Torch Awards to honor 4

Jan. 29—HENDERSON — This Saturday, Carolina United for Change is hosting its second annual Torch Awards at Southern Charms Event Center on South Garnett Street.

Just Friends, a mostly Vance County native jazz group, are slated to provide some musical accompaniment.

The awards are given out each year to those who display a longtime interest in helping others. Mayor Melissa Elliott, Jameel Williams, Brenda Gantt and Hilda Delbridge are this year's honorees.

"The Torch Awards are all about service in the community," said CUFC Founder Joseph Brodie. "Each one has contributed to service work in the community."

He gave an idea of what each honoree had done to deserve it.

Elliott, besides being Henderson's first Black mayor, also founded Gang Free Inc., a nonprofit that works with gang-involved youth and operates a food bank. They also provided masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and held a giveaway of food and childcare last February and opened a new family shelter on Pettigrew Street alongside the Chapel Hill-based nonprofit A Lotta Love a few months back.

Williams, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Vance County chapter, is being honored for his work with local youth as an employee of Vance County Schools. He has been a longtime bus driver.

Speaking of educators, former coach Delbridge will be honored for her longtime membership in the Optimist Club.

Gantt founded a corporation that assists in getting nonprofits off the ground and has helped senior citizens get to the polls.

When choosing members, the CUFC's executive board members each bring lists of names to a meeting and deliberate from there.

Last year's winners were Margaret Ellis, Kendrick Vann and Angela Thornton.

The CUFC hosts a variety of charitable events each year and has done so since its founding in 2022. Just this month, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, members collected household goods, from cleaners to canned foods, for the benefit of Vance County's homeless shelters.

In June last year, they established the $1,000 Jovan Q. Steed annual scholarship with Vance-Granville Community College. Steed, Brodie's son, was killed in an incident involving guns in Granville County around six years ago.

That tragedy and the "amount of gun violence incidents in Vance County" spurred Brodie into action. He founded CUFC in 2022. At the time, Brodie, Frances Bullock, and Angela Thornton were the only members. Rev. Brenda Peace, Wanda Moncrieff, Evelyn C. Couch, Clementine Lewis and Beatrice Walker would later join them on the steering committee.