Bladenboro Historical Society gift of memories

BLADENBORO – One of the hidden gems of Bladen County is the Bladenboro Historical Society and Museum located on the outskirts of town at 818 S. Main Street.

From trophies to military memorabilia and from high school yearbooks to an agricultural museum, the BCHSAM has it all. If it was a concordance – it would surely be labeled “exhaustive.”

The organization is nonprofit whose purpose is to restore and maintain the Bladenboro Farm Life School which was built in 1917. It is now officially called the Bladenboro Historical Building. The building served as a high school for many years and then ended its school career being an elementary school until 1991 when it retired.

According to organization leaders, the building was in disrepair when the society acquired it. Through the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and thousands of renovation hours, the building has been restored at a hefty price tag.

With donations and grants, the doors have been kept open. It is the home of several museums that preserve artifacts and provide information about the memorabilia and the history of the town of Bladenboro.

It’s similar to a movie that flashes a subtitle that says, “100 years ago” and then takes you into a different realm. The building also has rented out office space including currently where Trillium is occupying, but moving soon.

When their sole business moves out, the source of income from the rent that helped keep the lights on will become a concern and the people on the board are a bit worried.

Although the banquet room is occasionally rented out for reunions, birthday parties, weddings, receptions, showers, civic group meetings and Bladenboro Benefit Community events, those are not a continual or stable form of income.

This society is governed by a board of directors and operated by volunteers with Ricky Walters serving as their current chairman.

Walters who has been in the captain’s chair for quite a while has a special place in his heart for the organization, the maintenance of the building and the history for which he was such an integral part for many years as a science teacher at Bladenboro High School.

“Thirty-two years at the high school here,” Walters said. “I actually went to school here and graduated in 1966 and then went to school at Campbell University to obtain a degree to come home and teach. I had a good offer from the principal who was my principal when I was going to school, to come back home to teach. I retired in 2002.”

Walters has given his entire life to the progress of the community and many years to the building that he now oversees as the chairman of the BCHSAM. He has invested his blood, sweat and tears not only into the educational system, but also to the many students whose lives he touched.

“My brother who taught and coached at Bladenboro told me that there was an opening here for a teacher in science and Coach (John) Fraizer wanted to start a football program in the middle school, grades 7 and 8. So I came and signed a contract in the gymnasium.”

Walters who keeps busy in retirement with yard work and a little golf dedicates many hours to keeping the lights on and the doors open at the historical society.

“Working this building and keep it going, we hope,” he said. “It’s always a challenge. At our meetings we talk about the budget and if we have money to do this and money to do that. We are always looking for new grants as well. So, there’s some goals we have to do and I rely heavily on Joyce (Walters) and call her often for help and advice. We haven’t gotten to point where we are faced with the crisis of shutting it down yet, but I don’t know what I’d do.”

Bottom line, is they want to keep the building open and in the next few weeks, we will further explore some of those precious lives that have put everything into this project so that it will be a lasting legacy to Bladenboro and the generations to come.

“We got the Golden Leaf grant to begin with,” Joyce Walters said. “It was enough to put a roof on the top. In the early years of the collections and the projects, Sam Pait was the curator, but it is not known who wrote the early grants.”

“We have been able to get some good grants through our commissioner, Charles Ray (Peterson), “Ricky Walters said.

The group is a precious small group of aging citizens who are not too proud to ask for help, and one of the biggest needs at this point would be someone experienced in grant writing. The second thing that would help out is to find a few businesses that would be looking to find good quality office space inside a living legacy.

The Bladenboro Historical Society will be holding a fundraiser which is a Boston Butt Sale on Aug. 3.

Because of the amount of information that has been gathered in this story, this is just the first part of their story. Part two will publish next week.