Surry Business

Linda Crawford has been promoted to general manager of ProHealth Fitness Center in Mount Airy.

She has been a physical education and health and wellness instructor at Gentry Middle School for 31 years.

Crawford will be responsible for marketing and advertising, program development, working with corporate clients, the afterschool and summer programs and the center’s day-to-day operations. She also will be a personal trainer for a limited number of clients.

Phil Denton, administrator for Pro Health Fitness Center and Northwest Medical Partners, told the Surry Messenger, “We chose Linda because of her knowledge of the community, her training techniques and her fitness expertise. It is definitely a good move for our business and will only strengthen the vision for both organizations.”

If your New Year’s resolutions include starting a small business, you might want to check out “Small Business 101: How to Get Started” in The New York Times. It recommends tapping the resources of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Small Business Development Center and the Library of Congress’ “Entrepreneur’s Guide to Small Business Information.”

Other sites with useful information include Work.com, which has more than 1,700 how-to segments covering a multitude of issues confronting small businesses; E-venturing run by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; and About.com’s small business and entrepreneur sites.

StartupNation offers advice through video segments augmented by written information and also provides forums and groups where entrepreneurs can share information. Bplans has more than 100 free sample business plans and offers advice and other planning tools. CCH Business Owner’s Toolkit has templates to help examine financial issues as well as other model business documents, checklists and government forms.

North Carolina’s Business ServiCenter, operated by the N.C. Department of Commerce, may help you untangle the web of state licensing requirements. Or, instead of relying on the web, you can call 1-800-228-8443 and talk directly with a Commerce Department specialist.

Also utilize the free, but invaluable resources here in Surry County. The Small Business Center at Surry Community College in Dobson provides help and advice and also sets up regular seminars where you can meet other people working on small-business startups. The Surry County Economic Development Partnership, also based in Dobson, specializes in helping companies involved in manufacturing and distribution. The local chambers of commerce (Greater Mount Airy CoC in Mount Airy and Yadkin Valley CoC in Elkin) can help you plug into the retail community. The Mount Airy city government’s web site has an excellent FAQ on municipal, county and state business licenses.

And, of course, you can write to us here at SurryBusiness.com and let us know about your new company.

Twenty-three new corporations, limited-liability partnerships and non-profit organizations in Surry County registered their enterprises with the N.C. Secretary of State’s office in December.

The corporations are:

• Carolina Steel Inc., 187 Cardinal Trail Ridge, Dobson, registered by Javier Herrera, president of Carolina Carports Inc.
• Country Bumpkins Inc., 119 Pine St., Mount Airy, registered by Angie Montgomery.
• Mount Airy Collision Center Inc., 110 Marine Lane, Mount Airy, registered by Marvin Eddie Mundy.
• Rockford Ridge Inc., 212 Rockford Ridge Trail, Dobson, registered by John S. Marshall.
• Supersports and Imports Inc., 636 N. Bridge St., Elkin, registered by Jerry R. Willard.
• Z3 Solutions Inc., 121 Ridge St., Elkin, registered by Nathaniel G. Young.

The LLCs are:

• American Gothic Worldwide, 794 Old Highway 601, Mount Airy, registered by Timothy H. Vogler.
• Beck Trucking, 870 Zephyr Road, Dobson, registered by Nicholas Wayne Beck.
• Bryant Rental Properties, 161 Woodcove Drive, Mount Airy, registered by Thomas Gray Bryant
• Carolina Expediters, 194 Ararat Longhill Road, Pilot Mountain, registered by Jason Lee Ring.
• Elkin Valley MHP LLC, Elkin/Oakland Drive LLC and Surry Equity LLC, with principle offices at 121 Crutchfield St. in Dobson, all registered by Charles Patrick Crosby Jr. (Crosby is one of the principals of The Crown Companies, a commercial real-estate developer.)
• Mooney Transport, 4167 Highway 268, Ararat, registered by Calvin C. Mooney Jr.
• Needless Necessities, 1448 Edgewood Drive, Suite 200, Mount Airy, registered by B&H Computers (Tony Hines).
• Normwiger LLC, 153 Valleydale Drive, Mount Airy, registered by William F. Norman Jr. and Richard B. Wigeri Van Edema.
• Olde Tyme Ventures, 4978 Siloam Road, Dobson, registered by William M. Mayfield.
• Royce Auto X-Change, 818 Fowler Road, Mount Airy, registered by Richard M. Boles and Jennifer Boles Bullington of Pilot Mountain.
• Select Real Estate, 1835 Westfield Road, Mount Airy, registered by Harry Peterson.
• Simcon Company, 173 Pine Creek Trail, Mount Airy, registered by Selby Jarod Simmons.
• Treble J Farm, 170 Surrey Count Drive, Dobson, registered by Jeffrey, Joel and Josh Edmonds.

The two non-profits registered in December are Surry Thunder, the youth soccer team, registered by attorney Edwin Woltz on behalf of Susan and Samuel Holder Jr. of 352 Old Highway 601, Mount Airy, and Neighbor 2 Neighbor Inc. registered by Dennis Beck at 429 E. Old Highway 52 Bypass, Pilot Mountain.

There must be something going around, and I’m not talking about colds and flu. Tourist-oriented articles about Pilot Mountain seem to be proliferating on the Web. I mentioned that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday profiled the state park and the town. Now I see that “Dew on the Kudzu,” Kinah Lindsay’s (aka “Idgie”) online magazine about Southern life, also profiled Pilot Mountain on Sunday and included a recommendation to visit Mount Airy during Mayberry Days. The article is here.

Sunday’s (Dec. 30) Atlanta Journal-Constitution features Pilot Mountain — both the mountain and the nearby town — in an article titled “N.C. retreat promises outdoor fun (and shopping, too).”

Reporter Bill Cissna writes, “In north-central North Carolina, an age-old geological protrusion and a small community that share the same name provide a nice mix of outdoor and retail attractions for an overnight getaway.”

“Pilot Mountain has been a state park for nearly 40 years, including a scenic area along the nearby Yadkin River, which was added in 1970 and is linked by a corridor of land. For the spectacular views on a clear day, take the winding road up the mountain to a site near the two peaks…. Even the most exercise-averse should find the trip rewarding.

“For the more enthusiastic outdoors traveler, the park has much more to offer,” he continues, mentioning more than a dozen trails in varying levels of difficulty and facilities for horseback riding, canoeing and fishing, primitive camping on an island in the Yadkin, rock climbing and rappelling, family camping and picnicking areas.

“But if shopping for clothes and antiques more closely fits your needs, the town of Pilot Mountain itself (population 1,300, established 1889) sits just one exit north and three miles east of the park. Unlike many small towns, Pilot Mountain has a lively, occupied downtown Main Street.”

“We’re very proud that, though they are not all retail stores, all of the storefronts along Main Street are rented and used,” Cook’e Jessup, co-owner of Mount Pilot Antiques, told Cissna, adding. “Not too many towns can say that right now.”

Cissna also interviewed and quotes Antiquity’s Kristin Rutherford, 92-year-old clothing store owner Clyde W. Fulk and Sherie Holden, owner of Pilot Mountain Peddlers, who encouraged Georgians to come for Mayfest (on Mother’s Day weekend) and the monthly cruise-ins held downtown on the first Saturday of each month, May through October.

“If a few hours away from the urban hurly-burly is appealing,” writes Cissna, “whether you spend your time outdoors or with a credit card in hand, a visit to ‘Mount Pilot’ would fill the time nicely. Given the rural, laid-back nature of the area, spending a night at one of several bed-and-breakfasts” — he specifically mentions Dr. Flippin’s Bed & Breakfast and the Pilot Knob Inn — “or taking in a nearby Yadkin Valley winery or vineyard could expand the stay, and the relaxation.”

Atlanta is about 300 miles (a 5-1/2-hour drive) from Pilot Mountain.

Carolyn Quesinberry taught schoolchildren for 27 years. Her husband, Freddie, owned a floor-covering business. They both were looking for something new. They found it in a place they’d left 20 years earlier — Mount Airy.

And thanks to the Quisinberrys, you can find the sweetest place in Surry County on Main Street across from the Downtown Cinema, just up the block from the Snappy Lunch, right next to Floyd’s Barber Shop.

The Quisinberrys own and operate Opie’s Candy Store, a popular shop where tourists and locals alike stock up on old-fashioned candies, soda pop and sweet memories of the past and for the future.

Reporter Geni Dowd profiled the couple and their business in The Surry Messenger on Dec. 19.

“When the Quesinberrys moved away from Mount Airy in 1987, the town was ‘still Mount Airy.’ When they came back in 2004,” Dowd wrote, “it had completely changed. ‘It was a tourist town and had become known for being Mayberry,’ Freddie said. ‘We wanted to have a business that would fit in with what Mount Airy had become.'”

“There wasn’t that much thought,” Carolyn told Dowd with a laugh. “When we saw the building he said, ‘What about Opie’s Candy Store?’”

“People had bets on us,” Freddie continued. “They’d say, ‘A candy store? In Mount Airy?’ They said we’d never make it. ”

Opie’s opened in March 2005. It’s still going strong, banking goodwill along with profits.

“Mount Airy is such a friendly town,” Freddie explained. “You don’t realize it if you’ve always been here. You don’t realize it until you’ve moved away. It really is Mayberry. It’s a trusting town. Everyone’s first impression is to be open and friendly with everyone they meet.”

They’ve both seen customers help pay for someone else’s order or slide a couple of bucks across the counter when a child doesn’t have quite enough cash.

“That’s just the attitude here,” Freddie said. “There’s not necessarily a lot to do here for people in their 20s, but it’s such a great place to raise a family.”

“People come here the first time to see Mayberry, but they come back three or four times because they’ve fallen in love with Mount Airy,” he told Dowd. “They want to move here when they retire. It’s like a fairy-tale town.”

Opie’s Candy Store stocks 500 types of candy plus jams, jellies, ice cream, apple butter, honey and bottled soft drinks.

Laura Marshall is the store’s manager. You sometimes find the couple’s children working in the store, too.

Opie’s Candy Store at 135 N. Main is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The store extends its hours from May through December. During the warmer months it also opens on Sunday afternoons.

Friends of the historic Reeves Theater in Elkin have started an Internet blog to promote the theater’s restoration.

The web site, ReevesTheater.blogspot.com, includes information about the 389-seat theater, which was opened in 1941, and recent articles about the restoration program.

The restoration of the Reeves Theater is an effort spearheaded by the Tri-County Citizens Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Its goals are to create a lively center for the arts serving the Yadkin Valley region and to return the Reeves to its former role as the cultural center of downtown Elkin, one of Surry County’s historic cities.

This is the second-such restoration project in Surry County. In the 1990s, the Surry Arts Council acquired and restored a similar former movie theater in Mount Airy. The Downtown Cinema on Main Street shows second-run feature films, weekly Spanish-language movies and family-friendly pictures for parents and children. It also hosts live stage performances, including concerts and weekly jam sessions, and is the home of the long-running “Merry-Go-Round,” a weekly program of live country, gospel and old-time music presented by WPAQ Radio, The Voice of the Blue Ridge.

For more information about restored movie theaters, visit CinemaTreasures.org.

Northern Hospital of Surry County in Mount Airy has acquired a state-of-the-art LightSpeed® VCT (volume computed tomography) imaging system from GE Healthcare.

The system’s high-resolution, high-speed CT angiography will help physicians gather information they need to better diagnose diseases and life­-threatening conditions including cardiovascular disease and strokes.

In a single rotation, the LightSpeed VCT creates 64 high-resolution anatomical images, each section as thin as a credit card. These images are combined to form a three-dimensional view of the patient’s anatomy.

LightSpeed can capture images of a beating heart in five heartbeats and other organs in one second and perform whole body trauma exams in 10 seconds, more than twice as fast as conventional multi-slice CT scanners anywhere in Northern Hospital’s service region. This speed is especially helpful in shortening breath holds for geriatric patients, patients who are on ventilators and pediatric patients.

Director of Imaging Services Michael Leonard said, “Volume CT is patient friendly. Fast scans can help reduce patient stress and anxiety and some volume CT procedures can be done in only one simple exam.”

“We’re breaking barriers in speed and accuracy of patient exams and are now able to offer new and enhanced diagnostic procedures thanks to our new LightSpeed VCT,” stated Don Henderson, lead CT technologist.

Cardiac and coronary artery angiography CT scans are expected to begin by the spring of 2008.

For patients with chest pains, the LightSpeed VCT can help physicians rule out (or in) three potentially fatal conditions: aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism and coronary artery disease.

In stroke cases, where treatment should begin within an hour or less to ensure the best outcome for the patient, the LightSpeed VCT permits rapid imaging of blood vessels in the brain. It also reduces the number of exams a patient may need to undergo.

The Imaging Center at Northern Hospital of Surry County is staffed by board-certified radiologists from Forsyth Radiological Associates in Winston-Salem. The staff of CT technologists is ARRT CT certified and experienced. The center has three CT scanners to serve patients 24 hours a day.

The Imaging Center performed more than 21,000 CT scan procedures in 2007, detecting all sorts of diseases and injuries in patients from Surry and surrounding counties.

Elkin High School in Surry County is among the best high schools in the nation and ranks in the top six in North Carolina, according to U.S. News & World Report and School Evaluation Services, a K-12 education and data research and analysis company.

The two companies analyzed academic and enrollment information from more than 18,000 public high schools to find the very best in the United States. The top six North Carolina high schools, all silver-award winners, are Elkin, Murphy High in Cherokee County, Salisbury High, Statesville High, A.C. Reynolds High in Asheville and Terry Sanford High in Fayetteville.

Elkin is one of the smallest school districts in the state.

Elkin Superintendent Barry Shephard told the Elkin Tribune, “(The award) not only speaks to the fact that we are strong academically,” Shephard said, “but that we graduate students and take care of our students, and it recognizes that Elkin High School is a safe place to go to school. I think it’s an honor for the high school to be given that award, and I congratulate the principal and the staff.”

Principal Mark Byrd, who also served as vice principal at Elkin for two years, said he feels the award is a testament to the effort both students and staff put into doing a good job: “I think it speaks volumes for the type of students we have and the work that the students do and the work that the staff does to help prepare the students.”

“Across the board — (in) the entire district — … nobody has been complacent,” Byrd said. “Especially the teachers. They are always looking for ways to improve the kids. And I’d have to say the improved facilities have meant a lot. I think it is awesome that a school the size of Elkin is mentioned. I just think that speaks volumes. As a parent, it would really make me feel good about the school my child was at and the education my child was getting.”

Among the six North Carolina high schools on the U.S. News & World Report’s list, Elkin had a 1.12 rating in poverty-adjusted performance, meaning its poorer students performed above the statistical average for economically deprived students in North Carolina high schools. Elkin High School rated 25.3 on the college readiness index, a measure of the degree to which students master college-level material, and only Terry Sanford High School’s students in Fayetteville scored higher.

If your New Year’s resolution is to move into a new line of work, check out the annual U.S. News & World Report on “Best Careers 2008.”

Most of professions with the best combination of opportunities and job satisfactions require at least a two-year or four-year college degree, but the list also includes four careers that don’t demand a college education — biomedical equipment technician, firefighter, hairstylist/cosmetologist, and locksmith/security system technician.

Other non-degree careers with good prospects for the future include machinists and electrician/electronics techs (above-average pay and easier on the body than many other blue-collar careers). Several Surry County companies, among them Global Tactical Vehicles, Crescent Manufacturing and AES (Allied Electronics Services), tell us they can’t find enough people to fill openings in those two careers.

Remember that Surry Community College in Dobson offers degree, diploma and certificate programs for more than 40 occupations, including cosmetology, machining technology, electricity and electronics.