“My husband said yes to Tippy because he thought I wanted him, and I’d said yes because I thought he wanted him,” Mary Beth recalls with a smile. By that point, of course, the die was cast and the squeaky toy was shredded all over the living room floor. They resolved to find a way to make it work.

Fortunately for all parties involved, the adoption stuck and Mary Beth parlayed the experience into a new phase of her life - as an author of children’s books. Not surprisingly, her books are about a small terror of a terrier named Tippy.

In 1979 Historic Flat Rock, Inc. purchased the old post office and after extensive renovations, moved into the upstairs. The lower level was home to the Ladies Aid Society of Flat Rock’s Book Exchange until 2016 when HFR decided to create a cultural center and museum fulfilling its mission “to discover and collect materials of historic, artistic, or literary value, provide for preservation for such material and its accessibility as far as may be feasible for all who wish to examine it and to operate a cultural center.

Fulfilling a promise that fell victim to the pandemic in 2020, Flat Rock Playhouse brought up the lights on its powerful presentation of A Chorus Line this past Thursday. Always up to the task no matter the magnitude of the production, the Playhouse brings this iconic Broadway blockbuster to life with all the skill and verve we’ve come to expect on the Leiman Mainstage.

Fourteen years ago, parishioners at St. John in the Wilderness learned that several children attending Flat Rock Middle School were going hungry on weekends. The students were all participants in the free breakfast and lunch programs offered at public schools and had insufficient access to nutritional foods on Saturdays and Sundays.  

They decided to address the problem directly and the Flat Rock Backpack Program was created.