Atop a hill on the western edge of downtown Waynesville, just past the invisible line where the delicious smell of down home food stops wafting from nearby Bogart’s Restaurant & Tavern, sits a picturesque century-old home. 

With a fresh cup of coffee in hand one recent sunny morning, Joe Sam Queen sat in a rocking chair on the side patio of his serene abode and reminisced about the Smoky Mountain Folk Festival. 

Tribal Council got off to an unusual start in April of last year when Councilmember Tommye Saunooke, of Painttown, asked Tribal Council to begin the meeting by voting on a proposal that was absent from the day’s 28-item agenda. 

“Mr. Chairman, at this time, I’d like to make a move that the only press allowed in our Cherokee chambers will be Cherokee press,” Saunooke said. 

The Sylva-based Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet will present a concert celebrating 25 years of music, travel and fun together on Sunday, Feb. 17, in the Community Room of the Jackson County Public Library.

It’s a sunny day at Haywood Community College, light sparkling from the campus’s landmark mill pond and shining through the leaves still clinging to the archway of willow oaks lining the school’s entrance drive. The campus lawn is covered with leaves fallen from the towering white oaks dominating it, academic buildings nestled naturally into the folds of the landscape. 

In many ways, it looks more like a park than a campus, and that’s by design — the design of Doan Ogden, that is. Ogden, a nationally known landscape architect, designed gardens and landscapes throughout Western North Carolina after moving to teach at Warren Wilson College, and the grounds of HCC are among his accomplishments.

The year was 1966; “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” was on the big screen, “Bonanza” was on the small screen, and an Irish guy from Philly had just arrived in Maggie Valley to open Joey’s Pancake House.

SEE ALSO: The Book of Joe 

America’s fascination with cowboy culture had not only elevated the Lorne Greene television show and the Clint Eastwood movie to the top of their respective charts that year, but had also elevated a western-themed amusement park called Ghost Town in the Sky more than 4,600 feet up to the top of nearby Buck Mountain three years prior.

Brenda O’Keefe has dozens, if not hundreds, of stories about the people who have passed through her life at Joey’s Pancake House since 1966.

It isn’t often students in the creative arts program and the high-tech machinery program get to collaborate on a project, but Haywood Community College’s 50th anniversary has brought them together to create one-of-a-kind commemorative pieces.

SEE ALSO:
• 50 years forward: HCC invites community to ‘Big Day’ of celebration
• HCC graduates find success
• History in the making: HCC grows to meet community needs
• HCC President Parker looks forward 50 years

What better way to celebrate 50 years of education at Haywood Community College than to invite the community for a firsthand look at what the school has to offer?

Not every success story starts with a four-year degree from an elite university, and there are many Haywood Community College graduates to prove it.

As Haywood Community College leaders look to the future, it’s import to reflect on how far the institution has come in its first 50 years.