This and that

The other day a woman got in touch with the Gazette by email, saying she had a POW bracelet that belonged to James F. Bell, a Navy captain and pilot who spent seven and a half years in captivity in Vietnam after his plane was shot down.
The woman said she was trying to get in touch with one of his sons, Thomas Bell, who The Washington Post in 2014 said lived in Wake Forest.
The Gazette has been unable to get in touch with Thomas Bell and will be grateful to anyone who can help. The Gazette can give him the woman’s telephone number and email address so he can recover that memento of his father. To contact the Gazette, use cwpelosi@aol.com or 919-556-3409.
****
One of the interesting parts of last week’s Wake Forest Town Board’s work session concerned the tree that is the town logo. There was a suggestion that the triangle that holds the tree where Front Street turns left to become North Avenue be made into a small park.
Lisa Hayes, as the strategic performance manager, gets all the chores which do not fit anywhere else, and she undertook the job. It was more than simple.
First she had to determine who owns the triangle and the land around it. When the feds built U.S. 1 through town in 1923, they wanted to go straight down North Main Street and through the campus to South Main. The town and Wake Forest College said “NO.” After negotiations and President William Poteat deciding to build the new medical building squarely in front of North Main, the feds agreed to the current plan, which involved taking some private land on the northern corner. Hayes’s search determined the town owns the triangle and the land around it is partly in the CSX right-of-way and partly town-owned streets.
The town forester, Luke Devores, said the tree is not in good shape and it is not native to North America. A seminary professor planted it, believing it was something else. Devores recommendation was for the tree to remain with limited careful pruning, mowing of the grass in the triangle because the tree roots fill the triangle and therefore no digging or other intrusion. It is also under stress because it is surrounded by concrete.
Hayes, who also consulted with people in half the town departments, said the proposed budget will provide for improved sidewalks to the triangle and signs identifying it. In 2003, she said, someone liked the shape of the tree and it became the town logo though it has never been the town tree.
###