Josh Shaffer stories from Raleigh, NC

Josh Shaffer

One of the grave markers at Pet Rest Cemetery.

Shaffer: Brier Creek pet cemetery abandoned to mud and weeds

After uprooting and moving the graves of 500 animals, Pet Rest Cemetery shut down and surrendered the plots to the elements. But is a cemetery something you can close? It's not like its a laundromat.

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Archive by category ''Josh Shaffer

JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: 2-year-old taekwondo champ snaps board

Lydia Miller only recently learned to walk. But she's advancing already in the fierce world of taekwondo, breaking her first wooden board using the hammer fist technique. As far as anyone can tell, she is the youngest fighter anywhere practicing the ancient Korean art.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Blind hiker and trusty Lab cross Tar Heel state

Trevor Thomas aims to be the first blind man to hike North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Memories of Raleigh’s favorite Yankee soldier

Asa B. Forrest tended the Confederate graves at Oakwood Cemetery for four decades despite having fought for the Union
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Birthday party for Momma Judd, saint to Raleigh’s homeless

For the last 17 years, Mary Judd has shared breakfast with men and women who spent the night sleeping under tarps in the woods, huddled in the back seats of cars that don’t run or tucked in the crawlspaces under rainy overpasses.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Raleigh uproots 83-year-old widow

Nettie Grove shuffled to the door on her walker, still wearing her nightgown in the late afternoon, and invited me in. I had come to hear how Raleigh bought the house she rents on Carver Street and gave her 90 days to move. At age 83. After a stroke.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Hungry hermit gets long lockup after illegal hunt

Jeffrey Dale Suggs went to prison for 5.5 years as a habitual felon after hunting for food with a borrowed gun that turned out to be stolen.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Parrot raises a Raleigh spectacle

On spring evenings, when the air feels right, Donald Perry loads Curly the parrot into his travel cage and drives to Cloo’s Coney Island Hot Dogs on Avent Ferry Road – celebrating a man-bird friendship that has endured for 23 years.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Farewell to a tiny, ferocious friend

Señora Wences, the beloved Chihuahua of columnist Josh Shaffer and family, left few unbitten during a long lifetime that ended last week.
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: Joe Morgan's specialty is artificial critters, made to order

Randolph County’s Joe Morgan has crafted a line of specimens so popular worldwide that they have appeared in a dinosaur museum in Germany, at a poison control center in Utah and -- most triumphantly -- in an episode of “As The World Turns.”
JOSH SHAFFER

Shaffer: High school Samaritans have pen pals in prison

Nolan Hamilton and Ben Sistachs aim to write letters to every inmate in North Carolina.