Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church gave out three humanitarian awards, six scholarships and other awards during its King Birthday Celebration and Humanitarian Awards Day Sunday.
Lorenzo and Jill DeBose presented humanitarian awards to:
– Abundant Living Adult Day Services, an agency that moved in 2007 to new facilities and can now serve twice as many families as before.
Barbara Garwood, executive director, picked up the award and thanks the Mt. Zion congregation for supporting the agency.
Shortly after Abundant Living moved into the new building and got its Boundary Street address, the city renamed the street to Martin Luther King Avenue. “And we couldn’t be happier.”
– Fred and Raemi Evans. Raemi Evans formerly taught at Salisbury High School, where she was named teacher of the year five times. A member of Soldiers Memorial AME Zion Church, she also is involved in historic preservation, Rowan Helping Ministries and the Rowan Museum.
She said she and her husband have been blessed, and borrowed a passage from the 100th Psalm: “Serve with gladness ó that’s what we do.
Fred Evans was a coach, teacher and vice principal at J.C. Price High School and went on to become a vice principal at Salisbury High and later an administrator with the Salisbury City Schools. He is active at Soldier’s Memorial, the Red Cross, the YMCA and the Salisbury Symphony.
– Lorene Coates, now serving her fifth term representing Rowan County in the N.C. House of Representatives. Coates said she felt very undeserving and had always believed in giving back. “To whom much is given, much is required,” she said.
Mt. Zion also recognizes winners of its annual essay contest. Recipients of the Rev. Dr. S.R. Johnson Jr. Memorial Scholarships were:
– Robert Barton, North Rowan High School.
– Franklin Caldwell II, a South Rowan graduate now attending the University of Southern California.
– Brittany Hampton, a West Rowan graduate attending Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.
– Lisa Ann Hill, an East Rowan graduate now at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
– Christopher Martin, a West Rowan graduate attending N.C. A&T University.
– Christen Turner, a Salisbury High graduate now attending Winston-Salem State University.
Winners of the church’s essay contest were:
– Jaylen Brown, a fifth-grader at Hanford-Dole Elementary School, who talked about respect, honesty and self-control. If people don’t exercise self-control, he said, you lose chances that are not likely to be given to you again.
– Jarvis Miller, a Salisbury Academy sixth-grader who could not attend because he is recovering from surgery. His mother read his essay about courage. Born with cerebral palsy, Jarvis said he had never let that define him. His essay said he hoped that, when people thought of him, “a courageous child of God is the character that comes to mind.”
– Kaylee Frizzell, an East Rowan High ninth-grader, who talked about respect.
– Daija Thompson, a North Rowan 11th-grader, who talked about exercising patience, “from putting up with my sister to doing school work.”