Around the Region

Wilmington resident Lee Brewer Garrett has been appointed to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Board of Trustees. She was misidentified in Saturday’s Morning Star.

Morning Star

Category: Local/State

Published: 06/02/2001

Page: 2B

Keywords: region briefs

CORRECTION DATE: 06/06/2001

CORRECTION: Wilmington resident Lee Brewer Garrett has been appointed to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Board of Trustees. She was misidentified in Saturday’s Morning Star.

AROUND THE REGION

Citizen group to head to Raleigh

The Cape Fear Chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy will be busing up to Raleigh Tuesday to join other state chapters for the Second Annual “CSE Day at the Capitol.”

The event will include meetings with members of the local delegation and other officials for talks about taxation and government regulation. Annexation also will be discussed.

CSE is a conservative grassroots organization that supports less government, lower taxes and a free market economy.

For more information about the trip, contact Joyce Fernando at 799-3434.

Garrett, Payne on UNCW board

Wilmington businessman Lee Brewer Garrett and former state Labor Commissioner and Wilmington-area lawmaker Harry Payne have been appointed to University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Board of Trustees.

The appointments, announced by Gov. Mike Easley this week, represent two of the four political appointee positions on the 13-member university board. The four-year terms start July 1.

Mr. Garrett and Mr. Payne replace Hannah Gage and Juanita Kreps on the university board.

Strong thunderstorms hit Piedmont

RALEIGH / The first day of hurricane season brought severe thunderstorms that caused traffic delays, power losses and small fires where lightning touched down Friday afternoon.

The North Carolina Highway Patrol says weather may have played a role in a head-on crash on U.S. 321 in Catawba County that killed four people. A car traveling south on the highway apparently went out of control and crossed the median and into the path of a tractor-trailer that was headed north. The truck crushed the car and dragged it down the highway, officials said.

In central and eastern North Carolina, tornado warnings were issued as possible funnel clouds were spotted on radar. But there were no reports of touchdowns or damage, said National Weather Service meteorologist Shaun Baines.

The strongest storms moved through Lee and eastern Chatham counties, with reports of some one-inch diameter hail in Lee.

Carolina Power & Light reported that about 2,200 customers were without electricity, mostly in western Wake County.

Lightening was blamed for several small fires in the Raleigh area. Elsewhere in Wake County, strong winds blew over trees and knock|ed siding off several apartment buildings.

Grand jury indicts bank official

GREENSBORO / A federal grand jury has indicted a former bank executive on a charge of embezzling more than $ 1.5 million from her employer.

Marshal Rice Gibson is accused of taking the money from Home Savings Bank SSB in Eden between June 1, 1991, and May 15, court records said.

FBI agents arrested Ms. Gibson at her home May 18 and charged her with one count of embezzlement from a financial institution. She had been fired a bank vice president two days earlier.

S.C. land preserved for wildlife

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. / More than 800 acres of land once set aside as a dumping ground for hurricane debris is now being preserved for wildlife.

The Nature Conservancy’s South Carolina chapter has signed a conservation easement with the Horry County Solid Waste Authority for a tract of land near the state’s Lewis Ocean Bay preserve.

The conservation easement will allow the waste authority to keep ownership of the land but the Nature Conservancy will manage the protected area.

Waste authority officials, who recently bought the 1,187-acre site, will use the remaining land to bury debris left by a major hurricane. They say it could store 7.5 million cubic yards of debris, roughly what a Category 4 hurricane would leave behind in Horry County.