{"id":2908,"date":"2023-02-06T10:32:26","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T15:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2023-02-06T10:32:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T15:32:26","slug":"homecoming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2023\/homecoming\/","title":{"rendered":"Homecoming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Littleton, N.C. \u2013 The massive lumber trucks still rumble through downtown Littleton, hauling timber taken from the stands of pines and hardwoods that hug the country roads, headed to a paper mill east of town. They drive straight through, stopping only at the single stoplight in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long ago, the trucks drove through a nearly empty town. But today there are cars parked along Main Street, in front of the library, an upholstery shop, a nail salon, a clothing store, a thrift store. And then there are the new businesses\u2009\u2014\u2009a coffee shop, a wine store, an art gallery and an upscale restaurant\u2009\u2014\u2009all of them filling in what were previously vacant storefronts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A drone photograph shows downtown Littleton looking west.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A photo of Littleton in the early 1900s, when the circus came to town.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ed and Deb Fitts helped the Roanoke Valley Veteran\u2019s Museum relocate to Littleton after the museum lost its home in Roanoke Rapids<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Just down the road is the Littleton High School building. The school closed its doors in 1973, but its auditorium has been renovated into a state-of-the-art performance venue. In the refurbished gym, new hardwood floors shine while students from Littleton Academy study robotics and financial literacy in a K-6 private school that opened next door to the arts center. Nearby, bulldozers work the old football field in preparation for a 150-seat outdoor amphitheater that will bring free concerts to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new activity in Littleton\u2009\u2014\u2009a small town near the Virginia border and the shores of Lake Gaston\u2009\u2014\u2009is due to the investment of Ed Fitts \u201961 and his wife, Deb. Fitts grew up in a small white house near downtown, raised by a single mother. After getting a degree in industrial engineering at NC State, he went to work in the packaging industry and built a company that became one of the nation\u2019s largest suppliers of fast-food containers. After he sold the company, Ed and Deb Fitts opened a winery in Napa Valley, but sold it in 2019, leaving them free to turn more of their attention to Ed\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Fittses round a corner near a mural welcoming visitors with the words, \u201cGateway to Beautiful Lake Gaston.\u201d<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Littleton, like many small towns across North Carolina and the nation, has been steadily losing population, going from 1,000 in 1960 to a little over 600 today. Until recently, most of its downtown businesses were long shuttered. The last train came through in 1982. While Lake Gaston draws owners of vacation homes and day trippers, most travelers had been skipping over Littleton. But since the Fittses began their effort to revitalize Littleton about five years ago, Littleton is becoming a destination. So far, they have opened an upscale restaurant, a coffee shop and a wine store, renovated the old high school building and turned part of it into the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center, and opened a private K-6 school with scholarships available for any student in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left, Fitts still has the poster advertising the football schedule when he was a senior in high school and played on the team. Right, the white house where Ed grew up. Today the Fittses have a home a few blocks from downtown.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve heard of Fitts, it\u2019s likely because his name is on the new Fitts-Woolard Hall on Centennial Campus and the Edward P. Fitts Jr. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in recognition of his transformational philanthropy. But you won\u2019t see his name on anything in Littleton\u2009\u2014\u2009not the school, not the arts center, not the restaurant. The only outward signs of his influence are the paper signs posted in the windows of the library and town hall directing patrons to connect to WiFi at the Ed Fitts Charitable Foundation, which brought connectivity to a town that had been bypassed by efforts to bring broadband to rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn every small town, there\u2019s somebody who made it,\u201d says Stacey Woodhouse, a former Warren County, N.C., economic development director who now consults for the Fittses. \u201cBut the difference is, they don\u2019t come back to help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn every small town, there\u2019s somebody who made it. But the difference is, they don\u2019t come back to help.\u201d
\u2014 Stacey Woodhouse, Consultant<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A Teardown<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, it started at a class reunion. The Littleton High School Class of 1957\u2009\u2014\u2009often joined by folks from the classes of \u201956 or \u201958\u2009\u2014\u2009get together nearly every year. \u201cWe rented a place at the lake,\u201d Ed says. \u201cPeople would come for the day and picnic and bring a covered dish the way people do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deb chimes in: \u201cWe\u2019d watch a game, have dinner, talk\u2009\u2014\u2009it was a weekend outing. The guys all played sports together. They would talk about the games.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow we beat them up and who scored what,\u201d Ed says, filling in the sentence the way married couples sometimes do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at one of these gatherings in 2017, as Ed Fitts remembers it, that \u201cTerry Newsom showed up with a piece of paper in his hand.\u201d Newsom was on the board of directors of the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center, a small community theater organization that had been operating out of the old high school building. He\u2019d signed a note for a loan of nearly $200,000 to pay for roof repairs and it was coming due. Could Fitts help?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fitts had already pitched in here and there around town. In 2014, he\u2019d helped the library get a new location, telling them if they would raise $25,000, he would match it. They did and he did. He\u2019d helped pay for the planting of the crepe myrtles that still bloom along the downtown streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deb and Ed agreed to pay for the new roof. Then, like a home renovation project\u2009\u2014\u2009the kind where you start out to replace the cabinets and then realize you need to replace the countertops too\u2009\u2014\u2009one thing led to another. The school building was in worse shape than they realized. The roof was leaking so badly that kiddie pools on the second floor were used to catch rainwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Deb and Ed Fitts during the renovation of the gym, which was about to be torn down. Photograph courtesy of Peter Holloway.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The unrestored scoreboard. Photograph courtesy of Peter Holloway.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The original scoreboard, with an 8-minute timer for basketball quarters, has been restored. Ed Fitts was the high scorer his senior yea<\/em>r.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n
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The gym at Littleton Academy is full of activity again after decades of neglect.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

The volunteer group that had been running the community theater had not had the funds to maintain it. The school gym\u2009\u2014\u2009where Fitts was the leading scorer on the basketball team his senior year\u2009\u2014\u2009had been abandoned for years and was in danger of collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe walked in\u2009\u2014\u2009it was a teardown,\u201d Deb Fitts says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA disaster,\u201d Ed says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the gym, the walls were falling in, the hardwood floors had two feet of water underneath. There were broken windows, holes in the floor from rot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t bear to see my high school like this,\u201d Fitts remembers thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can\u2019t bear to see my high school like this.\u201d
\u2014 Ed Fitts \u201961<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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With an old chalkboard behind him, Ed Fitts \u201961 stands in the long-closed Littleton High School building. Fitts is helping refurbish his old school.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Stretching a Dollar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ed Fitts was born in Macon, N.C., a crossroads near the train tracks down the road from Littleton. His mother and father separated when he was five. He and his mother and older brother moved in with his grandparents in a 3-bedroom home in Littleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mother got child support of $25 a month for each of her sons, and raised the family on that income along with occasional stints working as a practical nurse or painting portraits for folks in town. \u201cShe was so frugal she could feed a family of five on $10 a week,\u201d Fitts says. \u201cShe could stretch a dollar further than anyone you knew.\u201d He remembers home-canned butterbeans and tomatoes. Potatoes and onions were stored under the house, which was raised up off the ground with no cellar, and on winter nights the wind would come through the floorboards in his bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were poor,\u201d Fitts says. \u201cBut the good news is, we didn\u2019t know it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fitts started earning his own money at age 12, delivering newspapers for $5 a week on a
3-mile bike route. Collection day was the hardest. (\u201cThe front door would open\u2009\u2014\u2009and then you\u2019d hear the back door slam,\u201d he says, adding that someone on that route still owes him 85 cents.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were poor, but the good news is, we didn\u2019t know it.\u201d
\u2014 Ed Fitts \u201961<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Back in those days, the train carried bales of cotton through Littleton. That was long before the Roanoke River was dammed to create Lake Gaston, which straddles North Carolina and Virginia and is now the site of thousands of vacation homes. Fitts remembers the river crossing at Eaton\u2019s Ferry\u2009\u2014\u2009now the name of a marina on the lake\u2009\u2014\u2009where a raft went along guide ropes pulled by mules on either shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school, Fitts took Latin and agriculture. He played football, basketball and in his senior year, baseball. (\u201cThey only had eight guys,\u201d he says.) He still has the poster with the 1956 football game schedule, with a score written in pencil beside each date. In 1957 he graduated along with 22 other classmates in the high school auditorium, enrolled at NC State and headed to Raleigh. An uncle had left him some money to help pay for college, and he paid for a semester by working at a paper mill in Roanoke Rapids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen I had to borrow money from my mom for my senior year,\u201d Fitts says. \u201cI paid it back in two years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once-in\u2013a-Lifetime Opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today Fitts is tall and lean with piercing blue eyes and a shock of well-groomed white hair. At 83, he grabs a cane when he needs it. He\u2019ll wink, tell you a dad joke, and stop a conversation to say: \u201cFunny story about that.\u201d And it usually is a funny story\u2009\u2014\u2009or at least an interesting one. Like the time he and Deb hosted the entire Cleveland Cavaliers team, including LeBron James, at their winery for a wine-tasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days before the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center\u2019s grand opening in September, he\u2019s in the lobby and passes a young man sitting behind a desk with a sign: \u201cWILL CALL.\u201d \u201cSo,\u201d Fitts says to the man with a wink, \u201cYour name is Will?\u201d They laugh, and Ed puts out a hand and introduces himself as he does to most everyone: \u201cI\u2019m Ed Fitts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A bird\u2019s-eye view of the original school building shows the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center. Littleton Academy classes are also held in the gym at top of photo. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Above, the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center features a bright and open gallery space where Ed and Deb admire the art. Right, Ed and Deb sit for a portrait.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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People describe Fitts as down to earth. \u201cI have been around other people who are extremely wealthy, and they make sure you know it,\u201d says Angel Jones, the assistant head of school at Littleton Academy. She remembers sitting beside Fitts at a meeting and not realizing who he was. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t know it\u2019s Ed and Deb Fitts unless you know it\u2019s Ed and Deb Fitts,\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The couple maintains homes in Florida, Pennsylvania and Cabo San Lucas in the Baja California section of Mexico. So it makes some sense that they would add a house in Ed\u2019s hometown to the list. Two years ago, they renovated a 1940s brick house only a few blocks from downtown, not far from Fitts\u2019 childhood home. \u201cWe knew if we were going to do this, we couldn\u2019t have a house on the lake,\u2019\u2019 Deb says. \u201cWe needed to be part of the community. We needed to be in town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n