Jose Colon

Jeff Maness

By RAY WYCHE
Staff writer

Two young men who wanted to change the directions of their occupations are proving to be a big help at the N. C. Museum of Forestry on Madison Street in Whiteville.

The two second year students at Southeastern Community College have been a big help to Museum Director Harry Warren’s efforts this summer in handling a pair of special projects at the museum: the establishment a nature trail and garden on the site of the old L.K. Fuller Furniture building and the cataloging of fossils from the Pleistocene period dug on the Jimmy Holloman farm north of Hallsboro.

“It would have been much more difficult to do it without the interns,” Warren says of the projects. “These guys are doing work that would not have gotten done. We’ve been wanting to do this for several years.”

The fossil collection, unearthed by technicians from the N. C. Museum of Science in Raleigh in 2002, has been awaiting cleaning, preserving and cataloging, a long tedious process requiring knowledge and manual skills.

The site next door to the museum where the pocket park is being constructed was growing up as a patch of weeds until an intern applied his skill and muscle to turn it into a green space in the middle of downtown.

Jose Colon
landscaper

Jose Colon is showing his skills as a landscaper and nature lover at the park site.
When he reached his late 20s, he decided in 2004 that it was time for a change in his life.
The decision led to his enrolling in Southeastern in the park ranger technician program.

Instead of sitting in an air conditioned classroom and poring over zoology, botany and other environmental sciences books, Colon’s decision found him, on the hottest days of August, pushing a wheelbarrow and raking smooth the marl on walkways he’s constructing at the Museum of Forestry.

The nature trails he is building are on the south side of the museum on land where the now-razed L. K. Fuller Furniture store formerly stood.

Museum Director Warren says he plans to establish a nature area on the site, with the walks bordered by plants and trees.

He hopes the pathways, in a more natural setting than paved sidewalks, will attract some of the many walkers who each morning can be seen hiking along Madison Street between the courthouse and downtown.

The trail-building is part of a 320-hour project required in the two-year course leading to an associate degree from SCC, which is necessary if Colon wants to be a state park ranger.
Colon thinks his career change will lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.

“I did construction work for years and I came to the point where I said, ‘I can’t do this the rest of my life.’”

What he was doing was indeed a young man’s occupation: Colon erected microwave telephone towers, those ubiquitous spindly, steel structures that reach 400 feet into the air.

“I’ve been to the top; I was in the clouds. I worked all over the United States,” he says.

This occupation sometimes led to lengthy periods of idleness at home, waiting for the contractor to call him to work.

“We stayed busy and I made real good money but I figured I needed something more secure than waiting for the phone to ring.”

Colon says he has always had a love affair with nature.

“I’ve been a nature boy my whole life. My dad took me hunting when I was 5 years old. I want to be a park ranger and a positive influence. I love wildlife. That’s why I got into the parks program,” he says.

Colon began his quest for something better in life three years ago but his enlistment in the National Guard has stretched out his educational pursuits, as his military duties required him to serve in different areas.

The hard physical labor involved in his current trail-building job does not bother Colon; he has worked since his early youth.

“I worked while I was in school and bought my own clothes and helped my family from the time I was 12 years old. I still work on weekends (as a welder),” he says.

Colon’s father is a disabled Vietnam military veteran. His mother is a native of the Buckhead community and the couple currently resides north of Hallsboro.

The task of building an all-weather walking trail at the Forestry Museum, as well as clearing debris left from the destruction of a building on the property and the construction of a fence at the rear of the museum, to Colon are merely steps in his quest for a better life.

“It’s been long and hard, but I want to be a happy park ranger and protect wildlife. That’s where I hope my home will be.”

Jeff Maness
paleontologist

Jeff Maness managed restaurants for years, suppressing the urge to put his mind to work in more scientific pursuits.

He is majoring in environmental sciences and agricultural biotechnology at Southeastern.
“I got tired of being indoors,” he says of his decision to prepare for an occupation that would allow him to be closer to nature.

As part of his studies, he was required to do an internship and was selected to undertake the patience-testing task of preparing 10,000-year-old bones for display. It’s tedious work.

“I clean them with (dental) picks and toothbrushes.”

The bones, fragments of spines, arms and legs, and shoulder bones of the giant ground sloth who roamed what is now Columbus County about 12,000 years ago, were unearthed when Jimmy Holloman was having a fish pond dug near his home.

Once removed from their earthen bed of the past few thousand years, the bones must be cleaned of dirt and bits of seashells and other marine life accretions that cover the fossils.

Fossils from other prehistoric animals include those from a miniature horse, about the size of a large dog, and some fragments of whale bones.

When Maness completes the cleaning, the bones are treated with a special plastic solution that prevents the materials from further eroding into dust, without detracting from the feel or appearance of the artifact.

“It hardens the bones,” Maness says of the high-tech solution he applies with a paintbrush.

Fossils of the giant ground sloth, a creature that weighed more than five tons and stood about 20 feet in height, “are one of the most common fossils found in North and South America,” Maness says. “It was the largest mammal ever to exist on land,” he adds.

The second floor room in the museum where Maness works has black bones scattered in bookcases and on tables.

“Most of these were sloth bones,” he says, pointing to the fossils, some as large as computer monitors.

To prepare for his unusual and educating summer internship, Maness had to go to Raleigh.

“I took a crash course at the Museum of Science,” he says, learning how to preserve that which cannot be replaced. “I’ve done a lot of research.”