757Teamz Top 15

#14 Norfolk Christian d. #10 Western Branch, 3-1

(21-25, 25-21, 25-19, 25-16)

CJ Coleman had 13 kills and seven digs. Landon Pruhs had 23 assists and three aces.

Non-district

Nansemond River d. Southampton, 3-0

(25-16, 25-14, 25-22)

Laila Greene had five aces and three blocks, while Michelle Parker had 10 kills.

Western Branch d. Norfolk Christian, 3-2

(16-25, 17-25, 25-20, 25-15, 15-13)

Junior Lindsay Waghalter led the Bruins’ rally by averaging eight digs per set. Senior Abbey Smith led the Bruins with an attacking percentage of .466, while sophomore Keira Wright led Western Branch with 11 kills.

Private schools

Hampton Roads Academy d. Williamsburg Christian Academy, 3-0

Non-district

Granby 1, King’s Fork 0

Kameron Creamer scored off an assist by Brianna Carasco. Goalie Renata Videki needed just two saves for a shutout.

Grassfield 3, Maury 1

G-M, Baker; Gr, McDonald 2, Smith.

Meghan McDonald had two goals and Hanna Smith one for the Grizzlies, while Kalyn Fluker had two assists.

York 1, Lakeland 0

The Falcons’ Natalie Moss scored with an assist from Chevelle Claypool.

JAMES CITY — A 30-year-old James City County man died Monday after his vehicle ran off the road near Chickahominy Haven.

Emergency crews responded to the crash on Forge Road between Diascund Road and Brickyard Road about 4:10 p.m. Despite lifesaving measures, Gordon Monroe Ivey III was declared dead at the scene, police said.

Police said the weather conditions may have caused Ivey to drive his 2005 Chevrolet Colorado off the road and into a tree.

The crash remains under investigation, police said.

Kim O’Brien Root, [email protected]

MANTEO — A trial jury and two alternates were selected from a 75-member pool of potential local jurors on Monday for the case of John “Jay” Curtis Tolson. Opening statements in the case are set for 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Tolson is charged with the second-degree murder of his former girlfriend, Amanda LeeAnn Fletcher Hartleben, who is referred to as LeeAnn Fletcher.

A 38-year-old mother of two, Fletcher was found unresponsive in her Kitty Hawk home on July 22, 2020, and died three days later. Tolson was arrested in Maine that October.

After about an hour of regular calendar cases in Dare County Superior Court, most of which were continued, Tolson was brought into the courtroom around 10:40 a.m., dressed in a suit.

The pool of jurors was called to the courtroom about 11:30 a.m. after Judge Jeff Foster of Pitt County heard motions by the defense attorneys.

Christan Routten, assistant public defender with the First Judicial District Public Defender’s Office and one of Tolson’s lawyers, requested a motion to prohibit all parties in the trial from identifying Fletcher as “the victim,” instead calling her “the decedent.” She said the use of “’victim’ implies that a crime has occurred.”

“That’s our theory, that a crime occurred, and she’s a victim in the case,” countered District 1 Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Bland, one of the prosecutors for the state.

Foster denied the motion regarding the state’s verbiage, noting that is their theory. He said he would decide later about the phrasing for jury instructions.

Routten also made a motion to exclude all the roughly 50 photographs and all physical evidence in the case.

Foster asked for the binder of photographs and said he would consider them “after hours” and then determine which are admissible and which aren’t. He said he’d rule on the physical evidence after the jury was picked.

The jury comprises seven women and five men, and the two alternates are one woman and one man. Jury members include two former math teachers, a pastor, an Uber driver, a landscaper and an oceanographer.

At least 11 jurors were called to the jury box, then excused throughout the day, and at least one juror was excused even before the jurors were admitted into the courtroom. When his name was called in the afternoon, a colleague told the judge that he’d left in the morning. After the judge suggested that deputies go locate him, it came to light that he had been excused from jury duty, and there was a collective laugh of relief in the room.

Attorneys had prepared a questionnaire that jurors filled out in the morning. The attorneys referenced those responses during their questioning.

Jurors were asked if they had heard or seen anything about the case previously; from what sources; if they had formed opinions of Tolson’s guilt or innocence; and if they had, if they could set those aside to be impartial jurors.

A Buxton resident said that one of his close friends was friends with Tolson, and that he was “struggling with the impartial part of this,” before he was excused from serving.

An East Lake resident said she grew up with LeeAnn, and she was excused.

A Wanchese man said he’d “probably not” be able to set aside the opinion he’d formed. “I know all of them up there,” he said, gesturing to Fletcher’s family members.

Attorneys representing both sides excused other jurors after consulting with either Tolson or Fletcher’s family, respectively. Without citing reasons, as is allowed, they excused several jurors including a restaurant server, a former physician’s assistant, a nurse, a retired nurse, an auto detailer and a realty company accountant.

Bland and Routten each in turn asked jurors if they understood that Tolson is presumed innocent until evidence is presented that satisfied the state’s burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

After Foster dismissed the jury at 4:25 p.m., he ruled that the physical evidence collected in July 2020 was admissible, and said he’d consider and decide later about the September evidence, collected by the State Bureau of Investigations along with Kitty Hawk police, about which he said he had “concerns.”

The evidence Kitty Hawk police collected on July 24 included a comforter, towel and pillow appearing to have blood on them, according to Bland’s statements. It also included a shirt also with the appearance of blood that a private investigator the family hired collected, then turned over to Kitty Hawk police on July 31.

Foster imposed a list of restrictions on members of the media who are covering the trial, which on Monday included reporters from three news outlets and two CBS “48 Hours” staffers.

Foster’s restrictions include mandatory seating in the bench farthest back in the courtroom and no audio recording for the duration of the proceedings. He also limited still photography and videography to the first half hour of motion hearings, and only by one designated media person for each.

He repeatedly cautioned jurors to not look at or listen to media coverage of the trial, as he said such coverage is often “inaccurate.”

Foster is the judge who denied the multi-organizational request for body camera footage being turned over news media in April 28, 2021, after sheriff’s deputies in Elizabeth City shot and killed the unarmed Black man, Andrew Brown, Jr., 42, one week prior while serving a warrant.

VIRGINIA BEACH — At the height of the summer season, 75 Virginia Beach lifeguards gather for “muster,” or roll call, before heading to their stands on the sand.

When the season wanes toward the end of August, Capt. Tom Gill expects that number to drop off as college students go back to campus. But in years past, he’s always had high school students left to fill the roster through Labor Day.

Not this year.

For the first time, Virginia Beach Public Schools started before the holiday.

“It’s always a tricky situation,” Gill said. “This has just added to the difficulties.”

Most of the city’s tourism industry leaders have vehemently opposed an early school start because small businesses need to maintain their summer workforce through the holiday weekend.

They lost the battle last year, when the city’s School Board approved an earlier start date on the 2023-24 calendar. Norfolk also started school this week, as did virtually every division on the Peninsula. The Portsmouth and Chesapeake school divisions will begin classes after Labor Day.

The lifesaving service first felt the effect about a week ago when teachers who work as lifeguard supervisors during the summer had to return to the classroom.

High school students working jobs in the service industry also bowed out earlier than usual to prepare for school. Some employees asked for reduced hours, but businesses still are short-staffed even as vacationers are coming to the beach.

“I have my hostess, busers, runners, you know, everybody is all of sudden: ‘Can I cut my schedule down’,” said B.J. Baumann, owner of Rockafeller’s Restaurant.

Matt Redford of Chesapean Outdoors has been juggling staff shortages over the last couple of weeks with many of his summer workers returning to college, followed by another batch going back to high school, including his two sons.

School administrators in support of the earlier start have said there are several benefits, including extra instructional time before students take standardized assessments and time for staff to prepare transitions between terms, The Virginian-Pilot has reported.

The division could revert back to a pre-Labor Day start next year. Interim Virginia Beach School Board Superintendent Donald Robertson said this week that a calendar committee will collect community feedback on the earlier start date when considering the start of future school years.

But the situation this month has forced some businesses to make difficult choices. Redford opted not to provide kayak and paddleboard rentals last weekend because he needed his remaining employees to run guided water tours.

“This time of year, we rely heavily on them (high school students),” Redford said. “It just makes it harder for small businesses.”

As for the service lifeguards provide, where safety is the top priority, expect less staff than usual keeping watch over the beach.

“We do have some guards left to put on stands, but it won’t be the typical presence we would maintain this week,” Gill said.

Staff writer Cait Burchett contributed to this report.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, [email protected]

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, GARY D. ROBERTSON and SARAH RANKIN (Associated Press)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — A shooter killed a faculty member in a science building at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday, police said after a lockdown paralyzed the campus community as authorities searched for a suspect.

Police arrested the suspect about an hour and a half after the initial reports of shots fired came in from Caudill Labs, officials said at a news conference. Charges were pending, and the suspect was not immediately identified.

University officials also did not immediately identify the staffer who was killed and said it was too soon to offer a possible motive.

“This loss is devastating, and the shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted in our campus community,” Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said.

Emergency sirens sounded about two minutes after a 911 caller reported gunfire at the laboratory in the heart of the flagship campus, UNC Police Chief Brian James said.

Students and faculty barricaded themselves in dorm rooms, offices and classrooms until the lockdown was lifted over three hours later.

No other injuries were reported.

Adrian Lanier, a sophomore computer science major, told The Associated Press that he and others sat against a wall in a gym, trying to stay as far away as possible from doors and windows as rumors spread.

“No one really felt safe enough to leave. I didn’t,” Lanier said.

Oliver Katz, an exchange student from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, said some students crowded into gym locker rooms to get away from windows while others crouched in corners and sat on the floor, he said.

“This never happens where I’m from,” Katz said. “It was intense. But I was a little surprised that other people weren’t panicking that much.”

Katz, who has only been on campus for two weeks, said he’s worried his home university will bring the exchange students back early. “I don’t want to leave. I like it here, and I do still feel safe.”

During the news conference, Guskiewicz apologized to students who are “feeling uncertain about your safety right now.”

James, the campus police chief, said it was unclear if the suspect knew the victim. He also said the weapon has not been found.

“We are looking for a firearm. It is too early to determine if the firearm was legally obtained,” he said.

Classes had started at the Chapel Hill campus a week ago. The university, with about 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, canceled Tuesday classes.

The nearby Chapel Hill-Carrboro City district also locked down its schools for several hours as a precaution.

During the lockdown, a student told TV station WTVD that she had barricaded her dormitory door with her furniture. Another student, speaking softly, described hiding in fear with others in a dark bathroom.

Noel T. Brewer, a professor of health behavior and a 57-year-old married father of two, told the AP by phone — as he hid with colleagues in his locked office during the lockdown — that he was once held at gunpoint in his mother’s jewelry store, but that Monday’s events were “far more stressful.”

___

Robertson reported from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Rankin reported from Richmond, Virginia. Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.

News of a $10 million plan to build a new, permanent island for the migratory seabirds whose nests now overcrowd Fort Wool is heartening evidence that, despite obstacles, we can work together to protect our environment and heritage even while dealing with today’s realities.

At casual glance, word of a new nesting site project might seem an extravagance prompted by overzealous environmentalists, or maybe a wasteful result of government ineptitude.

Wasn’t it just three years ago that we were hearing about a massive emergency effort to revamp Fort Wool and persuade a colony of 25,000 birds to move there when the expansion of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel drove them from their nesting grounds on the bridge’s manmade South Island? And wasn’t it just a couple of years ago that people were celebrating the success of that effort?

All that’s true, but building a new, larger, permanent home for the seabirds was always part of the plan. The move to Fort Wool, connected to the South Island by a rock jetty, was an emergency stopgap, a desperate gamble to try to protect one of Virginia’s most important colonies of migratory seabirds — royal terns, sandwich terns, laughing gulls, black skimmers and other birds that had been coming to the HRBT’s South Island for decades to lay their eggs and hatch their young.

If a government misstep was involved, it was a regulatory lapse that caused the state to wait almost too long to save the birds. Before the Trump administration’s changes, the state would routinely have produced a plan to minimize harm to the birds. Instead, a weakened interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act meant the disaster the bridge expansion could spell for these ecologically important birds wasn’t considered until environmentalists raised the alarm.

Ralph Northam, then governor, responded. The last-ditch emergency effort was such a success, in fact, that by the second year the colony was nesting at Fort Wool, historic preservationists were worrying about the effects of the birds’ messy lifestyle on an already dilapidated historic site that’s important in chronicling Black history. Built with the help of slaves not long after the War of 1812, Fort Wool was a refuge for escaped slaves during the Civil War.

Advocates still hope to repair Fort Wool eventually and reopen it as a historic site. Once the birds are moved to a more appropriate home, such a project would be another plus for the region and its efforts to chronicle our complex shared history.

In any event, Fort Wool isn’t suitable for the birds’ long-term nesting ground. It’s simply too small. Even with three barges providing extra space, it has only about 2.5 acres of nesting area, about a quarter of what was available on South Island. The planned new island, to be built of locally dredged material, will be about 10 times as big.

The project, led by the Army Corps of Engineers, is looking for a suitable spot within about 13 miles of Fort Wool that offers similar ample fishing and scarce predators.

The migratory birds that come here each spring to reproduce are much more than just an interesting, if noisy and smelly, spectacle. They are a crucial part of the overall, interrelated coastal environment that is so important to Hampton Roads and its economy and quality of life. As we have learned to our sorrow over the years, displacing or destroying any part of that environment upsets nature’s balance, with serious repercussions.

Giving these birds a home for years to come will be time and money well spent. If moving the birds to a better location clears the way for long overdue attention to the historical heritage of Fort Wool, that’s another plus.

Taking care of the birds when the bridge-tunnel expansion was needed wasn’t easy. Everyone involved in this heartening effort — environmentalists who raised the alarm, government officials who responded, scientists and agencies that set to work, volunteers who helped — deserves our thanks.

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM (Associated Press)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — An apparent shooting at the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus Monday led students and faculty to barricade themselves in dorm rooms, offices and classrooms for hours until the lockdown was lifted.

About three hours after warning students to seek shelter indoors and avoid windows Monday, the school posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, “All clear. All clear. Resume normal activities.”

The school didn’t say whether anyone had been shot or arrested, and it didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting further information.

Although school officials and local authorities didn’t provide details about the alleged shooting, Gov. Roy Cooper posted on X that he had spoken to the Orange County sheriff and the state’s public safety secretary and “pledged all state resources needed to capture the shooter and protect the UNC campus.”

Cooper’s office declined to provide further information, saying it didn’t want to get ahead of what local authorities were saying. School officials said as soon as they had verified information, they would share it.

The school’s first alert was sent out just after 1 p.m. At 1:50 p.m., officials posted on X that the shelter-in-place order remained in effect and that it was “an ongoing situation.” About 40 minutes later, the school added a post saying: “Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at large.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 50 police vehicles at the scene and multiple helicopters circling over the school.

One officer admonished two people who tried to exit the student center, yelling “Inside, now!” About 10 minutes later, law enforcement escorted a group of students out of one of the science buildings, with everyone walking in an orderly line with their hands up.

Shortly before 4 p.m., students and faculty started emerging from campus buildings, with the lockdown over.

The report of the shooting and subsequent lockdown paralyzed campus and parts of the surrounding town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s flagship public university. The university has approximately 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students.

During the lockdown, a student told TV station WTVD that she had barricaded her dormitory door with her furniture. Another student, speaking softly, described hiding in fear with others in a dark bathroom.

Adrian Lanier, a sophomore computer science major, told The Associated Press that he was in a campus gym when the first safety alert was issued. He said he and others sat against a wall, trying to stay as far away as possible from the doors and windows. He sheltered in place for a couple of hours as rumors spread across campus about what was happening.

“No one really felt safe enough to leave. I didn’t,” Lanier said.

Other friends of his were barricaded in classrooms or went into the basement of the building they were in, Lanier said.

Oliver Katz, an exchange student from Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, was working out at the campus gym with friends when he got the alert on his phone. Some students crowded into the locker rooms to get away from windows while others crouched in the corners and sat on the floor, he said. They stayed there for about three hours before they were evacuated by police.

“This never happens where I’m from,” Katz said, adding that before he decided to study at UNC, it crossed his mind that school shootings were much more common in the United States. “It was intense. But I was a little surprised that other people weren’t panicking that much.”

Katz, who has only been on campus for two weeks, said he’s worried his home university will bring the exchange students home early. “I don’t want to leave. I like it here, and I do still feel safe.”

Noel T. Brewer, a professor of health behavior, told the AP by phone during the lockdown that he was once held at gunpoint in his mother’s jewelry store, but that Monday’s events were “far more stressful.”

Speaking from his locked office where he hid with other colleagues, Brewer, a 57-year-old married father of two, said he was getting little information.

He also said he felt for anyone who might have been shot.

“But even in our own building, the students who are locked down and what they’re thinking about — it’s just a lot. It’s a terrible situation,” said Brewer.

UNC Medical Center was still accepting patients Monday afternoon despite being on lockdown as a precaution, but it had not received any patients from the incident on campus, according to Alan Wolf, a spokesperson for UNC Health. Outpatient clinics were closed for the day, he said.

The nearby Chapel Hill-Carrboro City school district also locked down its schools for several hours as a precaution.

___

Associated Press writers Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, Sarah Brumfield in Silver Spring, Maryland, Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Nneka M. Okona | for the Chicago Tribune

I was born in Atlanta during the evening hours on a Friday in late May. Days later, my parents brought me home, home to Stone Mountain. Since then, I’ve begrudgingly called this Atlanta suburb, born of red clay and granite, mine.

From my hometown, the 825-foot-tall quartz monadnock for which our city is named looms in the distance, visible from most anywhere. Its presence follows us as we run errands, lounge in outdoor spaces, or take out the trash in the evenings.

Others have staked their own claim on Stone Mountain. Before roads were built, Indigenous people hiked to the summit, bowing to the sunrise in the mornings and the sunsets as evening called.

This rock meant something else before the reborn Ku Klux Klan set a cross ablaze on the summit in 1915 the night of Thanksgiving, reigniting its agenda to sow seeds of violence, destruction, bigotry and discord. It became a sacred place to many Klansmen, who owned the land and as recently as 2017 petitioned to burn a cross atop the mount. When Georgia took over the park in 1958, the Klan’s ties to the rock were officially severed. But the stain of what had already been done — the degradation and unfettered hatred — was cemented.

Venture into Stone Mountain Park — the most-visited tourist site in Georgia — and you’ll get a closer glimpse of the face of the mountain, upon which Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are carved. It took 57 years and four lead sculptors to finish the project, which was fraught with disagreements and funding issues. As it is, this tribute to the Confederacy is the largest, unmovable monument of its type in the world.

And yet, families gather in front of the mountain on weekends, sprawled out on the lush Memorial Lawn with blankets and coolers, engaged in games and entertainment coupled with cognitive dissonance. The significance is loud and forever silenced.

Life in the suburbs of Atlanta crawls. Leaf blowers and lawn mowers compete for attention in a cacophonous chorus early on weekend mornings and evenings as dusk settles into the skies, urging crickets to screech their allegiance to darkness. As a child, I plotted my way out of this home, promising myself that when I finally left, I would not look back. I would not return. I would not fight to be rooted where it all began.

But home always calls. Even after leaving for college and later, leaving the country for a Spanish adventure teaching English, I found my way back to Stone Mountain, looking to the land that burdened and frustrated me for a fresh start. Within the same time I was finding my new rhythm back in the South, my hometown has been finding its way, too, becoming somewhere beautiful in spite of its past.

This moment of reflection came with the approaching 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s renowned “I Have a Dream” speech, which he gave Aug. 28, 1963. On that day, as he looked down from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he saw a horde of Black people waiting for his words. They were waiting to be moved, encouraged, to feel some sort of validation that their efforts for equality were not in vain.

And as he spoke his now often-called-upon words, mesmerizing and inspiring the crowd, he invoked a bit of home for me — he called to “let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia,” forever memorializing the complexities of this city and the reputation that often precedes it.

People like me, a Black woman from Stone Mountain, don’t feel the need to reflect upon the gruesome history. But we know it intimately, without blinking and without hesitation.

And yet, there is another story we cling to: one of resilience, of rebuilding, of taking what is broken and using the shards to create something unprecedented and glorious.

This is the story I want to tell.

To get to the top of Stone Mountain, a 1-mile hike or gondola ride are your options. On a clear day, you can see the north Georgia mountains and parts of Tennessee on the ascent. As the wind blows in docile gusts, the serenity connects you to how monumental this rock’s existence is as a sacred gathering place in nature.

Travel along a walking path from Stone Mountain Park, and you’ll reach Stone Mountain Village, often touted as “downtown” by residents. Humming in the shadows of Stone Mountain Park with an unexpected vibrancy, the newly invigorated Main Street corridor is proof of what can happen when we move beyond the gruesome underbellies of history and create a pathway for all — and, specifically, Black people — to flourish.

Throughout my youth, what lined Main Street was forgettable. Stone Mountain Village was not somewhere most folk, residents or not, wanted to spend any extended amount of time. I remember a funnel cake restaurant and a pizza joint with decent slices. I always wondered what it could be if someone cared enough, and in recent years I’ve had the honor of watching that potential unfold, with Black entrepreneurs leading the way.

At 5329 Mimosa Drive, you’ll find Gilly Brew Bar. Daniel Brown opened his cafe in 2018, in the city’s oldest existing building and once-home of Stone Mountain’s first mayor. The stately white house was built by enslaved Africans around 1834, and the town’s borders were based around the mayoral residence.

When you walk inside the stuccoed building, the floorboards creak under your feet, a reminder of the stories and lives that played out over nearly 200 years. In that time, it served as a hotel, a Civil War hospital, and a restaurant. As Gilly Brew Bar, the inside cafe and outdoor verandas maintain a steady flow of people working from their laptops or meeting friends for lively conversations.

Meander five minutes north and you’ll find The Vibrary, 970 Main St., a combination wine-and-book bar helmed by owner Candace Walker. A longtime wine aficionado, she sought to create a space for fellow enthusiasts to gather, and opened the space in 2021.

“Given the area’s history and that a Black woman-owned business was not welcomed during that time, being a part of its revitalization is important to me,” she said. “I want to help others experience the same nostalgia and connection to the community that I have.”

For Black people and Black families like mine, our full, rich stories are lost in the Stone Mountain history books. The assumption is that only racism thrived here when really, we took root and built community in spite of it. And we still remain.

Better still: We thrive. We embrace a city once mired in gore and fear, and find it reaching out its arms back to us. Instead of the suburban suffocation of my childhood, I am surprised to find myself breathing deep, drawn to spending long stretches of time in a downtown where, for the first time, I truly feel at home.

Sixty years later, this is what King’s dream was about. Stone Mountain was one of the first towns where Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman laid waste on his March to the Sea, considered instrumental in bringing about the end of the Civil War. He wrangled this city and destroyed the railroad tracks as he scorched the earth in petulant rage, but it regrew into a place where Black people felt encouraged to start anew.

For places such as The Vibrary and Gilly Brew Bar to be hubs of fun, enjoyment and community is the fulfillment of more than dreams; it is our inheritance, it is the ultimate consolation, it is a certain peace.

This place is ours to call home. And always has been, even if we didn’t always realize it. As you walk through Main Street, you’ll pass the Freedom Bell at the heart of town. It commemorates King’s speech and that promise of freedom.

The legacy of Stone Mountain belongs to us, too, and we shall, forevermore, let freedom ring here, right at home.

Sweet Potato Cafe: Sweet potato-centric restaurant with soul food, salads and soups. 5377 Manor Drive, thesweetpotatocafe.net

Weeyums Philly Style: Philadelphia-style cheesesteaks and hoagies, wings and salads. 900 Main St., weeyums.com

Freedom Bell: Monument in tribute to “I Have A Dream” speech. Dedicated in 2000. 922 Main St.

Nneka M. Okona is a freelance writer.