LUMBERTON — A national retailer that specializes in selling items for a dollar donated 10,000 of them Friday so West Lumberton Elementary School can continue its recovery from Hurricane Matthew.

During a ceremony held at Lumberton Junior High School because West Lumberton still is closed to students Dollar General District Manager Bob Petry and local store Manager Crystal Hunt presented the school with a $10,000 oversized check through the Beyond Words Grant, the Dollar General school library relief fund. The money will be used by the school to repopulate its library, which was damaged by Matthew and the subsequent record flooding.

“Dollar General is all about serving others and the literacy foundation is one of those aspects of it,” Petry said. “So to be able to help the children in the community that we serve, and with our store on the West Fifth Street, this means the world to us to be able to help them build a new library and replace the stuff they lost during the hurricane.”

Dollar General is collaborating with the American Library Association, the American Association of School Librarians and the National Education Association in sponsoring a school library disaster relief fund for public school libraries in the states served by Dollar General.

Stephanie Thomas, the media coordinator for West Lumberton Elementary, learned of the availability of the grant in the weeks that followed Matthew and applied for the funding. She, Principal Tara Bullard and students from the school were among those at the ceremony on Friday.

West Lumberton and W.H. Knuckles elementary schools were the hardest hit of all the schools in the Public Schools of Robeson County. Their students have been moved to Lumberton Junior High, which was the venue for a broadcast in February of an edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” during which both schools’ recoveries were highlighted. Bullard and three others were recognized on the show as a “hero” for their efforts following the hurricane.

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Staff Report