They Gave More Than 200 Years of Service to Their Community!

One is a photographer who spent more than a half century recording African American history in Durham, North Carolina and throughout the south. Another spent 34 years in broadcasting, including entertaining audiences as a radio announcer, with an incredible voice, and intriguing regional television audiences with a long-running public affairs program. Another served thousands of customers with a gas station and convenience store for more than 40 years. Another is the longest tenured member of the Durham City Council. Those four local living legends are men. They are joined by two women, one who served children for about 30 years, and another who published a weekly newspaper for 31 years, through some of Durham's most tumultuous times.

On a recent Saturday, scores of folks in Durham, mostly African Americans, gathered in downtown Durham to honor this initial team of local living legends. Their names won't mean much, but you will recognize their stories. First the names: Alex Rivera, Ervin L. Hester, George Bell, Jr., Howard Clement, III, Lonita Terrell Whitted and Vivian Austin Edmonds.

Their stories will stir memories of heroes in your community, many of them gone, but some still living. These legends in your local community, wherever that is, toiled quietyly, effectively and consistently through the years, making incredible impacts on people who know them. Some of these local legends own businesses. Others toil as educators. Some work in professions and others work in the trades. Whatever they do, they perform effectively and efficiently. They do all that they do without fanfare or recognition.

Now is the time to honor them.

At 94-years-old, Alex M. Rivera frequently thinks back to more than 30 years of recording the nation's history from an African American perspective. According to Valerie Whitted, the mind and creative force behind Durham's first Local Living Legends program, wrote about Rivera: "During his adult life, Rivera would go on to work as a writer and photographer for black newspapers, including the Pittsburgh Courier and Washington Tribune . . . His newspaper assignments included investigating lynchings and the trials that resulted from those investigations. Rivera also covered many of the lawsuits which ultimately led to the Brown v Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954."

Explaining the genesis of her idea, Whitted, a broadcaster, writer and entreprenuer, said: "The more I heard about these people, the more I realized how much they'd contributed to this community, mostly without fanfare, and simultaneously, I realized more and more that I had an opportunity to help the community say 'thanks' to these local living legends."

One of those legends is Whitted's mother, Lonita Terrell Whitted, who has provided outstanding care for children, ages six weeks to five years at Toddler's Academy, a business she opened in 1972. In 1989, Mrs. Whitted and her late husand, David, launched a second business, shortly after he took the IBM "golden parachute" and retired. This company--Artful Greetings--markets a comprehensive line of greeting cards that feature original artwork by African American artists across the country. Valerie is now one of the principals in the greeting cards company, and her mother still runs the daycare center.

"For me," Valerie said, "launching this living local legends project was an effort to do something good for somepeople who had done so much for the Durham community."

The 2008 local living legends are indeed community leaders.

Consider, for example, Howard Clement, III, a former executive with NC Mutual Life Insurance Company, the largest primarily African American managed insurance firm in the world, and now the longest tenured member of the Durham City Council. He was appointed to the local government body in May 1983, and first elected in 1985 to a full term on the Council. Known for his quick wit, penetrating wisdom and amazing electability over the years, Clement has defied all odds. He often takes positions, not simply contrary to the status quo, but positions that sometimes seem to purposely challenge the "powers that be." For example, back in 1971, when Durham struggled with the school integration issues, Clement, then chairman of the Durham County Democratic Party, contrary to popular opinion, recommended a Klan leader to co-chair of the discussion group charged to conduct these local discussions. That recommendation led to one of the most unlikely and long-lasting friendships between Ann Atwater, an avid African American community activist and C.P. Ellis, a former local leader of the Klu Klux Klan. Ellis ultimately quit the Klan and became an avid supporter of peaceful racial relationships. Clement now refers to that recommendation as one of his favorite.

In the same year--1971-- that Atwater and Ellis struggled to forge a lifelong friendship, Vivian Austin Edmonds changed careers. She was a high school counselor in the Orange County Schools, just a stone's throw from Durham where her father--Louis E. Austin published The Carolina Times, a venerable African American owned weekly newspaper that he bought in 1927 and operated until his death in 1971. The weekly newspaper, known by its motto--The Truth Unbridled, began growing and becoming better under Mrs. Edmond's leadership, and during the 1980s included a fulltime editor, and a staff of four. This was a marked contrast to the newspaper just a few years earlier when its offices were destroyed by fire in 1979. To her credit, despite moving into temporary quarters, and by the publisher's sheer will, the newspaper never missed an edition.

"Mrs. Edmonds was a formidable woman with a clear vision of what this newspaper stood for," said one of the people who spoke at the community celebration. "She was also one of the most courageous editors I ever worked for."

Ervin L. Hester was another courageous communicator included in this initial list of local living legends. Hester's 34 years in broadcasting included nine years at a Durham radio station, and 25 years on the news and public affairs team of one of the oldest and leading television stations in t he Research Triangle area. He developed a national reputation as a skilled interviewer and creative public affairs producer. Since retiring from broadcasting, Hester has continued his community contributors as a direct sales specialist.

This program also honored George Bell, Jr. a Durham entreprenuer, who operated a popular gas station and convenience store for more than 40 years. In fact, according to Ms. Whitted, her research and reporting of a story on Bell's retirement for a local monthly publication sparked the idea for the Local Living Legends initiative.
"The more I thought about it, the more meaningful the idea became," Whitted said. "Before I finished writing the story on Mr. Bell, I knew that I had to do something to honor these legends."

Local Living Legends live in communities across the nation. Check them out! Their stories might surprise you.