10/13/2026
Back in the late 90s I received a phone call at Gary's Nursery from a fellow at an Insurance Agency in I think Rocky Mount, NC. Having heard of my passion for palms he asked me had I seen the old palm tree at Eureka, NC. I told him I didn't even know where in the heck Eureka was. I didn't have internet back then, so I got my trusty folding road map and looked it up. North of Goldsboro, NC. He said there was a lady working there that that had a connection to the old house in Eureka, NC that had a palm growing there. I finally got in touch with her and she told me the exact location and off I went to find it. It was a very ratty looking palm at that time, but I took photos of it. The house was in somewhat disrepair and the windows were all covered in newspapers. Some years later I returned and took more photos when it was looking much better. Sometime after that Pete Sayre and myself started the NC Palm Society and we used my photo from 2004 for the first cover.
The lady told me the palm was planted as a small palm around the 1960s but she didn't know where it came from.
On my first trip to see the old Sabal palmetto in Eureka, NC I saw a historical marker sign at an intersection in Eureka about a B52 Bomber that had broken up in the air and 2 Hydrogen bombs were aboard only one step from being fully armed. One bomb was recovered but one bomb went so deep in a farmer's field close to Eureka, NC that was not recovered.
