BY LAURA DOUGLASS
Staff Writer
The Seven Lakes Kiwanis Club is raising funds for a new scholarship named in honor of Buddy Spong that will assist Sandhills Community College students.
The legacy scholarship was announced during a celebration of life for Spong at BPAC’s Owens Auditorium, on Sunday, July 21 on the SCC campus. A retired educator and active community volunteer, Spong died on March 15, five months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The celebration featured guest speakers — former students, colleagues and neighbors — representing the different avenues of his life. Longtime friend Kristen Webb Thompson played the piano.
“We are hoping the scholarship fund will expand,” said Ann Spong, Buddy’s high school sweetheart, dancing partner and wife.
The list of Spong’s accomplishments is inspiring and it’s easy to see how he earned the nickname “Energizer Bunny.”
A native of North Carolina, Spong played varsity basketball, attended Governor’s School, participated in Beta Club and was voted “Most Likely to Succeed” by his classmates at Northwest Cabarrus High School. He earned a degree in math education from Appalachian State University and worked at Hardin Park Elementary.
Buddy and Ann were among the earliest residents of the Seven Lakes community, settling in Seven Lakes North in 1975 after he was hired to join the SCC faculty. The couple were charter members of the Yellow Rockers square dancers, and of the original fire department and rescue squad in Seven Lakes in the late 1970s.
The couple were also active with the West End United Methodist Church, where Spong and Kenneth Fulcher would later start the WEUMC Food Pantry. He also served on the board of the Seven Lakes Landowners Association from 1977-1982, and nine years on the Moore County Board of Education, including two years as chair.
At SCC, Spong taught reading, English, math, study skills and speech but those lessons were secondary, he would later say. “What I’m really trying to teach is life.” He then shifted his focus to administrative roles, serving as dean of enrollment and dean of students at SCC before retiring in 2006.
After he retired from SCC in 2006, Spong served as the executive director of the Moore County unit of the American Red Cross until 2011. He was well-prepared for the real, having led the Moore County unit of the Salvation Army (from 1977-2001), where he grew the annual budget from $600 to more than $300,000, over his 24-year tenure with the all-volunteer organization.
Spong also started and directed the Carolina Eye Association Foundation, which helped with vision screening and provided aid to children needing glasses and other vision assistance, in addition to volunteer roles with Seven Lakes Lions Club, Seven Lakes Kiwanis Club, Rotary Club, United Way and Moore County Board of Elections.
But to only focus on Buddy’s remarkable achievements would be to miss his greater impact on the community.
“I think on paper you can list so many different accomplishments and so many different organizations he’s been a part of and all this work that he’s been responsible for that’s made a difference in people’s lives,” said his daughter, Angie, in an interview with The Pilot last January. “But what I keep coming back to is the way that he’s made people feel.”
When people in Moore County hear Angie’s last name, she says they immediately light up in recognition of her father. “I think it speaks so much to the difference that he’s made in the world and in so many different lives. It just ripples and ripples and ripples.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise additional funding for the Buddy Spong Legacy Scholarship at Sandhills Community College.
