Club leader named Ruritan of Year
President of the Southwood Ruritan Club for the past two years, Wendy Robinson has been named 2012 Ruritan of the Year by her club members. She has been instrumental in getting the club involved in a variety of community activities that have helped enhance the Southwood community.
Robinson is a member of Southwood Memorial Christian Church where she has been a Sunday school teacher, and is a deacon and chairman of the Personnel Committee. When there is work to be done for a fundraiser at the church or in the community, she is one of the first to sign up and go to work.
The daughter of Morrison and Julia Rivenbark of Kinston, she is married to Jay Robinson. They have a daughter, Brittany, who teaches and coaches at Northern Vance High School.
Zora Neale Hurston tribute Sunday at library
Friends of the Kinston-Lenoir County Public Library will be celebrating Black History Month throughout the month of February, beginning with a presentation at 3 p.m. Sunday. Beverly Fields Burnette will present “Zora Neale Hurston: Her Words, Whimsy, and Wisdom.” The event is free and open to the public.
Burnette, president of the North Carolina Association of Black Storytellers, will bring to life Hurston’s story in a one-woman show, telling the story of a small-town southern girl with a thirst for education. Hurston rose to fame as a writer and pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of the 1920s and 30s that was a precursor of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Burnette is a school social worker, poet and storyteller. Her programs and performances consist of fun, creative ways of combining cultural insights with storytelling, folktales and original/historical poetry. She enjoys teaching and telling folktales in the guise of Hurston. Burnette is published in several national poetry anthologies, has written poems for the National Public Radio/PRI program “A Season's Griot,” and has read her own work on this program.
Born in Rocky Mount, the Livingstone College alumna has written freelance for a children’s television program, edited a children’s advice column and been published in several poetry anthologies. She is a founding member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and the N.C. Association of Black Storytellers.
For more information about library events, contact 252-527-7066, ext. 120 or visit neuselibrary.org.