🗞️ A Kernersville brothers’ band, Jeremiah McKinley, is making a name for itself

🗞️ Forsyth planning board rejects a $3 billion data center in Rural Hall

🗞️ East Forsyth’s Todd Willert coaches football, and tends a backyard full of chickens and ducks

🗞️ Everybody is an All-Star: the Piedmont Challenger League celebrates its 37th season

🌤 Partly sunny, isolated storm | High: 91°F | Low: 69°F

A touch less brutal than Friday but still warm, with partly sunny skies and only an isolated afternoon storm possible. A good day for the Cruise-In and the rest of Saturday’s events.

Two Kernersville brothers are turning a backyard hobby into a real shot at a music career. Christian and Noah Smith, who perform as the duo Jeremiah McKinley (a mash-up of their middle names), are starting to break out, and tonight they play a free fundraiser at Friedland Moravian Church, the church where they grew up.

Both were standout athletes at East Forsyth, Christian a running back and Noah a quarterback, before they picked up guitars and began writing their own songs. Their sound is a stripped-down blues and folk built for the road: two guitars, a kick drum and, often, their drummer father sitting in. They have already played a festival tour in Texas and gigs in downtown Memphis at venues where Elvis and B.B. King once performed.

Tonight’s show at Friedland Moravian Church, 2750 Friedland Church Road, has gates at 6:30 p.m. and music at 7 p.m. Admission is free, with donations going to send local kids to church mission camps. “I am hoping six months from now neither of us will have another job,” Christian said.

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A packed public hearing ended in a 7-2 vote Thursday as the City-County Planning Board of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County recommended against a proposed $3 billion data center in Rural Hall. Many of the residents who filled the room cheered the decision.

The project, known as Project Iron Spur, would have sat on a 129-acre site, and its developer had spent two months revising the plan after neighbors raised concerns. Supporters pointed to jobs and tax revenue, while opponents said it did not fit the community or the county’s growth plan. As one longtime resident put it, “I am in favor of development, but not at the cost of losing our identity.”

Board member Clarence Lambe Jr., who called himself “a booster for Forsyth County and Winston-Salem, and my small town of Kernersville,” was one of two who favored the project. The vote does not kill it: Planning Director Chris Murphy said it is expected to go before county commissioners by the end of July.

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Heading into his 24th season as East Forsyth’s head football coach, Todd Willert keeps an eye on Sonny, Buddy, Donnie and dozens of others. They are not his players. They are his chickens. And ducks. Nearly 100 of them roam the Kernersville backyard that doubles as H&M Farms, named for his children, Harper and Morgan.

What started as a housewarming gift after the Willerts moved in has grown into 51 chickens, 38 ducks and 12 coops, most of them built by Willert himself. Almost every bird has a name, drawn from The Golden Girls, Bluey, NCIS and country stars like Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. The family sells eggs and has even taken chicks to Kernersville-area elementary schools for science projects.

On the field, Willert is the winningest coach in East Forsyth history, with 205 career wins, 11 conference titles and back-to-back state championships in 2018 and 2019. Off it, he keeps it simple. “I don’t play golf, I don’t fish, and I don’t hunt,” he said. “I just take care of chickens and ducks. And I love it.”

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On a sunny Saturday morning at the Union Cross ball field in Kernersville, the Piedmont Challenger League did what it has done for 37 seasons: gave every player a chance to shine. The Kernersville-based nonprofit offers adaptive baseball and softball for youths and adults with physical and intellectual disabilities, and this year it has grown to 80 players from across the Triad.

There is no score, everyone gets a hit, and the final batter is awarded an automatic grand slam. “The only rules are we pray before the game and everybody gets a hit,” said League Director Mark Ciofani. Saturday also brought a motivational speech from Mayor Dawn Morgan, team photos, a turn on the mound from Pastor Travis Shannon and more than 200 hot dogs served to the crowd.

Founded in 1989 by Kernersville’s Jack Stewart and the late former mayor Roger Swisher with just 16 players, the league closes its season with an All-Star game on June 20 at 11 a.m., because, as Ciofani says, everybody in the league is an All-Star.

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