PRINCETON: Billboard comes to town

By John Saccenti, Staff Writer
   Jack Young of Mount Lucas Road hasn’t been able to get to Wofford College in South Carolina in some time.
   After suffering a stroke 18 months ago, Mr. Young had to curtail his trips to the college, where his granddaughter, Joanna Suddath of Jackson, Tenn., played volleyball and recently graduated summa cum laude.
   But thanks to longtime friends Joe and Alice Pugh, she was able to come to him, in a way.
   On Wednesday, Mr. Pugh unveiled a 30-by-10-foot, 22-pound billboard sign depicting Ms. Suddath and other star athletes from the college. Mr. Pugh and friends set the sign up in Mr. Young’s front yard and hung it from scaffold built of PVC pipe.
   ”I was driving to campus and saw this and I said I just had to bring it here,” said Mr. Pugh, who is a Wofford alumnus.
   The poster depicts Wofford athletes Sarah Herbert, a golfer from Pendleton, S.C.; Cassie Rex, a soccer player from Boone N.C.; Ms. Suddath; Kathryn Varno, a basketball player from Wilmington Del.; and tennis player Sabrina Smyers, of Pittsburgh.
   ”It was a real delight, because she’s a delight and she’s good,” said Mr. Young’s wife, Lois. “She’s the captain of her team and was voted female athlete of the year. He was just stunned and he loved it.”
   Ms. Young said that while her husband may have a hard time getting around and communicating since the stroke, he is still very sharp.
   ”He’s come a long way, but he can walk and his mind is clear,” she said. “He’s had a huge amount of support of people, supporting him and doing fun things.”
   Among those fun things was a trip to Maine over the summer in which he captained his own boat.
   ”It takes a huge effort when you have a disability. But it was because his friends helped him,” said Ms. Young.
   Seeing the smile on Mr. Young’s face upon seeing the billboard was more than enough thanks for Mr. Pugh. Mr. Pugh and Mr. Young used to commute to New York from Cranbury in the 1970s and have been friends ever since.
   ”I got him to smile, and that’s all I wanted to do,” he said.
   That, said Ms. Young, sums up the help she and her husband have received from the community.
   ”We had hundreds of people help us during the last year and a half from the Princeton community. They’ve been overwhelmingly supportive and certainly we want to give a big thank you to all of those people.”
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