Paul Shoemaker handed his camera to his younger brother Peter and sat down on the lush summer grass next to Simone. Peter framed the shot per his brother’s instructions - with the couple offset to the right, Paul’s flourishing garden in the background, and the summer sun shining with approval on the faces of a young couple in love.

Peter pressed the shutter release … and time stood still …

As a young boy growing up in northern Virginia, Will Garvey was drafted to help with his father’s hobby of beekeeping. “I didn’t like it,” he recalls. “I got stung a lot.” Now, nearly five decades later, Will is the Volunteer Beekeeper for The Park at Flat Rock and a vocal advocate for the many ways individuals can help care pollinators and for the natural world around us.

Fifty years ago this month, a healthy baby boy was born to Stephen and Paula Wiesenfeld in Edison, NJ. Within hours, however, the celebration of birth turned into unimaginable tragedy when Paula suffered an amniotic embolism and died on the same day her son was born. It was June 5th, 1972.

Although he had no way of knowing, Stephen Wiesenfeld was about to embark on an amazing legal journey that involved confronting an archaic statute of federal law. It also led him into a lifelong friendship with perhaps the most iconic female jurist in our country’s history - Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Centuries after Native Americans first met on the “great flat rock”, the current-day residents of the village name for that same landmark gathered to celebrate their community, their history, and their good fortune to live in such a beautiful place with the revival of the Village of Flat Rock Ice Cream Social.

When Robin Hawkins Anderson arrived in Henderson County in 2015, she was still recovering from the upheaval caused by the dissolution of her marriage. A friend recommended spending time on the trails of the Carl Sandburg Home to find perspective and perhaps discover a new path forward. Seven years and over 7000 photographs later, Robin has published her first book, Uncommon Sanctuary, a photographic diary featuring Carl and Lillian Sandburg’s Connemara home in the mountains of western North Carolina.

During a recent Blue Ridge Center for Lifelong Learning course, instructor Paula Withrow did more than just teach history. She brought it to life. Dressed as Mata Hari, Withrow recounted the life and exploits of one of the most famous female spies in history. Her mastery of the subject material was captivating and her sartorial commitment to the topic gave additional life to an already fascinating subject.

As I stepped into the small Oakland Cemetery on the easternmost edge of Flat Rock, I could see her recent grave still adorned with memorial flowers. It was a cool, gray Saturday morning and the only sounds were the birds chirping in trees that border the modest cemetery on three sides. The grass was wet. The red clay, unearthed to prepare for her internment, still visible around the gravesite.

I’d come to this hallowed ground to pay my respects to a woman that I never met. To honor and reflect on a woman whose life was more intricately bound to the history of Flat Rock than perhaps almost any other living soul in the Village.

By the time John Burton was 11 years old, he had dislocated his left elbow six times and undergone three surgeries in an attempt to repair the problematic joint. John’s early medical misfortunes, however, turned out to be a bit of fortuitous fate that helped launch him on a course from the waters of Lake Summit in Tuxedo, NC to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.

One of the more dramatic and violent moments in the history of Flat Rock occurred during the Civil War. Beaumont, owned by Andrew Johnstone of Georgetown, SC, was one of the earliest grand homes in Flat Rock and during the final chaotic year of the war, a band of “bushwhackers” descended upon the estate on a warm June day in 1864 - with tragic consequence.