November 9, 2007

If you weren’t there (and if you weren’t, only Neal and Rebecca would know), you missed quite an amazing show last Friday. A normal Friday Asheboro Rotary meeting was scheduled, but a blockbuster community event broke out. Thanks to a harmonic convergence of great topic, dynamite speakers and lack of available space, the Asheboro-Randolph Chamber of Commerce provided us with one of our most impressive programs ever. “The Impact of Mental Health Reform in North Carolina” was the topic at what was the big finale of the Chamber’s “Lunch and Learn” series, and we were lucky to get both the program and more than a hundred extra guests at lunch. Your scribe has been around since 1994, and has only seen that number of people present at a Rotary meeting at a District Conference. In order to accomodate the overflow crowd, lunch started at 11:30, and the actual program began just after noon and went until 1:15. Amazingly, very few people left before the end, a tribute to the quality of the program. But, I get ahead of events.

We tried to bring a semblance of normalcy to a atypical meeting. Joy provided our usual piano accompaniment. Jaci Betts provided world-class table arrangements in honor of the Rotary Foundation, whose scheduled program this originally was. President HR began with a rueful acknowledgment that the club and the chamber were juggling a lot of things to weld the meetings together, and warned us that it could be either ‘lunch and learn’ or ‘crash and burn.’ Luckily it was the former. Past President Ed Clayton taught the crowd the Four Way Test, and led a Prayer. Rebecca Redding recognized a few special guests (not counting the hundred or more Chamber attendees): Debbie Cole, guest of Jerry Hill; Rob Wilkins and wife Cindy, with Elizabeth Mitchell; Matt Culberson, with dad Jim; Joyia Clayton, with husband Ed; Dr. Charles Betts, with wife Jaci; Christie Smith with Carole Matney; Sean Carter with Lynn Dodge; and from the Randolph Club, Sheriff Maynard Reid and Helen Keyes. Student Guests from AHS were Steven Buhrman, son of Bill and Karen Buhrman, an active young man who rock climbs, plays rugby and is a member of the Downtown Fencing Club in Greensboro. He plays to major somewhere in engineering, with an interest in nanotechnology. Clay Long is even bigger and more active as #74 on the AHS football team, and is the son of Chief Superior Court Judge Brad Long, and Reena Strickland. Clay is 17 years old and about 6′4″, it appears, though Your Scribe remembers clearly when he was born and was little enough to carry in the one-armed football clutch. Clay has 3 sisters (one of whom is just about a year old) and hopes to attend NCSU to major in mechanical engineering where he can pursue an interest in biodiesel production.

Past President and current Assistant District Governor Mary Joan Pugh stood to start the program. She recognized Bill Batten, our Foundation Chair, who had been recognized the night before as a Major Donor at the District Foundation Banquet. Then she went through a quick recounting of Rotary’s commitment to international peace and development, for the benefit of our visitors. She then introduced local banker Tina Crutchfield, head of the Chamber Lunch and Learn program, sponsored by Chandler Concrete and RBC Centura. She introduced the Master (mistress?) of Ceremonies Ann Shaw, our late lamented Randolph County Register of Deeds. In her very active retirement, Ann now serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the Randolph County Mental Health Association, a private advocacy agency funded in part by the United Way. [Chris Corsbie is the Executive Director of the Association; you could spot him pacing around the hall wearing a worried expectant father look.] Ann went down the dias to bring up the three speakers: Chris Fitzsimons, Executive Director of NC Policy Watch; Michael Watson, CEO of Sandhill Center for Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; and Anthony Pugh, a Board member of the local MHA and a mental health services client.

Well, Your Scribe took 18 little note cards full of notes, but frankly I can’t do justice to the excellence of the program in the time I have available to write this newsletter. Here’s the link to the Courier-Tribune article about the meeting; you can read that. Let me just say, however, that Chris Fitzsimons did a masterful, rapid-fire history of our disastrous attempts since 2001 to “reform” mental health care in North Carolina. All agreed that we’re in worse shape now than we were then, and privatizing what amounts to a vital service has just resulted in the clients who have the ability to pay being skimmed off the top of the heap, and the rest are left to struggle for the minimal level of public services that have managed to survive. Sadly, the hospitals, jails, prisons and homeless shelters have been having to deal with the rest. I’d love to do justice to Chris’s talk, but here’s just one paraphrased quote: the bureaucrats in Raleigh who are supposed to be responsible for mental health care are playing a ’shell game of blame’ trying to shift responsibility away from themselves while the system is in a state of collapse and public hospitals are a mess. ‘What happens after hospital discharge is not our fault,’ says Michael Moseley, director of state Mental Health services. ‘It’s due to the lack of services on the local level.’ [Which the state used to support and basically starved to death. It's the old cry of the guy who killed his parents: don't blame me, I'm an orphan!] Chris said the2001 reform was”basically well-intentioned” but the rank-and-file mental health professionals aren’t so sure, and the public has gradually lost all faith in a system in crisis. The biggest problem he sees is the lack of outrage from politicians (this he directed toward Rep. Pat Hurley and Rep. Laura Wiley of High Point, both of whom were present). A study commission recommended that $100 million would be necessary to fix the system, and the most recent legislature appropriated just $3 million over the last budget. There is a complete lack of leadership from the people whose job it is to make sure people are served, and a growing feeling that politicians at the highest levels of government just don’t care. Micheal Watson had equally blunt comments about his organizations forced privatization, and the upheavals local mental health professionals have endured through 3 separate “catastrophic reorganizations.” And Anthony Pugh provided a fascinating first-hand account of a mental health service “consumer.”

So, punches really weren’t pulled. It was disturbing, but a great program. If you weren’t there, you missed a really great event!

I’ll upload more photos later…

August 24, 2007

It was High School Football Coaches Day at Asheboro Rotary, and all four local teams were represented this year in the annual Race to Lower Expectations.

At the Scribe Table were two of our guests. Jesse Gneiting was the guest of Jim Foster, and is a young man of mixed heritage- a smattering of Italian and German, hailing from the Midwest and now here in Asheboro with the Wachovia Financial Advisors program. “Gneiting,” according to the Oxford Dictionary of American Family Names, means ‘eagerness’, ‘envy’ or ‘hatred’ in Middle High German, and originated as a nickname for a person with a hostile, resentful disposition. Jesse’s disposition, however, was rather friendly, putting the lie to another name just as Mike Miller doesn’t grind flour, Talmadge Baker doesn’t bake for a living, Stan Beck doesn’t live beside a stream, Rob Reese is not a giant, and Mac Whatley is not the Son of Kay and doesn’t tend a wheat field.

On the other side of the table, as guest of her new boss Phil Shore, was Nancy Newman, formerly of Canada and now the new Program Director at Randolph Arts Guild. Nancy has been in the area for a year or so, and has a lot of experience back in Our Neighbor to the North working with museums and nonprofit groups. Let’s hope she makes it through her first Fall Festival with a minimum of bruising! There were lots of other guests today, scattered around the room. Joe Weaver was back with Phil Koonce, appropriately enough at the Presbyterian Table, since his wife Connie is the new pastor there. Joe is a Clemson grad shopping around for a CPA job. Madison Cox was back, visiting again with Grandma Lib. Roma Cheek, local dentist, was with George Bain; Kathy Carter was with Linda Cranford; Kent Beck was with dad Stan; and Reynolds Lisk, insurance conglomerateur, was with Steve Eblin. Last but certainly not least, Vickie Gallimore and Archie O’Dell were making up from the Randolph Club.

We Shook and Tested and Pledged and Prayed: Phil Shore thanked God for rain and fresh water in general. President HR offered sympathy to the wives of Gene Johnson and Harold Holmes on the loss of their brother Ronnie Hunt; Mike Freeland’s wife Sherri is in Duke Medical Center, he informed us. Anniversaries: tomorrow is Mary Joan’s 12th in Asheboro Rotary; August 27th is Archie Smith’s 61st; and Allen Holt has been with us 24 years, today.

Tar Wheel in history, August 29, 1973, was about former AHS coach Max Morgan and a blind football player. Speaking of football, Foster Hughes says that his Graham High football team played Eastern Randolph one year, and he went home with 13 stitches. HR says last year’s ERHS/AHS game was the best he’s ever seen; and resulted in a new “Media Line” rule- spectators must stay at least six feet away off the field. (Since Your Scribe stood up in the scrum on the sidelines that whole game, he understands how that rule arose.)

Sam Whitley was the first to speak, he’s in his second year as AHS head coach and enjoyed at 12/1 season last year and won the regular season conference title. He is proud of their academic record, too: every 9th, 10th and 11th grader was promoted and eligible to play; and they’ll need them all since 22 seniors graduated. they have 5 walk-ons this year, and he has volunteers who coach on academics and make sure the kids all attend class. They lost 10-3 last Friday night, so this year he says they’re just working toward practicing somewhere on Thanksgiving Day. He thanked the community for behaving well last year at the ERHS game, and asked for our support in their game tonight.

The very Big and Tall Mike Lotzenheiser was up next; he’s brand new at Southwest Randolph. He’s an Arizona State basketball player, coaching football. He started coaching at Tempe when he was a junior in college.He says the move to Randolph County was a leap of faith, and he has loved it. News flash: Southwest, he says, is not yet a football powerhouse. they played Jordan Matthews from Siler City last week and lost 34-0; the improvement, however, is that last year they lost to the same guys 54-0. He has 2 starters returning on offense and 3 on defense, so it will be a young team. But he says they are dedicated, work hard, and won’t quit.

This was veteran head coach Burton Cates’ 24th year at Asheboro Rotary; he has been at Eastern Randolph even longer than that, and has a 224/68 record. One of those losses was to Asheboro last year, and another came in the preseason last week (a helpful member reminded him that “this was the first time you’ve been here with a loss.” Just remember, he says, that other team was #8 in the state). Tonight they play #4 (Greensboro Dudley)- and he just hopes to get his kids home in one piece. Call 1-800-Dial A Prayer, he says. (Future news flash: they won!).

For all the gloom, Burton was flashing a shiny new state championship ring up on stage. Eastern lost seniors, too, he says. Nine players went on to play college football. One got a Morehead to UNC; one got a Parke scholarship to NCSU. He has one starter back on defense and 2 very inexperienced guys left on offense. After the loss last October 13th, he says he told the team, “If we have faith in each other, we didn’t lose to Asheboro, they helped us win.” And he’s convinced that if the loss to Asheboro hadn’t happened, that they probably would never have won the state championship in Raleigh. Why didn’t you leave when your seniors left, asked Mike Miller. After the 1983 championship Donnie Baxter became an administrator and Burton got the head coach’s job, he replied. They went 7/2 with a very special group that year, and rebuilding the program is a fond memory to him. They’ll lose Liberty and northeast Randolph next year, when the freshmen and sophomores go to Providence High. Juniors can choose to stay or not; seniors will stay at Eastern. He doesn’t agree with that administrative decision- doesn’t think it’s safe to play at the varsity level with just juniors- Eastern will be at a disadvantage, playing a 3A schedule with 2A size people, but Providence will be playing a 2A schedule with 1A people. We need to give kids a chance to grow into the new schools, he says. Burton ended with his traditional closing mantra, “We just hope we can win a football game this year.”

Eddie Williamson mowed through last year’s lunch, but his staff made sure he made it this time- they took his John Deere away from him. He’s in his 4th year at Randleman and has a 12/22 record.  Eddie has been around these parts all his life: Carl Phillips’ brother delivered him in 1948- the first baby he ever delivered.  A hefty baby, I am sure.

He has 9 starters returning on defense; 6 on offense.  This year’s team will have 10 seniors on defense, and 35 freshmen.  His son Heath is an assistant coach running offense this year; he’s lost some hair in the job but Eddie still calls him “Curly”  His wife also teaches at Randleman, so it is becoming the House of Williamson.  He’d love to have a fairy tale finish like Asheboro did last year, but realizes that “some of the best games we ever played, we lost.”  Right now he’s enjoying this present moment, when “we’re the only undefeated team in Randolph County.”