Dec. 31, 2010

Friendship Trays Executive Director Lucy Bush Carter was among the community leaders featured in the Charlotte Observer Editorial Page's year-end Thank You feature.

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Charlotte Observer, The (NC)
2010-12-31
Section: Editorial/Opinion
Edition: 1st
Page: 14A

Thank You

Editorial Staff, Charlotte Observer

Today we send our thanks to the people on these pages, who in the past year, across a wide range of pursuits, private and public, individual and collective, have made our community and region more interesting, prosperous, livable, compassionate and optimistic than they otherwise might have been. They represent many, many others who have made comparable contributions, equally deserving of our gratitude in 2010. May their examples inspire us as we begin the New Year.

Lucy Bush Carter

If you know Friendship Trays only as a meals-on-wheels provider, you're missing some of its most important recent work. Since 1998 the nonprofit group has partnered with Community Culinary School, which teaches cooking and life skills, and whose apprentices help Friendship Trays' staff prepare 800-some meals a day. Under executive director Lucy Bush Carter - who began as a volunteer in 1985 - Friendship Trays two years ago partnered with Slow Food Charlotte to build a network of neighborhood gardens. In addition to Friendship Trays' own garden in South End (complete with worm composting), eight others now share produce with the kitchen in exchange for gardening, cooking and composting help. Today, Friendship Trays spreads more than meals made from healthful, local produce. It's helping share the friendships and life skills that often grow along with the plants, when neighbors work together with hoses and hoes.

Ophelia Garmon-Brown

Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown may be the busiest - and most giving - primary care physician in town. Her full-time job is taxing enough, but her volunteer work makes this community even better. For years, she was medical director for Presbyterian Healthcare's five urgent care centers, but three years ago she took on new responsibility as vice president for business and community partnerships for Novant Health, Presbyterian's parent company. She chairs Presbyterian's ethics committee, which often must deal with life-and-death questions of patient care. Recently, after finishing four years of religious study at Union Presbyterian Seminary, Charlotte Campus, she became leader of Presbyterian's chaplaincy department. She will be ordained early next year at Myers Park Baptist Church. For 10 years, she has made medical mission trips every summer to Kenya and Uganda. And she treats patients one day a week at Charlotte Community Health Clinic, the free clinic on Eastway Drive that she helped found and serves as medical director. This year, as president of the Mecklenburg County Medical Society, she has advocated for illegal immigrants who need medical care to be treated with dignity and respect. "I have tried to be a voice for those in our community that would not have an opportunity to be at the tables where I'm privileged to sit," she said, "and to do whatever I can to try to make life better for them."

Tom Hanchett

A quiet historian, Hanchett arrived in town in the early 1980s fresh from Cornell and spent years roaming the city, absorbing stories of its people and places. Hanchett left town, published a 1998 history of Charlotte, "Sorting Out the New South City," then returned in 1999 as historian for the Levine Museum of the New South, where he has built a series of highly regarded exhibits. Less visibly, he is an extraordinary bridge-builder, always hoping different cultures can find common ground. Pushing aside racial and ethnic barriers, he pulls people together with music, food, conversation - whatever it takes. From bluegrass and barbecue to mariachi and banh mi, Hanchett knows that where the people understand each other, a true community can grow.

Mint Museum installation crew

The Bank of America art collection got a lot of attention when the Mint Museum Uptown opened on Oct. 1. But how did all that art work get on the walls and in display cases? The Mint's installation crew spent a year putting the exhibits together. Building the display cases for "The Grainer Collection" ceramics show, alone, took more than a year. Without this unsung crew's hard work and thoughtful preparation, the city wouldn't have its glorious new art venue. From left, (front row) William Lipscomb, preparator; Kurt Warnke, head of design and installation; Elyse Frederick, graphic designer. Back row, Emily Walker, graphic design manager, and Mitch Francis, chief preparator.

Sabine Guerrier

A native Haitian who now lives in Charlotte, Sabine Guerrier has propped a piece of Haiti on her strong shoulders. A project manager for a local financial company, she is the leader of Haitian Heritage & Friends of Haiti, where she has organized almost a half-dozen trips to the northern region of Haiti since last January's earthquake. She's taken doctors, nurses, physician assistants, physical therapists, EMTs and dozens of nonmedical volunteers on her trips. She collected more than 100,000 pounds of medical and nonmedical supplies and shipped them by cargo ship. In order to keep corrupt middlemen from taking the supplies to sell for profit, Guerrier delivers the goods personally to the poor communities throughout the region.

Peter Gilchrist

In more than three decades as Mecklenburg County district attorney, Peter Gilchrist has come in for his share of criticism. The county's top prosecutor position is a lightning rod for discontent over crime rates and prosecutor decisions on plea bargains and dropped charges. Elsewhere in North Carolina, DAs in several other counties have been accused in the past decade of losing their ethical bearings: Durham's Mike Nifong was disbarred for breaking more than two dozen rules of professional conduct in the Duke lacrosse case. In 2006 a former Union County DA and a former assistant were accused of hiding a deal with a star witness in a death penalty case, although the complaint against them was dismissed over a technicality. In 2004 the N.C. Bar reprimanded two prosecutors accused of withholding evidence in a Bertie County case that sent an innocent man to death row. Prosecutors in Guilford and Randolph counties have also been disciplined. By contrast, Gilchrist is widely respected for integrity and for expecting the same integrity from his dozens of assistants. It's a sign of the regard in which he's held that in his 36 years in office, no one ever chose to run against him.

Erskine Bowles

Erskine Bowles leaves public office today with every intention of spending more time at home and less time on airplanes. But he probably won't, because public service is in his DNA. A Charlotte businessman who twice lost campaigns for the U.S. Senate, he has displayed skill as a manager, innovator and forceful leader of major government institutions. Today he winds up a successful period as president of the University of North Carolina system. But his service to state and nation is as deep as it is varied: director of the Small Business Administration, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, manager of relief efforts in disaster-torn countries, director of a landmark study of rural poverty in North Carolina, president of the 17-campus UNC system and, at President Barack Obama's direction, he recently co-chaired a brutally honest examination of what the United States must to do to come to grips with a huge federal budget deficit. Bowles has tackled the most difficult work, and in doing so brought reason - and civility - to his multiple jobs. And he has served North Carolina and the nation with honor, distinction and infinite patience.

George Michie

It's hard to know where to start about George Michie. At 82, retired after a career in community college administration, he has barely slowed. He volunteers every weekday in a fourth-grade class and three days a week in a first-grade class at Merry Oaks Elementary School. He's active in prison ministries. He plans to work with a bilingual preschool his church, Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian, is starting. This winter he rises at 4 a.m. once a week to serve breakfast to the homeless, part of Caldwell's Room in the Inn effort. And he plans to launch a campaign to convince more retired people to volunteer for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. "We participate in line dancing, ceramic pottery making, we work out at the 'Y,' we play bridge, we play golf, etc., etc. Too many of us never 'get down and dirty' by doing something for someone else," he says. What drives him? "I don't understand a lot in the Bible. I do understand the word 'homeless' and the word 'hunger' and the word 'poor.' And we are obliged to do something about it."