THAN TWO DECADES OF PUBLISHING EXCELLENCE. BY PAT BRADFORD
savor — guide to food & dining on the azalea coast
When it comes to honey, that sweet golden elixir in the bear-shaped squeeze bottle on the supermarket shelf is just the
beginning.
Honey comes in different varietals, ranging in hue from almost colorless to as dark as maple syrup. It can taste floral, grassy
or spicy and can take on the scent of certain flowers, such as orange blossoms. It all depends on the bees’ source of nectar.
Strength & Perseverance
ffaammiillyy ttiieess
By Lindsay Kastner PhotograPhy By aLLison Potter
parents provide room in their homes and their hearts
fostering
&adoption
Millie holloman says she immediately fell in love with
Vera Wren while offering respite foster care. Three years
later, holloman adopted the little girl.
PhOTO BY MiLLiE hOLLOMaN PhOTOGRaPhY
HONORING OUR FATHERS
a
DECEMBER 2021 • VOL. 22 • ISSUE 12 WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH MAGAZINE
REFLECTIONS ON THE WATER
LET HEAVEN AND NATURE SING
2022
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2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
A Look Back
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ThE SIgn REAd, “Vera Wren
holloman. In foster care 1,070 days.
today I was adopted.” the face of the
small ecstatic child holding the sign
was so precious, tears flowed.
Wilmington photographer and new
mom Millie holloman was looking
for a way to say thank you, to show her appreciation to all
the people involved in the process of adopting her foster
daughter in March. Every person that day — the judge,
caseworker, aunt and uncles, grandparents — held up their
own signs for the camera, the delight on each face obvious.
holloman’s sign read, “today I became a Mom.” Vera
Wren’s foster brother’s sign (his full face not showing) read,
“I’m next.”
“It’s more than me and her,” holloman said at the time.
“there were so many other people involved.”
She posted a video montage online, and became an
Internet sensation when the story went viral. She garnered
national publicity. the huffington Post called first. then
Abc news picked up her story, and she and Vera Wren
appeared on the network’s “good Morning America.”
What began as something personal, something holloman
says she did for her daughter, became a feel-good story for
the nation. And, holloman hopes, something much more.
“there’s a reason this happened,” she says. “If our story
and all of this can bring a light to foster care and help other
kids find amazing homes, then it’s worth it.”
there are many kids who need foster families. Alice Moore
of new hanover county’s department of Social Services says
the county has taken 450 children into care.
By Car o le Wi rszyla
august 2017 44
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children are taken into care for different reasons
including chronic neglect, family financial hardship, or
parental substance abuse. Some parents cannot provide
a safe, stable environment for their children. Some relin-quish
their rights at birth and offer the newborn up for
adoption.
there are around 120 families licensed to foster
through social services. Another 90 licensed families are
listed with private organizations.
“you have to decide if fostering is the right choice for
your family,” Moore says.
holloman embarked on her journey three years ago.
She chose Wilmington’s bair foundation child and
family Ministries, a private christian nonprofit foster
agency, and completed the process to become a foster
parent.
foster parents can choose the level of care they want
to offer. holloman initially requested to do only respite
care, temporary care for children awaiting placement or
help for foster parents needing a break.
“I just wanted to help kids out, and love them and
help them through whatever they were dealing with,” she
says on a podcast produced by the Archibald Project,
an orphan care advocacy organization. “I wasn’t thinking
long-term. I always said, ‘If I fall in love with them and
want to adopt them, great.’ but I wasn’t ready to adopt.
I was just testing the water.”
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Soldier’S Story
NINETEEN YEARS AGO, 52-year old expert Ed living Hawfield, in a Libertyville,merger Illinois,integration
corre-spondence
was given three by his boxes mother of family as she downsized.over 20 The Field boxes Service contained Postcards letters all and
grandfather,now a man 100 he years had old,never met,written but by his was named maternal
Most of the 150 for.
or so letters were still in their original envelopes. Beginning with a few
from 1914, the remainder span the years the United States was embroiled in the First World
War and its aftermath — 1917 to 1919 — during which Edward Manning Hardin faithfully
wrote from wherever he was, back to his hometown of Wilmington.
About 30 letters are from Camp Sevier, the United States Army training camp hewn
out of the Greenville, South Carolina forest. Another 30 or so were written during train
transport to New York for troop embarkment to the European war theater by ship, followed
by the battlegrounds of France and Belgium. One or two were written from a hospital in
France. Others are from the seven months follow-ing
The Armistice waiting to return home.
While a few were typed, the letters were
mostly written in longhand using pen and ink,
sometimes pencil, on a variety of pieces of paper.
Some had identifying letterheads, like that of
Army/Navy YMCA or even the unused back of
an ice delivery form.
Through them, Edward’s family and a few
close friends shared his experiences serving his
country in World War I, from his life as a new
soldier, to the horrors of war on the grim front-line
trenches of France and Belgium, to
The Armistice and the war’s end.
Above: Edward Manning
Hardin was awarded a
Victory Medal for his
service in WWI. Right:
Hardin graduated from
the Medical College of
Virginia in 1914. Below:
A 1918 panorama of
downtown Wilmington.
The first of a two-part story of World War I as described by
Edward Manning Hardin of Wilmington in fascinating letters
written home to his family and friends.
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WBM november 2019
Edward was the oldest son of Wilmington phar-macist
John Haywood Hardin. After graduating from
Cape Fear Academy, he began his college career at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In what is
attributed to poor judgment and a college prank gone
bad, Edward and friend “Duddie” Taylor were asked to
leave school after just one year.
Duddie and Edward next attended Washington and
Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. For Edward this
lasted just one year. He found his place at the Medical
College of Virginia, where the 6-foot-1, 180-pound
young man was active in fraternity life, played football
as a tackle, and was deemed the best-looking and largest
in his graduating class.
He earned a degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and
Pharmacy in the spring of 1914. After a year working
at the college’s school of pharmacy, he returned to
Wilmington and Hardin Pharmacy, founded by his
father in 1880.
While Edward was celebrating his college graduation
and planning for the future, disastrous events occurred
in Europe. The 1914 assassination of Archduke
Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the throne of
Austria-Hungary, triggered a Great War between the Cen-tral
Powers, primarily Germany and Austria-Hungary, and
the Allied Powers, which included France, Great Britain
and Russia. The United States entered the conflict in 1917.
Edward Hardin sat for a portrait in his U.S.
Army issued trench coat and campaign hat,
most likely in early 1918.
PART I
BY PAT BRADFORD
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ART AND BBQ
Whirligigs and food in Wilson
BRUNCH IS BETTER
Merry midmorning meals
HOME IS WHERE THE HEARTH IS
Decorating the mantel
MERRY AND BRIGHT
A remodeled home
in Landfall
GOD STORIES
& The Tent
of Meeting
FESTIVE FEAST
Planning the perfect
holiday meal
Lighting the Way
to Christmas
Finding the Christmas Spirit God Stories & The Tent of Meeting Reflections on the Water A Grand Tree Brought Christmas Joy Festive Feast
The Tastes of Honey
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Much of the honey produced in the
Wilmington area is labeled as wildflower
honey, meaning the bees have access to mul-tiple
nectar sources. the flavor will vary from
one type of flowering plant to another.
local beekeepers say poplar and tupelo
trees are plentiful and well liked by bees, but
nectar from agricultural crops, neighborhood
gardens, backyard shrubs and other flowering
plants also contribute to the flavor.
“bees can travel 3-5 miles to collect nectar,”
Wilmington beekeeper Susan Warwick says.
“It’s difficult to say what they are collecting.”
Warwick, the owner of Pine grove
beeworks, keeps 13 hives on her roughly
10-acre property adjacent to hewletts creek.
She says the first honey harvest typically is
around the end of May in the coastal region,
although she harvested her first batch on May
2 this year. the peak of the season is the end
of June through mid July.
the honey she collects early in the season
is likely clover honey, because of the preva-lence
of the plant flowering in the spring. It is
typically very light yellow in color and has a
delicate flavor.
Queen bees are larger and have a more pointed
abdomen than drone (male) or worker (female)
bees. opposite: the color and flavor of honey
depends on the source of nectar.
WBM www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com
2014-2016
Potter Hiroshi Sueyoshi was always
a favorite, not in small part because
of his generosity to us. Both Allison
Potter and I were treated to turns at
his wheel. In 2015 Susan Warwick
invited me to her beehives. The day
started with me terrified of the bees
to my bare arm draped over a hive
full of buzzing bees. Corn parties are
gatherings of friends and families
that take place on the day corn is
deemed ready to pick; Bert Williams
allowed us to attend a few and we
captured amazing photos that have
always been special.
2017-2021
The fifteenth in our Let’s Talk
roundtable discussion was Unmasking
Suicide in December 2017. It is still a
good read.
In 2019 and ’20 we outdid ourselves
in a series of history stories on our great
war veterans. The Shackleford Banks
wild horse on the October 2018 cover is
an all-time favorite for the strength and
perseverance it represents in the peo-ple
of N.C., especially post Hurricane
Florence. Although, back-to-back
December covers in 2020 and 2021 are
also dear to my heart. Who doesn’t love
our state red bird?
A GREAT BODY
Over 22 years we have built a great body of work, with
substantial content that is in home library collections and
those at the state’s universities including the Duke and UNC
collections.
Publisher Pat Bradford’s look back at the features and
covers that stand out to this day. For those of you with your
own collection we’d love to hear what your favorite cover
and favorite stories are. We have so enjoyed making these
memories with you and we look forward to many more
years.
Visit www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com for archives.