Sounds of music and the smell of home-cooked food filled the once-empty community center at the end of Jones Road in the Midway community Saturday afternoon.

Residents gathered at the center for Midway Day -- an annual cookout and gathering held every fall to celebrate Midway's heritage.

"This is an effort to bring people back and see how everyone's doing," Albert Thomas, vice president of the Midway Community Association, said. "It's reinforcing values."

This year's Midway Day was especially meaningful because of the strides the aging community has made toward revitalization and maintaining its family-oriented values.

Midway looks forward to welcoming new residents to the community with new housing provided by a Habitat for Humanity project that is currently being considered for approval by the town of Aberdeen. The community also looks forward to more improvements provided by the town, specifically streetlights to make the community safer at night.

Residents began receiving other town services, including trash pickup, and water and sewer, this past summer after Aberdeen annexed the community through legislative action by the N.C. General Assembly.

Thomas said that though the excitement about progress in Midway is tangible, residents coming together for fellowship is an old tradition.

"It's different because we have a lot more to be thankful for, but this is something we have every year," Thomas said.

Maurice Holland Sr., president of the Midway Community Association, said the community is ready to show its neighbors that Midway's residents are not "worthless" and "nonproductive" -- misconceptions that have evolved from decades of exclusion.

He said Midway is exactly the opposite -- a safe, family-oriented community whose children have grown up to become model citizens.

Though so much change is coming to the community, Holland believes in the reinforcement of community history and values for the children of older residents.

"You can't move on if you don't know where you came from," Holland said.

Andrea Seagraves currently lives in the Berkley community, but she never hesitates to tell people where her true home is.

"Midway is always going to be my home," she said.

Among old friends and relatives, Seagraves expressed excitement when talking about the new residents that a proposed Habitat for Humanity project will bring to the community.

"Can you imagine how Midway is really going to lighten up?" she said. "It's such an emotional feeling to know where Midway came from."

Seagraves credits much of her upbringing to the residents of "good old Midway."

"Everybody raised everybody's children," she said. "It was an intangible experience."

Seagraves said she wishes her grandmother, Minnie Ray, could see how far the community has come.

Ray was one of the community's most influential leaders when it first began its struggle for better living standards and equal recognition.

"She wanted everything to be up to speed with all other communities," Seagraves said.

Ray died in 2003, but Seagraves believes her grandmother's spirit is still a presence in Midway.

Deacon Leslie Jones, the community's oldest resident and one of the few original community organizers still living, was happy to see that so many had come back home to celebrate Midway.

"Thank God," he told Holland.

Holland, who is one of the younger community residents at the age of 65, enjoyed watching children playing together as old friends and family sat around catching up with each other. The scene was reminiscent of his childhood, when the community always came together for fellowship.

"I just love to see everybody get together," Holland said. "That's a meal by itself to me."

Now that Midway has realized its potential for progress and inclusion with the town of Aberdeen, Thomas said he knows that Midway must become a cooperative presence in town government and the surrounding communities to revitalize itself and to truly become a part of Aberdeen.

"It's up to us now," he said. "The door is open."

Hannah Sharpe can be reached at (910) 693-2485.