Horace Wyatt – a servant’s heart in Dublin

DUBLIN – Horace Wyatt has been the Mayor of Dublin on and off for the better part of three decades and his passion for his town has only grown stronger.

Born in Columbus County about 8 miles south of Bladenboro, Wyatt or “The Wyatt Earp of Dublin” as some call him has harvested a lot of wisdom in his 77 years on this earth and the town of Dublin is blessed to be recipients from all of his life experiences.

He was born into a North Carolina tobacco farm family and earned his work ethic while learning from his parents. In addition to the arduous task of raising tobacco, the family also raised pigs, had a horse, a mule and a cow according to Wyatt.

“We were out there at five and 6 years old and as my dad would plow and cover the tobacco, we would follow behind him and uncover the leaves so the tobacco would grow better,” he said. “I started driving a tractor at 6 years old. We also raised corn and soybeans and cucumbers.”

It wasn’t all work for Wyatt as a youngster as he was also talented enough to be involved in athletics.

“I played baseball in high school,” he said. “I wanted to play basketball and baseball but dad said he couldn’t afford to let me go for all of it. I played for Evergreen High School. It’s not a high school now. It cut back to a primary school in 1965. In fact, my class was the last class to go to that high school.”

After high school, Wyatt moved up to live closer to his sister in Richmond, Virginia. He took a job there as an accountant and as the draft for Vietnam began to ramp up in 1965, his thoughts turned to the military. He would try to get other jobs at the time, but everyone wanted someone that had fulfilled their military obligation. After studying for three months at Southern States to be an accountant, he decided to enlist in the Air Force.

He did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and from there went to Chanute Air Force Base in Champaign County, Illinois, for training. He then was deployed to Okinawa for 18 months and came back and was stationed in Las Vegas. During his time in the military, he was working as a mechanic on fighter aircraft and they repaired aircraft that were able to come back from Vietnam.

When he got home, he stayed close to the military by joining the Air National Guard. After 27 years of military service, he has since retired.

“I stayed in the Air Force from 1965 until 1969,” he said. “When I got out and came home, jobs were hard to find. Everywhere I went I was told, ‘we’ll let you know… we’ll let you know’ and I finally saw this little sign that talked about a telephone job. And I thought I’d try that. I applied and they said, ‘I’ll let you know.’”

After hearing those words that began to haunt him, he decided to take a chance and speak up.

“I told the guy that was interviewing me, ‘Sir I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I’ve got a wife and baby to feed and I can’t feed them on ‘I’ll let you know.’ He said, ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, but… I’ll let you know.’”

Wyatt left that interview in Fayetteville and headed back home which was a home next to his mother. He didn’t have a telephone at the time, and she did. She had gotten a phone call from the man in Fayetteville and when Wyatt called back, he learned that he was to report to work that next Monday. As an interesting side note, he was hired by a phone company and he didn’t have a phone, but it wasn’t soon after that he got to install his own telephone as one of his first jobs was installing residential phones.

“I hired on in 1969 and spent 40 years with them,” Wyatt said. “The first year I was living in Columbus County and then after that I moved to Bladen County. I’ve been in Bladen County ever since. After eight years of doing residential installs, I started a job installing commercial phone systems.”

Wyatt began living in White Lake at the blueberry farm and lived there for a year before moving on to Dublin in 1971 where he has resided ever since. He thrived in the small town and he said that it was an awesome place to raise his three children. He now enjoys four children and four great-grandchildren.

His recipe for keeping his youthful demeanor has been attributed to hard work, exercise which includes a 2.5 -mile daily walk, a monitored diet and the “blessings of the Lord.”

Wyatt enjoyed a 52-year love affair with his wife, Wilma. Sadly, she battled cancer and passed away in 2019. He still feels the sting of the separation from her and recalls how they met in a little bowling alley in Whiteville.

“I had just gone into the Air Force,” he said. “I was home on leave and a friend of mine and I decided to go on a double date.”

While on that date, his eye caught the eye of the one who he’d spend the rest of his life with. Only – it was not his date, but another woman. It was his Wilma.

A year later they were married.

“She had two cancers,” he said of his wife’s final chapters. “It seemed like when they treated one cancer, it would aggravate the other one. She finally couldn’t handle it anymore. My wife was very independent. She could do anything in the world. She could lay tile, make curtains, cover furniture – whatever she had a mind to do, she did. When she died, it was a big adjustment, but thank the Lord I had a loving family, and a loving church family. People that don’t believe in prayer and they don’t have these families to lean on – I don’t know how they make it.”

He praises his family and especially his daughters-in-laws for picking up the slack and helping him at the times he was most alone.

Now, here was a man who was working full time for the phone company, was active in the National Guard and raising a family. That would have been enough for most people, but politics came knocking on his door asking for help and since he’s not a man that likes to say “no” – he answered his town’s call.

“When one of my sons got to be 7 years old, I began coaching Dixie Baseball,” he said. “The president of Dixie Youth got out of it, and I took the position not knowing there were about 10,000 things involved with that position that most people don’t know about. From there I joined the fire department and got involved with them. Through that I found out that in our small town, there are not a lot of people wanting to run for office. I saw a need for commissioner at that time and ran for the board and got it.”

He went on to serve as a commissioner for six years before he ran for mayor and stayed in that position from 1994-97. After a few years hiatus, he ran again and served 20 years on that stretch.

“When my wife got cancer, I stepped down,” he said. “I decided in 2017 to give it up and take care of her and chose to be there when she needed me and not have other commitments.”

He decided to give that gift of unconditional attention from that point until she passed. He didn’t jump back into the mayor’s chair immediately, but after a while, he had some people approach him to run again. He didn’t want to get into it again, but to those who asked him, he made them a promise.

“If I’m written in, and I get enough write-in votes, I’ll consider it,” he said. “And lo and behold, I got a bunch of write-in votes and I was once again Dublin’s mayor.”

He has recently held that position since 2023 and remains humble about the appointment and though he’s done his duty many times over and could just be content to retire and do the things he wants to do, he feels such a passion for the people and the town.

“I realized that somebody’s got to do it,” he said. “And even though I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, I felt like I have the ability to lead and through other things I have done, I thought that maybe I could be of some assistance to show the direction that the town needs to go and encourage them.”

He has been a permanent fixture in town. He has been the mayor and he can be seen out cutting other people’s grass. He has raised children, been a deacon at the church, taken on the accounting duties for the annual peanut festival, been a champion of the town and has planted his precious love in the local cemetery. He has a rich history in Dublin.

His final thoughts of the interview were given after a moment of reflecting upon something he wanted to share with others.

“Put your trust in God,” he said. “If you take your Bible you can find a solution to every problem you have. God has blessed me and my family – I don’t know why, but He has blessed us tremendously. As for me, I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but when I walk down the street, I want people to say, ‘There goes a good man.’ I don’t know if I’ll reach that or not, but that’s the goal. I’ve had a good run and it’s not over yet.”

Meet the Mayors of Bladen is a series highlighting those chosen to preside over our towns. It is the hope of the Bladen County Journal that you will be able to see the people behind the title and get to know them on a more informed level. We will highlight one mayor during the coming weeks as a special investigative segment leading up to the national election in November.