Today's Features

The Blue Ridge Garden Club held a potting party last week. This, however, wasn’t something Sheriff Brown was worried about. It was perfectly legal.

    The club decided to celebrate its 80th anniversary with a new approach to the annual spring fundraiser. Part of this is to sell container gardens. The potting party was a gathering of club members to create these gardens. They come in various sizes, each in a ceramic container, and the club’s master gardener members helped design them. No two are alike.

Back in October, 1942, a young man from Brooklyn named Angelo Basile, received a written invitation from the U. S. Army to personally participate in World War II.

    Basile ended up in the 80th Infantry Division, nicknamed “Blue Ridge Division.” Its division patch, which Basile wore on his dress uniform, featured three bluish mountains. Today, he lives among those mountains. He and his wife, Mary, reside with their son, Philip, on the Bedford County side of Smith Mountain Lake.

For Kevin and Phyllis Dellis, last week marked a new beginning.

    In the early morning hours of this past Christmas Eve, Phyllis woke up to find flames in the home. “I didn’t smell any smoke,” she said. “It was foggy...The good Lord woke me up.”

    Two old friends have joined up to bring a new food experience to Smith Mountain Lake.

    Benjamin McGehee and Matt White, owner of Mariner’s Landing, have been friends for 30 years, ever since they played Little League baseball together. When White needed somebody to take over the food service at The Pointe at Mariner’s Landing, he thought of McGehee. McGehee started Benjamin’s Great Cows and Crabs in Forest several years ago.

    “His reputation precedes him,” White commented.