The Cooleemee Fire Department members are always polishing their skills to make sure they are ready in case of emergencies.  Candice Foster and Kaitlin Plowman were focused on the orange cones as their target while Captain Steve Plowman is always ready to offer assistance.

When the whistle or horn starts sounding, we all look for the first responders. Volunteers are needed on many levels to assist the firefighters.

Residents can help in ways that don’t require a suit or going into a burning house. Having a station ready to help with bottled water for firefighters to revive themselves before going back in or holding the hose is important.

Applications are available at the station.

Curt and Amanda Wilson received help from their church family to prime their historic mill town frame home on Yadkin Street.    

A lot of scraping was taking place before the paint sprayers went into action.  Those hand sprayers are awesome and turn what could be a laborious job into one that works quick and efficiently.

While watching Curt on the roof getting to high spots and hard to reach places, I’m standing on the ground with my eyes on his prosthetic leg ,wondering if he is really safe up there.

His wife Amanda was standing nearby holding their youngest daughter and I asked what branch of service did he serve and was that how he became hurt.

“He didn’t lose his leg that way, it was a lawnmower accident.”

Curt’s accident happened 13 years ago this September when his foot slipped under the lawnmower and later had to have part of his leg removed. You may remember the feature in the Enterprise back then.

Before the accident, he and a friend were sitting in his truck at Davie High making fun of a girl who wore a prosthetic leg.

At a homecoming football game, he and that same friend were sitting in a truck again, and began talking about how ironic it was to be talking about that girl, making fun of her and then Curt ends up having an accident and now wearing a prosthetic leg himself.

In 2005, Curt and Amanda married and would tell him from time to time, you need to apologize to her.

In August of 2007, Curt made the decision to hand his life over to Christ and it was then the thoughts of him apologizing to that girl came to mind.

“Really, I began working through my life and things that were not right. Before I gave my life to Christ, I thought well, these things aren’t that bad, but after I saw how dumb I sounded how stupid things were that I did before and thought it was ok.

“That amazing grace, once is blind, now can see really came into effect.  That was one of the things that God laid on my heart, I needed to take care of apologizing to the girl.”

If Amanda and Curt would leave the house for groceries, a WalMart trip, or basically anything that made them leave their home and go out, they saw that girl. They could be getting gas, sitting in the car and she would pull up in her car.

In 2010, their car was packed to go to the beach and he saw the girl at Sheets.

“It was one of those things, you do it now or you’re not going to do it.”

Curt said to her, “I don’t know how to do this but I’m going to because God told me to.” He apologized to her and said he was sorry.

The girl said she was used to it and it was ok, that people do that all the time. He explained that God wanted him to apologize to her and he had been putting it off.

“I wasn’t even man enough to do it to your face,” he told her.

His wife Amanda saw him talking to her and was so hoping that was going to be the day he finally got the nerve.

She said when he got in the car he had this big grin on his face. Curt said the burden had lifted from him and he felt like he was on cloud nine.

Believe it or not, they haven’t seen that girl since.

Curt says anybody who has a burden like that and doesn’t take care of it; it’s not easy to cope. If God calls you to do something you need to do it,” he says.

“He changed after apologizing. He wasn’t as easily frustrated, or get agitated as bad. He became more laid back,” Amanda said.

A prosthetic company offered him a job but couldn’t take it because at the time he was in high school.

They prayed for the guy to offer him a job again and sure enough he had the opportunity to go full time, but Curt didn’t think they could make it going full time because there was a $3 cut in pay.

So he worked his fulltime job and worked part-time with the prosthetic company.

Curt developed a fungus on his leg and it put him out of work for three months.

The opportunity came to him again about going full-time with the prosthetic company and he took faith, quit the other job and went fulltime.   

Within one year of his new job, he was making six dollars more than when he was working at two jobs.

“It was like God slapping me in the face, see, I told you, you should have taken that job.  Since then, I have relied on him for everything. “

So, I guess you could say that was the end of a story that started many years ago.  The ending was a happy one, indeed.

Feel free to contact me at www.cooleemeenews@gmail.com or call 336.250.1133.