At the heart of the Flat Rock Playhouse’s preparations for their upcoming season is the search for the talented actors, singers, and dancers who will grace FRP’s Leiman Mainstage for eight highly anticipated productions.  The audition process to find the perfect performer for well over 100 roles is extensive, intensive and rigorous. When it is done, however, the patrons who fill the Playhouse seats this coming season will be entertained by some of the most talented actors in theatre.

In 1858, Flat Rock resident Marti Vazquez Hutson’s great-grandfather sailed into Cuba’s Havana Harbor. Greeting him was the sight of the Morro Castle at the entrance to the harbor. Almost exactly one century later in 1959, as Marti and her family fled the Castro regime in Cuba, that same castle would be her last view of the country of her birth.

Spring has arrived and my favorite place to celebrate the season is The Park at Flat Rock. The Park’s beautiful Daffodil Project garden is in full bloom, the bluebirds are busy making their nests, and the trees are starting to pull on their green summer cloaks. Most of all, visitors of all ages are filling the trails, playgrounds, and pavilions with the positive energy and sense of community that make it such a blessing for everyone who visits The Park.

As the new dam that would create Lake Summit neared completion in 1919, the wonderful new power source proved to be the beginning of many beloved family retreats on Lake Summit. Removed from the confusion of nearby towns and cities and accessible only by a dirt road, enjoying the tranquility of Lake Summit became a tradition for the Law and Montgomery families.

One of those earliest summer homes was Interlochen — the Law Family Lake Summit retreat.

When Caroline Long Tindall’s son Liam was born in 2000, it was the culmination of many difficult years of trying to start a family. Holding her newborn son, she imagined her life ahead as a prototypical mother and wife with the challenges, rewards, and unexpected circumstances that accompany parenthood. 

Caroline had no way of knowing, however, that she was embarking on a path rife with challenges she could never have imagined - or even more surprising – that she would have the strength and conviction to create an organization that would provide help and hope to both her new son and hundreds of local families facing similar challenges.

Flat Rock Together recently had the opportunity to sit down for an interview with one of Flat Rock’s best-known residents, Squirt the Cat. Squirt has been a fixture along Rainbow Row in Flat Rock for several years and has accumulated legions of fans from near and far. Along the way, he’s learned a few things about people, life, and good barbecue.

“My music and reflections are my soul's way of making sense of the beauty, vulnerability and endless richness of this human life,” explains the soft-spoken Scotsman, Simon de Voil. And, despite a calm and placid demeanor, Simon has traveled a long and winding road during the course of his 48 years. Indeed, his life has been a journey that leaves him uniquely positioned to connect with people wherever they are physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Spend just a few moments with Jody and Jeff Rutter and you will know why they are so well suited to their chosen career in the hospitality industry. The owners of At Your Service, an Event Planning and Management company in Henderson County, are engaging, affable, and clearly the kind of people you would want to trust with details of your special day.

In short, Jeff and Jody are two of the most hospitable people you are likely to ever meet.

Throughout any reading of Flat Rock history, one name comes up repeatedly as having had a literal hand in the creation of the nascent mountain community which served as a summer refuge for many of Charleston’s most prominent citizens. Although, historians have tended to reserve the lion’s share of their accounts of Flat Rock’s earliest history for families with the familiar names of King, Baring, Memminger and Lowndes, a young Charleston boy orphaned at age 11 also found his way to Flat Rock and over time and with great energy and skill built a legacy that can still be seen throughout Flat Rock today.

His name was Henry Tudor “Squire” Farmer.

The Sandburgs moved to Connemara, their mountain farm in Flat Rock, North Carolina, in the fall of 1945: Carl and his wife Paula, their three adult children (Margaret, Janet, and Helga), and Helga’s young children John Carl and Karlen Paula. Helga and her children lived at the farm for seven years.

In January, Sandburg’s granddaughter Paula died at age 80. John Quinley, remembers Paula and her influence on his writings about Carl Sandburg. Remembering Karlen Paula.

The story of Lake Summit and its early origins may be traced back more than a century ago in Spartanburg County’s textile industry. Power was one of the early problems for the Spartanburg mills, and John Adger Law came up with a plan to bring sufficient electricity from the mountains of North Carolina some 30 miles away.

In March 2010, Anna Wesley Huneycutt died from a drug overdose. It was the culmination of a tumultuous struggle with addiction that upended her young life and the life of the family that loved her fiercely.

Anna’s death at age 20, however, was not the end of her story. In many ways, the tragic ending of her life was arguably the beginning of Anna’s legacy manifested during her short stay in this world.

Robert Cuthbert’s anthology of early private correspondence from Flat Rock provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of early 19th-century men and women who sought to escape the oppressive heat and disease that marked Lowcountry summers in and around Charleston, South Carolina.  Many of them, in their quest for reprieve, found their way to a growing settlement known as Flat Rock in the mountains of western North Carolina.

With his trombone in the attic and his music career a distant memory, it seemed very unlikely that Jerry Zink would one day find himself as the leader of a swing band in the mountains of North Carolina. But three decades after he last played and nearly a thousand miles from his Oklahoma home, Jerry Zink retrieved his trombone from his attic in Flat Rock and resolved to re-learn the instrument that had given him – and his audiences – so much pleasure in his youth.  (Caricature by Pete Adams)

My visit to the grave of noted Flat Rock historian and author, Louise Howe Bailey, was prompted by my interest in the history of the St. John in the Wilderness cemetery that sweeps around the venerable church like a solemn verdant cloak.  I was there to research the significance of the history captured on the chiseled granite monuments and inscribed marble slabs that are scattered throughout the grounds and even inside the sanctuary.

For Sonja Bruton, her work as Postmaster at the Flat Rock Post Office is more than a job. It is a calling. And for the residents of Flat Rock, that is a very fortunate thing.

“During the first half of the twentieth century, Carl Sandburg seemed to be everywhere and do everything: poet and political activist; investigative reporter, columnist, and film critic; lecturer, folk singer, and musicologist; Lincoln biographer and historian; children’s author; novelists; and media celebrity. He was one the most successful American writers of the twentieth century. Everyone knew his name. But as time went on, his fame began to fade, and by the twenty-first century, the public knew little, if anything about his legacy.”

Discovering Carl Sandburg by John Quinley

Ten facts about Carl Sandburg that you probably don’t know as compiled by John Quinley for Flat Rock Together.

Each year, as the last post of the year, I undertake the impossible task of selecting five favorite Flat Rock Together stories from the preceding 12 months. It is, of course, a task that is both arbitrary and unfair. Every story is valuable and should be celebrated in its own right. Stories are how we mark time, celebrate relationships, bestow accolades on the protagonists, and give meaning to our existence.

That said, here are a handful of stories worthy of a second look...

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Village,
Not a person was stirring in our small town on the Blue Ridge.
The stockings were hung at the State Theatre with care,
In hopes that the red-clad Vagabond soon would be there. 

In July of 2023, two long-time friends decided to push back their retirement a few more years to do something they both love together. Today, visitors to Dogwood in the bright blue building on Little Rainbow Row in Flat Rock will find new co-owners, Carol Mann Slowik and Tracy O'Connor-McGraw, happily stocking the shelves of their store, chatting with customers who wander in, and sharing in the adventures of business ownership.