Saxapahaw’s ‘swan lady’ is community ambassador

There’s no charge to attend “Saturdays in Saxapahaw.” These community gatherings on a grassy hillside have been described as “a farmers’ market on steroids.”

 

Each event runs from 5-8 p.m. and features fresh produce, live music, artists’ booths, children’s activities and food trucks. The season continues through August. 

Patrons are encouraged to donate cash to compensate the performers. Just toss your money into one of the plastic swan buckets on stage. The big tip jars have character. The containers were the idea of Heather LaGarde, a local entrepreneur. 

She’s been known to take one down and pass it around. Folks call her “the swan lady”…and that makes Heather blush as well as laugh.

 

Saxapahaw is situated on the Haw River in Alamance County. The main road nearby is N.C. Route 87, one of the state’s “true-blue highways.” 

The centerpiece of the community is an old textile mill complex that has been reinvented as an arts and entertainment/food and drink venue that also offers condominium and apartment living options.

 

Heather and Tom LaGarde left New York City to move into a rundown farmhouse just outside Saxapahaw after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Watching the World Trade Center towers come down in flames “unmoored us,” Heather said. They had two young children.

 

It was a homecoming of sorts. Heather grew up nearby in Chapel Hill but graduated from Bard College at Annadale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Tom grew up in Detroit, Mich., but graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…where he played some hoops for legendary coach Dean Smith. 

Tommy LaGarde, as Tar Heel network sports broadcaster Woody Durham always called him, was second team All-America in 1977. LaGarde’s No. 45 is one of only 51 honored players’ jerseys that hang from the rafters at the Smith Center.

 

After four knee surgeries, Tom LaGarde retired from professional basketball in 1985. (His trophy case includes a gold medal as a member of the Team USA basketball squad in the 1976 Olympics.)

 

He found work selling stocks and bonds on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley. Since he couldn’t run with banged up knees, Tom LaGarde stayed in shape by rollerblading. Then, he added a basketball, forming the National Inline Basketball League (NIBBL). 

Franz Lidz wrote a nice piece about roller basketball for Sports Illustrated in 1993. Tom LaGarde introduced the sport to disadvantaged kids in Harlem and on the Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 

One day, Heather Harding came to watch, and she met Tom. They were married in 1998. Her career in international relations involved events management. She had done a lot of consulting for United Nations’ initiatives and different global nonprofit projects. They always had some kind of an arts or music component, she said. 

“I believe you can really bring people together that way. I could never have seen that the path would take me to Saxapahaw, but I’m so glad it did.” 

The LaGardes created the Haw River Ballroom at the old mill in Saxapahaw and have helped launch other complementary business enterprises as well.

 

When Meredith Stutz was a broadcast journalism student at Elon University in 2016, she “landed” an interview with Heather LaGarde. They took a walking tour of the community. “Everybody knows you, Meredith remarked, “you’re a celebrity.” 

“No! I’m really not,” Heather replied. “If you were walking around with anybody in Saxapahaw, you would see that everybody loves each other like that. In this town, more people blow kisses than wave; they really do.” 

“I’m just the swan lady here,” Heather said.