his second night in town, Washington was entertained at a gala at Tryon Palace, and his dance card was full. In recent years, a yellow gown worn that evening by Mrs. Ferebe Guion was shown and evaluated on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow.” The dress, value unknown, remains in the hands of Guion descendants.

In an age of slow and unreliable mail, Isaac Guion, Ferebe’s husband, took advantage of the presidential traveling party and their Southern passage to send a letter to a friend in Georgia via the president. Imagine the conversation. “Uh, Mr. President, as long as you’re going . . .” I suspect William Jackson, the secretary, handled it, but indeed the letter was carried to Georgia and ultimately delivered.

In the 1940s, A.B. Andrews Jr., a Raleigh lawyer and history buff, came across the letter, acquired it, and presented it to the town of New Bern. It’s kept in the archives in the Kellenberger Room, a wonderful collection of local, regional and state history and genealogy at the New Bern-Craven County Public Library. With all these ties to the Southern Tour, New Bern held major commemorations of Washington’s visit in 1891 and again in 2015.

A cannon salute roared as Washington left New Bern, and the presidential party traveled through Jones County, a namesake of Halifax’s Willie Jones. Longtime Pollocksville mayor and avocational historian Jay Bender wonders why Washington stayed so far inland as he went south from New Bern. The old King’s Highway, the post road that went from Boston to Charleston, came through New Bern and tracked more directly to Wilmington. The reason might have been lodging and services for man and horse, since Shine’s Tavern in Jones County, where Washington put up for the night, enjoyed a good reputation.

The travelers arrived at the coast, a few miles from Topsail Beach, on Saturday, April 23. By late afternoon they linked up with present-day Holly Ridge and the King’s Highway, today’s U.S. 17. Washington lodged at Sage’s Inn, one of the establishments he labeled as “indifferent,” though another traveler of the era described the proprietor, Robert Sage, as a “fine jolly Englishman.”

On Easter Sunday, the presidential party followed the King’s Highway toward Wilmington, resting in Hampstead. Some claim that Hampstead takes its name from Washington requesting ham instead of oysters for his breakfast that morning. There is a large live oak hard by U.S. 17 in Hampstead that supposedly is where the travelers rested. A local DAR chapter has kept the tree marked as the Washington Oak for a century or more.

At some point on Easter, Washington wrote a long diary entry in which he observed that the land between New Bern and Wilmington was the most barren country he ever beheld. The travelers had gone through a vast longleaf pine savanna, and Washington had never seen anything like it.

While Washington attended church services several times during the Southern Tour, he made no mention of Easter or attending a service in Wilmington. The Port City’s streets were lined with people to catch sight of America’s hero as Washington was led to his lodgings, a home on Front Street provided by the widow Quince, who gave up her home for the president while she stayed with family elsewhere in town.

Historian Chris Fonvielle, an emeritus professor at UNC Wilmington, says that Wilmington entertained Washington lavishly, and that it was evident that the president “enjoyed the attention from the ladies and drinking with the gentlemen.” Indeed, Washington’s diary indicates there were 62 ladies at the ball. Fonvielle confirms that Washington spent time at two taverns, Dorsey’s and Jocelyn’s. Tavern keeper Lawrence Dorsey famously told the president, “Don’t drink the water!”

Washington’s party continued south on Tuesday the 26th with several stops in Brunswick County. The president met with Benjamin Smith of Belvidere Plantation. Smith was prominent in many ways, a future governor and large landholder, and an officer under Washington’s watch at some point during the Revolution. Southport was originally named Smithville in Benjamin Smith’s honor as he donated the land for the town. Bald Head Island is still known to some as Smith Island, as its original owner was Benjamin Smith’s grandfather, Thomas Smith.

After a night at Russ’ Tavern, about 25 miles south of Wilmington, the travelers stopped at William Gause’s Tavern on the mainland side of what’s now Ocean Isle Beach. Local lore says that the group took breakfast there and went for a swim in the swash, waters that are now the Intracoastal Waterway. The story goes that the president hung his clothes to dry in a large live oak by Gause’s that still stands. Washington crossed into South Carolina early on the afternoon of April 27.

The president continued his travels through South Carolina and Georgia and returned north to North Carolina in late May with stops in Charlotte, present-day Concord, Salisbury, Old Salem and Guilford Courthouse. Washington moved fast on the northbound return. His departures were often at four and five a.m. after one-night stays. In Charlotte, the president was hosted by Thomas Polk, a former officer during the Revolution and the great-uncle of future president James K. Polk. Washington lodged at Cook’s Inn on the corner of Trade and Church Streets where reportedly he left behind his powder box — not gunpowder but powder for body and hair.

Washington enjoyed two nights in Old Salem. Though he planned to spend only one evening, the president agreed to spend another day upon learning that North Carolina governor Alexander Martin was on the way to meet him but wouldn’t arrive until the next day. The president was impressed by the Moravians’ “small but neat village” and their ingenuity, having devised a clever water distribution system.

Before the creation of Greensboro, the county seat of Guilford was Guilford Courthouse, the site of a significant battle of the Revolution just 10 years earlier. Throughout the Southern Tour, Washington enjoyed seeing the battlegrounds that he had long read about. This was no different. “I examined the ground on which the action between Generals Greene and Lord Cornwallis commenced,” wrote Washington.

His last stop in North Carolina was an overnight stay with Dudley Gatewood in Caswell County, just south of the Virginia line. Gatewood’s home was disassembled and moved to Hillsborough during the 1970s, where it was reassembled and served many years as a Mexican restaurant. Sadly, the home gradually fell into disrepair and was torn down in 2024.

The travelers continued north through Virginia, spending time at Mount Vernon and in Georgetown, Maryland, where the president met with area residents to make plans and arrangements to create the new federal capital on the Potomac. Washington celebrated July 4 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the travelers arrived back in Philadelphia on July 6. Church bells pealed to honor his return. The odometer had turned nearly 1,900 miles and Washington noted that he had gained flesh while the horses had lost it.

America’s first president never again went south of Virginia, but his visit to North Carolina and the South in 1791 was a great success. The Stanly House in New Bern and Salem Tavern in Old Salem are the only extant places where the first president slept, but the legacy is alive and well. The journey was a remarkable physical feat, and politically, Washington’s presence among the citizens and leaders of the nascent United States created considerable good will and acceptance of the new federal government, helping to cement the legacy of 1776.

2026 Feature No Day at the Beach

All the Right Moves

ALL THE RIGHT MOVES

All the Right Moves

When downsizing is the perfect choice

By Deborah Salomon
Photographs by John Gessner

Residential downsizing for senior couples can be a challenge. Cherished possessions may be dispersed, gardens and neighbors left behind. Creating a rewarding life with curated furnishings, new fabrics and colors requires time, expertise, motivation and energy. That calls for a Cynthia Birdsall. “I ran the renewal. I was the architect, general contractor, interior designer,” says Cynthia of the Birdsalls’ move from Dunross, a 9,000 square foot, six bedroom, 10 bathroom, three-story castle with workshops and outbuildings built for Donald Ross in Knollwood, into a 4,500 square foot single-story two-bedroom 1970s “ranch” in an over-55 development. Finding that size house on one floor took two years.

The Birdsalls maintain an active social life. “We weren’t ready for assisted living. We still wanted a neighborhood,’’ says Cynthia. She hired the painter, the cabinetmakers and electrician. “The guys trusted me.” Bruce Birdsall’s health and mobility was an impetus for change. Cynthia’s renovation not only included friendly doorsills but space suitable for resident caregivers, if needed in the future for either of them. During the transition the couple moved into an apartment for two years. Furnishings that could not be used were stored.

Two bathrooms were gutted. “We had to take out a wall to build a shower in one,” Cynthia says. While designing space for their new lifestyle, Cynthia did not ignore their enthusiasms. “I’m all about wine,” she says. Several temperature-regulated “wine rooms” store and display her collection. Bruce has a coffee station, stockpiles single malt Scotch and keeps a stable of vintage cars and motorbikes. The couple entertains, thus the bar with refrigeration, icemaker and tools to suit a professional bartender. Against an exterior wall they added an adorable, enclosed garden with a wrought iron gate and a variety of surfaces including grass, concrete, pebbles and water where two elderly miniature French bulldogs hang out, weather permitting.

Frequent guests may remember leather-upholstered chairs and a stretch sofa that survived the move from Dunross. Cynthia is a seventh-generation Texan comfortable with fur, skins and leather, which appear throughout. In contrast, over the simple, 12-seat dining room table — made from a single mesquite tree — hangs an ornate, sparkling chandelier. More Paris than Dallas. She doesn’t assign a period or style to her furnishings. “It’s just what I’ve collected over many years because I love it.”

Cynthia chose an interesting black-coffee hue for the engineered flooring, an ideal background for light-colored area rugs. The sparsely furnished two-part living room and oversized Carolina room illustrate a concept originating in the foyer: space as a décor element. The foyer contains only a table. But what a table it is.

“We wanted our guests to have room to move around,’’ Cynthia explains.

Walls are a soft vanilla throughout. Woodwork, including crown moldings, is finished in light-reflecting semi-gloss. Paintings hang singly rather than in groups, creating drama. Windows are shaded by white venetian blinds, never drapes.

This absence of “stuff” conveys calm, something uber-active Cynthia seeks and appreciates.

Exceptions exist, particularly in the kitchen, where Cynthia had some wall cabinets removed to create a pantry and transformed the island base into shelves for her cookbook collection. A quartz countertop splattered in bright blue adds pop. Meal prep becomes happy time.

“When we cook for the family (with children and grandchildren) we cook as a group, and dance around,” she says.

Perhaps the most interesting space is the master suite with seating area, an impressive 18-foot-by-28 foot corner room furnished in custom-made pieces designed by Cynthia. Their shapes suggest frill-free Scandinavian modes popular in the early 1950s. In contrast, the showstopper is a cabinet from Bruce’s family that contains Cynthia’s perfume bottle collection.

The AARP reports that downsizing can have both positive and negative effects on seniors. A survey found that 75 percent of Americans ages 50 and over have a strong preference for staying in their longtime family home. The Birdsalls have had other homes and lived at Dunross only a few years, lessening the emotional attachment to any one place. Their upscale downsize happened under favorable conditions with enviable results: familiar neighborhood, same friends, comfortable furnishings, safe environment. They even have worked out sleeping arrangements for visiting children and grandchildren since the house has only two bedrooms — option one: rent the Pinehurst church that is now a residence.

Downsizing wears many faces, from worry to acceptance and relief. This face, thank goodness, is smiling. “This was the right decision for us,” Cynthia says.

2026 All the Right Moves Feature

Poem January 2026

POEM

The Other Side of the Mirror

“Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze . . .
And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away,
just like a bright silvery mist.”

— Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass

There’s always a reason I’d rather stay home,

as I brush my hair, gaze into my reflection, sit

before the dresser where I combed my curls

as a girl, forever getting ready for the life

that hadn’t arrived yet. Mirrors remained

unfazed, as I exchanged one image for another,

changed my hairstyles and hats, traced fingers

along a scar, abandoned myself for imperfections.

I have come close to escaping into another world,

always about to leave or about to live, my eyes

child-like, clear as glass, considering what time

it must be . . . to keep from disappearing

into my own unbreakable stare.

— Linda Annas Ferguson

2026 Feature Poem

The Winter Blues

THE WINTER BLUES

The Winter Blues

There’s no better time to have the blues than in winter, and the Arts Council of Moore County seconds that emotion with its exhibit “The Winter Blues.” The artworks in the juried show can be viewed at the Campbell House Galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave. in Southern Pines, beginning the 9th of January. In total 122 pieces were submitted by 74 artists in media ranging from paintings and glass to ceramics and fiber, and of that number, 95 works by 64 artists were accepted for the show. The art was judged by the ACMC Visual Arts Committee comprised of Kate Curtin, Katherine MacRae, Stuart Fulghum, Paula Montgomery and Nanette Zeller. The pieces will remain on display at the Campbell House until February 11.

2026 Feature The Winter Blues

The Art of Making Merry

THE ART OF MAKING MERRY

The Art of Making Merry

A special feel for Christmas

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

‘Tis said that on a crisp, clear December night the lights on Evon and Jerry Jordan’s showplace home are visible from the International Space Station — hyperbole until viewed with roof lines draped in tiny white lights and a lineup of trees across the façade.

Christmas is a full-time job for the Jordans and their helpers. Half a dozen indoor trees plus those outside — the largest overlooking the pool — illustrate how these great-grandparents make an art of making merry.

The dozen trees or maybe more

Are decorated tip to floor

With ornaments from every child

Rambunctious, meek and mild.

“Evon’s always had a special feel for Christmas,” Jerry says. “She’s decorated ever since I’ve known her.”

Such a show demands an audience: “I’m one of eight kids,” Evon says. That adds up to more cousins, in-laws, nieces, nephews than a five-legged dog has toes. Forty, to be exact, who visit regularly.

Some tree themes and colors change from year to year, but the Jordans aren’t into silver and royal blue Picasso-esque ornaments.

Holiday greenery

Adds to the scenery

But the dominant color

Just has to be red,

Including the coverlet spread on a bed.

The 10-foot tree rising beside a graceful hallway staircase illustrates another Christmas décor principle: Too much is never enough.

Baubles and bangles

Ribbons in bows,

Tinsel, poinsettias

Rows upon rows . . .

At parties guests usually gravitate to the kitchen, right? The Jordans’ has a marble-topped island the size of Manhattan.

Their kitchen is white as a Christmas Eve snow,

Here’s where for cookies Santa surely will go.

Except last year brought a buffet surprise —

Exotic yummies from the land of the Thais.

Beauty, love — all of the above — and a creche complete the Jordans’ holiday scene because, as Jerry says, “That’s what Christmas is all about.”

2025 Feature The Art of Making Merry

Category: Feature

HISTORY IN THE BACKYARD

History in the Backyard

Leaving a legacy on Pinehurst No. 2

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

Home Away From Home

The legend and allure of the Pine Crest

POEM

February 2026

Past Life

VINEGAR VALENTINES

Vinegar Valentines

When matters of the heart are in decline There’s sure to be a warning sign. The postman rings twice In your fool’s paradise Delivering your vinegar valentine.

BIRD MAN

Bird Man

On a mission to help save a species

NO DAY AT THE BEACH

No Day at the Beach

George Washington’s 1791 Southern Tour

ALL THE RIGHT MOVES

All the Right Moves

When downsizing is the perfect choice

POEM

The Other Side of the Mirror

THE WINTER BLUES

The Winter Blues

THE ART OF MAKING MERRY

The Art of Making Merry

A special feel for Christmas