[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

—in the Civil War. On the letter he had written to the cousin over here that lived down there in Findley, that he was on guard duty and the war was about over. He was doing all right and hoped everybody back home was. And if nothing else happened he'd soon be back home. Told them not to answer the letter because it wouldn't get to him in time, and just those little chit—chat things that a person would write. But after we found it and got to looking through it, someone made the comment about him on guard duty. In 1865 you didn't have fountain pens. You didn't have ball points or anything like that to write with. And how he must have been writing it with—wasn't it quills?

ROB AMBERG:

Quills pen, right, a goose quill, I guess.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He wrote in blue ink. After it was over he had dotted it all over in red ink. Why we don't know.

ROB AMBERG:

I wonder if the red ink would have been something like [unclear] berry or something like that.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We have no idea. But it was amazing—as much as, you know, children ransack trunks way back in those days—why I had never seen it before until after all my ancestors was dead. And one day I just opened up the trunk and it seemed like it jumped out at me. I had made some copies to give the kids in the family. But mine was in a drawer that went to the river. So I lost that.

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But I've got one here that was written in 1882. So that's as far back as—I don't even know who this is. I've never seen it before. Charles Sears. This is the same—John T. Lee was that fellow's name. But the writing he had was so immaculate. You couldn't believe somebody just standing on guard would—. Nowadays you do good to even read half of what you get. This was to a sister.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well, for purposes of the tape I'd like to just say we're here in the Northeast community. If I could have people go around and say their names, I think that'll help the one who transcribes to know whose voice is whose. State your full name. And it's on December 8, 1999. I'm Charlie Thompson.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Eunice English.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Raymond English.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Wayne English.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

My name is Charles Russell English.

ROB AMBERG:

I'm Rob Amberg.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Thank you. So we were just hearing Mrs. Eunice English describe some of the letters that she had saved from the flood. You had a lot more but you say —

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Some —

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Probably thirty different pieces here.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And who was this person in the Civil War? How is he related to you?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He was my grandmother's nephew or first cousin. I do not know for sure. He was a Lee from over in New Bern area.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Oh in New Bern.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

She was from over there. So it was some of her close relatives.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And you grew up in that county over near—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I grew up in Pender County.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In Pender.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. In what community?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Shelter Neck.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Shelter Neck.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Near Bergar.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. And you and Mr. English are married.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's right. Soon be fifty years.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Were you always from this community, Mr. English?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes, sir.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where do you live now? How far from this location?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

One tenth of a mile.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Good. And that was Shelter Neck?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm. That's where I came from.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

His mother came from there. My granddaddy came from up here. And his daddy was up here. So they criss-crossed visiting.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is that how you two met?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You want to tell that story, how you met and where it was?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Well, at that time his daddy was sick. His cousin that lived down next door to me came up to see his uncle. So a bunch of us came up with him because it was family connections. So that's how we met, visiting.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That was which year?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Forty-six.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In 1946 when you met.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And married in fifty.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay, how is everybody else related here?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's our son.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I'm the son.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's our son. This one is his brother's son.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Nephew.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Son and nephew.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay, son and nephew. Well with all of these rich knowledges and histories represented, it's hard to get it all on one tape. Often with oral histories, we concentrate on just one person's history. That's usually known as a life history. But what I'm trying to do here is mix in life history with the community and flood history all together. So we'll go backwards and forwards a little bit. I want to include parts of your lives that will enrich this collection about the flood. Because in order to know what was lost and what the community's like, this community that was flooded, I think we have to go back into history some. And so we have those kinds of stories. Your saving of these letters is part of what was lost. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit. How did you get these—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

You talking about how the community basically started?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yeah. Should we start with that or—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I could probably give you the overview on—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well let's start with that then.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, a personal note: I used to be quite active in doing genealogy things. I ran into a clinker and I just got it laying aside so perhaps one day when I retire I'll have the opportunity to pick it back up again. But our personal family genealogy that I can document goes back to 1790. I am of the fifth generation, Wayne and myself. Uncle Raymond is of the fourth generation. And, of course, the other generations are long gone. The first documented record that I have of the English family in this country is 1790. And that was in Pender County, which is, as the crow flies, less than fifteen miles from where we sit here. In 1800—to be brief—1836, our generation came to this property right here. A gentleman by the name of Stephen English, he had two marriages, raised two families, of which our generation is from his second marriage. He had a son and two daughters of which was my grandfather and Uncle Raymond's father. At the time he came to this part of Duplin County in 1836, of course, there were Teacheys—surname Teacheys. That's one of the older names of Duplin County. And, of course, there were Hancheys of which perhaps you have interviewed some today. I think Betsy told me they were on your schedule. The Carters were a very dominant name in the community. The Batts and, of course, the Cavenaughs, Southerlands, Englishes, Bradshaws, and each were given territory then. And it's amazing that how these parcels of property are still in the families

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today. And we're an example of that even here. As I said before, you know, it goes from generation to generation to generation. The earliest recorded document that I can find goes back to the early 1800s. This area was known was Paisley, North Carolina. Even on the maps today you will find it as Paisley. I think it got that name from the rail companies that would go into this area that were logging, in the logging business and using steam engines right up the road here less than a quarter of mile. Close to Betsy's place, if you visited there, is the old Cavenaugh house. They had a little sub-station there where they would put water in the trains, you know, that were going over into [unclear] to get timbers out. I don't know how it came up with the name Paisley. But Paisley is still on the map even today. The earliest recorded that I know of—and I'm fifty-five-Northeast, would be the Northeast School. And Raymond could probably share some of that with you. Where was the school, Uncle Raymond?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

About a quarter of a mile up the [unclear] River.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. That was across the creek. Is that the one beside the church or the one up there around Mr. Carlise's before they moved it to the church?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One side of the church.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One side of the church.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

At first it was two rooms. What we called big room and little room. And they went as far as eleventh grade, twelfth grade. Well, when it got kind of thickly populated through here, they built on to it. They built a room onto it. Later on

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consolidation come around. And so then everything had to go to Wallace. And that was in 19—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Twenty-eight, twenty-nine.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, no, it was before then. Let's see I graduated in twenty-eight and twenty-nine and went through—. So that was twenty-eight, twenty-nine—about twenty-five.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Twenty-five. That's when they went to the old Clements School in Wallace. Is that right?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The old Clements School in Wallace. There's where I went, continued until I graduated.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

From high school.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. The first year a bus ever went up and down this road, I drove it. I drove for four years. It was an old dirt road at that time. One of them was a Model-T. It was a push and a pull. The last two years I had a different bus. It was a Dodge. It held about four children. So that's about the early part and the later part of my life.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Did you go to the little school up here at Paisley before then?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And how did you get there?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Walked.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

How far of a walk was it?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I'd say two tenths of a mile or so.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Isn't that the old Annie Mae Hanchey house?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. That was the school was it not? [Phone ringing]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That school is beside the Northeast Church, which is right over here across the creek. The church was established in 1828. At that time it was part of the old original Freewill Baptist Church. As a matter of fact, we just celebrated our hundredth anniversary last year. To be brief and summarize, I feel that our community is a strong community with very, very deep roots. You could interview anybody in this community and they would tell you basically the same thing. Not to be derogatory, but to someone outside that would come in here, may consider us not from a religious aspect but maybe a cult community in that we've got our little old idiosyncrasies and we've got our ways, as is true in any rural community. When I say we, I'm saying that collectively. We don't like a lot of progress. We like things to be the way they were thirty, forty years ago. It's a general consensus of most people in the community. You've probably heard that already. We're not easy to accept growth by any means. I think most of the people, particularly sixty years and older, would rather see things stay the way that they are. Several political issues have been brought about in the community that have been voted down, for instance, county water systems. We're country folks, you know. We've got our own water. God's given us water. So that's the type of community that we are. I also feel that as in any rural community there are patriots that are more domineering when it comes to civic organizations, religious organizations. Every community's got to have a spokesman and we've certainly got ours. We've got our leaders and those that are good followers in the community.

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I think, for the most part we're a proud community. Self-supportive and, perhaps, highly competitive maybe to keep up with our neighbors. I don't know. I have no statistics to base this—probably the average age of our community is that of retirement age, or pretty well near because our kids go forward with a formal education, and they go for opportunities. Therefore, they leave the community. So, in a sense, you could say it's a dying community. At the same time, because this was a rural farm community, you know the problems that's happened to the farm belts in the last few years. Tobacco issue is one thing. People aren't doing as much agriculturally in this community as they were twenty or thirty years ago. I think education for the most part in this community would be limited to elementary or perhaps high school. We've got a few college graduates around. And, as I said, the industry here before was farming and that no longer exists. Most kids today that do go off and get an education, they either don't come back or if they come back they will come back to more or less run the family business, whatever it is, usually a small business.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Before you go on, when you say farming no longer exists, many people might think, well, there are all these turkeys that are—. What do you mean by farming?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, when I was looking from tobacco I grew in my era—and I'm fifty-five—we didn't know what chickens were unless you go out in the yard and kill one for dinner. That's how things have changed over the last thirty years. Yes. There is a poultry industry here. There is a hog industry. But in this particular community we don't have any hogs. Maybe one or two, as the crow flies,

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within a mile or so range. I think there's one farm over here. So I'm just speaking in terms of this community. Yes, there is poultry here: turkeys and chickens. That is basically the agricultural mark in this community. A little tobacco but nothing like there was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago by any means. Most people that had tobacco allotments on their farm either sold the allotment—. Some are leasing it out that it might be tended elsewhere. I think the Hancheys are about the only one left around here. Uncle Raymond, isn't Sam about the only one that's raising tobacco now?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Around here it is.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

So I'm speaking in terms of just this community. I think—this is my opinion—but, yes, the flood has definitely changed the community. Now this is my opinion. Because of the devastation, neighbor can't help neighbor anymore because everyone is so preoccupied in getting their own affairs back together. Before we had the church to fall back on, we had neighbors to fall back on. But with the devastation there's nowhere to turn. And people are too in tuned to trying to get their own affairs back together. I think the consensus of the community is that those that can afford to make their repairs are getting aid, while those that cannot afford to make their own repairs aren't getting as much. So I think there's a spirit of enviousness or perhaps competition. Some will restore on a short-term basis, some will restore on a long term basis. Some may not ever. My Uncle Raymond is at a young age of ninety plus living on a fixed income, as most people of retirement age are in this community. And without relief—. The biggest

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part of the relief that we have had is from outside churches. There's not a Chinaman's chance that the people could restore. Am I accurate? Government aid has been slow. But let me emphasize: I understand. North Carolina's never seen anything like this before, so government aid has been very slow in coming to this rural, nine mile stretch community that's been so hard hit and so devastated. Had it not been for churches as far away as from Raleigh, South Carolina—. I've had people at my residence from as far away as Alabama that have come to our aid to try to help us. I don't know what people would have done. Will we come back? Absolutely. We're strong enough that we will. Like I said, some can do it on a short-term basis. Some will be a long-term basis. Some will have to start all over again. I'm it exactly. My place was so devastated that, you know, you're looking at a good hunk out of a new home to make the repairs. So my wife and I felt—and there's only two of us—that we'd be better off to start all over again and build ourselves a small home. That's our goal right now. Whether or not we will accomplish that goal remains to be seen because I am facing that age of being among the majority of this community, retirement. Ten years away is not that far. So what do you do? The government says, yes, we can help you with a thirty-year mortgage. What does a ninety-year old man need with a thirty-year old mortgage? What does a fifty-five year old man need with a thirty-year old mortgage? I want to do something with the rest of my life besides make house payments. So giving you a brief overview—basically as the English family, where our roots originated from—we're English, of course. There's Scotch in this community. There's a

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little German over here with the Hanchey background. And a little Irish and, you know, we were all kinds of people two hundred years ago. But now we're, you know, we're one. We are a community. That's what makes America what it is.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

[unclear]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Going back, speaking of the early days, the way that we farmers made our money was with strawberries. Well, as time progressed I remember when tobacco first come into this neighbor. My father and Mr. Johnny McNettis over here built a barn, and they put out a little tobacco and they grew it. And they sold it out here to Wallace [unclear] . From the tobacco that's gone into the chickens, hogs, turkeys and that's where we're at at the present day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Did you grow strawberries?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes. My father grew strawberries. While I was in the war I was working in the shipyard. I was first drafted into the war and stayed in there at Camp Landry, Florida. When I left there I come to [unclear] shipyard—

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In Wilmington? Where in Wilmington?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

In Wilmington shipyard. I worked there three years and six months, five days. And the war broke [unclear] . I grew tobacco and had some strawberries. I worked the strawberries when I got home from the shipyard. I had to go to work in the strawberries. And I grew some cucumbers. And I come into the tobacco business. One time I had close to thirty some odd acres and we had five barns. You'd get up of a morning and by the time you would go to one place, one and another place, it just about consumed the morning part of the day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And how many children did you raise by farming? That was your main income, I assume?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Two.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Two children? There's Wayne and you have another—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

One is deceased.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. And Mrs. Eunice, were you working off the farm or on the farm as well?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Helping him and busy raising the boys and keeping things going.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Somebody mentioned earlier that there was a strawberry market in Wallace. How did that work?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It was the strawberry market of the world.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

The world.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The radio station here is WLSE, world's largest strawberry exchange.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

An old water tank out there—on the old water tank, Strawberry Capital of the World.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I don't know how true that is.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

1930, 1940.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

For a ten-year period it was the largest strawberry producing county?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. World's largest strawberry exchange. It would be like the largest produce market that there was, certainly in the United States. When they said the world back then, you know, the United States was the world. But it did carry the title of the world's largest strawberry exchange. That's where everybody took their strawberries,

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produce market, and from there it was distributed to various part of the "world": United States, South East, wherever.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

This was before California found out about strawberries apparently.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It must have been.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So do you know how far your strawberries went in the country?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

New York, Baltimore. They shipped them all over the place. At that time it was by rail. But later on, it got by trucks. Naturally, the rail lost out and they finally quit running.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I haven't seen a railroad track here anymore. Is that gone?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well it's in Wallace.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

There's one goes into Wallace to the wholesale place there.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Mr. English, how many acres of strawberries were you growing?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well at that time we were two to three, sometimes four acres.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You mean it took a lot of people to raise those.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It took a lot of work. It took a lot of rake and straw, too.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They didn't have tractors back then.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

We wouldn't have but a full four acres in but one year. But we would rake the straw over them of an evening, rake it off of a morning. That would keep the bloom from getting killed. So you couldn't do very many that way. But after a while it got to the place that if you took the weather as it come, you could increase your acreage.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's one reason they called them strawberries, wasn't it? Now when you went to pick them who all participated in that?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well people in the neighborhood. The last years I had them I went over at Maple Hill and got colored people and put them in an old house that we had back over there. They lived there and I paid them. I don't know if it was five cents a quart.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

They used to pay—I picked them for five cents a quart and they would give you a little token, a little tin token every time you would pick a quart. You had to pick them with the little stems on them. They had to be so long. Had to have them stems on it for some reason. I haven't figured out why. They couldn't be too ripe. As a child I remember picking strawberries right out there. They give you a little token. At the end of the day they would count your tokens. I can remember getting a nickel for every quart that you'd pick.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I can go back further. I remember them being a cent and a half. [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I can go back further than that being a penny. The first money I ever made in my life I made picking strawberries for Mr. Billy Duff. I asked him if I could pick his strawberries. He said, "You reckon you can do it?" I said, "Yes, sir." I was small back then. "You take the outside row." I said, "Uh-oh, I'm whupped now." But anyway I picked enough strawberries off that row to get me a dime. So I had money. Could go to the store and buy one of these long sticks of candy.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

How long would your picking season last when you had a couple or two or three acres of strawberries?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The strawberry season? It would last around three to four weeks.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You paid a penny or as little as a penny and a half or five cents. What were you selling those strawberries for at that point?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well they were taking them out to Wallace for about three dollars a thirty-two quart crate.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

S when you were growing two or three acres you were selling a lot of quarts. Do you remember—?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Made a trip or two a day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when you shifted over to tobacco, what sort of a size allotment did you have?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well about three acres at that time. It was an old log barn. I remember that the logs was drug out of the river swamp down here, a Cypress log. I went out there and I just couldn't crawl up on that log. So they had the tobacco right behind the place there and some over there. When they moved it was to Hickory Pryor.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Hickory Pryor?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Hickory Pryor. Yes, sir.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

P-R-Y-O-R?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I guess.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Was that the type of tobacco or was that the name of—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

That was the name of the tobacco.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Name of the tobacco.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Variety mainly that you were planting.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Right. But it didn't make much [unclear] about a thousand pounds. It was a good acre. But then they got—through our agricultural department—they got to

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improving it more and more and more and more. Well they put out one or two varieties. Just made so much until they cancelled it out and wouldn't let us grow that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when did you stop growing tobacco?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

About ten years, I guess, now.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

At least that long.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You grew tobacco for about forty years. And made the majority of your living by tobacco then for that long? Where were you selling your tobacco?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, I carried some as far as Georgia. I carried some to South Carolina to Jasmine. And sold in Wallace. Sold in Wilson. Sold in Rocky Mount. Sold in Kinston. Sold wherever I heard that it was a good price. That's where I went and sold my tobacco.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

There was no tobacco market in Duplin County.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Not in Duplin.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Not in those early days.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Then later there was one in Wallace?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yes, it came to Wallace. Langston and Fairger built a tobacco warehouse up on Main Street in Wallace.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is it still there? Is that warehouse still there?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. A Wal-Mart's there now.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

This was about the fifties, wasn't it Uncle Raymond?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Huh?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That was about in 1950 wasn't it when they built that warehouse in Wallace? Was it earlier than that?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It was earlier than that.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It was earlier.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Uh-huh. It didn't stay there I'd say a period of eight or ten years. The town began to progress. It had to get going.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well as the town began to progress, what was making the town grow if tobacco had to go?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well, tobacco was coming in strong.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Oh, tobacco was strong.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But the tobacco warehouse had to go.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They built more.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. In Wallace?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Um-hmm. They had—how many tobacco markets were there up there in the hay day like?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

There was Langston and Fairger, Sheffield—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Bill Hussey.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

He had an early warehouse.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

So there was about four or five—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The industry began to change drastically in Duplin County in 1951 when the textile industry came to Duplin County. I spent thirty-five years and twelve days there. Plant closed—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

J. P. Stevens?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Started out at J. P. Stevens. I started there in 1962. In 1986 they sold out to the Cosan Group, which was knit fabrics. They were later bought by Delta Woodside Corporation in 1986 and they closed that facility March the fifteenth 1998.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And when you got out of school when you first started working you went directly into the textile industry?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Directly into textiles as an industrial engineer.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You went to NC State?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I went there right out of high school. Graduated from high school May the 22nd 1963 and started there June the 6th 1963. I worked there all of my working life until a year and a half ago when the company shut down. I spent twenty-eight years in research and development. The last five years I was there I was a planning manager. When they closed the doors I had to seek employment.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where did that plant go? Where did that company go?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It closed.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Closed completely?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

As [did] twenty-eight more plants across the southeast.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They didn't go to another country?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. That's what cost us the company, this off shore products. We couldn't compete with foreign labor and that's why the company shut down.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Then what did you go into after textiles?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well I had some offers in textiles. But the apparel business due to the NAFTA act that was passed in this country, we can't compete anymore. I elected to

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change careers. Right now I'm an office manager for a small family owned business in the HVAC, heating and air.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And I'm office manager of a local heating and air company. Hard road to handle. Then a year and a half after that, having to adjust to half of a salary, then the flood comes. I'm [unclear] but don't take it that way. We're okay.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

No. I understand.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

But, that was the leading industry in Duplin County up until about a year and a half ago.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What is the leading industry today?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Pigs.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Pigs. Do you call that progress? Is this progress for most of the people here?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Personal note. Well I'd have to say from a political aspect, yes, it would be growth. However, growth has a price to pay. That kind of growth, I think, has been detrimental on our environment. I don't want to sound like an ecologist or one of these people that gets out and totes signs. But it's had a devastating affect on our environment, to our rivers, to the pollutants, to a well right out here in my yard that has been chlorinated four times and we still don't have drinking water. It has wasted the water. We never had these problems before so they came from somewhere.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I think that the major problem with the devastation was not really the water but the actual contaminants that were in the water. Used to be when they had floods, as I think I've mentioned before, the water would recede and people could go on

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and pick their crops, some of them, and no problems. But now everything is so contaminated.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well obviously the contamination is still here, isn't it?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The contamination is still here. Wells are still contaminated. Our clean water and clean air acts are just being mocked in this community, not only state but federal, clean water and clean air acts. It's just a mockery the way it's being treated. Most of the things that people lost could have been saved if runoff water hadn't come through here. But due to the amount of bacteria and everything, everything was just so contaminated that it had to be got rid of for health reasons. And we still don't know what the future affects of that will be. There's been a lot of illness in the community, a lot of sickness, a lot of sores that won't heal, a lot of upper respiratory problems. According to one doctor I talked to, they don't know really what to plan on six months from now, but they do expect a lot of respiratory problems

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

In 1962 we had a flood in the community. It doesn't compare to this at all. It didn't go in Uncle Raymond's house. I think it lacked six or eight inches for getting in his house in '62, but I'm using that to say that when the waters receded in 1962 I think people still harvested some of their tobacco. The soybean crop, they harvested it. The corn crop, they harvested it. To reiterate what Wayne has said, go look now. There's no green vegetation at all even to trees. We had planted some, over a thousand pine trees down on mine and my brother's property down in the Creek Swamp, what we call the Creek Swamp. The trees

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grew about that much in a year's time and everything's dead. All the vegetation down there's dead. To reiterate what Wayne said, just natural water don't do that kind of damage. I've seen mature trees seventy-five years old that are dead due to the nitrogen content—I'm assuming. I'm certainly not a chemist, but due to the pollutants, contaminants of these waters that—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Pesticides. Could there have been herbicides in that water?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I'm sure there was.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think a lot of it is contributed to—and here again, this is a personal opinion—from the chemicals that are used in some of these swine industries, perhaps poultry as well, that have gotten into our wells and into our drinking water, and certainly in the streams. My sport is canoeing. The northeast Cape Fear River runs about—I believe it's ninety miles from its point of origin down to Wilmington.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where is the point of origin?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Ghossen Swamp is actually where the northeast Cape Fear River would start, which would be up in the Goldsboro area.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Going towards Goldsboro.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Can you describe that river? Have you floated it all the way down? I mean, can you just kind of go through in your mind from leaving that swamp all the way to the ocean? Do you know the river that well?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I have only made the trip all the way to the ocean one time in my life. When we canoe we will go up to a little town called Beulahville, which is about fifteen,

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eighteen miles from here, and we will put in the river where it's rather narrow up that way. And we will canoe—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

About how wide?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The widest point there would not be over probably twenty-five, thirty feet.

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Anyway, I have canoed the river in low water where you would have to drag the canoe at times, and I have canoed the river when the water would be receding, I mean, would be out of the banks. You really couldn't tell where the run of the water would be or the run of the river would be. It is a beautiful river. As a matter of fact, I have met canoeists on that river that would come as far as Pennsylvania just to canoe the northeast Cape Fear River because of its natural and scenic content. There's beavers. There's otters. There's deer. I've never seen a bear, but there is just about any kind of wildlife you want to find on that river. To say the river is clean, no, it's not. Not compared to what it was fifteen years ago. You can tell every time that you get close to a hog house, as we call them, a swine producing facility, because you can smell the stench from the river. I have actually canoed the river when I would see suds coming from ditches that would be coming from a hog house up on the hill. I have tried to attack it on a political level in going to our county commissioners, making complaints and it didn't seem to do any good. About a year and a half ago there was funds appropriated to clean that river. Somewhat over—how many million? Don't quote me, but well over a million dollars to clean that river, which, in my opinion, caused more devastation than it was before the

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river was cleaned because they would snag it, pull the logs out, throw them on the banks. Well, guess what, when high water comes it washes them right back in the river again. I think that that could have had some adverse affects to the flood. The water had no where to go. On the other hand, it don't normally rain twenty plus inches in a twenty-four hour period either. We had rain that equaled almost to that amount plus we had rain about three solid days before Hurricane Floyd ever hit us. So the ground was already wet, already saturated. There are very few trees. I haven't canoed since Hurricane Floyd, but on our property down here we've got about a mile of property on the river between me and my brother, maybe two miles. Every tree that was left on the riverbank now is in the water because the root system was so saturated with water there wasn't a foundation there to hold the tree. So they've just fallen over in the river again. Should this happen again this year due to hurricane season—. As a matter of fact, I just heard the news tonight. I don't know if you heard it or not on Channel 6 in Wilmington. They're predicting seven major hurricanes next year of which three would be of greatest intent that would hit the North Carolina coast. I say that to say that if we get the rain waters even on a local level right here in this community that we did with Hurricane Floyd, it's subject to happen all over again because the water had no place to go.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Let's go back to Beulahville area, the Goshen Swamp. Is that right? Goshen Swamp and go back down through here. A lot of times we've heard through this flood story in other communities, it's all the development that's occurred: housing and new roads and so forth. When you look at the watershed starting up there at the swamp,

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has it changed that much in the last fifteen years? Are there a lot of new houses, a lot of new highways or are we mainly talking about a change in the farming system?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think the change is locally. I think a change in the farming system has hurt the rivers more than anything else. Yes, we do have a new facility right down the road here, River Landing, that big golf resort.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well the logging industry runs that.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. The logging—. Everybody has sold—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Every bit of tree that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. There's very few trees standing there.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I heard one the other night that a tree could absorb, I think, it was well over two hundred gallons of water a day. People that we've talked to that have dealt with floods before has told how much affect development does have. Like I say, in this community you can just keep seeing the logging industry. I heard one report the other day that they have just logged out this part of the country—that you had to go up to where the mountains or the northern part of the state now to find good tracts of land.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It's a great affect to the—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The outcome of that instant money-making business is never realized. Same way with when you try to pack two million hogs in one county. You go to figure up that a hog puts off four times the amount of nitrogen and maybe forty times the amount of ammonia of human waste. When you've got two million hogs in a county, you're figuring, well, you've got two or three New York cities dumping their waste in

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this county every day. That's open air, not a treatment place. With that amount of chemicals in the water, it's going to be making it dangerous. To begin with everybody is selling their timber as fast as they can. Every logging crew around here's trying to get it as fast as they can. Whether it's being used locally, shipped to California or Japan or wherever, trees are in big demand. When you have a combination of terrible contaminated water, too much water and no trees, no landscape to absorb it, naturally when you put all the factors together, you're asking for trouble.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

A big erosion problem.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You said open and untreated waste. Is that in the hog industry line? Is it that lagoons are a way of treating—?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There's no way to treat the lagoon waste other than—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well, it's open air. I mean you've got nitrogen and such components of the waste are absorbed into the air. Then it rains back down. So they can say it lays on the bottom all they want, but, you know, it's absorbed into the air and then it's carried over to the mountains. I'm sure everyone's seen pictures of the trees in the mountains now from the acid rain affect it's having up there. You just can't dump that. All these ponds—. My father's had a pond for years and years and years. The last ten years the pond stays green all summer long because of nitrogen based algae that grows. It just won't go away. There's just so much nitrogen. It used to be a nice place with beautiful water. People would go fishing. I've looked at ponds around the neighborhood and all around the county. Even running water, the mill pond bridge, the famous grist mill—one of the oldest in this area. I looked at it the other day when I went by. It's running water and it's still eaten up with green algae.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The creeks are the same way. The creeks are filled with green algae.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I heard a little kid the other day. His grandfather was showing him the river. The river was real low back in the summer and the bottom of it was a black, murky—some kind of substance with green algae just growing all over it. The grandfather was telling his grandson how he used to swim in that river and that when they got real thirsty they'd take a swallow or two of water. The grandkid couldn't believe it. That's just two generations. He has seen now that it's impossible. Well it's possible, but very unhealthy or unwise for the grandkid to enjoy that. Another generation it'll probably be the same with the fish. I mean, you know, the stories of listeria and everything else. Not too many people eat fish out of the river. That's been going on since time started. People caught their food and ate it, but now it's got to a point around here that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Not since Hurricane Fran.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's too dangerous.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I'm a bream fisherman and it's not unusual at all in bream season to see the fish that you catch have sores on them. I wouldn't eat that.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

In the ponds around here?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No, in the river.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Northeast Cape Fear River.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Wayne do you remember swimming on the river as a kid?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Oh yeah. That's where I got my Saturday bath. [Laughter]

ROB AMBERG:

So would you go down there with your family or friends? Describe a swimming trip for us.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well back in the sixties it was just a—. Well being in the country you weren't privileged to the city extra curricula activities, so what we had was basically farm work and swimming. All the kids would gather up and go to the river. You had good, cold, clean river water to swim in. Now it's a whole lot different. It was a big social event, really. Going swimming was a big deal especially for kids who didn't have their driver's license, you know. They could go not too far in any direction and catch a swimming hole. It was a big social gathering place.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Tie a rope to a tree and built a makeshift diving board and that's where you spent Saturday afternoons and Sundays if your parents weren't too religious. [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

When you come to the house you were clean. Mother used to make her own soap. We'd kill hogs and she'd take all of the skins and the loose parts of the—I call it the lard part. She'd seize it. She'd make her a pot of stew and she'd put some of that old grease in the pot and boil it. Then she'd put lye in there and she'd cook it down and when she'd take it up, it'd be just a little bit of real dark looking water on the bottom of the pot. We used to have a little swimming hole down there in this creek and when you took a piece of that and went in there and jumped in and all like that, you were clean. [Laughter]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Come out right red, didn't you? [Laughter]

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. It near about make you bald headed. [Laughter] I guess that's how come he's that way now. [Laughter]

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It was, especially as a kid, one of the more favorite things—part of the summer. It was the community spirit in going swimming and just having a good time.

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Like you said, stringing a rope to a tree and having a good time. That's why it's so sad to hear the grandson make the comment to father saying, "You actually swim in that water?" This was a kid, you know, ten years old, but he knows. He can look and he can see. He didn't like the idea of getting in that water.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

You know, that's part of my earlier comment. We're not susceptible to change around here. Even myself at my age, I wish I could go back to those days when, to borrow a line from Junior Sample, when pot was something that you used for the bathroom. We didn't know what pot was. A pot was a commode as a kid. We didn't know what drugs was. Even when I was in high school if you drunk a beer, you had done something big time. People just didn't do that. We never locked our doors in this community until maybe five years ago because now we don't know who our neighbors are anymore. The things that's happening, that was happening in Wilmington ten or fifteen years ago have caught up with us on the rural mart now. We know what crack is down here in Northeast community now. We know what alcohol will do now. Like I say, ten, twelve years ago, we didn't worry about that kind of stuff. That was something for somebody else. So, yes, there's some of that in me that I would love to see things back the way they were, not only before the flood, but farther back—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Times were more innocent.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. We were innocent and perhaps a little more naïve than what we are now. I think that's the consensus of the community as well.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Could we talk about two specific things that I've heard more about from other people? But I'd like to hear more about them from you. One is the global transfer.

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That is something they proposed for here, but the community fought it. That's all I know. The second one is River Landing that you mentioned. I was wondering if you could talk about both of those as issues of change in the community? One you fought and won against and one you didn't.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

With global transfer, basically—we knew what that was.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it's proved itself.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's proved itself. It was an excuse to raise taxes and to throw away money on somebody's pet project. Nothing's going to mature. It'll never be anything. It's just like the one out in Texas that he tried to tell me years ago that's sitting out there empty, several million dollar airport.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What did they say it was going to do for the community?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Oh, it was going to make us the Atlanta of the eastern seaboard, you know, bring business and industry and the higher tech industry to replace the textiles that were leaving. Open up eastern North Carolina to be—. I guess they were going to make a Research Triangle area out of it or what they thought—. But what we saw was a tax increase first.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I was somewhat an activist in that, which there have been some repercussions, so I want to be careful what I say. We asked the same questions now that we are victims of today. Primarily, what will it do to the environment? The property was part of the Kenan estate, who were very influential in this community—Thomas Kenan, UNC, the Kenan family of Guilford County. Their roots are here in Kenansville. They have a place right down the road here less than three or four miles, known to us in the community as Kenan Quarters. There are several hundred acres

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of land back there, which is in fact wetlands. We asked the same questions then that we would ask now: what will it do to the environment? Wayne has already said, and as proof will show if you look into the records by it being in Kinston, I think the last count I had—I forgot how many millions of dollars has been spent, but there hasn't been a block laid, nothing structurally, just a bunch of political rhetoric in my opinion. The community asked questions and we were told everything in the world that it would be. They told us that our homes could be condemned if it fell within the parameters of how the planes would fly, you know. Anyway, a lot of questions were asked. We wanted to know, who would benefit the most from this? Would the state of North Carolina benefit? Would our community benefit? What's it going to do to this community? In essence, it will wipe out this community, we were told.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Will you go back and [unclear] . He's the one [unclear] if I have two cars. I go to get my license. I have to pay ten dollars extra to go to that place. All that it has done for that county, that city, is built the nicest airport that is in the United States. Now, nobody never hears nothing about it. What we're going to do about it. I have heard that they were going to move it out of this state into another state [unclear] . But that over yonder has just about done what it's going to do. [unclear] great big stumps that they just enjoyed the money.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it was politically motivated on two parts. And I think the Kenan family was very active in the planning stages of it.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Yeah. There was talk at one time of settling it right down here on this old—which would be about two miles from us.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I heard it called the Kenan Plantation since we've been down here. Is that the same place?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, we refer to it as Kenan Quarters. The plantation itself was in Kenansville. But the property that the Kenans owned—we're going back now to the 1700s—actually run down here in the Northeast community. It was Lochland. It referred to the Scottish loch lands of that era. I'm going back now into the middle 1800s. That's how this precinct in here gets its name, the Lochland precinct. It's our voting place, where we go to vote. It got the name from the loch land [unclear] belonging to the Kenan family. And we always referred to it as Kenan Quarters. My dad—probably Uncle Raymond might remember—but my dad died two years ago at ninety-five. He said as a child he could remember the little slave huts that were up there on that. And there is a ditch that is in existence today that goes up from those loch land [unclear] to the mouth, or to the northeast Cape Fear River that was dug by slave labor, a big canal.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

For the purpose of—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

For the purpose of draining those loch lands that were up in the [unclear] , getting that water out of those wetlands, which, incidentally, are still wetlands even today.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The old Kenan house that Richard dated from was just across that ditch.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The old Tom Kenan place, was it not?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. That was the Kenan's home.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Which was James's brother.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And there is a slave cemetery on that land that we saw?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I've heard some of them call it a slave cemetery. But that cemetery is still being used today. It may have started out as a slave cemetery. But there is some—. Lord I don't remember those black people's names. Turn right there past [unclear] place and go up in there.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Just across that Kenan ditch.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. Right across the Kenan ditch. What's the name of that cemetery up there? Do you remember?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

No.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There's some Kenans buried in there with black Kenans.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah. There's some of the black people that were Kenans.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Right.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And they're in there. Well, all of these now that we know now from [unclear] . One of them dies he goes—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. There were some inter-racial things going on there with the Kenan family.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Uh-huh, which was common.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Which was common, right, right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well back to the transpark. When you say we thought such and such about it. Who was we? Was there a community organization?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The consensus of the community, yes. A community program started out that was called RANT. Was it called RANT?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I know everyone around here was against it because we did not want to [unclear] .

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The idea wasn't too bad. But everyone knew from the start, it was all politically motivated. They knew the money was going to be wasted. And just—. North Carolina—this side of North Carolina, especially this area of North Carolina is the last to get anything. I mean the people down here realize that Mecklenberg County, RDU, Research Triangle Park, basically, that's where the money goes. So they started off with it and said you might as well put it around Raleigh, you know, where it can be used. It's not going to work in Kinston. Who goes to Kinston? Who needs Kinston? There's not even interstate access hardly. So it looked like a dead horse to start with. And no one could convince anybody any different. So the—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

They go up to five dollars on our licenses. Is it this year or next year?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

They did it last year. It's off now.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Off now?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well you take every car there was, truck in North Carolina and add five dollars to it, see where it goes.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

That was the main [unclear] the five-dollar tax.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

If you write and ask—. If you ask the right politician they will tell you. As a matter of fact, I got a letter to this extent that the reason we're suffering in the swine industry now is because we, of this community, elected not to have the global transport here, if you can imagine that mentality.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you think you stopped it?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I really don't think this was a great—we were a great consideration anyway. I think, here again, it was a political thing and that the properties were available here. But we don't have the infrastructure to support anything like that. At that time there was no I-40. We didn't have the roads. I don't even know if it was on the planning board then. And our people—and when I say our people it was the greater consensus of this community that formed an organization that—. We want to be heard. We wanted to be heard politically. And we were. We attended some meetings in Raleigh. And, you know, it was forced upon us. I think the term they used, the intimate domain, wherein that our farm community could be condemned—if that's the right word—to make space for runways or whatever was needed for this transglobal park. And you've heard me say earlier how deep our roots run here. And our people were totally against it from the initial planning stages.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And what was your organization called? It was RANT.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I'm sitting here trying to think right now what was the name of it. It'll come to me in a minute. If it does, I'll remind you.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. How about the leaders? Who were those people?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I was one of them. And there were four or five—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Jennie and Aaron.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Jennie Cavenaugh, Lucille Rangio, myself, Sammy Cavenaugh—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Sammy as in Sambo.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. Not this Sambo, this was Sammy up the road. I don't know—. You met—. I don't know if you talked to Sammy last night when you talked to Frank or not.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

No.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Sammy is—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Frank's nephew.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Frank's nephew.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I talked to Andy.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Oh, okay.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Yeah. That's Frank's—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well this was Andy's cousin, Sammy. But there were a few that just began to ask some questions.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They would have all been misplaced, transported out.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Global transport.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I think it will never materialize here.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It had a rail like this and all those people would have been the first to go. And then when it grew, they had another parameter around it. And we were in the second phase. So we would have been gone.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The first phase came right up here to the creek. And then the second phase would have been us.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And you think four or five or six miles of people being washed away—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

It'd be from here right on into—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Chinquapin.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Chinquapin.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Then you had the church groups behind it because the noise pollution that it would bring about. You had the poultry farmers here that have established poultry businesses that were afraid of the noise pollution that it would bring about.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Scare the chickens, is that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Scare the chickens.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Scare the dickens out of them.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

There was the horned owl issue that came about, which the habitat was in those wetlands. And certainly we used everything that we could that was an issue. And personally—. Was it Martin, Governor Martin? This was more or less his last political stand as he left office. And, you know, the record speaks for itself. Where is the transglobal park today compared to where it was ten years ago? It's never got off the ground. Now that's not to stay that it could not have. The same thing could have happened here. It could be. We don't know. But as a community we were against it and we spoke against it.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And did you have—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

CLOUT, the name of the organization was CLOUT, C-L-O-U-T. And what did it mean? Concerned—. I don't remember what it stood for right now. I tried to erase that from my mind. But I have received a letter less than a year ago, or maybe two years ago, when the people would go to wake up to the pollutants that is being caused by the swine market. Somebody wrote me a letter—it was not signed—and asked me was I satisfied, knowing that I was a canoeist, with the shape of the rivers. That had we had transglobal park we wouldn't have to trade off for the environmental issues that have hit this community as well as southeastern North Carolina. And [unclear] .

CHARLES THOMPSON:

CLOUT.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The park doesn't have the power that the swine industry does.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And the part that carries right on over to the River Landing issue because the swine industry has made that place. And, yes, to some extent, we're paying the price, which goes back to the environmental issues that we've already talked about.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You're paying a price for the River Landing development?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

In a sense because the swine industry is what built it. And with the contaminations that was in the flood as a result, in my opinion here, that a lot of it comes from the swine and the poultry pollutants that were a result of this flood. It was the swine market or the swine industry that built River Landing by the Murphys.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And he was—turkeys, hogs, some cows and said a few horses would float down the river. Naturally, a lot of them would get hung up in places and stay right there. That's what, you see, has ruined our water.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Do you know why Wendell Murphy and his people would have chosen this community as a place for the golf course and the housing? Why—?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I think it's probably just the location.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Property was available.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Property was available and the location, the access to interstate. That, for some reason, this part did have a lot of hog houses either. There's not many places in this county you can go to find this big of area that's not got several hog houses. And you can't ask fifty or seventy-five thousand dollars for a lot if you've got to smell hog manure. So the location, I think.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's very interesting. So can you describe River Landing? We haven't been in. But maybe you've been through on a canoe or something and you can tell us about it.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I've never been in. I hear it's a beautiful place.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I've been in there. Our company does work in there and I've been in there several times. And, you know, I don't envy those people. I personally would not live that like if I could afford it. Our roots are in the country that is—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's in the country but it's not—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. It's in the country. But once you get inside it—inside that brick wall—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's a gated community.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. It's quote upper crust, if you will. And, incidentally, there's people that are living in there that can't afford to live in there. But it's part of the competition that exists among certain people of, not necessarily this community, but of Duplin County. I think for the most part that—. Well I started to say that perhaps it was built for the leaders of the swine industry because Duplin County is almost the world's—or was you might say, this country's capital of the pork producing market, probably still is. And there were a lot of imports that were brought down here to run the business, which is headquartered in Rose Hill, as the crow flies, less than five miles from where we sit. High-tech people, if you will, that were at that time living in Wilmington. And as River Landing began to develop some of those people resettled here to be closer to their work, if you will. There are some fine homes in there. There are some

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million and a half to two million dollar homes in there. And then there are some homes in there that are high dollar homes that are an average home that you would see out here in rural Northeast community.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Some of them in there's flooded just like we are.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

As a matter of fact, most of the homes that are in there are flooded just like we are. We are—our company was asked to do a contract on the heating and air to a home that the owner is moving up eleven feet high at a cost of over a hundred thousand dollars to jack that humongous home up off of the ground. Most of the homes in there were flooded first and some second floors. And there is—there's some Better Homes & Gardens homes in there.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

But understandably it was kept very—

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Oh it was kept very quiet.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

And no visitors were allowed in.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Even during Hurricane Fran, the first hurricane that we had here three or four years ago, there was a deputy sheriff at the gate. Nobody come in, particularly the press.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Right. That's one reason—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And, hey, I can understand that, you know. You don't want that news—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

You don't want people seeing the water on the top of the [unclear] flag.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

And, you know, we as a community—. My father said that a flood came here in 1900. He didn't remember it. But he heard talk of the flood of 1900. There was the flood of 1928. There was the flood of 1962, and, of course, this one. And as a community of which a consensus of the veterans of this community, "Hey, it's coming.

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We don't know when, but it's coming. And you people that are buying that property down there on that river, you know, you're going to get flooded. Eventually it's going to happen." And it did.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

You're talking about the first flood was in 1908.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Was it 1908?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Nineteen eight.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. But even in that flood of 1908 and '28, it never—it was nothing in proportion to this one, was it Uncle Raymond? Because I remember there was a family cemetery is right out here. I think it never crested that cemetery none of the other times before.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

This flood was four feet higher than the one in '62.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

In 1928 there was a little community over here about ten miles as the crow flies from here called Hallsville. And on the Presbyterian church there they put a watermark in 1928 when the floodwaters came. This present flood, it's ironic, but this present flood was twenty-eight inches higher than the flood of 1928. Rough calculations, as I said earlier, it covered approximately a nine to ten mile stretch from about two miles up the road here all the way to Chinquapin. Right down the middle of 41 highway the water was knee deep at least and deeper. You could run a motor boat full blast all the way to Chinquapin right down the middle of the road. I elected to stay. I didn't leave. To my knowledge, there's probably less than ten houses that I can count in that stretch on 41 that did not get water in them. My brother's was one. Right over here in this brick house it lacked an inch and a half of going through it. My cousin that lives beside him it lacked about four inches, and then an aunt that lives

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next to him. Those three houses right in—right here in one little [unclear] are the only—. And there was a few, couple of other homes, I think, over here in the park that didn't get flooded. But for the most part, seventy-five to eighty percent of all these homes in this stretch have water in them, including the homes at River Landing.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

We definitely should talk about the cemetery even though that's—. You just mentioned it in passing. Let's talk about who all's buried there. Let's talk a little bit about that because—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

They said there was one man floating down the river. It got [unclear] and was floating down the river.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Human as well as all those animals you mentioned.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

[unclear] Cemetery was started turn of the century sometime around 1900. It is an English family cemetery and a community cemetery. I can only assume, and Uncle Raymond can help me with this, was probably my great grandfather's, Stephen English. Uncle Raymond, was Granddaddy Stephen one of the first that was buried out there or don't you remember?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I think he was one of the first. And then the [unclear] came.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Right.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

There was one man out there that's a hundred and seventeen years old.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That was John McNallis according to what's inscribed on his tombstone. Don't know if he couldn't count or not. That's an old dude there. [Laughter] It's mostly family and community.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What were the years he was born and died, Wayne?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Seventeen ninety-five and then 1895 and then plus seventeen.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

He died in 1914. I'm not sure. I would have to go look. I would have to go look. There's probably half as many buried out there without markers as there is with markers that we don't know. I tried to catalogue that cemetery several years ago when my dad was living and with a fairly good mind. And I've got it plotted out even to those that don't have markers who are buried there. And most of them are within a half a mile radius of where we sit right now, family and community.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It would go back how many generations? There's his granddad. So let's count those.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It could go back four generations [unclear] .

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay. Now will—do any of you plan to be buried in that very cemetery?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Absolutely.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Definitely.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Oh yeah.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Yeah.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

In this part of the country—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

If another flood comes and floats me down the river—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

My parents are buried there, my mom and dad. Of course, my grandmama and my granddaddy and my great grandmama and my granddaddy of which they don't have markers for.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

We've got some lots down here at—in Pender. What's the name of that cemetery?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

River View.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Huh?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

River View.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

River View. We've got about, what is it four? Four lots down there. They come around one time was going to build a great big mausoleum down there. And so we went in with them. And we were going to buy us one of the lots [unclear] mausoleum. And so it played out, and played out and played out. So we wrote to him and told him to send us our money back.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We decided to go in the dirt.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Transfer our—from the mausoleum back to our lots. So they did it. But they have finally built something down there. I don't know what it is.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It's a mausoleum.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well how does it work being a family cemetery? Does someone take the full responsibility of managing that and has the plots all laid out and you have them numbered? How do you decide who will be buried where?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That one is not. And the consensus have been to this time that because it's on Uncle Raymond's property—his property surrounds it—. My granddaddy had it laid out in 1946 when his estate was divided up. And I think the deed was like two hundred and ten by two hundred and ten square feet. It was approximately one acre. And was left there for the English family cemetery. There was—. At the time they just carried you out there, and dug a hole and stuck you in it. So there is no—there is no conformity as to who is buried where.

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The Englishes are usually on the front part of the cemetery and the community's back behind it, which is the Kellys and McNallises and the Hunters. On the front part of the cemetery's predominantly Englishes. But there is no format as to how it is. And when it gets filled up I don't know what we're going to do. I'm going to have my wife bury me over here in my yard. [Laughter] I don't want to leave. My roots are deep here. That probably sounds silly to y'all.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Not at all. We haven't talked so much about your experience about what happened with flood relief. Do you have any vivid memories about—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I think everyone's got strong opinions about flood relief starting with the federal government right on down through the state on how little relief there's been.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

And right on down to the county.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I want to go ahead and get technical. This is—. The best consensus of this county is that it's run by a bunch of crooks who could care less about the people in it. Mainly the people on this end of the county—the southern part of the county—is probably, what the stepping stone of the county. We didn't even have a Red Cross-connection with the Red Cross in this county. There was weeks went by before Red Cross ever got here because Duplin County was the only county in North Carolina that did not have a Red Cross chapter in it because our county commissioners just let it lapse. So Red Cross didn't come in. They had to specially sent in or ordered in by, I don't know, the state of somebody. So it started there and went on up through the state.

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As far as people trying to get travel trailers, the problems they had. They couldn't get the state to come along and didn't care. It was run by a bunch of incompetents who lied, you know, just continuously lied to you. You'd call Raleigh about your travel trailer trying to get home and they would say, "Well, we'll call you right back." And you'd never hear from them again. I mean you go right on up to FEMA from the lying, the drunks that come around as FEMA representatives taking people. They claimed they were drunks. They were liars. They were working on a contract basis. And the more homes they hit in a day the more money they make so they would lie to people and tell them we'd be there at one o'clock and they'd come by at eleven. So they could leave a note saying we came by, you weren't here. That way I can do ten houses a day instead of five and make more money, you know, and get out of here. And they lied about the property damage. My parents lost everything: their house, all their personal items, their whole house. And I think they wrote in they lost less then two hundred dollars worth.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We weren't eligible for any help due to the fact that our inspector said we did not lose two hundred dollars worth of damage.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

But we saw this pile in your yard today. Can you describe that pile out there? What all's in it?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Five or six generations of family heirlooms.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Including—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

From the whole houses of furniture to mementos just passed through, trunks of history as you can see.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well the history, the war uniforms, the—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It's just—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The old pie safes that were passed down from generation, you know, the old antiques.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Tools. All his tools that he had had since he was a boy.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Antique tools.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And a little pile about this big left over that I'd thrown out to one side. And now they have rusted and I doubt if he can ever use any of them.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Well we have—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

So they're all gone.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I had a three bedroom home furnished, the living room furnished, dining room, kitchen [unclear] . And five closets, utility room, porch and a double garage. And he said, how much lost?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It said less than two hundred and one dollars. You had to have two hundred and one dollars to be eligible for SBA or family grant. So up until this time we two sat here with a twelve hundred and twenty-seven dollar rental assistance, is what we've had from FEMA. But I had three—.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Three FEMA people—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Three FEMA people tell you—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That they were usually in disaster areas two to three weeks, possibly four. They did their job and they were gone. When they hit North Carolina they said they had never been treated by a state like the North Carolina officials had treated them.

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Everything that they did had to be passed through the state government, or the state workers, whoever was in charge up there. Every trailer had to be okayed by them. Every donation, every check passed, had to be okayed through the state. And said they were tied up completely. One stood out there and said, "We are here to assist North Carolina." He says, "Do you see anybody riding in my seat from North Carolina?" He said, "I'm not even supposed to be doing this." Said, "I'm here—been sent here to assist the North Carolina people." He said, "Where are they?" He said, "We're running way behind because we're giving our orders and they're just not going through right." He said, "We have never dealt with a disaster where we were treated like this." And I had two others to tell me the same thing.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well the FEMA people said they usually run the program. They were experienced. They knew how to come in. And they said, almost everything had a ten-day turn around. But for some reason North Carolina, the officials in North Carolina, wanted the final say so on everything. Why anyone would what to take on that responsibility being unprepared, being uneducated, unexperienced on how to deal with it. I just don't understand why—what the—. Unless there was some kind of pride or ego thing there that North Carolina wanted the final say so. But if they'd let FEMA handle it—it was a very big disaster. But the FEMA people felt, I think, that the state really slowed everything down. It took, myself, it took right at eight weeks to get an inspection. And actually took a Congressional order to get a travel trailer to get home, which the FEMA people told me, being disabled, that that is usually put on a priority. If they read the list when they're handling it, they see a disabled

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person, they try to get them a travel trailer and get them home as quick—you know, put it on priority. In my case, I got a letter from my doctor telling how serious it was that I do get home because of my condition. And the state seemed to think it was a joke. And finally had to get—. My doctor volunteered to contact our congressman and got a congressional order so that I could get home. That's what it took because of the state.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Where were you up to that point?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Staying at a house in Wallace about eight or nine miles away that we could neither afford or felt comfortable in. Anyway, people were getting home. It was slow. But I just couldn't understand it. And the FEMA people were saying the whole time, "Look, you're problem's with the state." We had some very nice FEMA people here to help us at our center here, our local center. I had a couple that helped me out especially one guy. He helped me a whole lot.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Working—

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Trying.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well trying to do more than he possibly had to on my case, trying to get me home. He knew the condition of my disability and knew the state of—that I was in was very detrimental to that disability. He had talked—read a letter my doctor had sent him. And of the travel trailer ending up taking, what, over two months, a little over two months.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

You've only been in it a week.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

And I told him being on disability, you know, you have a very small income when you have to go on it at such a young age, and that we couldn't afford to live there. And, you know, with all the extra expenses, so that the whole FEMA situation—. The problem with FEMA was basically their inspections. The part with the state was, "We want to run the show. We don't know how. But we want to run it. We're going to have the final say so." And the people they hired, all this temporary help, had no experience on how to run it. And basically, they had a bunch of people that didn't care about the people they were dealing with, and basically, too many liars, actual liars. I don't know how many people from the state of North Carolina. "I will get that information and call you back." And you come and you wait by the phone all day. You know, you're so distressed from the flood. You've lost everything and you're stressed out. And here you are waiting all day long for a phone call that never comes. You call back. You're handed off to somebody else. The same thing, "I'll get that information. I'll see what I can do and I'll call you right back." So, you know, it run the whole gamut from federal—. Not so bad as far as the FEMA workers. They were pretty good. The inspectors were—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They were from where? Where were those ones who were good—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

The two I met were at our local DRC, which is Disaster Relief Center, number eleven in Wallace.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They'd come from somewhere else though, right?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Gail, which was the leader of it, I think she came from—. Oh gosh I can't remember. Up north somewhere, maybe Philadelphia or somewhere. But the guy who helped me the most, John, was from Boston.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

The one I talked to was from California.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

And there's another one out there, Clark, who is a field representative, who has come by and just shook his head so many times at the situation that he has seen in this community. And how slow the state has been to come to the assistance. He's also from California, very nice, very nice people. It kind of goes back to the same thing as getting our help. All of our help has come from outside community sources. The people who have really been nice to us and act like they've understood are people from outside the state, you know, that understand the situation and have really, you know, took extra effort and tried to help certain cases.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The whole disaster has been chaotic in that there has been—number one, no leader, whether it be on a local level or on a state level. Who—where does the buck stop? No one can tell you that right now I will assure you. Everything has been chaotic. Let me give you an example. My relief worked a little faster than Wayne's did. I did get some help from FEMA. But it was all, "If you qualify. Do you qualify?" And I spoke to a lady in Raleigh. I said, "Ma'am, this isn't a muddy issue. This is a shelter issue." I said, "The just and the unjust are a part of this, you know, this catastrophe." Give you an example, I inherited my father's house of which we had some long-term plans of refurbishing and rebuilding. And as a result of the floodwaters, I had to tear it down. I chose to tear it down because it would cost too much to repair it. The

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county would not let me burn it. It's sitting on my own land, had the power disconnected. Okay. I want to burn my home. No, you can't burn it. What do you propose I do with it? If you will tear it down, the county will come get in and haul it off. I had to hire a contractor to come in and tear my house down. I'm already on limited funds as it is, not knowing the repairs or the rebuilding that we've go to do. The county gave me a person to tear it down. And I tore it down thinking that they would come and pick it up. They said tear it down and string it out to the highway and we'll come get it. So I tore it down, paid a contractor to do it, strung it out to the highway. And believe it or not, overnight the rules changed. They can't come get it anymore. So here I am sitting there with a house that I was paying taxes on, forty thousand dollars a year, had no insurance, total loss on my part, laying flat on the ground. What do I do with it? Then I had to get a bulldozer to come in there and push that house within thirty feet of the highway so the state would pick it up. So that's an example of how there's been no leadership, no someone to take the buck and run with it. And the rules have changed overnight throughout this whole disaster. On a county level, we've had no disaster relief, on the county level or coordinator or whatever you call them.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Of course we didn't expect that—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

The evacuation of this community came from an individual who I'd like to go on record and acknowledge. His name was Gary Cantrell, who has a business, an earthmoving business, landscaping business. Had it not been for that young man putting his equipment in jeopardy I'm not sure this community would even have been evacuated.

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He's got trucks. You're looking at a hundred thousand dollars apiece. He used his trucks to evacuate a rest home as well as ninety percent of the individuals in this community getting them out of the flood zone up to high ground.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Talking about dump truck.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

With his dump truck, with his big dump trucks. I seen him drive across this bridge down here that you could not even see the hand railings on it. Who put not only his equipment in jeopardy but his own life in jeopardy evacuating. The fire department done a good job. But they, too, were chaotic.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Volunteer—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

But in coordination with the local fire department and Gary Cantrell, that's how this community got evacuated, hundreds of people.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did—do you know the story about how he decided it was time? How did he know and others didn't?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I don't know. Well the fire department came door to door. About two thirty in the morning they came to my house. This was the night after Hurricane Floyd. No one had power, electrical power. And the fire department came to my house honking the horn at two thirty in the morning and said you've got to evacuate. Water is rising. I turned the flashlight on. My wife says, "What are we going to do?" I said, "We're going back to sleep." "What should we do?" I said, "Honey, the water's not going to come over that hayfield out there. It's not going to come over the cemetery. No way." So we went back to sleep. This was on Friday. Friday morning we woke up. And Gary was hauling people out. We were high and dry here.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

This is four o'clock in the morning?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. This was at seven o'clock in the morning. We were high and dry here. But Gary was hauling people out on his dump trucks and parking them out here in front of my dad's house. And they were getting on another truck because we were kind of sandwiched in. Down the road here the water was across the highway. But we were high and dry here on this hill at seven o'clock in the morning. Never thought about anything like that happening. But all during that day Gary kept hauling people out and the water's kept coming, you know, it kept coming. And by eleven o'clock it was over my steps on my back deck. And my older brother wouldn't leave. He said, "I'm not going to leave." So we got our wives out. Everybody evacuated the entire community by two or three o'clock that afternoon.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

The last truck went out about one, between one and two.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. Everybody had evacuated except me and my brother and my cousin and his wife, and my aunt and step-uncle. And we were the only ones left in here. Probably a crazy thing to do, but I wouldn't leave because my brother wouldn't leave. And we stayed here the whole time and watched the water rise. And like I said earlier, it lacked an inch and a half literally going through his house. It crested on Sunday. The water rose all day Friday. It rose all day Saturday and Sunday it crested about three o'clock, I think. And it stayed at a standstill lacking an inch and a half, as I've said several times, going through his house. It was already in mine here about eighteen inches. Everything else—. I saw houseboats, literally houseboats go floating across the hayfield. Sightseers, jet skies going fifty miles an hour anywhere you want to go. Just—. It's like we were on an island and everything around us was water. We sat up on his rooftop over there.

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Let's see, I was there for seven days before I could get out or after I elected to get out. I could drive my vehicle out. But we sat up on his housetop every day and watched the helicopters fly over. And people on jet skies running up and down the highway like, you know, it's a big party. Game wardens—. But the water crested on Sunday and it dropped exactly one half inch per hour. And from his driveway the water got up to thirty-nine or forty-nine inches. I don't remember right now. We had a yard stick sticking down from his driveway. Had it tied up so we could see the degrees, or the level, that the water was receding. And consistently, from the time it crested, it dropped a half an inch per hour until it was gone. I was in here from Friday until the following Friday before I got out. I could drive my car out. Those seven days probably—. My house had water in it probably four days. I think your house was probably underwater probably eight or nine days.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Wayne's house.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. And during that time all you would—you would not believe the rumors were that floating around. The sheriff actually come to arrest me because I wouldn't leave my property. And I asked the question—and the sheriff deputy was a local boy, good boy. Grew up with him or he grew up, you know, different generation, but he's a good boy. I never felt so sorry for anybody in my life. He come up and he said, "Russell, y'all got to evacuate." I said, "Why? We have a generator. I've got a warm bed to sleep in. We've got all the food we can possibly eat because we raided everybody's freezer around here where there was no power. Man, we were eating steak and shrimp every night." [Laughter] I said, "What you going to do with me? You going to take me to the Holiday Inn and put me up?" He said, "No." I

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said, "What you going to do with me?" He said, "I'm going to take you out to dry land and put you out on the highway." I said, "I'm not going. Where is your warrant to arrest me." He said, "I don't have one." I said, "Well you go get a warrant and you bring it back to me and I'll go with you anywhere you want to carry me. You can take me to jail and you can feed me and give me a warm bed to sleep in." Well he broke down and went to crying. I said, "Son, I just left your house and you're in the same shape that everybody else in this community is. You've lost everything you've got, just like I have. What good is it going to do to take me—?" The water was receding then. It was going down. But the point that I'm trying to make—. Due to the lack of organization there was rumors floating and everything. You would have thought that there was the biggest bacteria in the world in that water and it was going to kill everybody. There could have been. But we have sense enough to wear rubber gloves and boots. And we had sanitation equipment. We had fresh water, bottled water. But anyway, to make a long story short, we—I lived like that for seven days. Me and my brother and my aunt and my step uncle and my cousin and his wife, we were about the only ones in here. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

[unclear] the looters. They said there was—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I never saw a looter.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Several up the road that way, mostly up that way.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I never saw a looter. The rumors were that there were corpses floating out of the graveyard. I get in my canoe and I paddle out to the graveyard. I know my cell

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phone bill was—. Well I don't even want to think what it is. My wife was out. She was with family, my niece, in Beulahville. When he came and got her and my sister-in-law, it took about two hours and a half to drive from Beulahville because they had to go up all the way to the northern part of the county, and then find route to get them from the shelter in Penn City to Wallace. And I stayed in here a week. I left on Friday and went to Beulahville. And then there were eight head of us that stayed in a mobile home for two weeks, sleeping on the floor. Then my wife and I left and went to another mobile home that was flooded. And we stayed in about four weeks until they brought the little FEMA trailer that we're in now. And we, like everybody else in this community, the church came and tore my floors out, tore my walls out, just like every home you see up and down this road. There's no floors in it. There's no walls in it. And I'm still, you know, I'm thankful that FEMA brought me some place to live. I really am. I'm grateful. I have a daughter that lives in Greensboro, going to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Graduates—took her final exam today. Thank you, Jesus. Graduates in a few weeks and with nobody but me and my wife, we're doing fairly well. We're fairing good.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You have one of the small trailers?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. We got a thirty-foot travel trailer hooked up in my yard. I've had estimates to make my repairs that outweigh what I paid for my—. I live in a double-wide mobile home. That out exceed—greatly exceed what I paid for it. And to my wife and I, it's not worth the—what it's going to take to repair it. And we're having us a home built.

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We're going to start all over again and build a small home. And work until I'm eighty-five. [Laughter]

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It's going to be right on the same place?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I tore the house down and I'm going to build back there.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It is going to be up any higher?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What do you believe about the next flood? I mean, you were talking about hurricanes. What, seven did you say?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Why should I live in fear? Certainly I'm going to get an insurance policy on it. If it happens again next year, I'll deal with it. I'll probably go up another block higher but not for the flood. Just so I can get under it if I need to. There are people, in my opinion that maybe have overreacted. Got a neighbor over here that's moved his house up six feet. It's a beautiful home. It was my grandmother's old home place that they remodeled, beautiful home. And now it's sitting on poles that you can drive a car under it. I'm not going to live my life in fear like that. If it happens again, I'll deal with it the best that I can. The chances of it happening again—I don't know. It could happen next year or it might be another hundred years.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Five hundred.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Or five hundred. But I don't know. I hope I don't live long enough. And I hope I live to be an old man. But I hope I don't live long enough to see this again.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The way this world is a going now, it won't be here five hundred years.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

But if it happens, I'll deal with it then. What choice do we have? And who's to say that the next flood is not going to be greater than this flood. So how high do you go, you know.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How about the rest of you? Where do you live now? What plans do you have for what—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We started back on ours. And just doing a little at the time.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You saved your house except you have to put in all new sheet rock.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

All new sheet rock, all new flooring, all new wiring, all new plumbing. The only thing we've got's the ceiling.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And the brick outer shell.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Excuse me for interrupting, but their home would probably have went on the market a hundred and thirty, maybe a hundred and forty, somewhere in that before the flood. Now, twenty? Would you do good to get twenty out of it?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

The estimate was twenty.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Twenty. So you're looking at—you're looking at—. This is where my heart goes out to.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Miss Eunice, I'm curious about your and Mr. Raymond's experience on that Thursday night.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Well, I went out about ten o 'clock and it was to the bottom step. Well I lived in high water all my life. Down in Pender County it was a regular thing. It'd come up like this on the road and then it might be like this in some of the areas where you couldn't drive through. But they saved their crops.

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It was always in the summertime. And we kids played in it. That was our happy times. We were talking about swimming. We played in the high water. And then when I moved up here I had it in '62 and then this one. But, as I said, that night about ten o'clock I went out and checked the water. He'd already gone to bed so I lay down. I'd been there about an hour. The telephone rung and I had this friend of mine in California wanting to know how we had survived the hurricane. She'd been trailing it on the t. v. She was from here so naturally her interest was [unclear] . And I said, "Oh we're fine. We're fine. Not a thing wrong. We didn't have any wind damage. The water's coming up gradually but that's just minor" because there was only about three or four inches in the yard. I said, "We're going fine." She talked for one hour. I finally got her off the phone about twelve. I went out and checked the water again and it had come up to the second step. I said, "Well, it'll soon quit rising now. I know it won't get any higher." Went back and lay down, just got back to sleep when a girl right next door over here called and said, "Eunice, get up and get out. The water's rising." I said, "Well it's not rising that fast." She said, "I'm telling what they've already warned us. We are to leave and leave now." I said, "Well I believe I'll just wait until day because it's not going to go that fast." So I went out and it was on the third step. Well I knew then it was rising fast. So Wayne's car was right at the head of the steps and there was a guy in the road with a flashlight. In case traffic was trying to go through he would stop them. And he hollered at me because he saw my flashlight. And he said, "Eunice, you've got to get out." Said, "The water's rising so fast we've been ordered to get everyone out."

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And he walked on up to the house then while he was talking. And he said, "Did you just open Wayne's car door?" I said, "No." He said, "Well the light's on inside." Well I noticed it was then. He said, "Eunice, it's already too late. The car's—the water's in there with his computer now." So, he said, "I've got to go over here to the some road down the road to get a family" out of a house that wasn't on the road. He said, "I'll be back in just a little while and help you get on out." And so Wayne—I went and got him. He jumps up and got out to his car and, sure enough, it wouldn't crank. And in just that few minutes it had gone in. So they had to pull his car over to the place where he was talking about that was a little higher. And I, of course, got Raymond up. And then as they were working with the vehicles getting them out, I was running around in the house getting everything off the floor, throwing it on the beds. Taking the bottom two drawers from the dressers and chest of drawers and putting them on the bed. Taking the clothes down the throwing them up on the shelf. And Wayne kept hollering, "Come on. Come on. We've got to go. The water's getting into the exhaust pipe now." I said, "I can't go until I get all this off the floor." So the last job I did was coming through the living room, I grabbed the pictures that was low down and all around, sitting around and throwed them on the mantle. And—

WAYNE ENGLISH:

This was all done by flashlight, too.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Yeah. Believe me that is another job. When you can't see, you lay down your light and directly you're in another room and don't remember where the light was. And we finally got—. I did as much as he would let me because he was losing power with the truck. So he finally backed up so I could get in it.

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And, of course, we only had the clothes that we had on. I'd thrown on a few and he put on his that he had just pulled off. They got in the truck and we were all wet to our knees getting in and out. And so I tried to get into the truck part of the truck to keep from getting wetter.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is that big dump truck at that point?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

No, this was his pickup.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's a regular pickup that we had in the garage.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But the water was coming then into the exhaust. It was rising fast.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Yeah. The truck had started bubbling. That's when I went in and I said, "If we're going, we've got to go now." Because I knew if that truck ever cut off it wouldn't ever crank again.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We were stuck. Yeah. And you did it before you come back and got me. But it was like somebody had a heart attack and you're waiting for the ambulance. You're scrambling to get everything together before it gets there.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I [unclear] at the moment, at that moment and—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

So we went over there, as he said, to his aunt's house. And I got him to lay down for a little while. And we stayed up and down. And the next morning, I think Russell got Wayne and went back over to our house to turn the main switch off and come back. And I said, "How deep was it?" And he said, "You don't want to know." But he finally told me it was knee deep then. And then it rose about two more feet after that. So we knew everything we had was gone.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

So all those things you put on the bed—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Got wet. The water came up—. The strange part is the water came up but when it went down it stayed in all these little containers. Our drawers that was in the bathroom and in the kitchen cabinets, when they tore them down, you still couldn't pull the drawers out because they still had water level in them. All my pots in the cabinets were still level with water. And the refrigerator, it had turned over in the water. My stove, it was terrible. The sink where the water had finally drained out left all of its little stuff in it. And it was so slick in my house you had to hold on to walk. And the stench was just out of this world. You didn't want to save anything. So when I went in it was two weeks then. When I went in the Marines drove up right behind me. And they were there to help you tear out. And believe me I found what a demolition crew was because they had that house torn down in the amount of an hour or two. Every bit of furniture that we had, everything was out at the road.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You said you tried to take a few things out.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I was going to. I saved what was above the closet level, you know, where the shelves come. We had ours up about five feet, I guess, from the floor. And that stuff remained dry. But some of it was so contaminated feeling and the smell—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Anything that absorbed moisture because—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Even after the waters receded the mildew factor started working on them. The water goes about eighteen inches to two feet in my house yet the ceiling is blackened with mildew.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

All of our clothes, I thought maybe I could save a few, especially one of his coats that he liked to wear so well. The next day I went back, it had mildewed and

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molded just like you wanted to take it and [unclear] . So everything I tried to save like that I went ahead and throwed out the next day.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Was it you who was telling me the story about carrying things, trying to get them by the Marine?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Uh-huh. That happened over at [unclear] .

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That's right. That wasn't your story. It was someone else's story.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They had the guards sit at the doors over there. They let people in for just a little while at the time and then they had to leave. I don't know whether that was before the water went completely out of the area or just when. But I felt so sorry. My heart went out to that woman that was trying to save her pictures.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Even the Marines that we had in here was on a volunteer basis. It was not a state issued thing or a governmental issue thing. They just—Marines wanted to come in this community and help us. And they volunteered of their time off.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Two weeks paid—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

From Camp Lejeune?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

From Camp Lejuene.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Two weeks.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

They came here and volunteered for that.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

They were volunteers. They were not ordered in here. It was their time off that they volunteered to come in here and help us.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Did they come in uniform?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No, none of them. Well some of them may have been. The ones that came to my house were—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They were in their fatigues at my house.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Okay. The ones that came and helped me had on blue jeans. They came to our church. We had roughly two hundred and fifty thousand dollars damage done to our church. They tore all the floors out, took all the furniture out, all the pews out, just took—well, everything in it had to go. Took the carpets off of the floor, took the furniture out of it, all volunteered from the Marines. As a matter of fact, they were the first relief that I recall seeing in the community. And they weren't a mandate. They was volunteers. [unclear] come in here and help us. And other than that the only other relief that we have seen other than FEMA doing their thing, is volunteer helps. There's churches as far away as Hillsboro have taken our church out here under its wing. They have restored our fellowship hall virtually at no expense to the church. They tore all of the sheet rock out, all the insulation out of the walls, all the floors out, and have gone through a drying out season. And we had our first meeting in there Sunday. Of course, we've got a lot of work to do. But we at least are trying to get our flock back together. The Holiday Inn was very gracious to us and let us use a conference room to have our Sunday services there. And now we've got to concentrate on finishing up our fellowship hall, the educational building and the sanctuary.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How many members do you have?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Active members, probably about a hundred.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Are many of them retired people?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Many of them are retired. And without some help from other churches there's no way our church could rebuild. We're on a fixed income. Most of us, as you've heard me say, is of retirement age. We don't have the facilities to rebuild that church, no way. We've got approximately $40,000 in the building fund. And there's no way—. No insurance, no way we could absorb a $250,000 debt, no way. And without the aid of other people trying to help us we would have to close that church.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

One thing that I don't know about is the Freewill Pentecostal Baptist—am I saying it in the right order?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That's right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Pentecostal Freewill Baptist, is that all the names? Pentecostal Freewill Baptist Church?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Right.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Incorporated.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Incorporated. Does it have a headquarters?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It's headquartered in Dunn, North Carolina. It has a—it has a population, if you will, of about twelve thousand people, primarily in eastern North Carolina. There's churches in Virginia, a couple of churches in South Carolina. The Freewill Baptist is an old traditional order of the Baptist church that has gone back several hundred years. In 1948, I believe I'm correct, that this organization or our church accepted the book of Acts—and I don't know how familiar you are with religion and theology—. But this organization accepted the infillment of the Holy Spirit, where the original Freewill

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Baptist did not teach that in their doctrine. And out of that we—the organization became the Free Pentecostal. They put the Pentecostal in front of the Freewill Baptist church and a corporation was formed through Dr. A. H. Carter, I believe. Is that right? Part of it and it was headquartered in Dunn, North Carolina. So we are a split, if you will, from the original Freewill Baptist church.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And does the church practice Pentecostal healing and speaking in tongues and that sort of thing the way—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yes and no because probably fifty percent of the organization are of the original Freewill Baptist. Maybe the other fifty-percent of the church has accepted the Pentecostal experience, if you will. So we're kind of half-and-half. Some do, some don't. Practice, not as it was twenty-five years ago. We used to wash feet. I don't think they even do that anymore, do they? So, I think we're more liberal now. There was a time at the organization you didn't drink strong drink, you didn't use tobacco. Check this, if you will, this is a tobacco belt. Tobacco built the church but yet it was against church doctrine to use tobacco. So things have eased up quite a bit, you know, over the last—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

[unclear] not necessarily more liberal but just more educated.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

More educated, that's a better word instead of liberal.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Well one of my reasons for asking more about the denomination is how few people there are in your own denomination to help out with the rebuilding of the church. And particularly—. So are you talking about when you say help from other churches, that we're talking about—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Outside the denomination.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Outside the denomination.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

If it had not been for the Presbyterian, the Methodists and the Baptists—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

We'd be up a creek.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

We would—. I don't know what.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Predominantly, predominantly the Baptist men have been very, very instrumental in helping people. I think they had a Methodist group over at Uncle Raymond's, very, very instrumental. Presbyterians have made monetarial contributions and as well as having people out working. We've had Catholics in the community. We've had people outside the faith that I believe in that I would consider heathens that have brought me food, that have brought us clothing. So, yes, there's some good come through this. I think a lot of denominational barriers have been broken. I think a lot of racial barriers have been broken.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How so? There's some black churches that have been here?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I haven't actually seen black churches working in the community. But out at Poston ever since the flood they have served two meals a day up until last week.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Through October was two meals and the month of November they just had one meal.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Just one meal.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is that a black church?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. It's a white church. But yet churches from all over this area: Duplin, Sampson County, have took a night that they have fed the people here in Northeast community, and among those churches were black churches. I know they fed twice that I

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recall and I don't know how many times prior to Eddy and I going out there and eating the meal with them. So, yes, I think, I think, denominational barriers have been—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And then we had some of the blacks in this community that went out there and eat with us too. Yeah. So we were well [unclear] with the Baptists and the Methodists and the Presbyterians. And take this, for example, we had one lone man, drove down from—. Where was it, Wayne? Where'd he live? Briar?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Somewhere around the triangle area.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Some where in that triangle area because his job was an office job, sat at a desk all day. He gave up his Saturday. He contacted the Methodist preacher here in Wallace. The Methodist preacher sent him to our house. We had a [unclear] that was still intact that had to come out. So it just happened we had to go to Beulahville that morning to see about a car. So we were about one o'clock, I guess, getting back or somewhere in that area. That guy had spent that whole morning tearing out the bathroom by himself. He was totally give out. And through the afternoon chit chatting I thought he was Methodist because of the Methodist contact. And he said he did have a close connection with the Methodist church up there. But along in the afternoon, we found out he was a Catholic. One Catholic man left his home to come down here to go in some stranger's house to knock out his bathroom. Would I have done that? No. I doubt if any one of us in this room would have driven a hundred and twenty-five miles and worked all day by himself to knock out somebody's bathroom.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I wouldn't have then, but I will now. That's my first priority.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Ceramic all around and on the floor. And the first—somebody went in there before he got there and the soap dish, they knocked it off the wall.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Yeah, that first group.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Everything on the wall was broken off. We probably could have saved that room. And those there they tore the floor up. All that ceramic was gone.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But he said the first time he slung that sledgehammer, said it said, bong. He said I reached around and hit again. It said bong. He said I knew I was in trouble. [Laughter]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I had at my house a group from Burlington, North Carolina, Baptist men and women. I get emotional just thinking about this. But one of the gentlemen was a reporter with the Burlington paper, and a photographer. One of the gentlemen was a professional person that was with the IBM Corporation that was a computer programmer. Another of the gentlemen was—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I thought that guy was with UNC public television because [unclear] .

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. All of these were professional people that you wouldn't think would get their hands dirty; or I wouldn't have thought would be willing to get their hands dirty. There was a mother that had a two-year old child and a four-year old child that hired a babysitter to come to my house with those men and slop around in that filth and those contaminated waters—that ruined everything in the world we had just about—to tear the floors out and the walls out and pull the insulation out of my house. Would I have done it? Probably not. Will I do it now? You better believe it. As a matter of fact, one of the churches in town is trying to start a Habitat for Humanity. And my name's on the list.

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[Recorder is turned off and then back on.]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

From disaster to disaster. Because they were well educated to what to do. They didn't have to be told where to start, I mean, women and the men, husbands and wives. And the Poston Baptist Church put them up at night. Part of them stayed there and part of them, the rest home doors was opened right down the road from them. And some of them went over there to take baths the next day that slept at the church. They just—everybody just cooperated. It was just like—well it was just unbelievable how the barriers just broke instantly.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

If the government agencies had been as organized, as qualified, as the volunteer help, then probably most people would be back at home now.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

But the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life—. And it's because you heard me say that we're a proud community. And my parents raised us in that—well my family, and Wayne's the same way—that we were to be self-supportive. I've never in my life asked or had to accept charity. It is a very humbling experience to go to bed in a nice king-sized bed. And our house was modest. But it was home. It was comfortable. We raised our daughter there. To go to bed and some of the better things that you worked hard for. We had a nice car, a Mercedes car, as a matter of fact. It was old, but you know, it provided transportation. But my point is to wake up the next morning and you've got nothing, nothing. Everything you've worked—.

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Things can change. And it's had some adverse affects on me. I found out that I don't have to have a home with two thousand square feet in it. That's what we

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were planning to do. I found out I haven't got to drive a nice car. I saved the little GM truck. That's my Sunday car now. That's all I've got. And an old pickup truck and it don't matter. My priorities changed just like that overnight. And I'm really sincere.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I wouldn't have taken anything at all for all of those possessions because most of my stuff was hand me downs from my family on down. And I have a great attachment for family possessions. But when I took them to the road or when those men took them to the road and I saw it laying there in that heap, I don't know, but something changed in me. It's no longer—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It's not important.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It wasn't important. I could just turn my back on it and walk back to the house and it was gone. I couldn't cry. I didn't even cry over it. And most people said they had cried all day. I just couldn't. I felt like God would take care of me. I thought of Job. He lost everything. And who was Job and who am I? We were God's creations. So it just didn't worry me. I said, "Well, you can't get them back better than you had before. I know you're going to provide." The next morning I stood in the Salvation Army line. We got blankets. And at lunchtime we went back, that night we went back. It wasn't all that good but it fed us.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Cold ravioli and stale bread. The place we went to in Wallace—. There was no electricity in Wallace either. And the house that we happened to stay in had a non—it was a non-cooking house [unclear] . And the Hardee's and McDonald's and whatever else, there was no power so there was nowhere to eat. And we found the Salvation Army truck and for, what, about three days we lived off of the Salvation Army food.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

The Methodist church out there served on Sunday night in front of the Piggly Wiggly store. And I don't know how they heated it up unless it was generators probably. And what other church served out there one night? I forgot which it was. But, I mean, we picked around. We didn't miss many meals. We were not that hungry. And the first day or two the Baptist people had gone in their closets and brought out a table twice as long as this room, I guess, with clothes, blankets, sheets. So we were able to start accumulating at the beginning. And then later on in the week, the distribution center in Wallace had had a truck brought in. We went there. We got other necessities. And I think I've gotten enough toothpaste to last a year. [Laughter]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I probably got more clothes than I've ever had in my life.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Our pack house over there where you were this afternoon is half full of boxes of clothes came down from Michigan.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

[unclear] The jeans I got on I got from a relief center, brand new, had the tags on them.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Everything I've got on came from somebody.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I couldn't afford Wranglers before. I had to wear Wal-Mart.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Our first Sunday was so funny back in church. We were out at the Holiday Inn. And the lady that lives down the road, Betty Stokes, came in. And she's kindly comical with some of her statements. She said, "Well I think we all look mighty good in somebody's else's clothes." [Laughter] And we were, everybody—. Then we got to picking at one another. And one of them said, "Well you're dress looks prettier than mine. You got a different box than I did." [Laughter]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It don't matter where you go some—. And I really think I've got an attitude. I've tried to keep an open mind. But there's always somebody going to be in worse shape. So I look at it that we're blessed. What did we get out of it? I got my life. I can start again if I have to. I hate it for the older people of this community that are living on a fixed income that's got seventy and eighty thousand dollars worth of damage to their homes. That was a long time. But they will recover. I will assure you that they will recover. Some it's just going to take a little longer than it did before. The things we used to have we found out we can do without them. Our house needed a good cleaning. We just didn't need it this way. [Laughter] Because we threw it all away, everything away.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He had begged me for twenty years to get the mess out of our house and that pack house. He said, "Now, I'll tell you, you're going to come home one day and you're going to see it burned out. I'm going to start at the back and start burning [unclear] ." So he didn't have to burn it.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

My wife was a trinket collector. She loved little trinkets, little things, you know, that collect dust. And that's the vow she said, "When we get another house there will be no more trinkets." [Laughter]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I vowed I was not going to junk it up.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

We're doing fine. As a community, we're doing fine. Roots are deep, people are stronger than they look like they are. And we'll be back. Give us a year, we'll be back. Come back and see us in a year. You have an open invitation.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

You have an optimistic outlook, too.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Even you, Wayne, even you.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I'm mad. I'm mad at this county. I'm mad at this state for allowing this county to get in the shape it is environmentally. I am so mad that our elected officials are so much on the take, not monetarily, maybe monetarily. But on the take of powerful people that run this county. That they will allow it to get in this shape that caused this much damage. And I'm also upset at the federal government. Simply because I had $12,000 worth of insurance on a home that will take probably thirty, with the porches and everything, will take thirty probably $30,000 to rebuild like it was. I lost probably fifty thousand in personal items. Because I had $12,000 in insurance they completely locked me out of any type of assistance. That's why it took a congressional order to get me a travel trailer to get home. They told me I did not qualify for FEMA help. I did not qualify for family grant help. I did not qualify for a SBA loan because I don't make enough money from my back. So I have really no way unless it does come through volunteer [unclear] no way, because the government has told me to decide. Plus out of that $12,000 I had to replace a car to get me back and forth to the doctor and to make sure we had transportation. So, according to the government, $12,000 is supposed to replace my car, replace probably a twenty-eight, thirty thousand dollar home and help me get probably some of my $50,000 of personal items back. And they see it that way. So I'm still very angry at that—from the county for not even having a Red Cross [unclear] . I went around for two or three days, "Where's the Red Cross? They'll help you." Finally a county official had to admit, well, we're not associated with the Red Cross. After he lied and tried to put it off. So I'm still very angry from the county to the state right on up to the federal government. So I'm not quite as optimistic as they are. Most

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people they can, you know, they can go to work and make money, or they can qualify for loans or they can get grants. But I don't see that sunny of an outlook for me right yet.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Is there a list of recommendations you would have for how they could have done it better?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well I feel like I was discriminated against number one because of being insured, which I didn't know at the time—that was a shock to me—that I was so under insured because simply I can't afford insurance. When you're living off of a few hundred dollars a month, you know, insurance is a luxury. I tried to get as much as we could. But because I have a little bit of insurance I was discriminated against like, hey, well he's got a couple of thousand dollars, he don't need a place to stay. He don't need to get home. He don't need to rebuild. And then I also feel like being disabled I was discriminated against because of where my disability resided. As a matter of fact, I was told by a FEMA agent that looked at my record. He said that your disability is above the shoulder and I feel like you're being discriminated against. The state does not take those type disabilities as serious disabilities. Even with your doctor's note, they're not taking you serious. When I told my doctor that he became very upset. And that's when he got on the phone to the congressman and demanded some action. This was not a joking matter. So I was very angry at the state about that, their attitude. And there again, the federal government, not the FEMA agents, but the federal government just because I had a few thousand dollars insurance, you know, you don't need our help. Well I need it just as bad as these [unclear] who are getting the money, you know. Some people in the neighborhood who could afford to build two or three

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houses back without ever seeing a government form. And yet they're getting a lot, you know, they're getting a full benefit. So, you know, I didn't choose my situation. I would have done anything not to have choose my situation. But because I'm in that situation I'm still angry because I feel like I'm being discriminated against because—. And so, yeah, people can laugh and we can get along. But when I go back down at night I'm still worried about how I'm going to recover, how I'm going to get back to any type of normalcy because I don't see it. I don't see it unless it does come in volunteer ways. And I'm sure I'm not alone, you know. I'm sure there's other people that's—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

And then, too, men that do not have families are at the bottom of the totem pole with all kinds of help from the Salvation Army right on down. If you're a woman with a child you can get anything there is. There's a family I know now, they've got $800 in food stamps. They weren't even near the water. They had no wind damage. But they're getting food stamps.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

If you're a single man with a disability—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It's just not looked at as needed.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

It's not seen as being needed. So I'm still angry. I try to get over it and—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

I'm glad you can say that you are. It's important. I think we're at a stopping point. Is there anything else—?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Have you got any questions that we haven't—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

[unclear]

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

You have our life story. That's for sure. [Laughter]

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You've done it very well with very little prompting on our part. I guess, thank you very much for sharing the story with us. It's a real privilege to hear.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Tell your future people when they get in trouble they'd better be affiliated with more churches because that's the only place to look to. The Lord said first to look to him for our needs. And these people that are looking to the government to take care of them in a time of trouble like this, they're in a [unclear] , too.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I don't understand it. I don't know if we're in the wrong country. If we're—I don't want to go that route.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That was part of it, too. Why can our country afford to send aid to foreign countries and let our country's taxpayer suffer the way that we're having to suffer.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They want to loan us money. And we sent it over there by the billions.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Right.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But, I'll loan you here enough money so you can—.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well they're the ones that will [unclear] if you give me title and deed to all your property and I can come in your house and check all your records and you spent every dollar and cent.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's what they want. Ask him what the SBA told him he'd have to do to give him a loan.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

That situation has not been explored enough. I received an email from my Senator John Edwards who was making that point in a statement before the Senate that he was leading up to the fact about how the government is—. I mean hundreds of millions of dollars they have given in loans to foreign countries during—since the flood. And why can't that money be appropriated here?

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We're sitting on a surplus—or supposedly surplus. Why can't we appropriate money to our own people? Why are our own people—why can't we take care of own people? When you think back to the Gulf War when then President Bush forgave an eight billion dollar debt to Egypt just to let us fly our planes over their space. Eight billion dollars would just about rebuild probably everything in North Carolina back better than it was. And that was just like that. And right now we're sending in hundreds of millions of dollars to the corrupt police force in Mexico trying to train them on how to handle their corrupt police force. And it's just throwing away money. And they get up there and say why can't we take care of our own. What ever happened to taking care of our own? And why is it so hard to get the money? I think our county's sitting on money now but they won't distribute it. I'm not sure but they have a fund I don't think they've distributed.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They said they had a fund.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I feel in my mind they're probably just sitting on it collecting interest so they can divide it among themselves. I don't know. I wouldn't make that accusation as a knowing accusation. But somebody's collecting interest somewhere. Is that going to be added back to the fund? Why hold back? People need the money now. So it's an issue to me that is not [unclear] . Do we take are of own?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

You've gotten some checks from the governor's fund is that right?

WAYNE ENGLISH:

We've received a couple.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Three checks, is that—?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I received one for three hundred and—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Thirty-nine dollars. And then another one for—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Three o eight.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Three o eight.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

And one for a hundred and some I think somebody said.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Yeah, a hundred and ninety-eight.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I didn't get a hundred and eight.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That was from the social services.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. All together I've probably received five hundred dollars from county support or state support.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It was donations into North Carolina funds. It wasn't state funds.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

It wasn't state funds.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

It was from the governor's fund but it was—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It was donations.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yeah. Right.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

You'd think it came from him. He had to put his name on it.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

Well actually it was from our county office.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

So that would cut my losses instead of being $71,000 it would be $69,500. [Laughter]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But the IRS has turned around. Instead of being the cruel demon that it is—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

I like the IRS.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

They're going to refund the taxes to our loss for the last three years.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

From '95. That's how I can afford to build me a small home right now. I file on my taxes from '98 to '95 and got enough refund that I can start again. Well I haven't got the check yet, you know. I haven't put it in the bank yet.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

How did you know about that?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

An IRS lady came out to the church one night and told us about it. I didn't think it was worthwhile. But for a year I had two incomes from severance pay from the company shut down. Plus I was working again and I paid them a hunk. So I decided I'd try it, you know, and I got my accountant to—. Fortunately, my records at home were flooded but his weren't. And he keeps a copy of my tax returns and filed on it and it really—it helped me. It will help me once I get the check.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

He hasn't got it yet.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

No. I haven't gotten it.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

As Raymond says, don't count on it yet.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Uh-huh. It's a promise.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

And don't count on FEMA either. [Laughter]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But I—.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

That still leaves Wayne.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

See? That still leaves him through the cracks not being able to have an income to file on. So he has no income tax return.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Yeah. Well I think we'll turn off the tape now but that was a good time.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Not to be taken lightly but the parsonage at the church—. I keep relating back to the church because the church is the vital part of the community. The church

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parsonage—. There's a church in Wilmington that's taken that under their wing and within a few weeks we had the church parsonage back in order at no expense whatsoever.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

What denomination?

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Baptist.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Okay.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

That was my brother's church in Wilmington that took on that project.

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Oh okay.

WAYNE ENGLISH:

I really believe the best advice come earlier. If anyone is in trouble or anticipates trouble it's a good idea to be associated, or at least know people, who are very closely affiliated to a church like the Baptist organization or the Methodist or the Presbyterian because they have saved millions of dollars in repairs, do it volunteer because to tear out a home could be very expensive, also. But their volunteer help there's no telling how many [unclear] .

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

As a matter of fact, the Baptist denomination right now, those that filled out the paperwork, there's families being adopted every day to see that the families have a Christmas. As a matter of fact, yes, I filled out the paperwork. And I got a call from the First Baptist Church in Wilmington last week asking me what I needed for Christmas. And I didn't know what to say. I said, well, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'll take whatever you got to offer. A year ago I'd have said, "Thank you, but I'm fine." He said, "We will set up a charge account for you at Lowe's or we will send you some money as a contribution to help you and your family out for Christmas." And I said, "Well, whatever you decide will be greatly appreciated." And not only me, but there's various families throughout this community that is being adopted by a church.

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I don't know if the Methodists and Presbyterians are doing it. But I do know that the Baptists are doing it. I was instrumental in working with the Lutheran church in Jacksonsville. They run us down. We didn't run them down. They run us down. We want to help. Tell me what you need. Have your people fill out these papers. Get them back to us. Give us time to review them. We want to help. So, you know, it's come from one end of the state to the other end of the state, from outside North Carolina. People really want to help. And it didn't dawn on me that this group came down here from Burlington to help me out. I was so emotional I couldn't even talk. I said, "Why do you do this?" And he said, "You know, I've been doing it more than you have—more than you have received me." And I didn't understand that for a while. But I think I do now. I do.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

I tried to thank one of our firemen that came down from Raleigh, the Durham Highway Department. And that was the first week they were down here because they took a week, each fire department, sent their trucks and firemen down here. And I made an effort to speak to this one guy that seemed to be like [unclear] and I'd seen him at the distribution centers a few times. And I tried to tell him how much we did appreciate what he was doing. He said, "Don't even mention it." Like I had offended him almost. I said, "But we do." He said, "Don't mention. You've done more for me than I have you." I said, "Well how in the world did that happen?" He says, "Your community has shown me a spirit I have never seen before anywhere I've lived." He says, "I can ride down the road and people say, 'Hey'." He said, "You don't wave at people where I came from." He said, "I can't believe that people will speak to you and show the love that has shined through the

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community for one another and for us." That was shocking. So I'm glad the spirit of that nature went forth. But he stunned me when he said, "Uh-huh. Don't thank me." I thought, "Oh what have I said?"

WAYNE ENGLISH:

[unclear] most people are good in this community. And I think the outsiders have recognized that.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Well when you've got four or five generations that have grown up together, you take up for one another. We've got bad eggs all around. But you'd like to change some of their ways—.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

We're close enough that we can recognize your faults better than we can recognize our own. We talk about each other. We try to get right in the middle of everybody's business when things are going good. But when there's a crisis, we're together. Somebody dies, we've got a telephone network system here like you've never seen before that [unclear] . I don't care who you are. If you die you can eat. You know, you don't have to worry about it because the ladies in this community are taking food. One end of the road will take it this week—today and tomorrow, another end of the road will take it. If it's three days or four days, no matter. They're there. We have an organization called Pink Supper House up here founded back in the forties. Just a bunch of ladies in the community through the church—through three churches, it was at one time—that have God knows how many kids have they put through a form of education. How many orphanages have they provided food for? How many scholarships? How many churches? It's never ending since back in the forties.

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The fire department: the fire department needs a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars. Hey, the ladies will give it to you. And they always have. In Duplin County we've got the only River Landing that there is in this county. No, the second one—the Ruritan Club, which is a civic organization here in the community, just decided we needed to do something. That's how the fire department got started. Our church burned in 1967 and we decided we needed a fire department. And you start from scratch. We were one of the first rural fire departments outside of a city limit that there was in this county, here in this community. We just recently built a landing and a park down on the river that the Ruritans were responsible for. And got politically inclined to get the state to support us a hundred—about a hundred and ten or fifteen thousand dollars. A nice place. So, yeah, there's blood and guts and hard work in this community. But we talk about you when things are running pretty good. We'll get in your business in a minute. But that's—.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

That's family. We're just like a big family.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

We're a cult. [Laughter]

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But we all believe in the Lord.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. I think for the most part we're God fearing. We have Baptists out here. We have Methodists out here. We have Presbyterians. We've got some Catholics in the community. But, you know, that don't matter. Some of us are more religalistic than others, some of us are more charismatic than others.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

When you're down we're there.

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Yeah. So in a sense the flood, I think, has drawn people closer together than they've ever been before. I won't be as quick to judge as I have before. I've had to say, "Hey, you've got to let things like that pass."

EUNICE ENGLISH:

This one woman told me in Wallace one day, she said, "The Lord had a whole lot of ways because he gave everybody a different one." She said, " "I used to think my way was the only way. But I found out the Lord had a lot of them to give them all."

CHARLES RUSSELL ENGLISH:

Well, you know, there's been people to help me that probably were atheistic, I don't know. So you got to look at it from the human side as well as the spiritual side. When you're in need, hey, I'm not going to say, "Hey, what denomination are you?" Are you God fearing or whether you don't, I say, "My door's open, man, I need help."

EUNICE ENGLISH:

You said you from where?

CHARLES THOMPSON:

Chapel Hill.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Chapel Hill. And you were from where, the mountains?

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

The mountains, um-hmm.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

But where.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Madison County up northwest of Asheville. My county borders on Tennessee on the west and the north side.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

We used to go up that way quite a bit but—.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

Where did you go?

EUNICE ENGLISH:

Just on over, just riding.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

I like Tennessee up that way.

EUNICE ENGLISH:

It's beautiful.

RAYMOND ENGLISH:

My county seat is Marshall and Mars Hill is up—.