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This month’s collection of Josh Shaffer columns aims the spotlight on a cast of noble but unsung characters:
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Enjoy learning the details of their colorful lives along with more from Shaffer’s Monday columns, these published in July;
Randy Hester, 81, spent roughly a decade restoring the Person County house where tenant farmer Shorty Lawson raised seven children with his wife Annie, turning it into a museum honoring the workers who drove North Carolina’s economy .Shorty Lawson died in 1974 at age 38 after working the Hester family’s 200-acre farm, where five of his boys slept in one windowless room and the family bathed in a washtub.
Hillsborough teen Imogen Curry spent 109 hours crafting a prom outfit entirely from duct tape, featuring 6-foot white wings and a zodiac belt with 222 handmade beads. Curry, a rising homeschooled sophomore, is a top 10 finalist in the national Stuck at Prom contest sponsored by Duck Tape, with a potential $10,000 scholarship on the line.
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Jane Hunt, who died last month at 93, spent decades as a Raleigh activist protesting war, torture and execution well into her 80s while raising four children and teaching at a Montessori school. Hunt once housed 14 Vietnamese refugees in a single bedroom of her West Raleigh home. A memorial service was held last week at Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh.
Raleigh reopened Fayetteville Street 20 years ago after a 30-year run as a failed pedestrian mall, spending $10 million to bring cars back to the four-block downtown corridor. The reopened street hosted an estimated 180,000 people last month celebrating the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup win, setting a new crowd-size record, though empty storefronts and panhandling remain challenges.
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