Daily Tar Heel staff writer Avishai Halev sat down with Chapel Hill resident Chris Smith for Town Talk's weekly Humans of Chapel Hill feature.
To view the original Humans of New York blog, see here.
“I do a poem for Martin Luther King every year, I make a poem about everything.
“I wrote a poem, it’s about three pages long, about what happened on 9/11, and every time I read it, it makes me sad. I saw the thing on TV, you know, people jumping out the window, and it was like a movie, but it was real life.”
What has been your greatest accomplishment?
“I played against Michael Jordan when he first came. They used to stay over at Granville Towers, and we’d all go over there in the summertime and play with the basketball players. We played them five times, they only won once. He talked a lot of junk during the game, I remember that.”
Halev also sat down with Ashish Patel, manager of Franklin Street Market.
What is your favorite thing about Chapel Hill?
“Everybody’s happy. I had a store in Ohio, people would go to work in the morning, everybody’s tired, they’re not happy, you know. But here, everybody’s happy, it makes you happy too, you know.”
What are you most proud of?
“My kids. So far I have two kids, and one is 14 years old, and he is good in study, he took pre-SAT in 7th grade and got 1600. So that time, I feel real proud.
“My other son, he wants to be a soccer player, he’s doing good and his coach tell me he’s ready for the club game, and that felt good.”
What is your greatest worry right now?
“I don’t have worry, but, you know I’m blessed.
“I’m here, on immigration, I’m still waiting on my green card, I’ve been waiting eight years, it’s almost here, but it keeps me from going anywhere. I can’t go back, but that is out of my hands. My kids want to see where I grew up, but I never got the chance to take them, only four years left then he will be in the college, then probably he will not.”
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