New Currituck center's auditorium to bear name of 'Extension icon' Sanderlin
Elizabeth P. Sanderlin (center, above, and pictured during her career as an Extension agent, below) was an active participant at the new center's August groundbreaking. She died Dec. 20 at the age of 102.
Photo courtesy Rodney Sawyer
The auditorium of North Carolina Cooperative Extension's new $6.6 million Currituck center will be named to honor Elizabeth P. Sanderlin, who died in December. A few months earlier, Sanderlin participated in the center's groundbreaking.
The 500-seat Elizabeth P. Sanderlin Auditorium and the new center will be available to the public when they open in late 2007.
The retired Extension agent for whom the auditorium will be named, Elizabeth Poyner Sanderlin, 102 - "Miss Liz" to her many friends - spent much of her working life helping her community grow from a rural, swamp-dotted backwater to a major agriculture- and tourism-supported county.
Cooperative Extension employees and residents in August joined Sanderlin and county officials at the 28,262-square-foot education and outreach center's groundbreaking.
Sanderlin smiled throughout the groundbreaking ceremony and stepped up to a shovel to have her photo taken with county commissioners and others.
The new building, on U.S. 158 at Barco, will include four classrooms, two conference rooms, a demonstration kitchen, an Extension library and offices, which will allow Extension to concentrate many services and programs currently offered by 14 full-time staffers from the county courthouse.
Landscaping will include water-quality best-management-practice demonstration ponds and botanical gardens.
At the groundbreaking, Rodney Sawyer, Currituck Cooperative Extension director, noted that Extension's Currituck operations began in the 1920s. He also recounted events in the life of Sanderlin, Currituck's home demonstration agent from 1951 to 1969.
"Miss Liz is an 'Extension icon," he said that day. "Her contributions to the citizens of Currituck County and North Carolina exemplify the Extension philosophy of helping people put knowledge to work to improve the quality of life.
During my career, her words of encouragement and support for our current efforts have fueled a desire to live up to her accomplishments," Sawyer said. "She is like a guardian angel who looks over our programs and staff to herald the efforts and sing our praises. Miss Liz has inspired me to greater heights and gives credence to continuing the cause. She truly is a beloved citizen of Currituck."
When Currituck County commissioners in 2004 declared Sept. 27 "Elizabeth Poyner Sanderlin Day," speakers noted her longtime efforts to help rural women. One commissioner said he learned from her about 4-H, Extension's youth development program.
Sanderlin was born in Moyock, a village along the as-yet-unnamed Intracoastal Waterway, then edged by marsh-laced fields and woods. A 1926 Louisburg College graduate, she returned to Currituck, where she taught home economics, then worked for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration and later, the Farmers Home Administration.
She joined the then-North Carolina State College's Agricultural Extension Service (now Cooperative Extension at N.C. State University) as a home extension agent in the 1950s.
When David Cecelski profiled Miss Liz for the Raleigh News and Observer in December 2002, she recalled things like her childhood one-room schoolhouse, socializing with friends at the railway station at Moyock when trains came in, roads so horrible that people "stayed stuck," closing the gate against free-ranging cattle between Moyock and Snowden, and families raising what they ate (although her father owned a grocery store).
Her sociability served her well in her years of Extension and other public-spirited work in the county. Sanderlin, with other county ag extension agents and the Works Progress Administration, developed the idea of farmer-supplied and operated roadside stands on U.S. 158/N.C. 168, Currituck County's linear main thoroughfare, to snare the ever-increasing Outer Banks-bound tourist trade. For most of Miss Liz's career, that (now) five-lane asphalt highway was at best a narrow, yet critically important concrete strip. But as the county grew, so did its Extension programs, and Sanderlin remained a critical component of that growth.
- Art Latham
The 500-seat Elizabeth P. Sanderlin Auditorium and the new center will be available to the public when they open in late 2007.
The retired Extension agent for whom the auditorium will be named, Elizabeth Poyner Sanderlin, 102 - "Miss Liz" to her many friends - spent much of her working life helping her community grow from a rural, swamp-dotted backwater to a major agriculture- and tourism-supported county.
Cooperative Extension employees and residents in August joined Sanderlin and county officials at the 28,262-square-foot education and outreach center's groundbreaking.
Sanderlin smiled throughout the groundbreaking ceremony and stepped up to a shovel to have her photo taken with county commissioners and others.
The new building, on U.S. 158 at Barco, will include four classrooms, two conference rooms, a demonstration kitchen, an Extension library and offices, which will allow Extension to concentrate many services and programs currently offered by 14 full-time staffers from the county courthouse.
Landscaping will include water-quality best-management-practice demonstration ponds and botanical gardens.
At the groundbreaking, Rodney Sawyer, Currituck Cooperative Extension director, noted that Extension's Currituck operations began in the 1920s. He also recounted events in the life of Sanderlin, Currituck's home demonstration agent from 1951 to 1969.
Elizabeth P. Sanderlin
During my career, her words of encouragement and support for our current efforts have fueled a desire to live up to her accomplishments," Sawyer said. "She is like a guardian angel who looks over our programs and staff to herald the efforts and sing our praises. Miss Liz has inspired me to greater heights and gives credence to continuing the cause. She truly is a beloved citizen of Currituck."
When Currituck County commissioners in 2004 declared Sept. 27 "Elizabeth Poyner Sanderlin Day," speakers noted her longtime efforts to help rural women. One commissioner said he learned from her about 4-H, Extension's youth development program.
Sanderlin was born in Moyock, a village along the as-yet-unnamed Intracoastal Waterway, then edged by marsh-laced fields and woods. A 1926 Louisburg College graduate, she returned to Currituck, where she taught home economics, then worked for the Depression-era Works Progress Administration and later, the Farmers Home Administration.
She joined the then-North Carolina State College's Agricultural Extension Service (now Cooperative Extension at N.C. State University) as a home extension agent in the 1950s.
When David Cecelski profiled Miss Liz for the Raleigh News and Observer in December 2002, she recalled things like her childhood one-room schoolhouse, socializing with friends at the railway station at Moyock when trains came in, roads so horrible that people "stayed stuck," closing the gate against free-ranging cattle between Moyock and Snowden, and families raising what they ate (although her father owned a grocery store).
Her sociability served her well in her years of Extension and other public-spirited work in the county. Sanderlin, with other county ag extension agents and the Works Progress Administration, developed the idea of farmer-supplied and operated roadside stands on U.S. 158/N.C. 168, Currituck County's linear main thoroughfare, to snare the ever-increasing Outer Banks-bound tourist trade. For most of Miss Liz's career, that (now) five-lane asphalt highway was at best a narrow, yet critically important concrete strip. But as the county grew, so did its Extension programs, and Sanderlin remained a critical component of that growth.
- Art Latham