Published: Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 12:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 8:34 a.m.

Marrio Jeter was looking for a rock to place in front of the Mosley Performance Learning Center. He figured students could spray paint it and start a new tradition.

Since fall, the former Blount Elementary School building at 3702 Princess Place Dr. has housed Mosley Performance Learning Center, which serves about 80 high school students who do better in a nontraditional school program, and the New Hanover County Pathways Program, with about 50 kids serving suspensions of a semester or longer.

Jeter found a perfect rock in a small wooded area on school grounds.

But the rock is already being used. An engraving on it marks the site of the Essie R. Miller Memorial Garden.

Who was Essie Miller? Jeter wondered.

Jeter, site coordinator at the school for Communities In Schools of Cape Fear, cleared away fallen limbs and debris and uncovered a semicircle of flat stone markers.

They are engraved with the names of people such as Linda L. Keifer, apparently with the Blount's Parent Teacher Organization from 1969 to 1998, Mamie Brown Harris, Felice Sadgwar and the T.C. Jervay family, and others.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20120107/COLUMNIST/120109779?p=2&tc=pg