Cyclists from as far away as Dublin and as near as Statesboro set out on 14-mile and 36-mile routes in two different directions as the fifth annual Willow Hill Heritage Festival got underway.
    The addition of the Thrill on the Hill ride and bike rodeo reflects the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center's interest in promoting active lifestyles. A lack of physical activity, and sometimes a shortage of parent involvement, are challenges facing children around Portal and Willow Hill, according to a community needs assessment by researchers from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern University in cooperation with the Willow Hill Center.
    "So there's a lot of work to be done, and Willow Hill wants to be part of that work," said Gayle Jackson, the center's development director. "We want to be able to develop programs to promote health among the students as well as push scholarship, because the study showed that the students have issues with obesity and lack of exercise."

Dream Team
    For help launching their first-time ride, Willow Hill's volunteer leaders called on the Oconee Community Mentoring Association Dream Team, the BRAG Dream Team affiliate in Dublin.
    Becoming a role model for active living, Dream Team member Keair Beauchamp, 13, had ridden the 770-mile Gullah Geechee Youth Bike Tour from Durham, North Carolina to St. Augustine, Florida, in July. In 2014, he completed both the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia, or BRAG, and the more than 600-mile King2King Tour from the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta to the King Memorial in Washington, DC.
    At Willow Hill on the Saturday before Labor Day, Keair was joined by his father, Prentice Beauchamp, on the 36-mile Thrill on the Hill route. It was the first time the older Beauchamp has biked with his son on an organized ride.
    "He's been challenging me for the last year or so," said Prentice Beauchamp. "I'm taking him up on the talk."
    Coach Chris Johnson, adult leader of the OCMA Dream Team, called it "a youth cycling organization that reaches out to young people to show them the joys of cycling so they can get out and see their neighborhoods and other communities."
    Members ride together in the Dublin area usually several times a week, often after school.
    But that's not all that the Dream Team emphasizes, according to Khalill Smith, 15, who also came from Dublin and is training for next year's Bicycle Ride Across Georgia.
    "Coach Chris Johnson, he's a mentor of ours, and he keep us out of trouble and makes sure we don't do nothing bad," Smith said. "He makes sure we do our homework every day, and we study for an hour. He always say, 'Homework before bikes.'"
    By taking part in the Thrill on the Hill, the Dublin Group was helping celebrate the heritage of the Willow Hill School and its community, Johnson said. The school was founded by former slaves for their children in 1874 and later became a Bulloch County public school.
    But the Dream Team's involvement also reflects a hope that something like the team could be formed at the Willow Hill Center.
    "They can mentor us," Jackson said.
    Willow Hill's first-year rides drew 23 cyclists, who set out after 8 a.m. These included five adults and nine school-age youth on the shorter route and six adults and three youth on the longer route. Several adult members of the Southern Cyclists, based in Statesboro, took part on the longer route. Three members of the Willow Hill Center's advisory council rode one route or the other.
    The afternoon bike rodeo, designed to teach safe riding behaviors, such as looking both ways at intersections and watching for traffic behind them, awarded certificates to about five children. Members of the Dublin group, who were already certified, also participated.
    Among other challenges, the young cyclists competed in a slowness race, practicing their balance by seeing who could ride slowest without putting a foot down.
    Coach Johnson said he wants his group to return to Willow Hill, and not just for next year's festival.
    "We would gladly come back to Willow Hill even before next year to follow up with the people, our new friends that we met there, hopefully to start a youth cycling club there," he said.
   
Needs assessment
    The health and education needs assessment led by Associate Professor Moya L. Alfonso, Ph.D., of the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, has put Willow Hill on the map in public health circles. An article, "The Willow Hill Community Health Assessment: Assessing the Needs of Children in a Former Slave Community," appears in the October 2015 issue of the Journal of Community Health.
    Alfonso and team members also gave a presentation on their work at the American Public Health Association conference in New Orleans last November.
    About 45 of Alfonso's students in one doctoral and two master's degree classes helped conduct the study, begun in 2013. Through a focus group discussion and interviews, they collected responses from six Portal Middle High School students, eight to 10 teachers and staff members, and eight key informants, Alfonso said.
    Alfonso and her students also did about 30 "intercept interviews" with people attending a previous Willow Hill festival. In spring 2014, the researchers held a community forum at the center. About 20 local residents attended.
    Several of the identified concerns are often found in impoverished African-American communities, including obesity, poor diet and very low levels of physical activity, Alfonso said. Willow Hill, being so rural, has special concerns because it lacks any health facilities or even a pharmacy. The prevalence of alcohol and tobacco use and teen pregnancy — or as some community members put it, "babies having babies" — were also discussed.
    "Those were the main problems," Alfonso said. "They also ranked violence and drug use as problems as well, but really obesity was the main issue that came out, and low parental involvement."
    Gayle Jackson, Ph.D., and her husband Alvin Jackson, M.D., president of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center board, are listed first among Alfonso's co-authors on the Journal of Community Health article.
    They are working together on ideas for grant proposals to the National Institutes of Health or a foundation for programs at Willow Hill.
    "One of the things we want to do with the Willow Hill School is get funding to create a community garden because I think we would have a lot of people in this community that would participate, and also we've got basketball courts that could be rehabbed, we could put up a walking trail on this beautiful school lot," Alfonso said. "So there's a lot that could be done here, we just need resources and donations."
    A spelling bee, organized by Bulloch County Board of Education member Glennera Martin, was also part of the festival. But some other youth events, such oratorical and music contests, were cancelled.

Prayer breakfast
    The annual prayer breakfast was still the most heavily attended part of the festival. Pearl Brown, president of the Bulloch County Branch of the NAACP, was the featured speaker.
    On her way in, Brown said she was thinking of the power of prayer and the importance of education, and would speak from the heart rather than delivering a written speech.
    "This center that they have here can be a blessing for the young people in Portal …," Brown offered in the interview. "You know, when you're out this far, you don't have the Boys and Girls Club and all of the other things … but then once they get this center up and running and have the volunteers for it, you can have those kinds of summer programs."
    About 125 to 150 people were served breakfast, estimated Tendai Haggins, a member of both the Willow Hill advisory board and the Portal Heritage Society board. He and his wife, Jan Haggins, the Portal Heritage Society president, lead breakfast preparations for the Willow Hill Festival each year.
    Students from the Anchor Club and FCCLA at Portal Middle High School help with breakfast, and this year also provided a rest stop and tours for cyclists at the Portal turpentine still.
    "We at the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center expect to continue growing the relationship between ourselves and the Portal Heritage Society for the development of programs for our youth," said Gayle Jackson.

    Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.