A South Boston councilman and one at-large councilman in Halifax will not seek re-election in the May 2 race.
South Boston councilman Dick Pond and veteran Halifax councilman John Murphy announced yesterday that they will not run.
Murphy holds one of two at-large seats in Halifax up for grabs in the May 2 race. Harold Younger, who could not be reached yesterday, holds the second at-large seat. No other slots are up in Halifax.
Four slots, including South Boston Mayor Glen Abernathy's seat, are up in the May race.
Those seeking council offices in the towns of Scottsburg, Virgilina, Halifax and South Boston face a 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 7, deadline to qualify.
Only "a handful of people" have picked up candidate packets for the election, according to Halifax County Registrar Judy Meeler.
The registrar's office, located on Courthouse Square in Halifax, is open from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
In South Boston, in addition to the seats held by Mayor Abernathy and Pond, seats held by Radford Trent and Carroll Thackston will be on the ballot.
Abernathy, Trent and Thackston are currently circulating petitions, according to town officials.
Pond, who is retired, explained yesterday that he and his wife plan to travel and that those plans affected his decision not to seek re-election.
"I think a lot of this area and I don't feel like I can devote the attention to it that it needs with me traveling," he said.
In Virgilina, Mayor Stover Long's slot and six council seats are up in the May election, according to the county registrar. Currently serving on council are Edward Chandler, Michael Glasscock, Mary Helen Gravitt, Beverly Murray, Keith Tuck Jr. and John Younk.
Scottsburg Town Council will have five council slots up as well as Mayor Ricky Gordon's post. Two council seats have been vacant. Scottsburg councilmen currently include Ron Claiborne, Connie Glass and Mattie Stoner.

A North Carolina man died at the scene of a logging site yesterday morning on Ham-Tuck Trail after he was struck by a company truck.
William Albert Miller Sr., 68, of Franklinton, N.C., in Granville County, died of chest injuries sustained from a 1996 Ford F-350 truck, driven by Franklin D. Autry Jr., of Creedmoor, N.C., as it was backing up, said Trooper R.T. Ridgeway.
Miller was waiting for his tractor trailer to be loaded with cut logs when the fatal accident occurred at 8 a.m. on Ham-Tuck Trail (Route752), eight-tenths of a mile west of Piney Grove Road (Route 751).
The trooper said workers tried to revive Miller, however, the injured driver was pronounced dead at the scene by medical examiner Dr. Gaylord Ray of the Halifax Regional Hospital.
Ray said Miller died on impact.
Miller had a history of heart problems and his body was sent to Richmond for an autopsy, said Ridgeway.
Miller's family had been notified, added the trooper.
A representative of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was also on the scene and the investigation is on-going, said Ridgeway.

South Boston's new budget year is still four months away but town officials have been examining revenues and expenses as they begin a series of work sessions before presenting the plan to council later this month.
"Right now, management is not considering any raise in fees or taxes," Town Treasurer Vandie Saunders said this week, an opinion echoed by Town Manager Ted Daniel. That objective should come as good news for town residents as well as those living just outside the corporate limits who purchase water and sewer services.
South Boston more than doubled water and sewer fees for all its customers last year, some of whom packed up and left town.
Among the exodus was Tultex which filed for bankruptcy last December, idled over 400 workers locally and left without paying approximately $12,000 in taxes.
South Boston has filed that claim with the bankruptcy court but any hope of collecting that amount is slim to none given the number and size of other creditors. Equal loser in property taxes is the county.
Add to Tultex the closing of Rochester Button which did pay its taxes to the town and county last year. In both instances, however, the loss of property tax revenues is only the beginning.
Both purchased water and sewer; with Tultex, those user fees alone ranged from $200-$300 monthly. Losses of revenue from utility taxes with Tultex are estimated to range upwards to $300 a month.
South Boston's current annual budget exceeds $6.2 million, slightly less than a year earlier.
The town's present 19¢/$100 real estate tax rate was actually lowered two cents per hundred from 1998. That rate, according to finance officials, will likely remain unchanged for next year.
South Boston's water and sewer fund is solvent for the first time in recent years, thanks mostly to the doubling of user fees in the 2000 budget.
Those higher rates "corrected the whole financial picture," said Saunders.
Even with the negatives, the town's revenue side of the picture is looking good. Tax and fee collections by the fiscal midyear (the end of December) were approximately 65 percent of what was budgeted.
Unexpected revenue increases have come from such categories as meals taxes, mobilehome titling taxes and car-rental taxes to name but a few.

Halifax County High School student Todd Eakes has been an outspoken critic of the school system and its policy of "freezing" everyone in place in the school in the wake of bomb threats.
Now, Eakes is taking matters a step further.
Eakes and approximately 15 supporters have been circulating petitions among the student body calling upon the Halifax County School Board to end the current practice and order a mandatory evacuation of the building in every incident.
The Halifax County High School student said he plans to submit the petitions, which he says now contain between 550 and 600 signatures, to the School Board when the body meets March 13.
Eakes says he feels that a majority of the students at Halifax County High School support his position.
However, there are many, he says, that are scared to say so in public.
"I think a high majority agree with what I think," Eakes pointed out.
"I also think a lot of people are scared to stand up for it because they think somebody will think bad of them for some reason.
"But, it (the school system's policy) will never be changed unless we have support from parents and the community. We need people to stand up with us if we're going to make a difference."`
Although he has not yet done so, Eakes indicated yesterday that he is strongly considering appearing before the School Board and personally addressing the issue.
"I intend to do everything in my power to help change the policy," said Eakes, a member of the junior class.
"I'm not going to sit by and let my rights be violated which I feel they have been. That is what I'm doing."
Eakes says he hopes that the School Board will not take a closed stance.
"I'm hoping the School Board will look at this with an open mind and listen to everybody, the complaints, the praises, and whatever, and make their decision after having carefully listened to both sides."
Both Halifax County School Superintendent Dennis Witt and Halifax County High School Principal Larry Clark have stated that there is no such thing as a perfect answer to the question of whether or not to evacuate the building every time a bomb threat is called in.
Eakes says he doesn't have the perfect answer, either.
"I don't know the perfect answer," said Eakes who serves as the president of the Young Democrats Club.
"And, I agree, there is no perfect answer. But, locking everybody in their rooms is certainly not the answer. That's what I'm saying."
Witt has pointed out that so far, the current procedure has worked.
"But, so far, they've been lucky," Eakes pointed out.
"They can't be lucky forever."
Eakes says he realizes that when a bomb threat is called in there cannot be an immediate evacuation.
"I realize the building can't be immediately evacuated because they (school officials) have many people that they have to notify," Eakes pointed out.
"While the notifications are being made, the main areas, the lobby and main stairwells should be the first areas checked."
Once those areas have been checked, then everyone should be evacuated, Eakes says.
"I would think more of the school system if it looked like it was trying to save everybody, the students, teachers, and administrators," he stated.
"Locking people in their rooms is not trying."

First Baptist Church pastor Bob Fox and First Baptist Church of Republican Grove minister Shelton Miles III spoke out against legislation that would require a daily minute of silence in public schools. during a House of Delegates hearing this week.
The House Education Committee later gutted the proposed legislation, sending an altered bill to the House that retains the current state law giving school systems the option to have a moment of silence, but not requiring it.
The altered bill incorporates the old statute and also provides for the state's attorney general to defend any school system sued for allowing the moment of silence.
Delegate W.W. "Ted" Bennett of Halifax opposed changing the old statute. He supported the amended version with the old statute and called on the state to shoulder the legal defense.
"We have an excellent statute currently," Bennett said yesterday. He also questioned whether the new bill, sponsored by Sen. Warren Barry, R-37th, was constitutional.
Bennett said that he had heard that some school districts have not allowed a moment of silence "because they were afraid they would be sued."
Five counties currently allow a minute of silence, according to Shelton Miles. Campbell County is one of those.
Fox and Miles joined about a dozen other religious leaders, including an Episcopalian , a Catholic, several Jewish representatives and a Muslim speaker, in opposing Barry's bill.
"Certainly there is nothing inherently offensive in offering a mandatory minute of silence at the beginning of each school day," Fox told the House committee.
However, the South Boston minister said he was "profoundly concerned with the social forces that lie behind the framework of the bill."
The minister said that it was his "suspicion that the legislation draws its support not from professional educators, but from good-hearted, well-meaning people of strong religious conviction.
"If this is the case, one must ask why the legislation draws its primary advocacy from those of religious faith. The answer, I think, is because however innocuously it is worded, the minute of silence is a first step in an attempt to bring formal public prayer back into the classroom.
"As a Baptist minister, whose denomination has historically found itself on the wrong side of the state organized religion, I treasure our country's celebration of religious freedom and strong position on the separation of church and state. The state should not proscribe how, when, why or what any citizen prays or does not pray," he concluded.
Miles told the committee that he appreciated "the intent that the framer of this bill must have had for the spiritual welfare of Virginia's schoolchildren," but that he opposed it for the following reasons:
·The minister said the bill would make "teachers and school administrators ministers of spirituality, a role that ill fits them." Miles said the teachers and administrators "come from all walks of life, all creeds and none, all life-styles, sacred and profane." He said that "to have them call students to meditation, prayer or reflection casts them in the role of hypocrite in many cases. Such hypocrisy is readily apparent to the students in their charge and serves no useful spiritual function; instead, it harms genuine spirituality and authentic faith," charged the minister.
· Miles also worried that "this coerced moment of silence tends to produce not free, passionate and fervent faith, voluntarily chosen, but rather a tepid and vacuous form of civil religion that is satisfying to none and offensive to many, including many sincerely devout people of faith."
· The Republican Grove minister said that "while this bill does not compel religious practice, it does coerce it, employing paid representatives of the state in a secular setting, and thus violates one of the central tenets of my faith: 'That the only authentic religious response to Almighty God is one freely and voluntarily chosen.'"
·Miles charged that the bill "employs the devices of the state, my state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the government of the people that produced Jefferson and Madison, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the First Amendment, to transgress the religious liberties of our people." Miles said that it is "not the province of the state to tell anyone how to pray, what to pray, when to pray or when to quit praying, where to pray, why to pray, or even whether to pray."

You see them at every football and basketball game - cheerleaders dancing, cheering and performing acrobatic feats.
Many people do not consider cheerleading a sport.
But it is a sport, a technical sport. And, the competition can be as fierce as the competition on the football field, the hardwood, or the baseball diamond.
Halifax County High School's varsity cheerleading squad under sponsor Brandy P. Arnold will face a good deal of tough competition in the Northwest Region Cheerleading Competition March 10 at Stafford High School.
The Comets finished 14th in the Northwest Region Cheerleading Competition last year and Arnold says her squad is hoping to equal or better that mark.
"We are going with the idea that we're going to do our best," Arnold said.
"Hopefully, we can do as well or better than we did last year."
Arnold, who is in her first year as the Comets cheerleader sponsor, said the videotape of last year's Northwest Region competition left a distinct impression.
"It was almost unbelievable," she remarked.
"It was just like you see on the cheerleading competitions on television. The competition was very tough. In the regionals there are so many squads that have been doing this for a long time and traveling to different places to compete.
"The squads from Northern Virginia are awesome," she continued.
"Cheerleading is a true sport in Northern Virginia. A lot of schools have separate competition squads that do nothing but compete in these competitions. We're still trying to get cheerleading at Halifax County to the point where it is a sport."
Halifax County made its way into this year's Northwest Region competition the easy way.
Normally, there is first a Western District competition with the top two teams advancing to the regional competition.
But, because GW and Albemarle did not compete, Halifax County and E.C. Glass automatically advanced to the next level.
The situation played into the Comets' favor in one sense. But, Arnold says, it may have hurt in another.
"I'd have rather gone to the district competition for the experience," Arnold remarked.
"It would have been good to have competed so that they (the Comets cheerleaders) could see what the regionals will be like and how the competition works."
The cheerleading competition is fast paced, energetic, and features several components including stunts, performing a cheer that includes stunts and a dance component, all of which have to flow together and be performed at one time.
Halifax County's cheerleaders have been preparing for this competition since last summer.
"We had a cheerleading coach come in back in August to do the routine and teach the girls the routine," Arnold explained.
"And, we've been practicing ever since. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and lots and lots of practice."

The competition is sophisticated and the Comets know that they are, in a sense, playing against a stacked deck.
"A lot of the schools we will compete against have separate competition squads that don't cheer for games," Arnold pointed out.
"The schools that have a separate competition squad do better in the long run. My opinion is that if you're going to compete in the competition it should be a squad that regularly cheers for the games.
"I know that if it was me that was participating I would want to be involved in it all, cheering at the games and being in the competition," she added.
Despite the fact that the Comets cheerleaders will face an uphill battle, the experience, Arnold says, is good.
"It's a good experience and the girls enjoy it," she pointed out.
"I hope that one day we can get to the point where we can finish in the top four or five.
"We've come a long way," added Arnold.
"I think if the girls in the high school that come out for the squad in the coming years are interested in working on this and are committed, we can continue to improve.
"They've just got to get really serious about it, stay focused on it, and really be dedicated to it. That's the bottom line."

Gertrude Oakes Bane, age 86, of 4106 Rodgers Chapel Road, Clover, died March 1, 2000, at The Woodview.
Mrs. Bane was born in Chatham on January 13, 1914, the daughter of Joseph Green Oakes and Mary Elizabeth Woodson Oakes and was married to Ira Aubrey Bane Sr. She was a member of Rodgers Chapel Baptist Church.
Survivors include two sons, Warren Bane and wife, Ruth of South Boston and Aubrey Bane Jr. of Sutherland; one daughter, Elizabeth Saunders and husband, James of Petersburg; one sister, Ruby Hammock of Danville; three grandchildren, James W. Saunders Jr. of Petersburg, Amanda Bane and Michelle Holmes, both of Colonial Heights; three great-grandchildren, James Saunders III and Meagan and Chelsie Holmes, all of Colonial Heights.
Graveside services for Mrs. Bane will be held March 3 at 2 p.m. at Rodgers Chapel Church Cemetery with the Rev. Doug Spurlock conducting the service.

Those wishing to give memorials are asked to consider Southside Virginia Community College (SVCC) to be used for a caregiver scholarship fund, made payable to the school and sent to Warren and Ruth Bane, 2148 Cherry Hill Church Road, South Boston.

Ruth Elliott Pulliam, 64, of Roxboro, N.C., died March 1, 2000, at Person Memorial Hospital.
Mrs. Pulliam was born in Halifax County. She was the daughter of Morell and Clara Snead Elliott and was married to Ferrell Thomas Pulliam. She was a member of Olive Branch Baptist Church and retired from Collins & Aikman Corp.
Survivors include one son, Michael A. Pulliam of Roxboro; one daughter, Wendy P. Bradsher of Roxboro; four brothers, Harry B. (Butch) Elliott of South Boston, William W. (Brownie) Elliott of Clarksville, Donald Elliott of Scottsburg, and Robert W. Elliott of Huntington, Md.; five sisters, Maurine Ligon of Scottsburg, Jeanette Hazelwood of Clover, Geneva Elliott and Edith Williams, both of Scottsburg, and Dorothy Ann Dance of South Boston; four grandchildren, Barbara P. Zimmerman, Crystal Pulliam, Samantha Moretz and Jaret Thomas Bradsher; and two great grandchildren, Jonathan and Alexander Zimmerman.
Funeral services for Mrs. Pulliam will be held at 11 a.m. March 4 at Brooks & White Funeral Home in Roxboro with theRev. Jimmy Pulliam conducting the service. Burial will follow in Surl Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.

The family will receive friends from 7:00 until 8:30 p.m. March 3 at Brooks & White Funeral Home.