2025 Hometown Spirit Award Recipient

From Nominators:

You could say Carla Michaels has been a hometown Cary girl for nearly 300 years. She might not have been around when the first settlers began arriving here back in the mid-1700s, but her ancestors were! Carla has a huge pride and passion for her family and small hometown roots. She puts her extraordinary research skills to work to continually learn about Cary's past and to share that history with the community. As a member of the Board of the Friends of the Page-Walker (Cary's Historical Society) and a volunteer with Upchurch and Allied Families, she has spent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours locating and organizing information about past Cary citizens and the land they lived on, the churches they attended, the businesses they ran, the public offices they held, the schools they attended, the contributions they made, and the cemeteries they are buried in.   

Carla never turns down a request or opportunity to share what she knows about Cary. You can find her sharing Cary's history through social media, website blogs, and newsletter articles, as a presenter at local lectures and seminars, as a consultant to students working on history projects, as a docent at the historic Ivey-Ellington House, and as a guide on Cary's historic downtown walking tours where she enthusiastically tells participants about Cary's history dressed as an early 1900s school teacher!  The  participants love her historic perspective based on her own experiences growing up in Cary, and the stories she tells about her ancestors who helped shape Cary.  Carla also participated on screen in both the CARY at 150 documentary and a short video the Town created to celebrate Historic Preservation Month. 

As you can imagine, Carla is a strong advocate for preserving Cary's historic buildings and properties. She serves on the Preservation Advocation Committee of the Friends of the Page-Walker and  has been influential in ensuring the preservation of the Nancy Jones House and the Ivey-Ellington House, including advocating for a new location and purpose for both houses. She also helps maintain the White Plains Cemetery and worked on behalf of a forgotten WWI veteran, requesting that the Town fill in his sinking grave at Hillcrest Cemetery and raise his headstone, which had become obscured by the ground that was swallowing it up. 

Carla's respect and admiration for those who have fought for freedom is exemplified by her long-serving participation in and dedication to the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). As a recent local Chapter Regent, Carla led the Asbury Station Chapter in the DAR's main areas of focus: education, patriotism, and historic preservation initiatives. As a current member and treasurer of the chapter, she helps and often leads event planning, fundraising, service projects, membership development and engagement, Constitution Week activities, genealogical research, discovering and marking Revolutionary War Patriots graves, scholarship distribution, and community engagement for the chapter.  Locally, these efforts help veterans, the home-bound, seniors, women, children in special circumstances, and schools. Carla is a well respected and well known member of the award-winning local chapter and under her leadership, she made new strides to re-energize the chapter, particularly in engaging and inspiring members.     

When it comes to kindness and hospitality, you would be hard pressed to find a more generous-of-heart and gracious woman than Carla. Somehow, she finds time to lead Bible study classes, prepare and serve refreshments at every event she's involved with (and there are many), and lovingly care for family members. Her values, morals, and ethics are representative of one who believes the collective prosperity of her community comes through the hard work, common sense, and selfless acts of each of its citizens. Carla humbly and authentically lives her life as one of these well grounded citizens. She lives and gives the “Cary way.” And we are all enriched because of it.