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Walk Offers More Than A Ghost Of A Chance For Fun

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By BETTY BRIGGS gabylee@tampabay.rr.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 8, 2008

PLANT CITY - Marsha Passmore, director of outreach for Hopewell Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens, invites the community to the second annual Hopewell Lantern Ghost Walk on Oct. 31. The event will begin at 6 p.m. with music at McCall Park, Collins and Drane streets downtown.

Cost is $10 for adults and $5 for children 8 to 15. Ticket price includes the walk, hot dogs, drinks, stories and more. Proceeds will go to Unity in the Community, which provides help to needy Plant City families.

For information, call (813) 737-3128.

Ceremony To Honor Fallen Soldiers

TAMPA - A remembrance ceremony honoring members of the American armed services who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past three months will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Veterans Memorial Park, 3602 U.S. 301.

The Veterans Council of Hillsborough County will be conducting Operation Field of Honor. American Legion Post 278 is hosting the ceremony. The names of those who died will be read aloud.

Girl Scouts Seek Women Nominees

The Girl Scouts of West Central Florida are asking communities in the area to nominate deserving candidates for the prestigious 2009 Women of Distinction honor.

Nominees must live within Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Marion, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Sumter counties, but they are not required to have been Girl Scouts. If you know of a woman who exemplifies extraordinary civic, professional and/or philanthropic commitment and achievement through gifts of time, talent and treasure, go to www.gswcf.org for a nomination form, or call Susan Barnes at (813) 262-1769.

Deadline is Nov. 30.

Photo Archives Officials Visit Eastman House

Gil Gott and Betty Patton, staff members of Plant City Photo Archives, recently visited the Eastman Kodak Co.'s international headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., when they attended the American Association for State and Local History annual meeting.

The conference included workshops, seminars and sessions involving speakers from across the country and focused on issues that historical associations and museums face including membership, exhibits, Web sites, community relations, digitization processes and other topics.

In addition to attending the workshops, Gott and Patton were given a private escorted tour of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, which houses more than 460,000 photos, thousands of movies and more than 1,300 cameras. Their tour guide, Peter Briggs, director of commercial development, showed them the scanning and preservation operations, the Eastman House educational outreach program and the extensive underground storage process.

Dinner To Benefit Scholarship Fund

Many Plant City High School seniors and their families will soon face the task of paying for college. Marilyn Day of the Woman's Club of Plant City encourages the community to support the club's annual spaghetti dinner, which raises money for scholarships.

A $7 donation to the Oct. 28 event will include spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, garlic bread and homemade dessert. The dinner will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in First Methodist Church of Plant City's Wesley Centre, 202 W. Reynolds St. The meals will be available for dine-in or takeout. Orders for 10 or more meals will be delivered but will not include drinks.

Last year the club delivered 609 meals and hopes to deliver 1,000 this year.

For information, call Day at (813) 659-9504.

Church Youth Help Rebuild Homes

Young people from Plant City's Hope Lutheran Church joined more than 100 youths from the Florida Georgia District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod this summer to work in Immokalee to rebuild homes in dire need of repairs.

They painted, gutted kitchens and bathrooms, did yardwork and taught vacation Bible school. The effort was coordinated by IHOPE, or Immokalee Helping Our People in Emergency. The homes were damaged in the 2004 hurricane season.

The participants shared their experiences last month with Hope's congregation.

Battle Of Bands At County Fair

DOVER - Remember garage bands? Is there one in your house? Tell the musicians about the 11th annual Teenage Battle of the Bands, hosted by the Hillsborough County Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department.

The event will be from 6 to 11 p.m. Nov. 6 and 7 at the Hillsborough County Fairgrounds, 4810 E. State Road 60, Dover.

Bands can apply now for the competition, which will provide free studio time to the top two winners. Entry fee is $50 per band, and members must be 13 to 20 years old. A maximum of eight bands will be selected to play at the county fair, scheduled for Nov. 5 through 9.

Call Joe Soletti for information at (813) 376-5778.

Art Festival Nov. 8 Benefits Bing House

Janie Wheeler Bing owned and operated a boardinghouse and restaurant for blacks during the segregation era.

It was a thriving hub of business activity. Bing has died, but she undoubtedly would be proud to know that her rooming house, on the National Register of Historic Places, will soon be a museum to highlight and preserve local black history.

The Bing House restoration was started by Jimmy Washington, her grandson, who began compiling research and materials on the house long before it was given over to the Improvement League of Plant City. Friends of the Bing House members Margaret Cyrise and Irene Farmer were key in gaining community support for the project.

The ownership was transferred to the league in an effort to restore and preserve the building as a museum. Washington will be allowed to reside in a portion of the house, which his grandmother operated for many years starting in about 1920.

The East Hillsborough Art Guild and Friends of the Bing House will host an arts festival Nov. 8 as a fundraiser for the restoration of the house, 205 S. Allen St. The festival will be on the lake at Samuel W. Cooper Park, not far from the Bing House, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Leo Watson Jr., president of the guild, welcomes artists to display and sell their works that day. There is no fee to participate. A piece of artwork from each participant is suggested for an auction.

For information, call Farmer at (813) 759-2188.

Mail items to Betty Briggs at The Tampa Tribune, 101 N. Wheeler St., Plant City FL 33563; or fax to (813) 865-4441.

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