Marooned by the NFL

MAROONED BY THE NFL

Marooned by the NFL

The Champions from Coal Country

by Ron Johnson

In the sweltering late summer of any given year, frenzied and potentially delusional NFL fans wake up thinking this might just be their year. Inside the generally hospitable confines of establishments like Jimmy’s Famous Seafood in Baltimore, Chickie’s and Pete’s in Philly and Bobby Hebert’s Cajun Cannon just outside New Orleans, you might even hear someone yell, “Super Bowl!” The story lines and scenarios spun by NFL fans are too numerous, and often too ludicrous, to follow.

In 1925, however, not a single hewer, pitman or digger in the rugged coal country of southeastern Pennsylvania was delirious enough to believe the Pottsville Maroons, just months out of a semi-pro B-League, would play well enough to win the National Football League Championship. But that’s exactly what they did.

The Maroons officially entered the National Football League in September of that year when Dr. John “Doc” Striegel, a local surgeon thought to be a bit on the eccentric side, paid a $500 franchise fee and a $1200 cash guarantee on behalf of the upstart crew from Pennsylvania’s hard coal country to join the league of 20 teams.

The Maroons were on something of a hot streak, having won the title the previous year in the Anthracite League. As if you couldn’t guess from the name, it was essentially a coal miner’s alliance, and the Maroons captured the 1924 title in their one and only year as members.

From 1920-23, even before competing in the Anthracite League, they had been an independent franchise called the Pottsville Eleven. Pottsville was something more than a wide spot in the road, but not much more. It was a town of roughly 20,000 people, many of whom were involved in coal mining after a significant coal seam was discovered there in 1790. King Charles II granted the land that would become Pottsville to William Penn. The town was named after John Pott, who had an anthracite forge there in 1795. Later, in 1829, D.G. Yuengling opened what many people consider to be the oldest brewery in the United States, in Pottsville. So, when you are hoisting a Yuengling Lager on game day, the can or bottle you are drinking from will still list “Pottsville, PA” as the city of origin. And while anthracite coal fell out of favor after World War II, Yuengling is still the beer that makes Pottsville semi-famous.

Modern Pottsville is not an unpleasant place — even charming in an old-school kind of way. Like many aging coal mining towns, there are signs of decline, but Pottsville still has a busy main street with businesses, retail stores and small hoagie shops churning out cheesesteaks, “wit or wittout.” There is little crime. Families thrive. The Yuengling Brewery sits on the side of a hill and continues to be one of the little city’s focal points. And, posted right in the middle of the central business district, is a historical marker that tells the story of the beloved Maroons of the National Football League.

The Maroons got their name in 1924 when Doc Striegel asked Joe Zacko, a local sporting goods store owner, to supply 24 uniforms to upgrade the team’s look. When the order form asked what color he wanted the suits to be, the box was not populated. So, when the outfits arrived in maroon, the team had its name. No Miners, Rocks, Mountaineers, Brewers or anything else — they were the Pottsville Maroons.

Coming off the 1924 Anthracite League Championship, Dick Rauch, the player/coach, knew he had a diverse mixture of skilled players and rugged brawlers on his squad — a combination of good college performers and tough coal miners. But were they good enough to compete at the top tier of football? After all, this was the NFL, even if it was an embryonic NFL.

Many of the Maroon players were locals themselves and typically had second jobs. Some pushed heavy coal carts, others were surveyors or land men for coal companies. Some had professional careers in engineering and dentistry.

Coach Rauch was no joke. Besides being a football player and coach, the Penn State graduate was a noted ornithologist, an electrician, a steelworker and a graduate engineer. He spent his off seasons studying the nesting habits of various birds. He was an accomplished poet and later explored the Antarctic for the U.S. government, studying our frozen feathered friends at the bottom of the world. On the gridiron, he was the first professional football coach to institute daily practices and is credited with inventing the screen pass.

In the early days of the NFL, the building of a team roster was an informal process. Players were often selected from a pool of free agents, mostly on a regional basis, and from colleges close to the team’s base of operation. The wealthier teams could cast a somewhat wider net. There was no formal way of procuring players until 1936, when Philadelphia Eagles owner Bert Bell suggested, and the league unanimously accepted, a method that would become the NFL draft.

In the league’s inaugural draft, the University of Chicago’s Jay Berwanger, the Heisman Trophy winner, was the first pick, chosen by Bell’s Eagles. Instead of playing for Philadelphia, Berwanger opted out, choosing a more stable and safer career — he became a foam rubber salesman.

In their initial NFL season, the Maroons suited up Tony Latone, nicknamed the “Human Howitzer,” a bona fide star of the era. The Chicago Bears’ Red Grange, the “Galloping Ghost,” said of Latone, “For my money, he was the most football player I have ever seen.”

Latone, a player of Lithuanian descent, did not attend college and had worked in the nearby Pennsylvania coal mines beginning at age 11. He later said he was paid $125 for daytime games and $75 for night games, more than he made hauling coal by the ton. Many people regarded him as the most productive rusher during the decade of the ’20s. Bears owner George Halas once commented, “If Latone had gone to college and played college ball, he would certainly have been one of the greatest pro players of all time.”

Charlie Berry, an All-American at Lafayette College, an hour’s drive from Pottsville, played end for the Maroons and led the league in scoring on his way to being named All-Pro. Berry also caught for three major league baseball teams and was an umpire in Major League Baseball’s American League, as well as a head linesman in the NFL for more than 20 years, officiating 12 NFL championship games. In Major League Baseball, he umpired five complete World Series and five All Star Games. In fact, Berry umpired the World Series, officiated an NFL game and worked the College All-Star Game (a long defunct exhibition between college stars and the NFL champions), all in one year. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980.

Walter French, a West Point grad who had a .303 lifetime batting average with Connie Mack’s world champion Philadelphia Athletics, was a late addition to the backfield for the Maroons and averaged 5.4 yards per carry during the 1925 season. Because of his mobility, French was the perfect complement for the bone-breaking Latone. After his dual careers in football and baseball were over in 1936, French returned to the U.S. Military Academy to coach baseball from 1937-1942. He was a Reserve officer in the Army and after World War II went on active duty with the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

It was clear Rauch had more than a random band of misfits.

The Maroons were covered by the Pottsville Republican’s young reporter John Henry O’Hara, who would become a star in his own right, later joining the staff of The New Yorker and writing Butterfield 8 and Appointment in Samarra. When they took the field in Minersville Park, a 5,000-seat facility comparable to a modern-day high school stadium, most fans expected their spirited entrance — fueled by the brass of the local high school band — would be the only highlight of their NFL debut. They opened with what was essentially an exhibition game against a team from a Philly suburban neighborhood, Colwin-Darby, and won it, 48-0.

A week later, the time came for the NFL schedule to start, and there was a noticeable buzz about town. Maroons games were suddenly big events, and as one local put it, “They had taken on the significance of a heavyweight fight.” It was not unusual for Pottsville to draw 10,000 ecstatic fans, half the town’s population and double the capacity of Minersville Park.

The Maroons started their NFL slate with a resounding 28-0 victory over Buffalo, before dropping a sloppy and uninspired 6-0 decision to Providence in their second outing. It was not lost on coach Rauch that the team was one-dimensional and predictable. After adding the elusive French to the roster, Pottsville then shut out its next four opponents. They went into the game with the Frankford Yellow Jackets (forerunners to the Philadelphia Eagles) with a strong 5-1 record but lost ignobly to their natural rival from 100 miles south, 20-0. Rauch rallied his troops and the Maroons won their next seven games, including a 31-0 victory over Curley Lambeau’s legendary Green Bay Packers. During that run, they stunned the Yellow Jackets in a rematch, 49-0.

When the regular season ended, the teams with the two best records had not crossed paths. Realizing money had been left on the table, the arrogant and over-confident Chicago Cardinals challenged the Maroons to a season finale, which was immediately billed by the media as the league championship game. The Cardinals never dreamed they could lose. A throng of fans from eastern Pennsylvania accompanied the team to Chicago while others watched the progress on cardboard cut-outs parading across the stage in a Pottsville theater. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “In the face of a driving attack by the Eastern eleven, the Cardinals curled up and were smeared in the snow on the gridiron of Comiskey Park yesterday, 21-7.” The Maroons got off the train in Pottsville and were greeted by a large contingent of celebrating fans. The impossible had happened, and some members of the league apparently didn’t take it well.

As the coal dust cleared, Pottsville finished the league season 10-2-0, the NFL’s best record. As they celebrated their championship with two meaningless exhibition games to end the season (both of which they won), the word got around Pottsville that something was brewing — not at Yuengling but in the dusty NFL offices in Columbus, Ohio.

Playing with the Best author Lenny Wagner writes, “In November of 1925, after the game the Maroons had lost to the Frankford Yellow Jackets, a Philadelphia promoter by the name of Frank Schumann approached the teams proposing that the top NFL team play a post-season exhibition game against the Notre Dame All-Stars, which were led by the famous backfield known as the Four Horsemen. Presumably, the game would be played in Philadelphia. Both owners signed on for the game. Sheppard H. Royle, president of the Frankford franchise, assuming that the team to play Notre Dame would be his Yellow Jackets, never raised the issue of territory, or anything else. However, on November 29th, the Maroons turned the tables on Frankfort, pummeling them 49-0. After the Maroons beat the Cardinals the following week, in a post-season game arranged by the Chicago team, by a score of 21-7, they were declared the NFL champions and were in line to play Notre Dame at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. It was at that point that Royle made a protest to the league, which was backed by then-commissioner Joe Carr, and the other owners.”

What would happen following the Notre Dame game would be devastating to the Maroons and their faithful. The All-Stars comprised the bulk of Norwegian-born coach Knute Rockne’s unbeaten ’24 team famously nicknamed the “Four Horsemen and the Seven Mules,” considered by some to be the greatest college team ever assembled. The game was to be played at Shibe Park, later named Connie Mack Stadium, home of the Phillies and Athletics, and the birthplace of Philly’s legendary penchant for booing.

But there were few boos on that day. The exhibition was expected to draw a large crowd of more than 10,000, which it did. The Maroons won the game 9-6, behind former Penn State fullback, Barney Wentz, and an opportunistic defense. Charlie Berry kicked a field goal to give the Maroons a lead they never relinquished. The victory, along with exhibition wins over Colwyn-Darby and the Atlantic City Roses, made the Maroons overall season record 13-2-0.

Things came apart rather quickly after the Notre Dame game when the commissioner of the league, Joe Carr, a former sportswriter who some later called “the Father of Professional Football,” ruled that Pottsville had never gotten permission to play the game in Philly and was infringing on Frankford’s territorial rights, essentially playing an unauthorized exhibition game, even though there was no clear prohibition in any franchise agreement. Carr not only stripped away the NFL title and awarded it to the Chicago Cardinals, but also suspended the Maroons from the league entirely and fined them $500. In any event, the Chicago-St. Louis-Arizona Cardinals have the trophy in their case. And no number of protests, political maneuvers or prods have been able to pry it loose.

Some people believe the Cardinals — the oldest team in professional football, founded in 1898 — to this day carry a curse related to their stolen championship, but there are lots of takes on the subject.

“It’s just not right,” said Steelers owner Dan Rooney. “When you are talking about the birthplace of professional football, you are talking about Pennsylvania, you’re talking about the Maroons.”

Red Grange, one of the greatest players of all time, said, “The Pottsville Maroons were the most ferocious and respected players I ever faced. You know, I always thought the Maroons won the NFL championship in 1925. They were robbed.” He promoted the Maroon’s championship throughout his life.

The Maroons never got their day in court, much less a judgment in their favor. And the court of public opinion in a small coal mining town didn’t matter all that much to the elitist big city power brokers of the NFL.

Despite their championship run in 1925, and a respectable 1926 season, the Maroons never again amounted to much. Players moved on, and opposing teams got stronger. They relocated to Boston in 1929 and became the Boston Bulldogs before Depression-related financial pressure forced them out of business at the end of that season. In Boston, they played their games at Braves Field, where Warren Spahn started his career and Babe Ruth ended his. The Boston Bulldogs were the first of several franchises that attempted to set up shop in Boston, without success. Not until the Boston/New England Patriots pitched their tent in 1960 did a professional football team establish itself in New England.

According to his great niece, the Maroons’ colorful owner, Doc Striegel, died in 1969 in the bar of the Flamingo Hotel in Philadelphia, on his feet, pouring himself a drink. He was one day shy of his 84th birthday. Minersville Park is long gone with the King’s Village Shopping Center sitting on its former site along Route 901.

In 1925, the NFL was ruled by a czar in a small office in Ohio, influenced by powerful team owners. There was no way a bunch of coal miners from Pottsville was going to put an NFL Championship trophy in their building, if they even had a building.

The Maroons’ title was lost on a shaky technicality in what would become the biggest and most powerful league in one of the most popular sports on the planet. There were no controversial plays. No clandestine activities. No deflated balls. No ineligible players. It was more about money, greed and elitism.

The NFL may have given the trophy to Chicago — and the cursed and hapless Cardinals will likely never give it up — but as far as the city of Pottsville is concerned, the Maroons are still champions. Their beloved team won the 1925 NFL Championship on the field by virtue of having the best record in the National Football League. That much cannot be disputed and can never be taken away.

Age Has its Privileges

AGE HAS ITS PRIVELEGES

Age Has its Privileges

A surprise around every corner

By Deborah Salomon
Photographs by John Gessner

Looks can be deceiving: The white cottage set back from a street bordering Pinehurst village appears well-maintained but of modest size, featuring two bay windows but few exterior bells and whistles. Open the front door, though, and wow. To the left, parlor No. 1, with startling pewter-brownish walls, stark white woodwork and a sofa strewn with pillows in an abstract yellow print. To the right, parlor No. 2, morphed into an overflow bedroom. At 2,350 square feet, small this cottage is not.

Knotty pine original and reclaimed floorboards, randomly laid, brilliantly polished, add character and continuity throughout. Admire the carved mantels, heavy paneled doors and the 9-foot ceilings. There’s even a basement and an unfinished attic.

Built in 1896 by the Tufts family — simultaneously with the Carolina Hotel and Holly Inn — and enlarged tenderly through the years, it was one of a dozen homes intended for purchase or as long-term rentals. At various times it has been christened Eureka and Juniper.

Let’s just call it a cottage with benefits, a dwelling that has aged like a fine cabernet.

Its current owners fit the mold of New Age Pinehurst retirees — youngish, athletic, well-traveled, sociable, adventurous, rushing home from pickleball to meet friends in the village for supper, maybe a concert.

Matt and Pat Ryan — he an attorney, she a nurse advocate — have at various stages lived in a five-story 1864 row house in Baltimore’s Old Town and in a New Jersey Tudor, with a winter getaway in Key West on the side.

With their two sons grown and retirement looming, they sought a primary residence somewhere reasonably warm and certainly fun, preferably a turnkey property needing only cosmetic work. Matt was traveling south on Amtrak in the early 2020s. He had played golf in Pinehurst but wasn’t familiar with its environs, or its possibilities. The train was delayed, so he looked around.

“I called Pat, said we should look here and asked her to fly down,” he says. They contacted a Realtor. When nothing in Southern Pines clicked they moved on to Pinehurst.

“Then this house pops up,’’ Pat recalls. “I fell in love with the location, with the magnolias. When I walked in I could feel the energy, the vibes.”

They purchased the cottage in May 2021. There was only one problem: It required a total update. Walls were moved, rooms repurposed. This wasn’t Pat’s first rodeo. Confidence and a good contractor make a difference. The project took about a year.

The new floor plan hops, skips and jumps in a delightful fashion, with areas connected by tiny corridors. Somehow they left intact three sunny alcoves for chatting with guests over coffee or something more exotic. One alcove, beside the stark black and white kitchen, is wallpapered in a deep maroon, densely patterned paper coordinating with an L-shaped upholstered settee, vaguely Eastern European, which hugs the wall. That stark black and white kitchen is softened by an exposed weathered brick chimney that adds contrast to the enormous Wolff gas range.

Nearby, a breezy pastel sunroom has a daybed for overflow. On the patio, in addition to the grill, stands a Carolina Cooker: a self-heating iron cauldron filled with boiling liquid where, Pat says, guests toss in crab legs, lobster, corn — all manner of edibles — then whack them open with heavy utensils when they’re done. Less dramatic entrees are served at a polished dining room table with matching chairs and china cabinet reminiscent of Sunday dinner circa-1950s.

Furnishings and art are derived from the couple’s previous residences. The word “eclectic” is insufficient to describe a décor where nothing quite matches but everything works together. “My purpose was to preserve and re-gentrify,” Pat says. To that, add a surprise around every corner.

Pat may be finished for now, but she’s already daydreaming about a staircase to the attic to accommodate younger family members. And there’s still plenty to do in the gardens.

But first let’s walk over to that new bistro in the village . . .

2025 Age Has its Privileges Feature

The Coffin

THE COFFIN

The Coffin

Fiction by Ray Bradbury

Illustration by Mariano Santillan

THERE WAS ANY AMOUNT of banging and hammering for a number of days; deliveries of metal parts and oddments which Mr. Charles Braling took into his little workshop with a feverish anxiety. He was a dying man; a badly dying man and he seemed to be in a great hurry between racking coughs and spittlings, to piece together one last invention.

“What are you doing?” inquired his younger brother, Richard Braling. He had listened with increasing difficulty and much curiosity for a number of days to that banging and rattling about, and now stuck his head through the work-room door.

“Go far far away and let me alone,” said Charles Braling, who was seventy, trembly and wet-lipped most of the time. He trembled nails into place and trembled a hammer down with a weak blow upon a large timber and then struck a small metal ribbon down into an intricate machine, and, all in all, was having a carnival of labor.

Richard looked on, bitter-eyed, for a long moment. There was a hatred between them. It had gone on for some years and now was neither any better or any worse for the fact that Charlie was dying. Richard was delighted to know of the impending death, if he thought of it at all. But all this busy fervor of his old brother’s stimulated him.

“Pray tell,” he said, not moving from the door.

“If you must know,” snarled old Charles, fitting in an odd thingumabob on the box before him. “I’ll be dead in another week and I’m — I’m building my own coffin!”

“A coffin, my dear Charlie. That doesn’t look like a coffin. A coffin isn’t that complex. Come on now, what are you up to?”

“I tell you it’s a coffin! An odd coffin, yes, but nevertheless,” the old man shivered his fingers around in the large box, “nevertheless a coffin!”

“But it would be easier to buy one.”

“Not one like this! You couldn’t buy one like this any place, ever. Oh, it’ll be a real fine coffin, all right.”

“You’re obviously lying.” Richard moved forward. “Why, that coffin is a good twelve feet long. Six feet longer than normal size!”

“Oh, yes?” The old man laughed quietly.

“And that transparent top; who ever heard of a coffin lid you can see through? What good is a transparent lid to a corpse?”

“Oh, just never you mind at all,” sang the old man heartily. “La!” And he went humming and hammering about the shop.

“This coffin is terribly thick,” shouted the young brother over the din. “Why, it must be over five feet thick; how utterly unnecessary!”

“I only wish I might live to patent this amazing coffin,” said old Charlie. “It would be a god-send to all the poor peoples of the world. Think how it would eliminate the expenses of most funerals. Oh, but, of course, you don’t know how it would do that, do you? How silly of me. Well, I shan’t tell you. If this coffin could be mass-produced — expensive at first, naturally — but then when you finally got them made in vast quantities, gah, but the money people would save.”

“To hell with you!” And the younger brother stormed out of the shop.

It had been an unpleasant life. Young Richard had always been such a bounder he never had two coins to clink together at one time; all of his money had come from old brother Charlie, who had the indecency to remind him of it at times. Richard spent many hours with his hobbies; he dearly loved piling up bottles with French wine labels, in the garden. “I like the way they glint,” he often said, sitting and sipping, sipping and sitting. He was the only man in the county who could hold the longest grey ash on a fifty cent cigar for the longest recorded time. And he knew how to hold his hands so his diamonds jangled in the light. But he had not bought the wine, the diamonds, the cigars — no! They were all gifts. He was never allowed to buy anything himself. It was always brought to him and given to him. He had to ask for everything, even writing paper. He considered himself quite a martyr to have put up with taking things from that rickety old brother for so long a time. Everything Charlie ever laid his hand to turned to money; everything Richard had ever tried in the way of a leisurely career had failed.

And now, here was this old mole of a Charlie whacking out a new invention which would probably bring Charlie additional specie long after his bones were slotted in the earth!

Well, two weeks passed.

One morning the old brother toddled upstairs and stole the insides out of the electric phonograph. Another morning he raided the gardener’s greenhouse. Still another time he received a delivery from a medical company. It was all young Richard could do to sit and hold his long grey cigar ash steady while these murmuring excursions took place.

“I’m finished!” cried old Charlie on the fourteenth morning, and dropped dead.

Richard finished out his cigar, and, without showing his inner excitement, he laid down his cigar with its fine long whitish ash, two inches long, a real record, and arose.

He walked to the window and watched the sunlight playfully glittering among the fat beetle-like champagne bottles in the garden.

He looked toward the top of the stairs where old dear brother Charlie lay peacefully sprawled against the banister. Then he walked to the phone and perfunctorily dialed a number.

“Hello, Green Lawn Mortuary? This is the Braling residence. Will you send around a wicker, please? Yes. For Brother Charlie. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.”

As the mortuary people were taking brother Charles out in their wicker they received instructions. “Ordinary casket,” said young Richard. “No funeral service. Put him in a pine coffin. He would have preferred it that way — simple. Good bye.”

“Now!” said Richard, rubbing his hands together. “We shall see about this ‘coffin’ built by dear Charlie. I do not suppose he will realize he is not being buried in his ‘special’ box. Ah.”

He entered the downstairs shop.

The coffin sat before some wide-flung French windows, the lid shut complete and neat, all put together like the fine innards of a Swiss watch. It was vast, and it rested upon a long long table with rollers beneath for easy maneuvering.

The coffin interior, as he peered through the glass lid, was six feet long. There must be a good three feet of false body at both head and foot of the coffin, then. Three feet at each end which, covered by secret panels that he must find some way of opening, might very well reveal — exactly what?

Money, of course. It would be just like Charlie to suck his riches into his grave with himself, leaving Richard with not a cent to buy a bottle with. The old bastard!

He raised the glass lid and felt about, but found no hidden buttons. There was a small sign studiously inked on white paper, thumbtacked to the side of the satin lined box. It said:

THE BRALING ECONOMY CASKET. Copyright, April, 1946.

Simple to operate. Can be used again and again by morticians and families with an eye to the future.

Richard snorted thinly. Who did Charlie think he was fooling?

There was more writing:

DIRECTIONS: SIMPLY PLACE BODY IN COFFIN.

What a fool thing to say. Put body in coffin! Naturally! How else would one go about it? He peered intently and finished out the directions:

SIMPLY PLACE BODY IN COFFIN—AND MUSIC WILL START.

“It can’t be —” Richard gaped at the sign. “Don’t tell me all this work has been for a —” He went to the open door of the shop, walked out upon the tiled terrace and called to the gardener in his green-house. “Rogers!” The gardener stuck his head out. “What time is it?” asked Richard. “Twelve o’clock, sir,” replied Rogers.

“Well, at twelve fifteen, you come up here and check to see if everything is all right, Rogers,” said Richard.

“Yes, sir,” said the gardener. Richard turned and went back into the shop. “We’ll find out —” he said, quietly.

There would be no harm in lying in the box, testing it. He noticed small ventilating holes in the sides. Even if the lid were closed down there’d be air. And Rogers would be up in a moment or two. SIMPLY PLACE BODY IN COFFIN-AND MUSIC WILL START. Really, how naïve of old Charlie! Richard hoisted himself up.

He was like a man getting into a bath-tub. He felt naked and watched over. He put one shiny shoe into the coffin and crooked his knee and eased himself up and made some little remark to nobody in particular, then he put in his other knee and foot and crouched there, as if undecided about the temperature of the bath-water. Edging himself about, chuckling softly, he lay down, pretending to himself (for it was fun pretending) that he was dead, that people were dropping tears on him, that candles were fuming and illuminating and that the world was stopped in mid-stride because of his passing. He put on a long pale expression, shut his eyes, holding back the laughter in himself behind pressed, quivering lips. He folded his hands and decided they felt waxen and cold.

Whirr. Spung! Something whispered inside the box-wall. Spung!

The lid slammed down on him!

From outside, if one had just come into the room, one would have imagined a wild man was kicking, pounding, blathering, and shrieking inside a closet! There was a sound of a body dancing and cavorting. There was a thudding of flesh and fists. There was a squeaking and a kind of wind from a frightened man’s lungs. There was a rustling like paper and a shrilling as of many pipes simultaneously played. Then there was a real fine scream. Then — silence.

Richard Braling lay in the coffin and relaxed. He let loose all his muscles. He began to chuckle. The smell of the box was not unpleasant. Through the little perforations he drew more than enough air to live on, comfortably. He need only push gently up with his hands, with none of this kicking and screaming and the lid would open. One must be calm. He flexed his arms.

The lid was locked.

Well, still there was no danger. Rogers would be up in a minute or two. There was nothing to fear.

The music began to play.

It seemed to come from somewhere inside the head of the coffin. It was green music. Organ music, very slow and melancholy, typical of Gothic arches and long black tapers. It smelled of earth and whispers. It echoed high between stone walls. It was so sad that one almost cried listening to it. It was music of potted plants and crimson and blue stained glass windows. It was late sun at twilight and a cold wind blowing. It was a dawn with only fog and a far away fog-horn moaning.

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, you old fool you! So this is your odd coffin!” Tears of laughter welled into Richard’s eyes. Nothing more than a coffin which plays its own dirge. Oh, my sainted Grandma!”

He lay and listened critically, for it was beautiful music and there was nothing he could do until Rogers came up and let him out. His eyes roved aimlessly, his fingers tapped soft little rhythms on the satin cushions. He crossed his legs idly. Through the glass lid he saw sunlight shooting through the French windows, dust particles dancing on it. It was a lovely blue day.

The sermon began.

The organ music quieted and a gentle voice said:

“We are gathered together, those who loved and those who knew the deceased, to give him our homage and our due —”

“Charlie, bless you, that’s your voice!” Richard was delighted. “A mechanical funeral, by God. Organ music and lecture. And Charlie giving his own oration for himself!”

The soft voice said, “We who knew and loved him are grieved at the passing of —”

“What was that?” Richard raised himself, startled. He didn’t quite believe what he had heard. He repeated it to himself just the way he had heard it:

“We who knew and loved him are grieved at the passing of Richard Braling.”

That’s what the voice had said.

“Richard Braling,” said the man in the coffin. “Why, I’m Richard Braling.

A slip of the tongue, naturally. Merely a slip. Charlie had meant to say “Charles” Braling. Certainly. Yes. Of course. Yes. Certainly. Yes. Naturally. Yes.

“Richard was a fine man,” said the voice, talking on. “We shall see no finer in our time.”

“My name again!”

Richard began to move about uneasily in the coffin.

Why didn’t Rogers come?

It was hardly a mistake, using that name twice. Richard Braling. Richard Braling. We are gathered here. We shall miss — We are grieved. No finer man. No finer in our time. We are gathered here. The deceased. Richard Braling. Richard Braling.

Whirrrr. Spung!

Flowers! Six dozen bright blue, red, yellow, sun-brilliant flowers leaped up from behind the coffin on concealed springs!

The sweet odor of fresh cut flowers filled the coffin. The flowers swayed gently before his amazed vision, tapping silently on the glass lid. Others sprang up until the coffin was banked with petals and color and sweet odors. Gardenias and dahlias and daffodils, trembling and shining.

“Rogers!”

The sermon continued.

“Richard Braling, in his life, was a connoisseur of great and good things —” The music sighed, rose and fell, distantly.

“Richard Braling savored of life, as one savors of a rare wine, holding it upon the lips —”

A small panel in the side of the box flipped open. A swift bright metal arm snatched out. A needle stabbed Richard in the thorax, not very deeply. He screamed. The needle shot him full of a colored liquor before he could seize it. Then it popped back into a receptacle and the panel snapped shut.

“Rogers!”

A growing numbness. Suddenly he could not move his fingers or his arms or turn his head. His legs were cold and limp.

“Richard Braling loved beautiful things. Music. Flowers,” said the voice.

“Rogers!”

This time he did not scream it. He could only think it. His tongue was motionless in his anaesthetized mouth.

Another panel opened. Metal forceps issued forth on steel arms. His left wrist was pierced by a huge sucking needle.

His blood was being drained from his body.

He heard a little pump working somewhere.

“Richard Braling will be missed among us —”

The organ sobbed and murmured.

The flowers looked down upon him, nodding their bright-petalled heads.

Six candles, black and slender, rose up out of hidden receptacles, and stood behind the flowers, flickering and glowing.

Another pump started to work. While his blood drained out one side of his body, his right wrist was punctured, held, a needle shoved into it, and the second pump began to force formaldehyde into him.

Pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause.

The coffin moved.

A small motor popped and chugged. The room drifted by on either side of him. Little wheels revolved. No pallbearers were necessary. The flowers swayed as the casket moved gently out upon the terrace under a blue clear sky.

Pump, pause. Pump, pause.

“Richard Braling will be missed —”

Sweet soft music.

Pump, pause.

“Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last —” Singing.

“Braling, the gourmet —”

“Ah, at last I have the secret of it all —”

Staring, staring, his eyes egg-blind, at the little card out of the corners of his eyes: The Braling Economy Casket . . .

DIRECTIONS: SIMPLY PLACE BODY IN COFFIN—AND MUSIC WILL START.

A tree swung by overhead. The coffin rolled gently through the garden, behind some bushes, carrying the voice and the music with it.

“Now it is the time when we must consign this part of this man to the earth —”

Little shining spades leaped out of the sides of the casket.

They began to dig.

He saw the spades toss up dirt. The coffin settled. Bumped, settled, dug, bumped and settled, dug, bumped and settled again.

Pulse, pause, pulse, pause. Pump, pause, pulse, pump, pause.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust —”

The flowers shook and jolted. The box was deep. The music played.

The last thing Richard Braling saw was the spading arms of the Braling Economy Casket reaching up and pulling the hole in after it.

“Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling . . . “

The record was stuck.

Nobody minded. Nobody was listening.

2025 Feature The Coffin

California Goes Carolina

CALIFORNIA GOES CAROLINA

California Goes Carolina

With charm, art and a dash of fun

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Gessner

Some houses come with their own histories. Others conform to their residents’ tastes and lifestyles. A very few built by builders or interior designers for personal occupancy showcase materials and expertise. This one began with a sad event, then blossomed into a happy ending.

Randy Boyd, an interior designer based in California’s Laguna Beach and Palm Springs, had been friends with Joyce Reehling, a New York-based TV, film and stage actress, for more than 30 years. Joyce and her husband, Tony Elms, retired to Pinehurst in 2008, where their contributions to the arts community have been significant. When Tony died in 2024, Randy visited Pinehurst to support Joyce. He and partner Mark Stine, liked what they saw: a pretty little town filled with interesting people involved in worthwhile activities. Some but not all were retirees. They were looking to relocate and saw much to like beyond Pinehurst’s reputation for golf.

“We fell in love with the village, the charm, the people,” Randy says.

Finding the right living space was a major factor, given Randy’s profession, which he planned to continue pursuing. The shoemaker’s children, after all, mustn’t go barefoot. He and Mark shared similar tastes. Neither pined for historic Pinehurst properties, a good thing since most Old Town Taras and Georgians are spoken for. Better a bright, breezy Camelot that Randy could transform with ideas gained as an antique dealer, the kind who scours France and sends back shipping containers full of fascinating stuff.

How about two handsome armoires, one shelved for shoes, a rustic pine grandmother clock and statuesque lamp bases? But all the right stuff is just the beginning. Randy nods “yes” when asked if hanging photos and paintings isn’t an art itself: height, layout, subjects, frames. He measures and draws, then mocks up on the floor. Originality counts, like a bedroom wall hung with portraits of men, likely 19th century, with facial hair and pensive expressions.

“The guy in the middle reminds me of Poirot,” Randy says. “He makes me smile.”

Another bedroom pays homage to Randy’s mother and grandmother, their nearly life-sized portraits dominating intersecting walls. Color, even white, adds excitement, like the filmy white “veils” hanging off tall bedposts; the overstuffed quilt where two big dogs sleep; blankets woven with multi-colored threads; a chair upholstered in lime green, others covered in line drawings of rabbits on a white background — all different, all unusual, related only by their unpredictability.

Both bathrooms required gutting. One returned papered in rich jewel-toned leaf shapes, the other in staccato black and white.

Variety, tempered by surprise, rules. Art, formal or not-so, needs an airy, well-lit display venue. At 2,300 square feet, this semi-detached brick unit with 13-foot salon ceilings, an eyebrow front door and British-themed neighborhood signage fit the couple’s furnishings. Mature trees, a reprieve from longleaf pines, manicured boxwoods and weathered brick exteriors give a settled appearance, while two walled terraces anchored by olive oil jug planters expand entertaining space.

Randy and Mark purchased the unit, hired a contractor, rented an air B&B for the duration and got to work. The project took less than a year. They, along with their two pups, moved in May, along with Randy’s business, Thurston Boyd Interior Design.

Each room showcases several pieces or a collection. In the living room, Lucite shelves hold bright Chinese roof tiles in the form of warriors protecting the property. In ancient times, quality of workmanship symbolized wealth and social status. Balancing their artistry, a contemporary sofa and simple painted wood coffee table face the proscenium opening into the dining room, where four paintings (by Mark’s niece) of flowers in vases suggest, in brilliance and style, Van Gogh sunflowers or a mixed bouquet by Cézanne. Hung against wallpaper that wriggles with life, they are anything but “still.” A massive, intricately carved desk, perhaps Asian, offsets the colors, as does a gathering of spider-webby landscape prints.

The kitchen, small but efficient, locates the gas range top on a center island. Almost bare countertops and blue-grayish cupboards impart Shaker plainness interrupted only by a collection of whimsical ceramic pitchers aligned on a pantry shelf. A sideboard with a built-in frontal wine rack resides here.

Opposite the kitchen is a dining area — a touch more formal than a breakfast nook — that opens out onto a patio, where a life-sized alligator, carved from wood, lurks among the planters. Throughout, carpet and tile were replaced by stained hardwood, knotty and laid randomly.

Nothing here blares California, but nothing screams Old Pinehurst, either — the house lacks a name or a resident ghost. It blends practicality with charm, fine art with a dash of fun, all the trademarks of “Pinehurst Now,” where wine-tastings, farmers markets, walking tours, pickleball and food festivals fill out calendars.

“People are so friendly,” Mark says. “It’s like we’ve lived here for years.”

2025 California Goes Carolina Feature

A Fungus Amongus

A FUNGUS AMONGUS

A Fungus Amongus

Making ’shroom for a new method of farming

By Emilee Phillips

In the dark basement of a sprawling farmhouse, a mother and son work daily — and meticulously — tending to colorful bunches of oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms. Like the natural mushroom systems that grow underground, the labyrinthine basement is laid out in intricate patterns, a maze of rooms, each dedicated to its own phase of cultivation.

The rhythmic routine of misting, monitoring humidity and harvesting is as much art as it is science — a quiet but steady labor rooted in patience and precision only to be broken up by the laughter of a family joke.

In a home that sits on 200 acres of farmland that has been in the family for three generations, Candice Graham and Jonathan Bumgarner have converted their basement into Cranes Creek Mushrooms, breathing new life into empty space.

There is something profoundly grounding about a family farm. In the fast-paced, ever-changing landscape of modern life, the farm represents a constant — a space where the rhythms of nature dictate the pace of life, where the priorities shift from instant gratification to patience. It’s about cultivating a lifestyle that prioritizes sustainability, where food is grown with intention, animals are raised with care, and the land is honored as a precious resource.

Graham inherited the farm from her mother, who wasn’t a farmer herself but had a vision for her children’s future. In an act at the intersection of hope and business, she arranged for 322 pecan trees to be planted that, one day, would tower over the land and provide an additional revenue stream to sustain the farm. Though still young, some of her trees are beginning to produce, her promise literally coming to fruition.

Determined not to see the land broken up and sold off, the family had to get creative. They decided to take a leap into the unknown with mushroom farming. Aside from pecans, neither Graham nor Bumgarner had dabbled in agriculture before. “You take one step forward and three steps back with farming,” Graham says. “There’s a lot of education and research involved.”

Their first summer was trial and error. Beginning outside in a barn, they quickly learned the unpredictability of the effect natural climates can have on fungus farming — an experience that resulted in a complete do-over and driving them inside and underground. One way to bypass the natural limitations of mushroom farming, such as seasonality, is through indoor farming, which allows for year-round production and more control over the finicky crop. Now Cranes Creek Mushrooms produces a variety of oyster mushrooms, including black pearl, elm, chestnut, king trumpet and blue. From start to finish the process takes about two to three months. Lion’s mane — especially prized for tinctures and unique dishes — takes even longer, requiring about five months to grow. The longest part of the process is the preparation and sanitation of everything.

“It’s a very sterilized process, which is ironic considering how much mold mushrooms produce,” Bumgarner says with a chuckle.

The operation begins by soaking wheat grains to use as a breeding ground for the mushroom spores to colonize and reproduce, building vast networks of their root-like structures, called mycelium. Then the spawn is placed into large biodegradable bags and formed into blocks. The blocks are monitored closely after spores are added. These blocks are then arranged on rows of shelves in one of the converted basement rooms, where the mushrooms grow mostly in the dark, changing color from brown to white to nearly black, and then back to white again. In the wild, this part of the journey would happen underground.

“If it gets just one little germ in it, it multiples,” Graham says. If at any point in the process something appears wonky, the entire bag must be discarded. It’s survival of the fittest for these fungi. “You have to keep an eye on them every single day,” she says.

In another room, the next phase begins in large inflatable tents equipped with zippered doors and climate control. This “fruiting” space is lined with shelves of carefully arranged grow blocks that sprout with alien-like forms. Mushrooms thrive in humidity, but the temperature must be carefully managed. “A lot of people think mushrooms grow in the dark, but they actually crave light,” Graham says.

The family works in the tents wearing masks to avoid inhaling too many spores in the confined space. “A lot of it is about the tedious little things,” Bumgarner says.

“None of the labor is hard; you just have to keep an eye on them. It’s like having little babies,” Graham says.

Just days after the fungi begin emerging from the mycelium bags, they’re ready to harvest. For Bumgarner, the most satisfying part is twisting off a large clump of mushrooms, a small and crisp snap accompanying the plucking. Oyster mushrooms sprout in delicate clusters, their soft, fan-shaped caps unfolding in shades of pale cream or dusky blue-gray, like the soft brushstrokes of a watercolor painting. The bushels vary in size, resembling bouquets of flowers.

Just as mushrooms seemingly pop up out of nowhere, so too has their rise in popularity. With growing awareness of their health benefits, mushrooms were named “Ingredient of the Year” by The New York Times in 2022. At the Moore County Farmers Market in Southern Pines, Graham and Bumgarner regularly set up their booth with a selection of oyster mushrooms, lion’s mane and mushroom tinctures, all far from your average white button mushroom. They take the time to educate the curious about the complexities of mushrooms, whether for cooking or as tinctures. “We’re met with a lot of curiosity,” says Graham.

Every week, it seems, the duo find themselves explaining the benefits of lion’s mane mushrooms with their distinctive, almost otherworldly appearance — long, white, hair-like tendrils resembling the mythical abominable snowman. Despite the growing buzz around their potential health benefits, Graham and Bumgarner are often surprised when people haven’t heard of lion’s mane. Graham takes tincture droplets daily, which she believes improves memory and reduces inflammation. For them, mushrooms aren’t just a culinary ingredient; they’re a form of nature’s medicine.

The two are also experimenting growing rieshi mushrooms, which are thought to help aid relaxation. “Everyone needs to relax more,” says Graham. Mushroom-based products like mushroom coffee have been gaining popularity in recent years, but Bumgarner believes tinctures are the way to go. “They’re more potent, pure, and taste better,” he says. Cranes Creek Mushrooms soak their mushrooms in pure vodka to make their tinctures.

Oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms are seldom found in traditional grocery stores. In many ways, they are a quiet luxury, accessible to those who shop with intention at places like farmers markets and co-ops. Their luxury isn’t due to high cost or rarity, but rather their shelf life, which makes them less suited for conventional grocery store environments.

In addition to the farmers market, you can find Cranes Creek Mushrooms in gourmet dishes from local restaurants such as Ashten’s and Elliott’s on Linden. For Bumgarner, nothing beats the simplicity of sautéing mushrooms in butter. He and his mother agree that lion’s mane has a more unique texture, almost chicken-like, with a flavor that is difficult to explain to someone who has never tasted it. “It’s meatier,” he says. “One of the most interesting things I’ve learned about mushrooms is that you don’t get any of the benefits, other than fiber, unless you cook them.”

Graham says the shared mother and son moments are one of the most rewarding parts of their business. “We get a lot of family time. We can tease and talk and work.” As someone passionate about eco-friendly practices, Graham was thrilled to learn about the benefits the mushroom spawn blocks could bring to the soil on the farm.

Along with mushrooms, Graham and Bumgarner have added quail and chickens to their operation, knowing the extra minerals and nutrients from the spent mushroom blocks can aid the overall health of the animals on their property. “We are trying to get to the point where the farm supports itself,” she says. “I also have to stay busy or I’m not happy.”

More than a business, Cranes Creek Mushrooms is life underground, a labor of love, fueled by family.

2025 A Fungus Amongus Feature

The Nature of it All

THE NATURE OF IT ALL

The Nature of it All

The soothing embrace of the Healing Gardens

By Claudia Watson

It’s a slight squeak of the wooden gate that welcomes me to the garden, but once I step inside, the sounds shift. There’s a gentle breeze rustling the leaves, creating a soft whisper. The garden’s colors and textures blend with its aromatic smells and birdsong. It’s a soothing symphony, all mine for a few sacred minutes at dawn.

Nature has always been an escape for me, keeping me centered even in the most challenging of times. When I was young, I filled the hours in a woodland and creek, teasing polliwogs, rock-hopping and chasing the delicate butterflies flitting among the wildflowers. Then, I’d seek my secret sanctuary, an ancient white birch tree, snuggle into its curved hollow and listen as the wind in its branches whispered.

Immersive experiences, such as those youthful pursuits, connect us to nature’s wonders. We are hard-wired to find them engrossing, soothing and a powerful tool for healing. Gardens are particularly well-suited to tap into those connections in health care settings where life-challenging and life-threatening events are amplified.

Healing gardens engage the senses and foster those connections. They are designed with a passive involvement approach that allows visitors to be present and absorb the elements of nature, without structured activities and programs.

It was the long and exhausting experience of caring for their loved ones in the hospital that motivated Dr. Lynda Acker and Cassie Willis to approach the Foundation of FirstHealth with a vision to construct a healing garden on the regional hospital system’s Pinehurst campus. Acker and Willis were longtime gardeners, and it was their vision and design, supported by the community’s love for the concept and philanthropic spirit, that brought the Healing Garden oasis to life in 2012.

Located behind the Clara McLean House, the public garden is meticulously designed, expansive and mature. On any given day, it might host a patient undergoing treatment at the hospital, a medical provider taking a break, or a garden club enjoying the season’s blooms. Its beauty and tranquility instill a sense of calm and peace.

Upon entering the Healing Garden through its rose-laden moongate, a visitor is immediately greeted by the sound of birdsong. This auditory experience, combined with the garden’s visual beauty, creates a tone that sets the stage for a peaceful and engaging journey. The meandering, curved stone paths encourage exploration and curiosity about what lies around the next turn.

Small seating areas, including an intimate Lutyens bench in the Cottage Garden surrounded by mophead hydrangeas and roses, invite visitors to linger. The replica of a 15th century English stone dovecote serves as the visual and functional centerpiece of the garden.

The bounty of unusual trees, including a mature loquat, towering snowball viburnum, Chinese elms and vitex, adds a sense of curiosity. Beds of showy Japanese anemones and Mexican petunias add bursts of color. At the same time, sensory stimulation is offered by new dawn climbing roses, daisies, native salvias, herbs and a grey owl juniper that smells like a Christmas tree.

Many plants possess unique features that make them a natural conversation starter. One morning, as I was guiding our weekly volunteer work session, I was approached by a visitor intent on learning more about the plant he held in his hand.

“Can you please tell me the name of this?” asked 76-year-old Harlan Devore, holding out a weed.

“Chickweed,” I said.

“The Latin name, please?” he asked.

Embarrassed, I replied, “I don’t know.”

It was the beginning of our friendship, made in the garden. Devore, a retired military officer and science teacher for 20 years, was a patient undergoing treatment for cancer and staying at the Clara McLean House.

“I grew up loving plants because my mom did and she always used a plant’s Latin name, so that’s how I know plants, not by the common name,” he told me. Using a lot of show-and-tell, we discussed weeds in two languages. He met many of the garden’s volunteers and then asked if he could pull the weeds when he had spare time.

“Sure, if you’re OK with the work. It would be greatly appreciated,” I said, and showed him where we stored our tools and the debris bins.

When I returned a couple of days later, I found three 32-gallon bins full of weeds. Later that week, Devore asked if he could join the garden volunteers every week. He believes that active physical involvement with the garden enhanced his healing while instilling a sense of usefulness and accomplishment — and he made new friends who share his love for it. Today, he’s in remission, spending time with his family, volunteering for numerous organizations, kayaking on a local lake and, of course, pulling weeds at home.

“You reflect on your life, but sitting by the garden’s waterfall reading and listening to the birds took my mind off my worries,” he says of the garden. “I felt absorbed into nature, and that helped me relax.”

Gardens and natural spaces enrich both the body and the soul. When you view nature, you become embraced by its tranquility and beauty. It’s a welcome distraction, especially if you’re grieving. The gardens on the FirstHealth Hospice and Palliative Care campus opened in 2015 and were conceptualized with nature in mind, recalls Acker, who, with Sally DeWinkeleer, designed the peaceful space. With its carpets of densely planted, vibrant flowers and plants, the gardens provide patients, families and caregivers a place for rest, reflection and engagement with nature.

“We considered the individual needs of those who will benefit from this space,” explains Acker. “They need relief from the stressful conditions and long hours in Hospice House. The gardens and the outdoor sitting and walking areas provide respite at any time of the day or night.”

In addition to the beautiful flowers and serene atmosphere, the gardens feature a single-path labyrinth shaded by white Natchez crape myrtles. The labyrinth serves as a therapeutic tool, encourages mindfulness, and is designed to help individuals navigate the complex emotions associated with grief and loss.

“It’s a meditative experience, a reflection of your journey,” says DeWinkeleer, who lost her mother before working on the project. “It was a powerful and safe way to help me process my grief.”

A small pond was placed at a corner across from the Hospice House, where its mesmerizing movement and gentle sound offer a calming space to passersby.

One of the most poignant scenes at the gardens happens in early spring, when the grounds present a breathtaking display of thousands of cheerful daffodils. As the sun crests the horizon at dawn, its golden light illuminates the fields of daffodils, symbolizing hope, rebirth and new beginnings.

The healing gardens at FirstHealth of the Carolinas, including two of its newest at the Cancer Center, are lovingly cared for by community volunteers, many of whom have spent years tending them. These dedicated individuals aren’t just nurturing plants — they are creating an environment where patients, families and staff find peace and serenity during some of life’s most challenging times.

“When I saw how many people found comfort in this garden, I knew I had to be part of it,” says Melanie Riley, a volunteer at FirstHealth’s Cancer Center, which opened in 2023. Riley had just begun the 13-week Extension Master Gardener program with the Moore County Extension Service when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After reviewing the options, she elected a double mastectomy, and days later, passed her final EMG exam. After her recovery, she began volunteering at the Cancer Center’s Healing Gardens, co-designed by Acker and the building’s architect.

“Working here among those with cancer, as well as survivors, gave me a sense of control over my health and emotions,” she says. Now cancer-free, Riley says her experience in the garden was not only life-enhancing, it became life-rebuilding. She cherishes her mornings working in both the lobby-level and rooftop healing gardens.

“Patients and their caregivers come out to the garden for an uplifting distraction from their concerns,” she says. “I’ll introduce myself as a cancer survivor and offer them an encouragement stone that’s engraved with an uplifting message.”

That small stone is often the conversation starter, as they share their experiences. “It’s such an important validation for them to know another has made it through,” says Riley, reflecting on her own turbulent passage through the disease. “Then, I’ll notice a shift in their mindset. They are calmer and will ask about the flowers and plants, as well as the little bugs they see. They leave their worries for a bit and depart with a brighter perspective and a smile.

“It’s magical when they step into the nature of it all.”

Time spent in green spaces has a profound and positive impact on our lives. Whether it’s birdsong, a gurgling stream or the wind blowing through the tall trees, nature provides joy and comfort. Listen closely, as it whispers, “All is well.”

2025 Feature The Nature of it All

The Ladder

THE LADDER

The Ladder

Fiction and Illustration by Daniel Wallace

She kept the ladder hidden against the far side of the house, on its side, behind an array of shrubbery and a small pyramid of partially charred firewood. It was a metal ladder, and heavy, yellow and blue, and picking it up involved several challenging moves — lifting, leaning, pushing, and prying it into its sturdy inverted V. Harder now than ever but still doable. The hinges adjoining the two sides of the ladder sometimes stuck, and with her bare hands she had to thwonk them until they were perfectly straight. The meaty part of her palm had been pinched more than once during the course of this procedure; her Saran Wrap-thin skin roughly torn like a child’s scraped knee. All this happened at night, in almost complete darkness, the only light from the dim bulb in the laundry room, casting a soft, milky glow through the dusty windows onto the thorny leaves of a winterberry. Once the ladder was open she shook it, made sure the ground was level. Usually she’d have to adjust it, moving the legs this way and that a few times before it felt secure. Then she climbed, step by step, testing her balance on each flat rung, falling into a worry that made her take special care not to slip or get her slacks caught on anything. It was especially dangerous when she got to the very top, where it was written in serious, Ten Commandant letters: THIS IS NOT A STEP. Here there was a sharp metal protrusion, the final test that she had, so far, nimbly passed. She got on her knees on the step that wasn’t, and with her forearms on the shingles drug herself onto the sloping edge of the roof, turned herself around, and sat breathing. She brushed the dirt off her forearms. Another breath and she was fully there.

This is what she did for her cigarette, the only one she allowed herself, once a night every night, for almost all her adult life. She didn’t even have to hide it anymore, because there was no one here to secret it from. But it had become a part of who she was, a tradition she could not and would not and did not want to end until she couldn’t make the climb. It was necessary. It was her spot, her perch. There was no great view to be had, really, just the cross-the-street neighbors, a young couple in the modest, red-brick split-level, their lives ahead of them, as they say, as if all our lives weren’t ahead of us, some just farther along than others. Sometimes she could see them — the Shambergers? — as they moved from room to room, miniature people, busy as little ants. It was like watching a movie from a thousand feet away.

She smoked, and the smoke rose and quivered from the red and orange coal into a dreamy cloud, then off into a dreamy nothing. But most of the smoke was inside her, in her lungs and her blood. It made its way to her brain and she felt lighter, lighter. She felt like she could follow the smoke if she wanted. The cigarette didn’t last very long, never as long as she wanted it to, but always time enough to review the plot points of her life, the highlights, good and bad, the husband and the children and now the grands, the cars, the planes, the ships, the glam, and the struggle, the love, the sex, so much of it really it didn’t seem fair that one woman should have it all. So much. But every night she climbed the ladder’s rungs and sat here, here on top of the world, smoking, she wondered what it meant that out of all of it, out of every single second she remembered, this was the best, the very best, the moment she lived for, surrounded by the invisible world beneath the moon and long dead stars, sharing her own light with the dark.

2025 Feature The Ladder

One For All – By All

ONE FOR ALL - BY ALL

One For All - By All

The complicated birth of the Moore County Hospital

By Bill Case • Photographs from the Tufts Archives

Last year, U.S. News and World Report ranked Pinehurst’s FirstHealth of the Carolinas Moore Regional Hospital sixth best in North Carolina. Money magazine placed it 65th in the country. With 402 beds, it serves as a primary care referring facility for the surrounding 15-county area. It employs more than 3,000 people, by far the most of any private Moore County employer. The spacious cancer clinic, opened in 2023, is the latest jewel in the crown.

Exactly a century ago, the residents of Moore County weren’t so lucky. In May 1925, the county’s lone acute care facility, James McConnell Hospital (named for Carthage’s heroic World War I flier) was teetering on its last legs. Located in rural Eureka, 4 miles from Carthage, the facility offered four private rooms and two wards, totaling 20 beds. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, McConnell treated 35 additional patients by putting beds on the porch.

Lacking an endowment, McConnell struggled to stay afloat, financially and literally. The wells serving the hospital totally dried up in periods of drought. Nurses and other employees hauled buckets of water from a spring half a mile away. As the Sandhill Citizen put it, McConnell was constantly “working against the task of too little money for too big a job.” The hospital closed its doors on June 1, 1925.

Following the shutdown, the nearest hospitals to Moore County were now located in Fayetteville and Hamlet. Southern Pines’ celebrated author James Boyd believed the status quo was unacceptable. “If a man gets seriously sick in this section of North Carolina, what can he do?” Boyd wrote in The Pilot newspaper. “That means a trip to Raleigh, or Charlotte, or Hamlet, or Fayetteville . . . if it is a case of accident, or other emergency, the two or three hours necessary to make the trip may cost the patient his life.”

Community-minded members of the Kiwanis Club of Aberdeen (later Kiwanis Club of the Sandhills) began considering the feasibility of building a modern hospital located close to Moore County’s population centers — Aberdeen, Southern Pines and Pinehurst. A Kiwanis committee met several times in late 1925 and early 1926 to discuss the parameters for a new hospital. At a February 3, 1926, Kiwanis meeting in Pinebluff, club president Talbot Johnson announced that there was a “chance to get a half-million-dollar hospital for the neighborhood of the most modern type.” He also announced that a newcomer to the campaign, Simeon B. Chapin, “and others of the moving spirits will be on hand to discuss this situation.” Johnson urged his fellow Kiwanians to pack the house for their meeting.

Proponents floated the concept of building a 70-bed hospital costing $500,000 plus an additional $250,000 endowment. Other public forums were scheduled in Aberdeen and Pinehurst. An overflow crowd at Pinehurst’s Carolina Theatre turned the presentation into a pep rally for the hospital, giving the project an enthusiastic (and nearly unanimous) thumbs up. “The pledge of support expressed by the audience would seem to indicate the county can be counted on for the maximum amount of support,” The Pilot reported.

However, it is one thing for citizens to stand up in a meeting and collectively voice their “huzzahs” and quite another to reach into their pockets to support it. It became clear that fundraising for a hospital would likely flounder unless people of substantial wealth stepped up. Six such men (two of whom were Kiwanians) banded together for the purpose of making the hospital a reality. The men who referred to themselves as the Hospital Committee were Leonard Tufts, whose family owned almost everything in Pinehurst; Jackson Boyd, a Pennsylvania coal magnate and, with brother James, co-master of the Moore County Hounds; Eldridge R. Johnson, founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company, which revolutionized the phonograph industry; Henry A. Page, Jr., president of two North Carolina railroads and owner of a chain of Ford auto agencies; John D. Chapman, a Wall Street broker and member of the New York Stock Exchange; and Simeon B. Chapin, owner of S.B. Chapin and Co., a stock and grain brokerage firm with offices in Chicago and New York City. After making Pinehurst his winter retreat circa 1910, he built several houses and acquired thousands of acres of Sandhills real estate. His Chapin Orchards made him the area’s foremost peach farmer.

But Chapin’s most profitable venture came in 1912 when, in partnership with the Burroughs family, he acquired 64,000 acres of South Carolina pine forested real estate, together with 9 miles of ostensibly “worthless” beachfront. Chapin and Burroughs developed the property into an unparalleled resort community — Myrtle Beach.

Chapin and the other members of the Hospital Committee, recognizing they were not qualified to evaluate the scope and size of the proposed hospital, retained the New York firm of Wright and O’Hanlon that specialized in such matters. In 1927, that firm’s lead partner, Henry C. Wright, conducted a survey of the area and concluded it was feasible to build a 35-bed hospital at a cost ranging from $80,000 to $140,000. The Hospital Committee’s members were ready to pool their money to fund the bulk of that price tag, but they considered it important to have citizens from the county at large also contribute.

Soon, a source of charitable funding emerged. It was learned that North Carolinian tobacco heir-investor-philanthropist James B. Duke had established the Duke Endowment, a trust fund totaling $400 million in assets. Among its missions was support for rural hospitals in North and South Carolina.

In March of 1927 committee members greeted Dr. Watson S. Rankin, the director of the Duke Endowment’s Hospital and Orphans section. Rankin advised those assembled that once the hospital was built, the Duke Endowment would be willing to contribute $1 per day per bed toward the care of patients unable to pay their bills. This was significant, because Moore County had its share of impoverished individuals, including many in its Black population (who were to be treated in a segregated wing).

While wrestling with financing, the committee also dealt with the thorny issue of the hospital’s location. Since Pinehurst was in the central section of Moore County, several properties on the outskirts of the village were considered. The members were unable to reach a consensus regarding the best site, so it was decided to have the consultant, Wright, make the choice. He picked property near the intersection of N.C. 211 and Page Road — the southern reaches of the current campus — citing as tiebreakers the fact that it was well situated to catch breezes (a must pre-air-conditioning), and that a sewer line was already in place. That site, like virtually all the land in and around Pinehurst, was controlled by the Tufts family. Leonard Tufts deeded the land over without compensation.

The task of raising money beyond its own membership continued to frustrate the Hospital Committee throughout the summer and fall of 1927. This included the securing of charitable funding. A Nov. 16, 1927, newspaper article in the Greensboro News caught Leonard Tufts’ attention, eventually breaking the logjam. The story indicated that the Duke Endowment was planning to build six or seven hospitals a year in North and South Carolina.

The following day, Leonard Tufts wrote Rankin, expressing his “hope one of these will be located in this section.” Rankin promptly responded: “I am glad to convey to you the encouraging information that we will probably be able to help you materially in the building and equipment of your new hospital.” He promised to send Tufts an application and did so on Dec. 27.

When the Duke Endowment’s trustees reviewed the information set forth in the application regarding contributed pledges, they were dismayed. Outside of “a few wealthy people from Pinehurst and Southern Pines,” there were few pledges. The Duke Endowment was disinclined to contribute anything unless the “people of Moore County” proved their interest with cash contributions in the amount of $25,000.

Why were people reluctant? “It has so happened that during the period when funds were being solicited, the farmers and businessmen in rural communities throughout the country were undergoing business readjustment through a period of deflation, which has made it very hard for them to get hold of any spare cash,” The Pilot reported.

But resistance went beyond that. Some scoffed that “a hospital is the last thing the county needs.” Decades later, Leonard’s son, Richard Tufts, wrote “Today it is difficult to believe that the establishment of our hospital was not a popular decision with all the people of this county. Many thought of a hospital as a place where you went to die and not to get well.”

Some local residents were peeved that wealthy winter residents from the North were running the show. “They have the money; they can afford it; let them pay for it,” was the sentiment. Naysayers also voiced the view that the hospital was being built to benefit Pinehurst resort guests, not permanent residents.

Based on the committee’s assurance that it would raise the requested $25,000, the Duke Endowment trustees conditionally approved a $25,000 grant on March 27, 1928. Rankin hinted more money might be forthcoming once the committee raised $25,000 from small, local donors.

The hospital committee shifted into overdrive, pushing for donations in Aberdeen, Southern Pines, Vass, West End, Lakeview, Pinebluff and Jackson Springs. In a meeting on April 24, 1928, the committee advised that “sufficient funds are definitely in sight for the construction of an A-1 hospital.” In sight perhaps, but not yet in the bank.

At the meeting, it was determined that building of the hospital would move forward even though the conditions of the Duke Endowment’s grant had yet to be satisfied. The prospect that the endowment could still pull the plug on its sizable contribution was deemed a risk worth running.

Contracts for the hospital’s design and construction would be required, so the committee formed a corporation to execute them. The board included representatives from throughout the county, including the mayors of Carthage, Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Simeon Chapin was named board president. The board immediately created a building committee composed of Leonard Tufts, Aberdeen’s Robert Page, Pete Pender, West End engineer George Maurice, Aberdeen Mayor G.C. Seymour and James Boyd. Cincinnati architect Samuel Hannaford was hired to design the building.

Meanwhile, contributions trickled in, but far too slowly. Hopeful that favorable press might sway hesitant donors, Leonard Tufts wrote The Pilot’s Bion Butler on May 5, 1928, seeking the paper’s assistance in clearing up “misconceptions” about the hospital. Butler printed Tufts’ correspondence verbatim on the front page. Tufts maintained the wealthy winter residents who were contributing the bulk of the money were doing so “not for selfish reasons, but giving of their riches to aid the health conditions in this county.”

The Pilot offered words of editorial support. “Men who do as much as the visiting strangers must not be looked on as the open pocket for everything that is wanted here, for it would soon destroy their regard for the community that would permit such mendacity, and it would also ruin the community’s regard for itself.”

Though not having obtained the necessary subscriptions from “outside Pinehurst” as required by the Duke Endowment, the Moore County Hospital Association boldly plunged into deeper waters on Nov. 13, 1928, hiring Sanford contractor Jewell-Riddle Company to construct the hospital. The company estimated the cost to build at $167,000. Groundbreaking took place that same month.

Meanwhile, hospital boosters resorted to new measures to eliminate the fundraising gap. On Sunday, Nov. 24, 1928, pitches for subscriptions were made at the services of every Moore County church. The new owner of The Pilot, Nelson Hyde, implored readers to contribute, “in any sums, big or little as it is desired.” In his Nov. 30 editorial, Hyde offered a rallying cry for this effort. “One for all — by all.” Subscription forms were printed in the paper.

The fundraising campaign was still short of its goal when the cornerstone for the building was laid on March 19, 1929. Conditional funding from the Duke Endowment remained up in the air. Chapin briefly addressed those assembled at the cornerstone ceremony: “This hospital is built by all the people of Moore County to serve all the people of Moore County, and is here and now dedicated to the county and its citizens for ever and ever.“ He closed with, “We wish it Godspeed on its errand of mercy into the future.”

To those still skeptical regarding the county’s need for a hospital, events the following day in Southern Pines served as a grim wake-up call. The town’s police chief, Joseph Kelly, was ambushed and shot four times while searching an automobile. The motorist who fired the gun was wanted by law enforcement for an assortment of holdups and burglaries.

The chief was in a bad way but managed to stagger to his patrol car and drive to the residence of Dr. W.C. Mudgett before collapsing to the ground. Mudgett summoned an ambulance, which transported the gravely wounded chief to Highsmith Hospital, in Fayetteville. He died the following morning. It cannot be said with any certainty that Chief Kelly would have survived had the hospital been nearby, but that thought undoubtedly crossed peoples’ minds.

Perhaps the murder loosened strings on some pocketbooks. Or maybe the eye-catching sight of the new three-story brick and columned hospital did. In any event, it was announced in the Sept. 20, 1929 Pilot that “the necessary donations to make available the conditional subscription of $50,000 by the Duke Endowment have all been paid in.” Construction was finished two months later. The final cost of the building plus needed equipment turned out higher than projected. The Duke Endowment upped its building contribution to $75,000.

Moore County Hospital’s 33 beds and two operating rooms opened to patients on Nov. 25, 1929. Chapin continued in his role as board president. Dr. Clement R. Monroe became the institution’s first doctor and administrator. The omnipresent Dr. Mudgett was named chief of surgery. Ellen Bruton supervised the nurses. To the surprise of the staff, the hospital was filled to capacity almost from the start.

While all the members of the Hospital Committee deserved credit for their steadfastness, Simeon Chapin came to be regarded as its guiding spirit. In 1930, the Sandhills Kiwanis Club awarded Simeon the Builder’s Cup. The Pilot noted that “Mr. Chapin’s faith and optimism through the long campaign for funds, plus his untiring efforts in soliciting contributions, and in overseeing the proper expenditure thereof, which has given to this section of the state one of the finest institutions to be found anywhere in the United States.”

However, the struggles continued. With the onset of the Great Depression, nearly two-thirds of the patients during the hospital’s first year could not afford to pay for treatment. In his role as administrator, Dr. Monroe scrambled to keep the operation above water, describing himself as the “all around water boy.”

Alarmed by the shortfalls, several organizations pitched in to assist. The women who comprised the Moore County Hospital Auxiliary contributed money, towels, curtains and bedclothes. The 400 members of the Birthday Club made it their practice to donate funds, canned goods and linens on their respective birthdays. An old fashioned “pounding” was held in the early years, in which local farmers donated vegetables, fruits, jellies and jams. The hospital even purchased a cow to supplement its dairy requirements.

Despite the hardships, Moore County Hospital prospered and grew, and soon needed to expand. By 1939, housing for nurses and a new wing featuring 26 additional beds had been added to the campus. The hospital’s endowment and footprint would eventually grow far beyond the dreams of the founders.

James Boyd passed away in 1944. Four of the remaining stalwarts responsible for the birth of Moore County Hospital died in 1945: Leonard Tufts, Eldridge Johnson, Pete Pender and the hospital’s honorary president, Chapin. On the day of his passing, the latter visited the hospital to make a donation for the purpose of ensuring the presence of Bibles in every room.

It was the sort of thing Chapin had been doing his whole life. He liberally supported churches of all types, including Pinehurst’s Village Chapel, serving on that church’s building committee during its erection in 1924 and ’25. In Chapin’s 1929 hospital dedication speech, he opened with this anecdote: “About five years ago, when the new church was being built in Pinehurst, a certain person who had had sickness in the family said to me, ‘We need a new hospital more than we need a new church.’ My answer was, ‘We need both.’”

He got both.

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Doctors’ Orders

DOCTORS' ORDERS

Doctors’ Orders

Breathing life into a contemporary villa

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

Embarking on a second career in retirement is nothing new: Lawyers become clergyman; bank tellers resurface as hairstylists; farmers write novels. But a retired Army physician renovating high-end residences? Well, why not?

Retired Lt. Col. Teresa Pearce, M.D., a public health specialist with a master’s degree in epidemiology, and her husband, Dr. Tony Freiler, M.D., a retired Lt. Col. Army radiologist practicing locally, found Pinehurst perfect for work and family. With two sons, 8 and 12, Teresa thought about renovating a house large enough for several generations to live communally. “I’m very big on family,” she says. She found a candidate in an estimated 7,200-square-foot manse built in 2001, with detached garage/apartment and pool on 5 acres overlooking a Country Club of North Carolina golf course. The multi-generational living plan didn’t materialize but, oh, what a venue for honing interior design skills and showcasing good taste.

Although the property does not conform to any off-the-shelf architectural mode — try contemporary Italianate villa — its wings spread over a section of CCNC where land parcels are of similar size. Teresa’s method was simple: Find something to make your own and get to work. Upgrades took about a year.

“This one . . . it was very well-built but the layout, the flow, didn’t work,” she says. But, given the imagination, the means and the neighborhood, it was a diamond in the rough.

The interior spreads out along hallways on either side of the foyer, where a large painting of a golden orb mounted on grasscloth hangs. Could it be the moon? Teresa’s father was part of the space program, in Florida. His NASA helmet contributes to the décor.

To the right, near the kitchen entrance, was a small formal dining room Teresa commandeered for her office, with a narrow glass-topped table — an unlikely but decorative desk — and a spectacular set of double doors she found in Maryland.

Beginning in the office, a trail of wallpaper and fabrics continues throughout the house — ferns, fruits, flowers, creatures and dense European mini-prints so vivid they jump off the background.

“Wallpaper, it’s my thing,” Teresa says, often in unusual color gradations. Navy, with a touch of teal, becomes Prussian blue; red has deep rather than bright overtones; and green imitates frogs, not limes.

The core of Teresa’s renovation is the living room, whose back wall, paneled to the ceiling, rises 20-plus feet over a formal gathering space with a library section and, at the far end, a dining table seating 12 to 14 “in a pinch.”

Here, Teresa is not shy about expressing her taste. Against one living room wall stands a lamp table lacquered red with gold curlicues, stripped down to pale wood at the top. “All that red and gold . . . just too much,” she decided.

The kitchen escaped significant reconfiguration, although wood cabinets became white and the island more user-friendly. Notable are the side-by-side Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer. Beyond is a kid-friendly family room where the giant circle motif is repeated in wall mirrors. And beyond that is a screened porch and pool.

Teresa haunts auctions and estate sales. “I’m an accumulator,” she admits. At one time, she owned an antique business. Now, she and a partner, Jennifer Beranek, operate Elliott Rowell, an interior design firm in Aberdeen.

Living space continues in an above-ground lower level, encompassing a game room with pool table, a lounging area for watching movies, several guest bedrooms, 2 ½ bathrooms, a kitchenette and gym with weight-training equipment, an arts and crafts area, and Tony’s office. The walls are mostly done in Teresa’s signature navy blue, also the favored color (along with white) in the main floor master suite.

The totality allows for overstuffed sofas, large fireplaces and multi-era furnishings with a surprise around every corner: A campaign throne/chair stands in a hallway. Children’s furniture creates a village, with ceiling shelves for stuffed animals. A combination laundry/dog parlor has an elevated tub for bathing twin Springer spaniels. Teresa’s classic butler’s pantry is a rarity in contemporary construction, but oh, so convenient when serving those 14 guests. A canopy-free four-poster bed dominates the master suite, also home to a giant Boston fern and a bay window. Next up: a rose garden.

“I love renovation,” Teresa says. “I feel like the house has a new life, like it’s relevant again.”