1411 Asheville Hwy.vHendersonville, NC 28791
v(828) 692-0575 vFAX: (828) 696-3546 |
Member Profiles
October 2005
Baldwin is a Teller of Tales
Mart Baldwin has been a member of Opportunity House since May 2005 and has produced many fine paintings as a student in the Monday Oil & Acrylics Painting class led by Clare Clark.
He grew up in the Carolinas, graduated from Furman University, spent a year in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship, earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina, and retired as Vice-President of Shipley Company in Boston. He and his wife, Betty, now live in the Blue Ridge mountains that he writes about, as in his book Rocking Chair Tales. He is a local author and short story writer noted for his homespun humor and poignancy while capturing the spirit and wisdom of the people and settlers of this region of the country.
Opportunity House is proud to have members of Mart Baldwins creative character and experience, and thats no tall tale!
Liedl is a "Material" Guy
Gerald L. Liedl retired as professor and head of the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue University in 1999 after 40 years in higher education. He earned both his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University. His research involved applying x-ray scattering and electron microscopy to problems in materials science. He was the director and founder of both the MidWest Superconductivity Consortium (a six institution research organization) and the MidWest Analytical Team for Research Instrumentation of X-Rays (a four institution synchrotron users group). Also, he was a founding chair of the University Materials Council (organization of department chairs), faculty member of the National Technical University and a co-coordinator of the Career Resource Center for Materials Science and Engineering. He is currently one of three ditors for a forthcoming Elsevier publication, "Encyclopedia for Condensed Matter Physics."
Jerry and his wife Carol moved to Hendersonville in 1999 following Jerrys retirement. They chose the region for retirement after a 10 year search for the place that fit their requirements - four seasons but mild, good health facilities, close to an airport, and good local performing arts with a strong craft community. Carol passed away in 2003 leaving Jerry with a bunch of quilting projects to finish as well as a wide range of the needlearts projects. Jerry is active in the Hendersonville Rotary Club, Henderson Computer Society, as well as community groups in Carriage Park where he lives.
September 2005
A True "Blessing" for Opportunity House
Buck Blessing has been a member of Opportunity House since 2003 and been a member of the Board of Directors since 2004.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1938, he graduated Cum Laude from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a Bachelor of Science in History where he was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
He worked for nine years as a tool and die maker, then worked in management consulting for eight years before starting his own business in career planning consulting in 1972. He was president as this Princeton-based company, Blessing/White, Inc., grew to become the largest business of its kind with offices throughout the country. In 1989 He sold Blessing/White and took early retirement, spending his time becoming quite active in his former homeowners association in Pine Knoll Shores, NC and then in Naples, FL serving as president of those organizations for several years.
He has been married forty-five years and has three children and four grandchildren. A resident of Hendersonville for nine years, he spends his winters in Florida. Some of his many interests include maintaining an extensive flower garden, reading, current affairs and playing bridge.
Having Buck as a member makes it easy to count our blessings here at Opportunity House!
June 2005
Hobbs is "Face" Behind Mask Museum
One of Hendersonvilles best kept secrets is The Mask Museum located on Fifth Avenue West and a gem of a jewel it is. Its owner and proprietor is Ellen Hobbs, an Opportunity House member.
Moving to Hendersonville in 1946 with her husband, Homer Hobbs, she has been here ever since and is now a resident of nearly sixty years. They raised their family here and Ellen taught at Hendersonville High School for thirty years. Having a background in teaching art from Kutztown State University in Pennsylvania, she taught civics, European history and geography at HHS and thoroughly enjoyed her time there where they encouraged her to develop a curriculum and teach Art1, Art2 and Advanced Art. Some of her students have gone on to careers in various aspects of the art field since then and her art classes left her students with a well-rounded foundation in principles of art and design. One of her favorite projects with her students was to have them cast each others faces in plaster and make masks from them. She also took them on field trips to the Greenville Art Museum, the Bob Jones University Museum, and the World Fair in Knoxville. After a trip to Japan, she taught them to carve wooden masks in the Japanese manner. She retired from teaching in 1985.
When her husband passed on, she moved to Fifth Avenue West where she opened The Mask Museum to display her many collections and masks from her world travels and keeps it open to the public by appointment only for showings. In the fall of 2004, she re-married and now she and her husband, Dr. Charles DAugustine, are members at Opportunity House. She enjoys traveling to third world countries where cultures have not been totally influenced by our civilization and collects masks and textiles wherever she goes. She has visited Japan, China, Bali Indonesia, Western Europe, England, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and is a seasoned veteran world traveler.
Opportunity House could not have a better spokesman to put a good "face" for it in the community of Hendersonville than Ellen Hobbs as a member!
May 2005
Masters is Much More Than a "Plane" Member!
Gordon Masters, a native of Pennsylvania and a 1951 graduate of Bucknell University with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, actively served in the Air Force for eight years, joining in 1942. He was an instructor pilot and B-29 pilot, flying five bombing missions over Japan in World War II and three PW missions where 55-gallon drums of goodies for prisoners held in Japanese camps were lifted and dropped in very dangerous missions through the foggy Japanese mountains. He also served in the Korean Conflict and Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterwards he remained active in the Air Force Reserve for twenty years flying many different aircraft, including jet fighters, with over 5,000 hours as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Masters joined IBM and became a development engineer and project manager for IBM enroute Traffic Control program for the FAA, working with them twenty-five years before joining with Lockheed Electronics as a project manager for the Saudi Arabia Computerized Air Traffic Control System where he was stationed in Jeddah for two and a half years, traveling many times from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and throughout the Arabian Penninsula. After retiring from Lockheed, he returned to the United States in 1983 to Hilton Head and began helping his father-in-law build homes. After building four houses in Hilton Head, he moved to Seneca, SC building his last house on Lake Keowee. He became aware of Opportunity House due to his interest in bridge, eventually moving to Hendersonville to settle, and has done maintenance work for Opp House.
Members like Gordon Masters are instrumental in helping to keep Opportunity House “flying high” !
March 2005
Live from Opp House - Presenting...Ben Wright!
Ben Wright broadcasted golf and many other sports for CBS TV for 23 years. A native of England now residing in Flat Rock, NC, Wright was educated at Feldsted School, Essex, England and at London University. He graduated in English and Russian. He served as a Russian interpreter in the British Army. He became a sportswriter, then golf correspondent of the Daily Dispatch in Manchester and for the Daily Mirror in London before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1961.
Wright penned weekly columns for The Observer and Sunday Times national newspapers, contributed regularly to Time magazine and Sports Illustrated, broadcast for BBC radio and television, and ITV (the British commercial network, Channels 3 and 4). He was a founder and associate editor of Golf World (UK) and joined The Financial Times as its first ever golf correspondent in 1966, penning a weekly column until retiring in 1989.
In addition to serving as an announcer for CBS TV Sports from August 1972, Wright commentated on golf for the BBC, ITV, Australian television (ABC Channels 9 and 10), and in New Zealand. For four years (1993-1996) he hosted the world feed of the Sun City Million Dollar Challenge and broadcast the World Cup from Cape Town, South Africa in 1996.
Wright was a member of the CBS golf team that won the Emmy award in 1980-81, has been nominated for further Emmy awards on a regular basis, and was also a member of the CBS team awarded the coveted Peabody Award in 1992. He was an award winner in the MacGregor golf writing contest in 1982 and 1989.
Wright has written books on golf, cricket and soccer in Great Britain, and in 1992, published the highly acclaimed The Spirit of Golf (Longstreet Press), with illustrations by the renowned American impressionist painter, Ray Ellis, and a lengthy foreword by Herbert Warren Wind, the doyen of American golf writers.
Wright, who has attended the worlds major golf events since 1954, announced the Ryder Cup matches for the USA Network in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1995. The 1995 Masters tournament at Augusta National Golf Club was the 23rd in succession and last Wright broadcast for CBS, where, since 1994, he announced the 15th and later the 16th hole as well.
He was Editor at Large for Links magazine, formerly Southern and Western links since their launch in 1988 and is still a contributing editor with his featured column, "There I Was."
In 1994, he designed and built his first golf course in America, The Cliffs Valley Golf and Country Club in Travelers Rest, SC which opened on Oct. 2, 1995 to rave reviews. For the first four years of its inception, The BMW Pro-Am at The Cliffs - the crown jewel of the Nationwide Tour - has been headquartered at Cliffs Valley. Three of the tournaments four rounds are played there.
Wright was featured in the very successful golf film, "Tin Cup," which starred Kevin Costner, and was released worldwide in 1996. His autobiography, "Good Bounces and Bad Lies," was published by Sleeping Bear Press in August 1999 and was followed by "Speak Wright."
Since leaving CBS in Nov. 1999, Wright has been a regular contributor to CTV on major golf events - Canadian TV . He served as a writer and sole commentator on the Terry Jastrow productions of the 2002 and 2004 World Club Championships at Jeju Island, South Korea, two hour specials that aired several times in prime time on The Golf Channel. In June 2003, he anchored the prime time special for Best Western Hotels, "People Against The Pros," again on the Golf Channel, starring John Daly and Lee Trevino in Las Vegas, and again produced by Jastrow, who has produced 68 major championships in a stellar career with ABC TV.
Wright appeared on ESPN on Dec. 23, 2002 in an hour long panel discussion of the Augusta National Golf Club controversy, alongside others such as Dr. Martha Burk. He is a regular contributor to radio sports shows nationally, in syndication and locally throughout the United States.
Wright is deeply involved in working for charity. The Ben Wright International Challenge Cup netted over three and a quarter million dollars in its first eight years for Mobile Meals of Spartanburg, SC. This year, "his" tournament was again the Tuesday feature of BMW week. Wright has played every year as a celebrity in the BMW event, which itself has donated over three million dollars to local charities in the Upstate and Western North Carolina.
Wright is in constant demand as an after dinner speaker and master of ceremonies and regularly hosts chartered tour parties to British, Irish and other foreign countries.
Margaret Fraser Wright, Bens 22-year-old daughter has won seven US National Youth championships as an Arabian horse show rider. Ben and Helen Litsas, also from Flat Rock, were married on July 26, 2003.
February 2005
Cree Dawson Sees Opp House as Big Bonus to Retirement in Hendersonville
While Cree Dawson was born in the Northeast (Plainfield, New Jersey), he only lived there for a few months before moving to Atlanta and he really considers himself a southerner at heart. As the son of an Air Force Officer and Pilot, Cree grew up all over the USA, including Hawaii and then Florida where he went to Winter Park High School. Cree went on to become a "gator" at the Univ. of Florida where he received his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering in 1961.
Upon graduation, Cree got married and then he, and his wife Sandy, moved to New Jersey where he joined Bell Laboratories. While they planned to stay in the Northeast for only a few years, they soon found themselves in Holmdel, New Jersey. In the middle of horse and farm countryside, this was a great place for raising a family and they ended up being there for nearly thirty-five years. Cree and Sandy have been married for over forty years and have two grown children, Victoria and Andrew, both now living in Ft. Lauderdale.
Although their home was in New Jersey, Cree served in a wide variety of Bell Labs R&D and AT&T executive management assignments and worked in many different places. Along the way, he even found time to get his PhD in Engineering as well as an Executive MBA. Before retiring in 1997, his last assignment was in Washington, D.C. where for nearly ten years Cree was responsible for managing the design, implementation and operation of a very large communications system for the federal government.
Cree and Sandy started to come to Hendersonville in the early 1980's and knew then that Hendersonville was a small town gem and a great place for them to retire. In 1999, they moved to Hendersonville to begin a new adventure in Western North Carolina. Cree says that "living in Hendersonville has been everything we had hoped for, and indeed, activities at Opportunity House have been a big bonus." A plaque in their home sums it all up - "I was not born in North Carolina, but I got here as fast as I could!"
While an avid bridge player and golfer, Cree says he is "still learning both games after nearly fifty years of trying." Since coming to Hendersonville, Cree has also found time to be involved in the Bent Tree Homeowners Association as well as on the Board of the contract bridge league for Western North Carolina. Last year, Cree joined the Opp House Board where he headed the Buildings and Grounds Committee and served on the Finance Committee. This year, he will serve as Opp House Board Secretary as well.
Cree feels strongly that "being on the Opportunity House Board is one way to give back something to an organization that is an important part of people's lives, particularly retirees." He also believes that "the key challenge of the Board is to continue to help Opportunity House live up to its name by providing "opportunity" today and for years to come!"
As both of their children are now in Ft. Lauderdale, you may find Cree and Sandy basking in the warm Florida sunshine this winter, but their roots are now firmly in Western North Carolina and they will be back in Hendersonville before the first flowers bloom in the spring!
January 2005
Adding Points or Numbers = Harold Johnson!
Harold Johnson has served on the Board of Directors at Opportunity House since January 2001 as the Treasurer and Chairman of the Finance Committee. For the last two years, he has helped to insure that Opportunity House has operated on a sound financial basis, and been able to accumulate some funds for future capital improvements.
Harold and his wife, Lisa, moved to Flat Rock, NC in June of 1991 from Arlington Heights, IL after retiring as a Vice-President and Controller. Lisa was an Occupational Therapist and continued to practice in Western North Carolina.
Harold and Lisa have been playing duplicate bridge here at Opp House since 1991 and Harold has served as the past President of Unit 171 of the American Contract Bridge League. Together, he and Lisa deliver meals for Meals on Wheels once a week.
Currently, Harold also serves as President of the local chapter of the M. I. Hummel Club, as a member of the Finance Committee at Grace Lutheran Church where he has been the past Treasurer, and as Librarian of the Hendersonville Area Computer Club since being President of the same organization.
December 2004
Meet Some Apples of Opp House’s Eye: The Edwards’
From the Big Apple to the Apple Festival, Bob and Vivian Edwards have always been at the “core” of being involved and staying busy and it’s no different since they’ve been members here at Opportunity House. They can be seen just about everywhere from time to time, doing whatever may be needed.
Bob graduated from Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, spending 35 years in managing country clubs, hotels and owned two restaurant night clubs in New York City, “Captain Kidd’s Pub” and “Barnum’s 1890” in Greenwich Village. Vivian was born in Estonia and raised in Sweden, coming to the United States when she was 18 years old to attend Hunter’s College. They met when she was working in a doctor’s office and married a year later. “I chased him for six months and then he chased me for six months,” Vivian said.
Together they have three wonderful sons –one in California, one in Canada and one in Georgia. The Edwards’ have lived in Hendersonville six years and in West Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for twenty-three years.
When Bob retired at sixty-five, he studied stained glass in Florida and has exhibited there for four years. Living in San Miguel de Allende from 1986-1997, he had a studio called “Galaria Athena” where he displayed his stained glass works alongside the famous artist, Bustamonte.
They are avid bridge players, playing twice a week at Opp House during the summer, and Bob has taken two of the computer courses offered here. They both love arts and crafts and have volunteered during the Apple Festival, working in the kitchen and helping out as needed. With spirit like that, it’s easy to see the “appeal” of Bob and Vivian Edwards and why they’re people to get to know.
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