THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411270049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Perry Parks
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
It's amazing what gets people mad in Elizabeth City.
Police have reported rising crime statistics, punctuated in the last month by several shootings and an armed bank robbery.
Civic groups like the River City Community Development Corp. are struggling to push grass-roots improvements through a thick pavement of apathy in troubled neighborhoods.
A Pasquotank County grant application completed this year says a third of the county's children live in poverty and a quarter of Northeastern High School students are also parents.
But what really got Mayor H. Rick Gardner's goat recently is a letter and story in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance criticizing town maitre d' Fred Fearing for displaying a gift T-shirt depicting bare-breasted women.
Most locals and thousands of boaters worldwide know about Fearing and his merry crew of welcomers, the Rose Buddies, who meet boaters at Mariners' Wharf downtown and treat them to wine and cheese.
It's a delightful service that has brought tourists and fame to Elizabeth City, and Fearing gets plenty of deserved credit locally and throughout the yachting community.
But one visitor thought Fearing's joviality went a bit too far when he showed off a shirt that said ``Fred's Rose Bunnies'' under a hand-painted cartoon of shirtless women. So he wrote a letter to the editor and shocked a community to the highest levels of officialdom.
With a few exceptions, City Council members speak in riddles or not at all when issues such as race, crime and poverty rear their heads within city walls. The best way to get a rise out of most council members is to bring up Christmas hams, an important and divisive issue that plagued the panel last budgeting season.
But let one man speak against the Rose Buddies or Fred Fearing, and ye shall hear the wrath of an outspoken council.
``The Rose Buddies have been an inspiration for the people of this city,'' Gardner huffed Monday after reading aloud a tourist's letter defending Fearing. ``I have yet to see anything in bad taste. . . . I saw the T-shirt the letter referred to. I have seen far worse things on high school students.''
Chimed in Councilman A.C. Robinson: ``Mr. Fearing and his group are to really be commended. . . . I think it's a shame for people to pick on a poor gentleman like that.''
The ``poor gentleman'' - loved by thousands and disliked apparently by one - was upset over the letter and the news story, as well. The reaction to what many could consider a justifiable criticism reveals a thinner skin than one would expect from a historic southern town and one of its foremost southern gentlemen.
Public criticism is a part of public life; it is the people's check on the powerful. Incidents like this call attention to the diversity of opinion in our vast nation, a diversity that adds spice to our breakfast discussions and editorial pages without hurting a flea.
Nevertheless, let us thank the valiant City Council for rushing to Mr. Fearing's defense in this time of crisis, this turning point in Elizabeth City history when the Rose Buddies are subject to the scorn of a single nonresident boater.
As gunshots ricochet off city homes and children's bones, as sirens of a beleaguered Police Department wail endlessly and residents of endangered neighborhoods plead with stone-faced officials, let us give thanks this weekend for a City Council that knows what's really important. by CNB