Summerfield media mogul Don Wendelken gave a lot of Summerfield residents quite a scare when they woke up on April 1 and saw his news story that read,

“On Tuesday, April 1, 2025, NC will vote to remove Summerfield’s Charter. NC House Bill 1313 (HB1313) will be debated and passed on to the Senate for a final vote. The bill appeared out of nowhere and has caught the attention of many in Guilford County.”

While it was an April Fool’s Day joke, the truly funny thing about the story – and the reason it caused a lot of hearts in that town to skip a beat – is that it is so utterly believable given the intense drama that has been coming out of that small town of 11,000 people in recent years.

There has been everything from the years-long legal battle of former Town Council member Todd Rotruck attempting to regain his seat, to the day last year when the entire Summerfield town staff resigned all at once in a protest against the way the Town Council had treated the former town manager.

The drama is still going on with the Town Council now investigating the actions of the former administration.

Last year, when farmer and developer David Couch requested and received the right from state legislators to de-annex roughly 1,000 acres of land in the town in order to move forward with a residential and mixed-use development, there was some serious talk among legislators as to whether Summerfield should continue being a town.

Wendelken is a polarizing figure in Summerfield but it is undeniable that he provides the community with a lot of information as to what is going on in the northeastern section of Guilford County. He owns a newspaper and a well-trafficked news website and he has often broadcast live streams of Town of Summerfield meetings that would otherwise not be viewable online.

In the April Fool’s Day story Wendelken wrote: “Since the news broke, Guilford County officials are planning a Special Called Meeting to ensure Summerfield can transition back into an unincorporated area. The move has also caught the attention of Greensboro officials. They are revising their long-term plans to annex Summerfield because of the housing shortage. Summerfield officials are still in shock and hope to return to everyday life. They said those complaining and arguing about politics in Summerfield will need to find a new hobby, move on, and positively influence society.”

Wendelken wrote that the breaking story would be updated as more information is released before he provided readers with an “APRIL FOOLS” in all caps at the end.

The printed version of the Rhino Times used to come out on Thursdays, and, on average, April 1 fell on Thursday once every 11 years.  When that happened, the paper would do April Fool’s stories just as Wendelken did this year.  A couple of classics from the Rhino Times were that the Rhino would, due to state law, have to begin charging readers for the paper as well as another story that High Point was breaking away from Guilford County and forming the state’s 101st county.

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