This local 911 supervisor’s gingerbread skills will be showcased on Food Network

Working as a 911 supervisor for Horry County, Sharon Buckwell has countered the stress of the job by making gingerbread houses in her spare time.

In fact, she and her daughter, Sarah Cummings, own and run a local business, The Gingerbread Ladies, that sells elaborate structures the Conway residents have come to be known for locally.

On Sunday, a national audience will get to see Buckwell’s talent.

She is among the competitors on the third episode, “Fright Night,” of the inaugural season of “Haunted Gingerbread Showdown” on the Food Network, which is set to air at 10 p.m. Sunday. The series was recorded in June in Denver, Buckwell said.

The winners of each of the first three shows — disclosure agreements disallow Buckwell from revealing her fate ahead of time — will appear on a fourth episode to determine an overall winner who gets the $25,000 grand prize.

“We had the time of our lives,” said Buckwell, who saw an advertisement for the show on Facebook and decided to give it a shot.

Buckwell said her job with Horry County graciously allowed her to leave for the one to potentially three weeks — depending on how far she got — she’d be gone for filming.

Buckwell said doing gingerbread has provided balance while doing an important, yet stressful, job.

“Gingerbreading is my release from 911. When I get into gingerbread mode, the whole world disappears and I’m focused,” said Buckwell, who is originally from Canada but has lived on the Grand Strand since 1990. “It doesn’t really matter what’s going on around me because I’m not going to pay any attention to it.”

That focus helped ease the pressure of being on camera for a national audience, she said. Buckwell said she and her daughter have been on local TV shows to display their work, but being on national programming — and having a Halloween theme — was a whole new experience.

The first show had competitors using a “Beetlejuice” theme, the second was a Halloween party and the third will be a haunted theme park.

“Instead of doing Santa Clauses and wreaths, I was doing ghosts and goblins and mummies and spiders,” she said. “It was certainly a challenge and very different.”

Buckwell typically makes gingerbread houses that are up to 7 or 8 inches. In competitions — either she or her daughter has won the past nine hosted by Original Benjamin’s Calabash Seafood — structures are as large as 2 feet. In the Food Network competition, the houses are 4 feet by 4 feet and 40 inches tall.

“The scale was something that, oh my goodness, is huge,” said Buckwell, who started doing gingerbread in 1980. “I’m used to working on a 24-inch board, and this is double the size.”

Buckwell’s daughter helped her prepare in what she described as a short time span — “It was a madhouse getting it done,” she said — and is responsible for an octopus named Fred who will be part of her exhibit, which crashes to the floor during the show, a trailer teases.

“Everybody’s very supportive, and they’re excited,” Buckwell said of friends and family.

“Hey, they know somebody who’s on the Food Network,” she added with a laugh.

This story was originally published October 20, 2018 at 5:20 PM.