Home Care In Prospect Hill, NC

More than 25 years ago, Bill Selvidge was interviewing for jobs in North Carolina, and on his last interview he toured Chapel Hill with Moses Carey — executive director of what was then called Orange Chatham Comprehensive Health Center. Carey spent four hours with his new recruit, buying him breakfast at Breadmen’s and then taking Selvidge to see a small rural community health center in Caswell County. It was the place he liked best, and the family doctor has been there ever since. It is now the Piedmont Health Prospect Hill Community Center.

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Like all of Piedmont Health’s community centers, the mission of Prospect Hill is to help people who might not be able to find medical care because they live in a rural area or cannot afford regular medical care. Dr. Bill Selvidge sees anyone who comes in the door. The bulk of his practice is people he’s known for many years, and some of his patients have become friends who have sent other members of their families to see him. The family doctor calls it “a good community relationship.”

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Among Dr. Selvidge’s many staff heroes at Prospect Hill was John Poteat, a van driver who picked up patients and drove them to the clinic or a local hospital. He stopped at houses and helped the littlest kids get dressed or feed them breakfast, and then piled everyone in the van and went to the next house. Often late getting people back to the clinic for their appointments, nobody minded. Poteat also took patients from Caswell County to the hospital at UNC and waited for them long after the hospital vans stopped service.

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Family doctor Bill Selvidge also advises his long-time patients when it may be time for them to become participants in one of the two Piedmont Health SeniorCare PACE Centers. After taking care of them for so long, he can tell them how good it will be for their entire family. The all-day facilities in Burlington and Pittsboro have doctors and nurses on staff, along with recreational experts to help them enjoy the senior years to their fullest. Dr. Selvidge helps with the transition when the time is right.

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“Reflections” is a recurring series on Chapelboro.com sponsored by Piedmont Health Services that will highlight local healthcare professionals striving with purpose and passion to keep our community happy, healthy and thriving.

A Caswell County judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Carolina Sunrock against opponents of a proposed mine and two asphalt plants, ruling that the defendants are engaging in constitutionally protected speech.

Last year Carolina Sunrock sued 58 residents who were petitioning Caswell County officials to stop the projects. The Thomas Holt Branch of the NC NAACP, Anita Foust and the Rev. Byron Shoffner are fighting a proposed asphalt plant, known as Burlington North, on the Alamance-Caswell County line; landowners near Prospect Hill are contesting a second asphalt plant and mine in the southern part of the county.

The judge’s ruling affects NAACP members, as well as Foust and Shoffner, who had asked the court to dismiss the suit.

Carolina Sunrock, based in Raleigh, plans to build an asphalt plant along Highway 62, in Anderson Township, a predominantly Black neighborhood. The NC Department of Environmental Quality initially denied the company’s air permit application, but approved revisions last fall. NAACP members are especially concerned about the health effects of harmful air emissions — particulate matter, as well as toxic air pollutants — on the neighborhood.

Carolina Sunrock has claimed that opponents’ persistent legal appeals were depriving the company of its “vested rights” to build these projects despite a county-wide moratorium that had been placed on polluting industries. A vested right allows a company to continue a use or complete a project as it was approved, despite subsequent changes to the ordinance.

However, Shoffner, Foust and the NAACP have not challenged the company’s vested rights; rather, they simply asked the county to reconsider the issuance of two local watershed permits.

Opponents have argued that the company’s litigation was a SLAPP suit — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — intended to quiet them and bypass the citizen appeal process. Most recently, opponents have petitioned the county watershed review board, which also must approve the projects. Opponents did not raise the issue of vested rights in their appeals.

Superior Court Judge Edwin Wilson did not use the words “SLAPP suit” in his ruling. However, he noted that if the court prohibited Foust, Shoffner and the NAACP from appealing to the county watershed board, it “will only serve to dissuade petition activity, which is constitutionally protected.”

“This lawsuit asks the court to prevent the NAACP from making legal arguments during a hearing which has not yet occurred, and may not occur at all,” Judge Wilson wrote.

Judge Wilson also wrote that Carolina Sunrock legal arguments were misdirected. County officials, not the concerned residents, would be the defendants in a vested rights case.

The Southern Coalition for Social Justice represented the defendants. “Caswell County residents stood firm for their First Amendment rights and pushed back against corporate strong-arm tactics to stifle their speech,” said Mitchell Brown, counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

This order does not affect the defendants who chose to have the Superior Court determine the vested rights question. All defendants, including Foust, Shoffner and the NAACP, are still involved with the Watershed Review Board appeals hearing, which has been postponed until after the Superior Court case concludes.

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Right off NC-86 in Caswell County, about 45 minutes out of Raleigh, you'll find one of the wonders of North Carolina. The tiny village of Shangri-La has been standing for over 50 years, an enduring and magical testament to the life of retired tobacco farmer Henry Warren. During the final decade of his life, while battling cancer, Warren hung up his farming equipment and built his own version of paradise -- a miniature, whimsical town of stone and quartz, complete with every comfort and amenity one might hope to find in a tiny hometown. There's a school, a theater, a library, a fishing-hole, and even an artfully-carved church.

Warren began building Shangri-La in 1968, when he was 75 years old. He lovingly crafted each detail, pouring his soul into these structures, even going so far as to gather the stone and quartz from the nearby quarry himself. He also found offbeat items at local flea markets, which visitors can find sprinkled around the town like hidden easter eggs: A black french bulldog, a headless duck, a metal donkey, an old-timey kettle.

The buildings are around five feet high, encircling a central pond with a tall, metal water tower. For added fancy, Warren added several elaborate thrones, which lure passersby to sit, to be royalty of Shangri-La, if only for a few moments.

Warren's purpose and dream is carved into a stone slab at the entrance:

"Let me live in the house by the side of the road and be a friend to man." - Henry Warren, 1972

By the time Warren passed away in 1977, he'd built 27 buildings in his peaceful stone town. His loved ones worked together to finish his final structure, a hospital.

The Inhabitants of Shangri-La

"Howdy," says a woman mowing the grassy lawn.

"Come on over, come look around!" she welcomes me in a warm, Southern drawl.

Henry Warren's daughter and family still enjoy and maintain Shangri-La, keeping it beautiful and lively for visitors to enjoy. Truly they are a friend to man, as the sign suggests. She gives me a tour of the village. I peer in tiny doors, discovering hidden surprises and delights--like a tiny toilet in one building--that speak to Warren's sense of humor like a twinkle and a wink.

Then I spy something that doesn't seem to belong: A Minion toy from a pipe atop a building.

"Oh!" Warren's daughter laughs. "I haven't seen that one! People leave all kinds of things here."

I notice them everywhere then: Toys hidden all around the village. Warren's village is such an inviting and utopian place, visitors often want to leave a piece of themselves behind. A toy duck sits beside the fishing hole; a small alien is watching the theater.

I pull a small toy bear from my keychain and gently sit him inside the school. I hope he enjoys his new home in North Carolina's own version of Shangri-La.

The other inhabitants of Shangri-La are swarms of butterflies. Tall bushes, through which Warren built a meandering pathway of quartz, stone, and arrowheads, herald dozens of fluttering orange and black butterflies.

"Oh, they just come for the flowers," smiles Henry's daughter.

But I suspect they come for the peace and magic of Warren's village.

The Guest Journal

On a grassy hill overlooking the Shangri-La skyline, visitors find a guest journal -- a tome full of decades of beautiful memories and thank you's for the Warren family. Visitors are encouraged to write their experience there.

Not many things last 50 years in this world. Once upon a time, a retired tobacco farmer dug up rocks and gems and crafted a beautiful city just so strangers could come by and be happy -- and 50 years later, his legacy is still giving people wonder and joy.

I write: Thank you for creating a little paradise for your North Carolinian neighbors.

I smile as I drive away, hoping my little bear enjoys his new home in Shangri-La.

If you want to go see Shangri-La for yourself, you can find it here!

Dom Flemons, a founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, goes solo with his new album Prospect Hill.

Prospect Hill, premiering at USA TODAY, will be released July 22 via Music Maker Relief Foundation. It's Flemons' third solo album, but his first since leaving the Grammy-winning string band last fall.

"I wanted to show people the other parts of my repertoire that I never really got to showcase in the Chocolate Drops," Flemons says. "Working with them, I've picked up quite a few different tunes in my own personal research. On this record, I tried to bring up tunes that showed my own talents as a musician. I also dusted off some tunes I've written over the past several years."

Where the Chocolate Drops focused on one style of music, Flemons takes a broader approach on Prospect Hill, an album that encompasses folk tunes, ragtime, early jazz and rock and roll and fife-and-drum music

"For my own record, I've let myself be a lot looser about my style," Flemons says. In his original tune Till the Seas Run Dry, for instance, "I tried to show off New Orleans jazz in the era before the Hot Five. I Can't Do That Anymore — I used to play a lot of old rock 'n' roll, '40s R&B. Those were things I couldn't ever do in a string band. It just didn't fit the style."

Flemons found a kindred spirit in blues musician Guy Davis. "He's really the heartbeat of the album," Flemons says. "We're both students of music, and we're both in this realm of songsters, where we're folk singers and blues singers and jazz singers and country singers, all at the same time."

Flemons' songs may draw heavily from old styles, but Prospect Hill is never locked in the past. "I've worked a lot of years, trying to balance that," he says. "I tried to make sure when I presented songs, I made them as good as the old songs I might try to interpret."

Prospect Hill is a well-traveled album, with songs set in locales ranging from Arizona to Georgia, from San Francisco to Nashville. "These are all places that meant something to me," says Flemons, who lives near Chapel Hill, N.C.

Flemons spent nearly a decade with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a group that reintroduced the music of old-time African-American string bands to the culture.

"It was always supposed to be a place we could train musicians of like minds," he says. "We covered so much ground that we couldn't find common ground anymore after a certain point. We had covered all the common ground we set out to cover over the course of 10 years."

Flemons calls his new music "a continuation of the work I've done for years. It's just a natural bridge into the next part of my career."

Fifty-eight defendants named in legal complaint filed in Caswell County

Opponents of two asphalt plants and a 426-acre mine proposed for Caswell County have been so successful in stymieing the projects that the company behind the proposals is now taking the residents to court.

Carolina Sunrock filed a lawsuit last week in Caswell County Superior Court against 58 residents: those who have fought a proposed asphalt plant in Anderson Township, a predominantly Black neighborhood on the Alamance-Caswell County line; and opponents of a second asphalt plant and mine in Prospect Hill in southern Caswell.

The company is asking the court to declare that it has “vested rights” to build these projects despite a county-wide moratorium on polluting industries. The one-year moratorium expired in January for most of Caswell County, but commissioners extended it until early July for four townships where the mine and plants would be built.

Carolina Sunrock is requesting a jury trial, and that the defendants pay the legals costs of the action.

The residents are concerned about air pollution, truck traffic and the potential harm to the quantity and quality of the groundwater, which serves as the drinking water supply for these rural areas. The Prospect Hill mine would be built near Roxboro Lake, the drinking water supply for the City of Roxboro.

The company filed the complaint after several residents appealed a watershed protection permit it had been granted. The Caswell County Watershed Administrator approved the permit in January, despite a prohibition on development approvals during the moratorium extension. However, a separate county document known as a “zoning determination” indicates that Carolina Sunrock does have vested rights and the projects can continue.

The residents’ appeal now goes to the county’s Watershed Review Board. The company alleges the board would have to weigh the issue of vested rights, yet has no authority to do so.

The subtext of the lawsuit is that these appeals have further thwarted the asphalt and mining projects. By filing with the court, Carolina Sunrock is trying to expedite matters and bypass the citizen appeal process.

Without the court’s intervention, “Sunrock faces a continued and potentially perpetual risk of having to litigate and relitigate the issue of vested rights” even though the county has already recognized their existence, court documents read.

“Keep in my mind, they’re coming to us,” said the Rev. Bryon Shoffner, who lives in Anderson Township. Shoffner is not a defendant in the legal complaint. “They want us to suck it up and deal with it. But the Anderson community is dealing with cumulative impacts. We want them to respect what community wants.”

Carolina Sunrock’s lawyer, Bill Brian of Durham, argues in the court filing that the projects should be exempt from the moratorium because the moratorium states that it “does not apply to development for which substantial expenditures have been already made in good faith reliance on a prior valid administrative or quasi-judicial permit or approval.”

The company says it has spent $1.1 million on land purchases, permitting fees, air modeling, wetlands assessments and other permit requirements at the proposed sites.

“We have vested rights, too,” said Anita Foust, a resident of the Anderson community, on the Alamance side of the county line. She is not a defendant in the case. She had planned to build a wellness retreat on her farm. “I can’t do that across from an asphalt plant. I want people to come before profits and pollution.”

(Court filings state that Sunrock has developed the site for the Prospect Hill asphalt plant, but that appears to be a questionable claim. As of this week, there is no plant, just a junkyard of parts and metal debris at the corner of Wrenn Road and NC Highway 49.)

The company has received some, but not all, of the required state and county permits for the projects. Some of the permits are comparatively minor — for a commercial driveway and monitoring well construction — and others, such as a wastewater discharge permits, are more substantial.

However, the NC Department of Environmental Quality dealt the company a setback when it denied key air quality permits for both asphalt plants last summer. Carolina Sunrock could have appealed that decision, but instead announced it would resubmit the application.

Ed Dougherty, who is named as a defendant with his wife, Dawn Leith-Dougherty, called the minor permits “toeholds” — bureaucratic requirements that are easily secured and that allow a company to invoke claims of vested rights or “grandfathering” in order to avoid new regulations or moratoria.

Further confusing matters is a legal opinion from attorney Tom Terrell, who often represents mining and landfill interests. Last summer Caswell County hired Terrell to evaluate the moratorium and its effect on Sunrock’s vested rights. He advised the county that he “agreed with Sunrock’s position” that the moratorium didn’t apply and it had vested rights.

Carolina Sunrock’s projects are in a legal morass in part because Caswell County has no county-wide zoning. Last fall, a referendum on the issue failed after a full-court press by conservative groups which inaccurately warned voters their property rights would be all but eliminated.

The lawsuit inaccurately claims a “clear majority of voters rejected the idea,” when the referendum was defeated by just 512 votes of 11,000 cast.

To assuage the residents of precincts where the referendum passed, county commissioners proposed allowing district zoning in those areas. This included Anderson Township and those encompassing Prospect Hill.

But last week, one commissioner, Rick McVey, changed his stance and voted against district zoning, removing another roadblock for Sunrock to build its projects.

The appeal hearing for the watershed permit is scheduled for Tuesday, April 27 at 1 p.m., in person at the Caswell County Courthouse, 144 Court Square, Yanceyville.