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Stamp Out Hunger
Food Drive
By E. Bishop
Every year, the second Saturday in May, is dedicated to the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive which was first established in 1993. It has grown substantially over the years and continues to be the largest one-day food drive in America. This year’s drive falls on Saturday May 10, always the day before Mother’s Day.
It’s extremely hard to believe that we live in a country of plenty but yet approximately 47 million people live in a food insecure household, meaning there is a lack of consistent access to enough food to meet basic needs. One in seven households – let that sink in. Over 13 million of those being children latest statistics show. Poverty is the number one cause of this situation and it seems in the current climate of our nation, it will not improve anytime soon.
According to Food Bank News, tariffs will greatly impact food security; tariffs are taxes on consumers leading to higher grocery prices. Low-income households which already allocate a large share of their income to food will only see food insecurity rise higher. Andreas Waldkirch, a professor of economics at Colby College specializing in international trades, tells Today.com that “grocery prices will go up.” And, lower-income Americans will feel it the most; they are more dependent on products from countries that will be hit the hardest by tariffs. At the same time, food banks and social service organizations will likely see increased demands while they will be experiencing higher operating costs and reduced donations.
The NALC participates in many programs throughout the year, but as a retired letter carrier, I feel this is one of the most important for the current year. The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive aims to offer relief by collecting food to feed millions of families in need throughout our nation. Next time you go grocery shopping and you have a little extra, please consider your neighbors who might be in need of a helping hand. Add a few non-perishable food items to your cart, put them in a bag in your mailbox for your postal carrier to pick up. All food picked up will be donated to the local food bank in Davie County.
Please mark your calendar – Food Drive – Saturday, May 10- place food in mailbox or drop off at your local post office.

More
Connections
By Linda H. Barnette
In Dr. Rumple’s history of Rowan, I discovered many Davie County connections, especially before 1836 when our county was formed.
One such group was the Pearson family. The founder of this family was Richmond Pearson, who came to North Carolina from Virginia at the age of 19 and settled in what is now Davie. He was a merchant and a planter who lived near Cooleemee and was a merchant and a planter. When the Revolutionary War began, he was a lieutenant in Captain Bryan’s Company.
He was married twice, first to a Miss Hayden, who had 3 sons and a daughter. One son was General Jesse Pearson, who married the mother of Letitia Carter who gave the land for FUMC. He also built the house on Salisbury Street that I mentioned in an earlier article. By his second wife, he had 6 children, the most famous of which was Richard Mumford Pearson.
He graduated from Chapel Hill in 1819 and then read the law with Judge Archibald Henderson in Salisbury. He was licensed in 1826 and practiced law here in Mocksville where he built a law office. Eventually he was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons, finally becoming Chief Justice of the N. C Supreme Court in 1866.
The main thing that he is remembered for in this area is his establishment of the Richmond Hill law school, named for his estate in what is now Yadkin County. Many young men of that day who could afford it studied law there. Originally opened here in town, he moved and rebuilt the law school on his plantation in Yadkin County near the Yadkin River. Many of his students went on to become well-known jurists and public servants.
Pearson was married twice and had numerous children. On Jan. 5, 1878, he was riding in a buggy to Winston-Salem to catch the train to Raleigh for court. He became ill on the drive and died shortly after reaching Winston. His funeral was held in Raleigh an he was buried at Oakwood Cemetery there. (Several of his family members are buried in the Pearson Family Cemetery near Cooleemee).

Just One Part
By Felicia Browell
“We love each other. Isn’t that enough?” my then-husband asked.
I will never forget standing in the doorway, jaw slack, as I considered the question.
“No. No it isn’t.”
And it isn’t.
My parents hadn’t approved of him, but they supported my decision and choice. I was really determined to make it work. Within a couple of months living with the man, it was painfully – tearfully – obvious that our marriage wouldn’t last. Since then, I’ve spent hundreds of hours pondering WHY. Why I’d gotten into it, and why that was a mistake.
The introspection led me to what I call my rules of life (see previous Renegades piece), and after years of thinking on it, I feel can speak to what I’ve learned from my relationship failures and successes.
The question of “is love enough?” had me soul searching regularly since that first marriage ended.
Love should be, but it really isn’t.
A relationship has a few essential elements, and without those elements, it’s like a three-legged stool with two legs missing and half a seat.
The first leg is a big one – respect. Mutual respect. You need to respect each other’s choices, opinions, efforts, beliefs, values, education, accomplishments, etc. You don’t need to agree with all of it, or even like all of it. But as long as whatever it is doesn’t physically or psychologically harm you or your family, everyone is entitled to have their own thoughts and personal drivers. This also means you don’t mock or tease, or talk negative about the person when they aren’t around. And no eye rolling, either. I was guilty of that in marriage number two years before I consciously realized I was losing respect for Husband Two. I should have recognized it, but by then we were both in defense mode, and we actively avoided one another to avoid dealing with the growing division.
When I married Husband One, I was finishing two degrees at the university, and had one semester left after we married. He flat out told me that both degrees were meaningless, that anyone can write, and that psychology is a quack science. I still laugh when I remember his favorite saying about counseling. He liked to say “There’s something wrong with you if you need to see a shrink.”
Well, duh. That’s the point, right?
The next big element in a good relationship is trust. My proverbial clue phone was ringing when Husband One came home from work one day, furious. “I heard you did [such-and-such] today near where I work. My guys told me they saw you there,” he raged.
“That’s not what happened,” I replied, feeling blindsided. After all, I’d done nothing wrong. “I was in that building, but it had nothing to do with why they were there.”
“Well, they said you did [such-and-such], so that’s what happened.” I felt like I’d been gut punched. “His guys” told him that I had done something; so I was lying.
We were only two months into the marriage, and I told myself it was just a phase. He hadn’t been controlling or distrustful when we dated, or while we were engaged. When, soon after, he told me that he believed “give a woman a chance and she’ll cheat on you,” I knew it wasn’t a phase. I knew I had to leave. I looked for and found an exit from that situation before I became someone I didn’t recognize.
One way to show love, trust, and respect is by cultivating good communications. Open communications. You should be able to say the most serious or the silliest thing, to your partner, friend, or family member. You should be able to disagree without getting angry with one another. You should be able to laugh with but not at one another. And you should be willing to laugh at yourself, too. After all, we all do silly or stupid things occasionally, and laughing about that is a great way to smooth over whatever blunder happened.
Husband Two and I had this quality in our communications for the first few years of our marriage. I’m still sad that we couldn’t find a way to heal the relationship and recapture the fun we had early on.
Of course there are other important elements too, like basic compatibility, a willingness to compromise, being authentic to one another, sharing, just being friends, and encouraging each another to be true to who you really are.
Love itself is just one part of being happy in healthy relationships. But if you both work at it, love can be the glue that holds your relationship together.