Teacher-student duo help 'cast hope' for women suffering from ovarian cancer

WLOS - October 21, 2016

MORGANTON, N.C. -- Our "Persons of the Week" are a teacher and student who share a bond. Together they are fighting a disease that's had a profound affect on their lives. It's a cause that has caught on with some teenagers.

John Zimmerman, a teacher at Patton High School in Morganton and former student Taylor Sharp share the pain of losing a loved one to ovarian cancer. John lost his grandmother. Taylor was a junior at the time of his mother's death. "It was soon after my mom passed I realized I wanted to try to be able to raise money to help women fight the disease that didn't have financial means to do so," Taylor said.

Beginning with their shared passion for the sport of fly-fishing, they launched the non-profit "Casting for Hope." It's a way to raise money, awareness and for a retreat for patients with ovarian cancer, a disease that has no diagnostic tests to detect it. "So, usually if ovarian cancer is found in stage one, it's by total accident," Zimmerman added. Since it's often detected in later stages, it is often terminal.

At Patton High School, dozens of students can be seen wearing teal colored t-shirts with the "Cast for Hope" logo. Tess Causby, a student, described the importance of the non-profit. "You have all these other organizations talk about breast cancer and no one really talks about ovarian cancer," Tess said. Students are learning lessons in giving in a variety of fundraisers. "We added in a music concert and now added a 5k. We're a lot more than a fly-fishing tournament," Taylor added.

They've been casting for hope for almost five years now, raising about $300,000. For Taylor Sharp, "Casting for Hope" represents something personal. "It feels like I'm honoring my mom in that sense, so always that connection to home, connection to her, to my past," he explained. "Casting for Hope" has a winter concert coming in December. Click here to learn more about upcoming events and about ovarian cancer.

Something in the Water: Public-Private Efforts to Improve Quality

November 7, 2016 - Stephanie Carson, Public News Service (NC)

RALEIGH, N.C. -- It's a literal trickle-down effect: water that runs off the mountains of western North Carolina, flows into streams that work their way across the state to the coast. And a joint effort between the state, feds, nonprofits and local land owners is working to improve water quality. 

Many of the projects are coordinated by the nonprofit Resource Institute, which uses public dollars to repair streams and mitigate runoff. According to Tim Reader, assistant secretary at the Department of Environmental Quality, the entire state benefits from even the smallest projects. "By repairing these streams up when they're smaller and up in the headwaters area of these streams, basically what you're doing is removing all this pollution that would eventually make its way downstream into our rivers," Reader said.

In North Carolina, the Resource Institute manages the Western Initiative, which is involved in projects that stabilize streams, improve aquatic habitat, protect wildlife corridors, reduce sediment and improve drinking water. To date, the Western Initiative has completed 85 projects in North Carolina. The Western Initiative's Mount Airy Greenway project on the Ararat River is another example. State Representative Kyle Hall, who serves Rockingham and Stokes counties, said partnerships between the public and private sector make all the difference.

"Down in Raleigh when we're serving, we don't know what every single issue looks like in the state," Hall said. "We're not experts on everything, so it's nice to have the resources to come in and be the experts for us and be able to point at the issues that we're having, especially with the stream bank restoration which they're really focusing on."  The Western Initiative also works with farmers in western North Carolina to repair damaged streams that make farm land unusable. Tim Beard, North Carolina State Conservationist for the USDA, said the impact is significant.

"Agricultural land is going to be more and more important, as we try to feed an increase in population. We can't afford to lose good, productive agricultural land for the simple fact that it is the foundation of this country," Beard said. "So it is critical that we try to restore and conserve as much farm land as we can." Projects that mitigate runoff and that direct water in a way that mirrors natural flows, help improve irrigation on farms and enhance recreational activities on rivers and streams.

Ribbon Cut for Mount Airy Greenway Connector

By Tom Joyce - tjoyce@civitasmedia.com

Years of planning, coordination and hard work were celebrated Friday when a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for Mount Airy’s new greenway connector. Although that link to the existing Emily B. Taylor and Ararat River greenways has been open to the public for several months, no official program had been conducted to welcome the connector as the city’s newest recreational resource.

That formality typically associated with the opening of such facilities was taken care of in a big way Friday when about 65 people attended the ceremony held at site just off U.S. 52 at a bridge built as part of the recent greenway project. The location chosen is near the spot where the Taylor greenway ended, but which now provides bicyclists, joggers or walkers a gateway to a 10-foot-wide paved trail of nearly seven continuous miles.

The “road” to supply that was even longer in terms of the time and preparation required. “This has been about a 15-year process to get to where we are today,” said Michael “Squeak” Smith of The Resource Institute in Winston-Salem, a non-profit organization that helped Mount Airy obtain funding for its greenway system.

“Vision” realized

The timeline Smith referred to dates to when the Taylor greenway came about along Lovills Creek, which was joined by the building of the Ararat River Greenway about eight years after that and the connector linking them during the past year. But the groundwork had been laid long before, in the aftermath of a devastating local flood in 1979, Mayor David Rowe said during Friday’s program.

That calamity led to a massive flood-control project along both Lovills Creek and the Ararat River which met the immediate need to keep those waterways in check, while also spawning a vision for the future, Rowe said. Tom Webb, a local businessman who formerly was a grants administrator for the municipality, saw the possibilities for the greenway. Webb had the foresight in the 1980s to advocate the acquisition of extra rights of way from affected property owners in addition to those needed for flood-control channels and stream widening — which Rowe said resulted in today’s greenway network.

“This, of course, was the start of that vision,” the mayor said of Webb’s efforts many years ago. Yet the “dream” also required planning — and money, Rowe told Friday’s gathering that included other city officials and staff members; employees of Smith-Rowe, LLC, which built the connector; local chamber of commerce and tourism officials; elected state representatives including Sen. Shirley Randleman; and interested citizens. The recent connector and related stream-restoration, totaling about $3.8 million, was made possible by various grants obtained with the help of The Resource Institute, along with a $430,000 allocation by the city government. The lion’s share of the funding was a $2.2 million grant awarded to Mount Airy by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Without that allocation, city Parks and Recreation Director Catrina Alexander told the crowd, “this project would not be.”

Mike Pettyjohn of the N.C. Department of Transportation, who is based in North Wilkesboro as the division engineer for the DOT unit that includes Surry County, also spoke during Friday’s ceremony. Pettyjohn said that in addition to recreation, the connector has helped provide alternative transportation opportunities for local residents — with his words nearly drowned out by tractor-trailers and other heavy traffic roaring by on U.S. 52. “This project is an example of what can happen when the municipality and the state partner together,” he said.

Another speaker, Charles Anderson, the executive director of The Resource Institute, says Mount Airy is helping to inspire other communities with similar greenway hopes. “You are the envy of many North Carolina cities and towns,” Anderson said. “People from all over have come here to see what you’re doing.” Although she wasn’t able to attend Friday’s event, Susan Kluttz, the secretary of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, who has visited Mount Airy multiple times, sent written remarks that Rowe read.

“Congratulations to Mayor Rowe and the Mount Airy community on the opening of the Lovills Creek-Ararat River Greenway connector,” Kluttz wrote. “One of the reasons visitors come to North Carolina is for the scenic beauty our state has to offer and this new, expanded greenway exemplifies this,” she added while also pointing to its economic potential. “Mount Airy understands that quality of life is one of the many ingredients that spark economic development, more jobs and increased tourism,” Kluttz wrote. “Combined with their leadership in historic preservation, Mount Airy is a bright example of a vibrant community.”

Tom Joyce may be reached at 336-415-4693 or on Twitter @Me_Reporter.