Home Care In Currie, NC

CURRIE, N.C. (WECT) - The first thing Woodrow Lloyd sees each morning when he gets out of his camper is what’s left of his home.

Hurricane Matthew dumped two feet of water inside his house on Keith Road. In the middle of cleaning up that damage, Hurricane Florence struck.

He’s lived in FEMA campers and hotels since the hurricanes, but moved into a friend’s white camper back in February.

”It’s miserable. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” said Woodrow Lloyd.

To add insult to injury, Lloyd was approved for federal disaster funding after Florence, but found out at the last minute his eligibility status changed. The ink was already dry on the contract for the rebuild and he had already picked out his new house when he was notified he was no longer eligible for the repairs.

”Everybody knew that Woodrow had just fallen through the cracks and it wasn’t right,” said Mike Moser, site coordinator for Baptists on Mission Pender Rebuild.

Pender County and the Office of State Budget Management have since become involved. This week, Pender County commissioners approved disaster recovery funds to allow Baptists on Mission to rebuild his home.

Now, when he looks out from the camper, he sees volunteers hard at work. Lloyd’s home is expected to be finished in a matter of months.

“Damage from Hurricane Florence is not over. It hasn’t gone away and we probably have another year and a half to two years worth of work to do and that’s hoping and praying that we don’t get another hurricane,” said Moser. “We keep getting referrals from people that, for whatever reason, were going under false hopes that they were on somebody’s list to help them and time keeps on going by and now we’re over two years past and some of them are still waiting.”

Moser still sees homes where the damage is cordoned off with plastic. Lloyd says he’s seen the entire landscape of the community change since Florence.

”If you go around the Canetuck area here you see this place looks like a ghost town. Used to be two mobile homes over there. The neighbor’s—that’s gone. The flood took it. They had to tear them down,” said Lloyd.

Lloyd’s property though is special to him, having spent his entire life here. His house will be elevated in the coming weeks, allowing him to stay here for good and weather any storms that might come his way.

”I’m so thankful to be this far and I think it’s going to hit me when I move into the house I think that’s when everything is going to come down and I’ll be grateful,” said Lloyd.

Moser says they’ve had volunteers from 42 different states help rebuild homes with the Baptists on Mission group. If you’re interested in getting involved, you can find more information here.

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Jefferson Currie, the Lumber River Riverkeeper, drove his truck down St. Paul’s Road, a narrow, sandy stretch near the Robeson-Hoke County line and began counting the chicken barns: “Four, eight, twelve … this is a 48-barn operation,” Currie said, “at 35,000 per barn” – doing the math, that’s roughly 1.7 million birds being raised for Mountaire Farms in nearby Lumber Bridge.

Feces, feathers, urine: All of it stinking, shedding and seeping into the air and water in largely non-white, low-income neighborhoods throughout North Carolina, especially those east of I-95.

Currie, in his capacity as river keeper, Robeson County environmental organizer Donna Chavis, and Friends of the Earth filed a complaint with the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights alleging that the NC Department of Environmental Quality has failed to adequately regulate the poultry industry, which illegally discriminates against Native, Black and Latinx communities in Robeson, Duplin and Sampson Counties.

The complainants are represented by the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Sharon Martin, DEQ deputy secretary for public affairs, said the agency had not yet received the complaint.

The farms in question are those that manage “dry litter” – manure, urine, feathers and other waste from the enormous operations – which is stored in open barns or fields. The waste, roughly 2.5 billion pounds per year – is eventually spread on farmland as fertilizer. These farms, which house millions of birds, aren’t required to obtain a state permit.

Only farms that use “liquid waste management systems” – wet litter – are subject to permitting requirements. There are only 19 “wet litter” farms in North Carolina, according to state data, accounting for 550,000 birds – a fraction of the 1 billion raised in the state each year.

But that distinction is a matter of semantics. Under state rules, the “dry litter” piled in the fields is allowed to sit for as long as 90 days. During that time, rain can wash the manure into nearby waterways, spiking levels of pollution into streams, wetlands, lakes and even drinking water supplies.

The contaminants include fecal bacteria, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphorus, nitrate and even tetracycline, an antibiotic used in the poultry industry, according to test results by riverkeepers, including Currie.

Fecal bacteria can make people sick if they ingest the water through drinking, swimming, tubing and other recreational activities. Phosphorus and nitrogen contribute to algal blooms, some of which are toxic to people, animals and aquatic life.

The waste piles also attract rodents and flies – and they reek of the shrill smell of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. The piles also emit fine particulate matter, which can exacerbate asthma and harm human health.

When the waste is applied on farm fields as fertilizer, the pollution continues, but is not comprehensively tracked by state regulators. “We don’t even know where the manure is being hauled.”

The civil rights complaint quotes Henry Brewer, a lifelong resident of Robeson County, as he describes the litter or “crust” from the farms:

“Crust is dumped across the street from my house around every hundred days . . . Each of the five piles is over eight feet tall. They stand there and start fuming off. The odor is terrible. Sometimes it feels like the flies are about to eat us alive — the dogs can’t even live in the yard.”

This regulatory exemption for the poultry industry also keeps secret the locations of the farms. Unlike hog operations, which must have a permit and whose locations and owners are listed in a public database, there is not similar transparency for dry litter operations. Only the state Department of Agriculture has a database of these exempt farms, which state law allows it to keep confidential.

Aerial flyovers can detect many of the farms, but the only comprehensive way to tally the location and number is to go county-by-county and analyze building permits.

“As a result of this unchecked regulation, dry litter poultry facilities are overwhelmingly concentrated in areas already overburdened with a long history of environmental discrimination, particularly stemming from the hog industry,” the civil rights complaint reads. By failing to regulate the poultry industry, the complaint alleges, DEQ is disproportionately burdening predominantly non-white communities, who are protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from “cumulative impacts.”

Without considering the locations and pollution from these unregulated poultry farms, “DEQ cannot accurately consider cumulative impacts on water quality in its other permitting processes as it is required to do by state statute,” the complaint reads. “Each time DEQ issues a permit without considering the cumulative impacts of dry litter poultry facilities, it is a discrete violation of Title VI.”

The complaint also alleges that DEQ’s “failure to implement a comprehensive and effective permitting regime for dry litter poultry facilities is a systemic violation” of the Civil Rights Act.

These same communities are burdened with giant hog operations and their attendant open-air waste lagoons and spray fields – also a major source of water and air pollution.

In 2014, several environmental groups filed a civil rights complaint related to DEQ’s weak regulations over the swine farms. Four years later, the parties reached a settlement agreement that included timelines for investigating complaints and considering all information submitted by complainants. Under the agreement, DEQ must publicly document how it responds to citizen complaints.

The agency’s Community Mapping System, which allows the public to see all permitted pollution sources in the state – was also part of the settlement. However, dry poultry, lacking permits, is not available through the system.

The complainants are asking DEQ to take several steps to improve its poultry program:

“Dry litter poultry facilities comprise the largest industry in North Carolina yet have been unlawfully allowed to operate without adequate regulations in place,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director for Friends of the Earth in a press release. “This lack of regulation fails to protect the environment and nearby communities from industrial agriculture pollution. It also prevents state officials and the public from accessing vital statistics and records related to the industry. Today’s filing launches the first step toward finally securing much needed standards for this prevalent and destructive industry.”

In west Pender County born and raised, on a farm is where he spent most of his days.

Yamacraw to be exact.

It’s the home of Philip Banks, affectionally known as Uncle Phil by his nephew Will Smith in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" — a 1990s sitcom about a teenager sent to live in a rich Los Angeles neighborhood with his relatives after running into trouble on a West Philadelphia basketball court.

Banks and the beloved characters have returned to television through Peacock’s “Bel-Air,” a one-hour drama series set in modern times. Once again, Yamacraw is being represented through Uncle Phil, a lawyer running to be a district attorney. He is being played by actor Adrian Holmes.

The unincorporated community is located in the Currie section of Pender County between Atkinson and Burgaw. Residents say there's not much there and the only thing letting drivers know they're in Yamacraw is a small sign before the intersection of Bell Williams and the John Henry Store roads.

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At the Yaya Mini Mart in Currie, clerk Betty Martin wouldn't have any problems giving directions if asked.

“It’s just like being out in the country,” she said. “Around here there is not a neighborhood or subdivision.”

It's an area Kendrick Holmes is pretty familiar with. The Pender County resident enjoyed watching the show and the references to the area, especially in episode three, titled "Yamacraw." Holmes and Martin said it's good to have representation of someone coming from a rural community and becoming successful

“I really like it and it’s cool,” Holmes said. “Work hard or you’re not going to get anything.”

Why Yamacraw?

Michael Y. Taylor, a longtime board member of the Pender County Historical Society, doesn't know how the name came to be in Pender County. However, Gary E. Trawick, author of "Born in Reconstruction: the story of Pender County," said the earliest mention of Yamacraw he found in the area was a 1788 reference to an early Presbyterian meeting house at this location.

“I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of the origin of why the rural community in Pender County is called Yamacraw,” Taylor said. “However, the place name is also found in several other states.”

Like us on Facebook:Head to Pender Today to join the conversation on county events and issues

A 2007 Pender Post article provided by the Pender County Library reported it may have came from a Georgia town named after a Native Americans band or other stories involving an argument where the words “yam” and “craw” were mentioned.

But how did Yamacraw end up on the script for Philip Banks?

The connection may have come from Samm-Art Williams, an American playwright and screenwriter from Burgaw, which is about a 16-minute drive to Yamacraw. He was an executive producer and writer for the Fresh Prince show in the 1990s.

Sticking with the 'Yamacraw' script

Bel-Air is executive produced by Will Smith and was inspired by a viral trailer made by writer and director Morgan Cooper reimagining the original show with a grittier concept.

Co-showrunner and executive producer Rasheed Newson said they didn’t want to change the Yamacraw roots of the original character, played by the late James Avery, and said it was a perfect part of the story.

“We liked it,” Newson said. “If you look at the mansion he’s living in and you look at LA and the community of Bel-Air, it just spoke to his arc. He started on a farm and now he lives in a mansion.”

A citrus farm is on the exterior of the Banks mansion. Newson said it was a way for him to stay connected to his agricultural roots by planting something in the earth and seeing the fruits of his labor. Agricultural art is also in his office, which represents his upbringing.

Newson said it also lets people from a small town feel like they’re part of the story, too, even though it takes place in the nation's second largest city.

“One of the things we were trying to do when we built this show is that we hope when you watch the Banks family, you saw yourself represented there somewhere in one of those characters and you felt you could have a seat at the table and join them for dinners," Newson said.

“By having Uncle Phil have these roots, if you come from a rural place, he’s somebody you could talk to about growing up in a small town. It also helps Adrian ground his character. He loved having that backstory and something specific to work with as he was building his own version of Uncle Phil.”

As the series continues, Newson said he would like to have some of his relatives from Yamacraw visit Bel-Air. He also emphasized having a character from rural America is something he wants people to take serious as well, while referring to colleagues from small towns.

"I think too often, rural sort of gets portrayed in this negative light,” he said. “We’re not doing that. We’re proud that he’s from Yamacraw, and we honor that.”

Reporter Chase Jordan can be reached at [email protected].

Daniel L. Currie, Jr., Captain, USN (retired) was born at home in Hamlet, N.C., on August 24th, 1938. His father was Daniel L. Currie, and his mother was Ailcey (Freeman) Currie. He has two siblings, Cecilia Pearl (1942) and Eugene Freeman (1950). When he was 12 years old, his father took a job in Aberdeen, N.C., 30 miles away from Hamlet. They moved to Aberdeen in 1950, and he entered the 6th grade.

After graduation from Aberdeen High, he headed to Chapel Hill to enter the fall class in 1957. The University had awarded him a small self-help scholarship that provided tuition and fees, and a job in Lenoir dining hall that provided meals. The rest was up to him. Despite the work load, he very much enjoyed his four years at Carolina, although he never settled on a major. He graduated in May 1961 and was accepted for employment at the National Security Agency (NSA). Before he left Aberdeen for Fort Meade, Maryland in August, he and Patsy Taylor were engaged. She was the love of his life.

Dan entered the training program at NSA in August and had long range plans for a career there until fate intruded. At that time the draft board was casting a wide net to fill ranks for Vietnam. He was about to be drafted. To forestall becoming an Army “grunt”, he joined the Navy and reported to Officer Candidate School at Newport, Rhode Island in the dead of winter. After four grueling months, he was commissioned an ensign in June 1962. Two days after commissioning, he and Patsy were married in Aberdeen. They then set off on an odyssey that would take them all over the world, from Germany to Japan, and from Adak to Oahu in the Pacific, interspersed with lots of time in the Washington, DC area.

His nearly 30 year career was spent in the Naval Security Group (NSG) due to some serendipity. Since his lengthy security clearance for work at NSA had been completed, the Navy saw him as a ready candidate for the NSG, and snapped him up. The NSG and sister services were the collection arm of the NSA. He served at several of the so-called listening posts located around the world including Germany, Adak, Alaska, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Hawaii. These listening posts contained giant antennas that vacuumed up radio emissions from foreign countries. The intercepted radio signals were provided to NSA for analysis and intelligence exploitation. His limited sea duty was spent on aircraft carriers and in submarines. His command tour of duty was as commanding officer of the NSG activity in Okinawa.

He served in the Navy with great joy and pride for nearly 30 years (29 years, 5 months, 22 days) and was quite sad when it came time to retire. His service was enhanced exponentially by his wife, Patsy, who was a wonderful Navy wife. Every three to four years they would pull up stakes and move, and she always was eager to go with a smile on her face. She gladly entertained legions of guests to their home, and was by his side at the many, sometimes boring, social events. She maintained a happy home under often difficult conditions and during his frequent absences. Along the way, she gave him three fine sons who are married to equally fine women. He has five wonderful grandchildren.

They retired to Pensacola, Florida, the closest place to Pacific island weather they could find, hurricanes and all. Dan worked in real estate for five years after retirement. After that, he began volunteer work at the National Museum of Naval Aviation (tour guide and security) and the Pensacola Historic Village (tour guide and archives). They moved to Azalea Trace in March 2013.

A graveside service will be held at 9:30 am, Friday, August 14, 2020 at Barrancas National Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research https://www.michaeljfox.org/donate

“I’m going to keep on working while we talk,” says Ed Currie, the founder and brains behind PuckerButt Pepper Company.

Currie is a busy man. He runs his entire company out of a small storefront in Fort Mill, South Carolina, and sells everything from seeds to pepper mash and hot sauce to more than 95 countries around the world. Currie -- who’s rightfully earned the nickname Smokin’ Ed -- is most famous for creating the Carolina Reaper, which is currently the spiciest commercially-available pepper. With an average of 1,641,000 Scoville heat units (SHU), it also holds the Guinness World Record for Hottest Chili Pepper in the world. For comparison, a jalapeño’s range tops out at a measly 8,000 SHU, and the previous record holder -- the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T -- has 1.46 million SHUs at its very hottest.

Currie has been into hot peppers for decades. The 55-year-old from West Bloomfield Township, Michigan first got into chiles when he went away to the University of Michigan for school, mostly as a way to stay healthy as raucous partying became a way of life.

“I was studying indigenous populations around the equator,” he says. “One of the things they all had in common is they don’t have heart disease or cancer. And one of the things they all had in common was capsicums at just about every meal and in their water. Originally, it was: How can I do something about cancer and heart disease? But really, it was: How could I keep on partying?”

Multiple studies have shown that capsaicin -- the active compound inside chile peppers that produces a burning sensation when it comes into contact with tissue -- does have anticancer properties. In very simple terms, capsaicin causes certain cancer cells to undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Basically, studies show that hot peppers have the power to make cancer cells self-destruct. But like many holistic remedies, the evidence behind the cancer-fighting properties of capsaicin isn’t solid enough to use it for actual medical treatment. But there’s definitely enough information there to strongly suggest that spicy food, is in fact, good for you.

Most people don’t get into super hot peppers for the health benefits. Some people indulge in peppers akin to the Reaper for the thrill. Others do it to one-up their friends, even if it makes them feel terrible afterward. Currie fits into a third group, one that he calls the addicts.

“Addicts don’t understand that they’re doing it for the buzz,” he says. “A lot of people in recovery do a lot of stupid hot stuff. They say ‘it makes my food better,’ but they’re getting high. They just don't realize it.”

We know that the human tongue is equipped with taste buds. These receptors identify the five elements of taste -- salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami -- and are responsible for making food taste either pleasant or offensive. Notice that there are no taste buds incidental to spice. Spiciness is a sensation rather than a flavor. The compounds in capsaicin sends a message to your brain and tricks it into thinking you’re being burned. In turn, the brain responds by releasing endorphins (the body’s natural way of relieving pain) and dopamine. Together, these create a euphoric feeling that many would describe as “high.”

“One of the coworkers who’s with me right now, Derrick, me and him made a tincture last Thursday,” Currie says. “And that was so frickin’ hot that when we tried it, both of us were miserable. But then we got a lot of work done because we were both high as kites for about two hours. And that’s just part of what happens.”

I can personally attest to the Carolina Reaper high. I first met Currie at The 7th Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo, and he offered me a taste of one of his famous tinctures. This particular formula was a mix of Carolina Reaper, Chocolate Blue Bonnet, and Pepper X, which is currently the hottest chile in Currie’s lineup but not available for commercial sale. I immediately started sweating and tearing-up, and grabbed for a can of whipped cream (which was free-flowing at the event) to help dull some of the pain. But after about five minutes, the burning subsided and left a euphoric feeling in its wake. I felt light and energized, and those sensations lasted for the better part of the day.

For some, the pain that comes with the world’s hottest peppers isn’t worth the struggle. But for Currie and many people in his circle, chiles don’t just provide pleasure. “Pretty much all my team is in recovery in one form or another,” he says. “And I truly believe that being part of that fellowship, as well as the chile fellowship, is a support structure.”

Throughout college (he attended seven of them before graduating from Central Michigan University) and the decade following, Currie was addicted to drugs and alcohol. One night he had a revelation of sorts, and checked himself into a rehab facility where he completed a substance-abuse program. Shortly after in 2001, he moved to South Carolina to be close to his parents. That’s when his love for and knowledge of chiles flourished. He began growing his own peppers in the yard and experimenting with crossbreeds.

Interestingly enough, the Carolina Reaper wasn’t a product of some grand scheme to create the hottest pepper, but rather a happy accident of Currie’s botanic experiments.

“The hottest pepper wasn’t hot enough for me back in the '90s,” he says. “When I created the Carolina Reaper, I really wasn’t trying to make the hottest pepper in the world. I was just trying to make something that was good, and it just turned out hot. It turned out that all nine in that series were extremely hot.”

When crossbreeding produce to create something new, you can’t simply watch the experimental plant grow and call it a day. The process of getting a new species approved is a rigorous one that takes the better part of a decade. “It takes eight to 10 years to stabilize a cross breed -- if it works, most of them don’t,” Currie says. “You have to have a geneticist involved and a chemist involved, pretty much the whole time. We get them involved in year two, if things are looking good.” From there, a chemistry lab needs to verify a statistical average of the SHUs.

“Then you can apply to Guinness to get a world record or just get a certificate from the USDA that says it’s a stable crossbreed,” he says. “It takes anywhere from eight to 10 more years for it to become a cultivar, which is what you see for sale at stores.”

Chiles also brought Currie and his wife together. He first spotted her at an AA meeting, but she didn’t pay him any mind. At the next meeting, Currie gave her a jar of homemade peach mango salsa, and the rest is history.

“We got married like nine months later,” he says. “And she is 15 years more clean than me, so being together with her helped me stay clean. All my friends that are in recovery who also participate in my chile madness help me stay clean.”

Currie isn’t here to tell you that peppers are the overarching answer to beating addiction. But for him, obsessing over chiles and PuckerButt has helped him stay away from drugs and alcohol for 20 years.

“Twelve-step recovery is the base of all of it,” he says. “You become a productive member of society, and you learn to look up to your responsibility instead of trucking off and doing stupid shit, excuse my language,” he says.

Currie’s pepper operation was merely a hobby, until his wife convinced him to start a business. When she realized how much hot sauce and salsa they were giving away for free, she encouraged Currie to sell it instead.

“We went to a farmer’s market, and the first weekend we sold like $800 bucks worth,” he says. “When I saw that we could offset some of the costs by doing all of this, I decided to start a business.”

PuckerButt currently brings in more than $1 million in annual revenue and is the biggest organic pepper farm in the United States.

Like anyone who starts a business, Currie admits to making “every mistake there could be” as an entrepreneur. But for him, the drive to make PuckerButt successful was motivated by more than money and world titles. “When I got clean, I figured I really gotta get serious about something, and that [peppers] was one of the things I got serious about,” he says.

Now, Currie’s product is everywhere. The company’s main focus is making and selling pepper mash to manufacturers for things like hot sauce and salsa. If you buy something spicy in the grocery store, chances are the peppers responsible for that heat came from PuckerButt. Enthusiastic as can be, Currie sees a bright future for the company, so long as people remain interested in spice.

“I couldn’t make this up with my very worst lies as a drunk,” he laughs. “I couldn’t! Amazing things keep on happening.”

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