Nine-year-old MacKenzie Creasman likes mystery movies, roller skating and Hannah Montana.
Things you'd expect a typical third-grader to get excited about.
But MacKenzie got my attention because of her other interests. A student at H.H. Beam Elementary School, she recently won first place in the Gaston Together: Communities of Excellence "Proudest Kid in Gaston County" essay contest.
Gaston Together worked with Gaston County Schools in 2000 to develop the "Proudest Kid" contest and "Pride in Gaston Traveling Tour" field trip to promote and build community pride in young students. Third grade was selected because students begin their study of the community in that grade.
The things that make MacKenzie proud to live in Gaston include the legacy of her great-great-grandparents, who came from the North Carolina mountains to work in Firestone Mill; the beauty of Crowders Mountain state park; and the services the Sisters of Mercy provide to kids with disabilities at Holy Angels in Belmont.
These are Gaston subjects I never tire of looking into: the mill, the mountain and Holy Angels. When I read MacKenzie's essay, I knew she was a kid I had to meet.
She recently stopped by the office with her mom, Pam Creasman, a teacher at Evangel Day Care in Gastonia.
MacKenzie was a little shy at first. But as the interview progressed, she relaxed. She got over me sitting there taking notes. Talking about things she loved fired her imagination.
Helping people
The mill: MacKenzie sees it almost daily. Five stories of brick stacked up over in west Gastonia.Early textile workers knew it as the Loray Mill. The name had changed to the Firestone by the time MacKenzie's great-great-grandparents, Walter and Eugla Lyles, found jobs there.
MacKenzie got their story from her family. Folks like her mother and grandfather Jackie Lyles.
Like thousands of others, her great-great-grandparents left the isolation of the mountains and moved to a crowded mill neighborhood in Gastonia.
I've seen a photo of Walter and Eugla Lyles made sometime in the 1930s. He's wearing a hat and bib-overalls. She has on a cotton dress with floral patterns. They are mountain folks starting over in a Carolina mill town.
The Lyles would spend the rest of their lives in a company-owned house on West Sixth Avenue. The house still stands. When MacKenzie passes by her great-great-grandparents' home and the old Firestone plant, she feels proud of her textile roots.
From the Firestone, she can look west and see Crowders Mountain rising like a green wall.
The state park there is another reason MacKenzie is proud to live in Gaston County.
"My dad would always take me there when I was little," she wrote in the essay. "We would have a picnic and go hiking. I love to go hiking and sit on the rocks and look down. It's such a beautiful view. This has turned into a family tradition."
Views from the mountain remind her of the connection her relatives made with the land when they came down from Western North Carolina. It was a bold move to leave the old ways and start over, but MacKenzie is glad they made the decision.
Sometimes on the mountain she says, "Thank you, great-great-grandparents."
When MacKenzie is atop Crowders, looking toward Belmont, she also thinks of Holy Angels. She went there on a field trip and met some of the children. In the classrooms, she watched techniques for teaching students with special needs.
MacKenzie told me: "It made me think how these kids can do stuff like we can, but they just need help. It was a pretty cool school."
Already, she's thinking: Maybe she could become a doctor someday. "I want to help people," MacKenzie said.
Learning more
MacKenzie's contest prize was money for a trip to Raleigh, where she'll get a guided tour of the Legislative Building with state Sen. David Hoyle.
And she'll also be introduced on the floor of the N.C. Senate as the "Proudest Kid in Gaston County."
Pretty big stuff for a rising fourth-grader.
I hope MacKenzie will want to learn more about her family and community. It will enrich her as an adult, no matter where she lives.
"I'm just so thankful she's interested in all this," Pam Creasman said.
So am I.
In My Opinion Joe DePriest
