Aug. 12: Exciting new changes at The Herald

By Billy Liggett
Sanford Herald Editor

Exactly one year ago this week, The Herald launched its redesign — the result of months of plan­ning, a lot of tinkering with our product and a lot of research on what our readers wanted.

We’re happy to say that in the past year, our readers have been pleased with the result.

The paper is more local than before, our regular features are much easier to find and overall, it’s a much more user-friendly product.

Today, we launch what I’ll call our Redesign 2.0. I write in the headline that the changes today are “exciting,” and I’m completely aware that it’s an opinionated word. I feel that strongly, however, and all of us at The Herald hope you do to. Unlike last year’s redesign, this year’s changes are more out of necessity. Beginning today, the paper you’re hold­ing comes from a much more modern printing press — one that allows us more flexibility with color and graphics than in years past.Whereas before we were only able to position color photos and advertisements on the front and back of sections, now we’re able to place color on a majority of our pages.

The improved color capa­bilities and printing quality have meant other changes were necessary, however. For the time being, we’re reducing our Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday papers from four sections to two. This does not mean a reduction in news print or page count, though. In fact, on some days, we’ll have more pages than we used to.

For example, today’s Herald is 24 pages (a 14-page A section and a 10-page B section). Last week’s Tuesday Herald was also 24 pages (an 8-page A section, 4-page B section, 8-page C sec­tion and 4-page D section).

Wednesday and Sunday pa­pers will be three sections each. The big difference between those days and papers like today is our Carolina section — something we implemented with the redesign. The section will remain a daily feature, though on days we publish two sections, you’ll find Carolina behind news in the back of our A section.

Other changes today:
■ The paper is larger than what you’ve gotten used to in the past few months. This was also a necessary change because of the different print­ing press.
■ Our “features” and “com­ics” pages have moved behind sports in the B section. They were formerly in the Carolina section. Today, you will find them on pages 5-7B.
■ Page 2A has more infor­mation about our blogs and Web site. Our site, sanfordher­ald. com, will also be undergo­ing major changes within the coming weeks, so please stay tuned.
■ Our weather map is located on the back of the A section instead of on the back of our sports section.We felt weather was more “news” than sports, and our improved color capabilities allowed for this move.
■ Our earlier deadline means our sports stat boxes will not include some of the later games we were able to publish previously. The improvements to theWeb site means many of those late games will show up on our site instead.

As with last year’s redesign, we’re certain there will be a few glitches and bumps over the next few weeks. But once those are ironed out, we feel you’ll be getting a better product.

If you like or dislike the changes, or if you have sug­gestions to make us better — please contact me by phone at (919) 718-1226 or by e-mail at bliggett@sanfordherald.com.

Lawsuit against Jim McCormick

Download the PDF file of the lawsuit.

A civil lawsuit filed Monday by the husband of a Deep River Elementary School teacher alleges that former Lee County Schools Superintendent Jim McCormick used his posi­tion to exploit the teacher into a two-year “romantic and sexual relationship.”

The plaintiff in the suit, Sher­rill Normann Jr., seeks monetary damages from Mc Cormick for alienation of affection and crim­inal conversation due to what court documents deem a “reck­less, wanton” affair between his wife, Margaret Dossenbach Normann, a technology facilita­tor at Deep River Elementary, and the superintendent. The suit states the couple is still married.

The suit alleges that Mc Cor­mick, who is also married, knew Normann was also married, but “willfully, intentionally, wrongfully, maliciously and unjustifiably” interfered with the Normanns’ relationship.

Memorial Day: Skip Cupps

By CHELSEA KELLNER
kellner@sanfordherald.com

SANFORD — On December 7, 1941, Skip Cupps was lying on his bed in his parents’ house in Pittsburgh.
One minute he was reading a book and half-listening to the radio; the next he was running downstairs, crying and calling to his parents that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps five months later, the day he graduated from high school. By the next weekend, Cupps was on his way to Parris Island for boot camp.
He was 16 years old.
Now 84, the Sanford resident recalls how upset he was over the country’s invasion, and how determined to help ensure it never happened again.
“I didn’t look for medals, I wasn’t in it for glory,” Cupps said. “I was in it to get even for what happened to our country.”
Cupps had known he wanted to be a Marine since he was 7 years old, when he first saw a Marine honor guard wearing its dress uniforms at a family funeral. He persevered through the rigors of boot camp, staying focused.
“I had made up my mind, and they weren’t going to get a chance to send me home,” Cupps said.
He was transferred all over the country after enlisting, from posts in North Carolina to Texas to California. From there, he was put on a boat and sent to fight in the South Pacific. He was wounded in action multiple times and lost his three best friends who volunteered to man an ambulance during an air raid.
Cupps recalls little sleep and long hours. After collapsing exhausted onto his cot one night, Cupps woke up when the sun shone into his eyes through a gaping hole in the roof of his tent. Upon investigation, Cupps found a trench in the ground next to his cot, from which he dug a large piece of shrapnel. It had missed him by an inch. Cupps had slept through an air raid.
He still has the shrapnel.
“It shakes you up,” Cupps said. “You get a little bit nervous after a while.”
He was in the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, and stayed there for the next six months. He was gearing up for Japan when the war ended and was sent home in November.
The re-adjustment period was slow and difficult; he didn’t go back home right away, hitchhiking around California for a little while first. He warned his first wife never to touch him when he was sleeping; she did once, and his automatic response, conditioned from four years spent constantly on guard, was to throw her across the room.
He weighed 190 pounds when he left for the South Pacific; when he returned in 1945, he was down to 136.
“You have a lot you have to get over. You have things happen that you want to forget, that you always can’t, that will be with me for the rest of my life,” Cupps said.
Despite the hard times, Cupps re-enlisted in 1954, serving in the Marines for a total of 12 years. When his son enlisted in the Army in 1985, Cupps wasn’t happy at first — but he understood.
He’s now retired, and lives with his wife Doris in Sanford, where he settled in 1951.
He speaks to children at Greenwood Elementary School each year about his World War II memories.
They’re an edited version, however; he refuses to talk about his experiences in action.
“My niece keeps after me to write about my experiences, but I won’t write any of it down,” Cupps said. “I lived it, why should I make somebody else live it by reading about it.”

Memorial Day: Rex McLeod

By JONATHAN OWENS
owens@sanfordherald.com

SANFORD — Former Sanford Mayor Rex McLeod saw it all while fighting in the Pacific theater of World War II. Including a lot of things he’d rather forget.
But 63 years after he left Japan for the final time, the memories remain vivid in his mind.
There were good times, like the day he saw his fellow Marines raise an American flag on a volcano in Iwo Jima, an image that has since been immortalized in photographs and statues.
But the war also took two of his four brothers. Stanley McLeod died at Hickam Field when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and his brother, fighter pilot Duke McLeod, died in a crash in Virginia. His father, Neil McLeod, also died of a stroke while he was away.
He witnessed firsthand the carnage of war. And though he can’t say for sure if he ever killed anyone, there are times that still make him wonder, like the time he threw a grenade into a cave where a Japanese soldier was holed up.
“I’ve got a lot of good memories and a lot of bad ones,” he recalled Wednesday from his home on Woodland Avenue.
“That was the most traumatic part of my life. I saw things no one should ever have to see.”
He also received a Purple Heart for a back wound he suffered at Iwo Jima from a mortar blast, shrapnel from which is still lodged in his spine today.
And he had at least two other close calls with death — once a bullet severed the chin strap on his helmet and another time a fork in his chest pocket stopped what would have been a possibly fatal shot.
“It was scary,” he recalled. “You were facing death all the time. You could smell death everywhere. “
And then there was the devastation he witnessed in Nagasaki, Japan, just after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city, which effectively ended the war for good.
“It was unbelievable,” he said of the town. “You could go five miles and not see anything. But it was a necessity, because war is hell and people shouldn’t have to go through it.”
Even after his brother died at Pearl Harbor, McLeod volunteered for the Marines in 1943 on his 17th birthday, because back then, he said, young men felt it their duty to serve the country.
“It was the most patriotic time I can remember in my life. It was all about country then,” he said. “And I guess I just didn’t have a lot of good sense, either.”
And he remembered that sense of patriotism with each haunting image that came his way, because, he said, the ideals he and his fellow soldiers were fighting for were
His time in Japan shaped the rest of his life, he said. He came back to Sanford after the war and owned the local bowling alley. He also served on the Sanford City Council for 28 years and was mayor for 16 while raising a two daughters and four grandchildren, building a life out of those traumatic days in the Pacific.
Today, with those memories in hand, he enjoys going to reunions with his fellow vets and is active in the VFW post in town that bears his brother’s name. He also takes every chance he gets to speak to young people about the war, including his own grandchildren.
“It’s very important to let them know what to be proud of,” he said, “and what not to be proud of.”

Memorial Day: Jay Moore

By GORDON ANDERSON
anderson@sanfordherald.com

SANFORD — To hear Jay Moore tell it, not going to fight in World War II just wasn’t an option.
“You didn’t have much choice,” the Illinois native said from his Cotten Road home this week. “Back then, everyone was involved. If you were a draft dodger, they just painted your car yellow. Everyone was affected.”
Moore, now 86, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force — when it was still a branch of the U.S. Army — in November of 1942. He had served three years in the National Guard before that and was coming off a stint as a schoolteacher in his native Illinois when he decided to offer his services to his country.
He didn’t receive the call to join until the following January, though. His goal was to fly B-51 airplanes.
“I was going to be the hottest B-51 pilot the Air Corps had and if you didn’t believe it, all you had to do was ask me,” he said, chuckling.
It didn’t quite work that way, though: He ended up stationed in Greenville, S.C., where the only airplanes were B-25s.
“That was a surprise,” he said. But Greenville wasn’t Moore’s final destination — by the spring of 1944, he shipped out to New Guinea, a base from which he would fight the Japanese in the South Pacific for over a year with the “Air Apaches,” as his flight unit was known.
“The one place I didn’t want to go was the South Pacific, and so they sent me to the South Pacific,” he said. “I flew 40-some missions out there.”
Like many veterans, Moore didn’t talk specifics about the horrors of war, saying only that there were both good times and bad. But Moore’s service didn’t end with World War II.
In 1951, he was recalled to serve as a nuclear weapons officer in the Korean War. After that, he stayed in the service, going to Vietnam briefly — “it was damn hard work we did in Vietnam,” he said of that experience — before retiring from the Air Force in 1969.
He moved to Sanford in 1992. Moore says that Memorial Day is about more to him than firing up the grill or watching a baseball game on TV.
“It makes me think about a lot of buddies of mine. I’m about the only one left,” he said. “When you go to the services or parades, you’re honoring those buddies who didn’t make it, or even the ones who made it through but have died since then.”
Moore also noted that conditions today are different than the ones he fought under, pointing out that many people forget that the U.S. is currently at war.
“Those guys that are over in Iraq and Afghanistan — they’ve got pure Hell to deal with,” he said. “People might forget there’s a war going on, but maybe they’ll remember on Memorial Day.”

Memorial Day: John David Raines

John David Raines (far right) walks ashore with Gen. Douglas MacArthur (front center) in the Philippines in 1944.

By BILLY LIGGETT
bliggett@sanfordherald.com

MONCURE — Fifteen years ago, Larry Raines was sitting in a doctor’s office with his father, John David Raines, when he began thumbing through the magazines on the waiting room table.
Reading would help Larry get his mind off of why they were there — his father was undergoing cancer treatments — and while reading an article on WWII in Time Magazine, Larry saw a photo of Gen. Douglas MacArthur knee-deep in the ocean, walking toward the shores of the Philippines.
He showed the photo to his father, knowing he had served in the Philippines back in 1944 during the invasion against Japanese forces occupying the islands.
“Yeah, that’s me right there,” his father said matter-of-factly, pointing to the faceless figure looking left in the shot.
“How do you know?” Larry asked his father, amazed at the coincidence that just occured.
John answered by naming each man in the shot, and their ranks. He recalled seeing video of that shot as well.
He remembered his time in the Pacific well. It was there where he experienced combat, experienced getting separated from his platoon, experienced seeing his fellow soldiers die.
It was there he became a man.
Tears mixed in with smiles Friday when Larry Raines talked about his father, the man who survived a world war and a bout with cancer that spanned two decades before he collapsed in his yard after suffering a massive heart attack Monday.
John David Raines was 86.
Until Monday, he was part of a proud group of men and women who endured one of the most important eras in world history. Monday, he joined what the Dept. of Veterans Affairs estimates is the 1,000 WWII veterans who die each day. Their numbers once stood at 16 million; today, there are just over 2 million veterans left.

Life of service
John Raines had just finished the fifth grade when he realized he had to leave school to help out on his family’s 30-acre tobacco and cotton farm in Moncure. The second oldest of seven children, John lost his older brother at a young age, which put him in charge of his younger siblings.
He would remain a farmer until he turned 21. That’s when he enlisted in the Army, and eventually, he would serve overseas with Company H of the 368th infantry regiment in the Army’s 93rd Division. He joined the Army as a truck driver who also serviced and cleaned the vehicles.
He enlisted in July of 1944. Three months later, it was him walking next to one of the most famous war generals in U.S. history, Douglas MacArthur, on a beach in the Philippines.
His son Larry said it was a big deal to see his father — an African-American — walking next to the general like that.
“There weren’t a lot of blacks who served like that, alongside white soldiers,” Larry said. “But dad said the men he fought with didn’t see color. They were tight. They went through a lot together.”
During a battle in the Pacific, John and a handful of men in his platoon were separated from their squad, and their effort to get back was a hellish experience, one that Larry said his father never went into much detail about.
“The only time he would talk about the war was when we were sitting infront of the TV, and a war movie would come on,” he said. “He talked about getting frostbite during a cold stretch, about nearly starving to death until him and his friends found a farm and killed a chicken to survive. The whole experience taught him about survival. They stuck together through thick and thin, and they depended on each other. That’s what kept him alive.”
He said a lot of his father’s friends were killed in the war.
“You really don’t know what these guys went through,” Larry said. “I think if it wasn’t for those guys at that time, this world would be a much different place. That war changed this world. We don’t give those vets enough gratitude for what they did.”

A rich life
John Raines’ war experience shaped him. It gave him appreciation for life — he would return home to marry a sweet Chatham County girl, and the two would have nine children.
It gave him strength — he handled the racism he faced in the 1950s and 60s with dignity; he watched a few of his brothers die of cancer; he had his own battle with cancer for more than 20 years; he worked construction despite war injuries that never completely healed; and he raised a family that would grow to make him proud.
“He stood up for what he believed in,” his son said. “If he thought it was right, he stood up for it. I see that in my brothers. They have that quality, that deep-down strength.”
When Larry Raines found out The Herald was honoring WWII veterans, he jumped at the chance to tell his father’s story — a rich story far too long for the space available in this newspaper.
“So many people admired him,” he said. “We’ll all miss him.”

Lee County Relay For Life Events

SANFORD — Relay for Life of Lee County will begin at 6 p.m. Friday, continuing through Saturday morning, at the Lions Club Fairgrounds. For more information, visit www.events.cancer.org/rflleecountync.

The following events have been planned in conjunction with Relay for Life:

Ongoing
• The 3M Company’s Relay for Life team is raffling off a wooden clock and a wooden Dale Earnhardt Jr. children’s toilet. Tickets for the raffles cost $1 each, or purchase six for $5. All proceeds will benefit Relay for Life of Lee County. To purchase tickets, call Catherine Wood at (919) 718-0000, ext. 1126, or visit the 3M booth at Relay for Life.

Friday
• Hair Associates at 2109 Tramway Road will hold a hair-cutting event from 3 to 6 p.m. to benefit Relay for Life of Lee County. No appointment required; at least 10 local stylists are slated to work at this fundraiser, and all other local licensed cosmetologists are invited to participate as well. A minimum donation of $10 per haircut is requested. This event is being held in memory of Jamie Jernigan and in honor of Pat Sharpe and Julie Strickland.
• The event’s opening ceremonies begin at 6 p.m. The survivor’s walk starts at 7 p.m., and the luminary ceremony is slated for 9 p.m.

Saturday
• 7 a.m.—The Sanford Lions Club will offer breakfast for Relay for Life participants at the Lions Club Fairgrounds. The meal will include bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits, juice and coffee. There will be a fee, with proceeds benefiting programs supported by the Lions Club.
• 8 a.m.—A wakeup stretch will be held by Carolina Women’s Fitness.
• 9 a.m.—Turner’s Chapel Children’s Choir.
• 9:30 a.m.—Magic Man.
• 11 a.m.—Kids Lap.
• Noon—Fight Back Ceremony.

July 26
• The All-Nite Trakkers Relay for Life team will hold its fourth annual golf tournament at Sanford Golf Course. (This event was originally scheduled for April 5 but had to be rescheduled due to rain.) Entry fee is $50 per player (four players per team) for this captain’s choice-format event. Golfers will be able to purchase mulligans at a cost of $5 (limit two). Prizes will be awarded for first ($50), second ($30) and 10th ($20) places. For more information, or to register, contact Kevin Schoolcraft at schoolk78@aol.com or (919) 774-8522. All proceeds will benefit Relay for Life of Lee County.

Lee County Election Results

Results will begin appearing at approximately 9 p.m. tonight for Lee County.

LEE COUNTY
(9 of 9 precincts reporting)

‘For’ or ‘against’ a .25-cent increase in the Lee County Sales Tax
For —— 44.7% (5.728 votes)
*Against —— 55.32% (7,092 votes)

Candidates for Lee County Board of Commissioners at large nomination (vote for three):
*Jerry Lemmond —— 22.29%
*Richard Hayes —— 22.15%
*“Ed” Paschal —— 20.23%
Bob Brown —— 19.06%
Wade Childress —— 16.27%

Lee County Board of Education (vote for four):
*Lynn Smith —— 19.55%
*Shawn Williams —— 17.15%
*Cameron Sharpe —— 16.13%
*W.P. “Bill” Tatum —— 14.76% (5,715 votes)
Kimberly Lilley —— 14.42% (5,583 votes)
Mark Akinosho —— 12.06%
Write-ins —— 5.93%

CLICK HERE TO SEE RESULTS FROM OTHER COUNTIES

Editor Billy Liggett’s Election Day blog

Sanford Herald endorses .25-cent sales tax increase for Lee County

Voters who have followed the tug-of-war over the 0.25-per­cent sales tax measure appear­ing on the May 6 ballot could, if they allowed themselves, become awash in rationale, rhetoric, statistics and logic. (And, for the right-brained among them, emotion.) Or they could cut to the chase and take the only reasonable path. Either course of action, if played out fully and with proper perspective, ends with the same result: a “for” vote.

Saying “yes” to the question will raise the local sales tax on most items in Lee County (excluding most foods and prescription drugs, as well as cars) from 6.75 percent to 7 percent, the same level at which the sales tax was until changed by the state leg­islature last summer.The revenue it will generate — projected to be about $1.5 million annually — will help fund dire education-related capital needs in Lee County.

The persuasive — but ultimately superficial — arguments against the tax might tempt you to think there are alternatives, but the bottom line reads like this: the significance and immediacy of the needs we have means that the alternatives we face, if the sales tax measure fails, will ulti­mately cost us more. (The 0.25-per­cent sales tax equates to 3.5 cents in property taxes.)The sales tax, which will be paid by anyone shopping in Lee County, and not just residents, is less burdensome and more fair than a property tax hike.

For those reasons, The Herald endorses and supports a “for” vote on the question.

This issue is more complicated than either side of the argument might have you believe, but a basic element weaves its way through the complexity: renovations and repairs needed at Lee County High School and Central Carolina Community College have put the county in dire straits. Approval of the sales tax in­crease will help call the question and get the repairs done.

The key to studying the issue is perspective.Those who oppose the tax will cite the county’s high property tax rates, significantly increased spend­ing in our schools, existing “rainy day” reserves on hand and alterna­tive sources for the funds as reason to defeat the sales tax question.There is merit to those discussions, but they distract from the urgency of the ques­tion at hand. Ultimately, the circum­stances which conspired, negatively or not, to bring us to this tax question don’t change what we face in the here and now. Sometimes you must take stock of what’s in front of you and make the call. Now’s that time: the sales tax is the least painful and most equitable way to do that, and it can only be done by voting “for” it.

At the end of the day, the sales tax question reminds us of the old riddle: would you step off the wing of an airplane without a parachute for $1.5 million?

The instinctual response is “no,” but if that airplane is on the ground — and not airborne — it’s still the wrong response. Get all the facts be­fore you turn down this bet.

Bill Clinton Online Coverage today

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO OF HIS SPEECH


SANFORD — Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, stood on the back of a flatbed trailer just yards away from a hay field here Wednesday to stump for his wife, presidential candidate and former First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, who wore a blue suit and pink tie, made it to Sanford around 10:10 a.m. and left about 40 minutes later for a speech in Lillington and then Dunn. He began his day in Apex.
Clinton made references to Sanford’s pottery and the state’s beautiful spring weather, then proceeded to talk about Hillary’s campaign — focusing on the economy, gasoline prices, hybrid cars, health care and leadership of the armed forces.

The Hearld will have complete coverage of his visit in Thursday’s edition.
For more online coverage of Wednesday’s visit, check out our Herald bloggers who attended today’s event at the McSwain Center.

• Billy Liggett
• Gordon Anderson
• Bill Horner III
• Chelsea Kellner
• Jonathan Owens