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Dunn Group Recalls Hodges' Aid to Town

Topics: Luther Hodges

Dunn Group Recalls Hodges' Aid to Town

The Daily Record (Dunn, North Carolina)
21 May 1952

A group of prominent Dunn citizens, recalling how Luther Hodges helped secure the paving of the Dunn-Newton Grove Road, today issued a statement in which they endorsed the prominent industrialist for the office of Lieutenant Governor.

Citizens who signed the statement were: J. Shepard Bryan, Henry M. Tyler, Herbert B. Taylor and Carl E. Fitchett.

Following is the text of their statement:

A Community which forgets its friends itself deserves to be forgotten!

This little bit of Dunn history will bring to mind to older citizens that about fifteen years ago there came into being a paved highway into Dunn as the result of the efforts exerted by Luther Hodges on behalf of the community of Dunn.

Prior to the intervention of Luther Hodges in behalf of Dunn, leading citizens of Dunn over a long period of time had repeatedly tried to induce the Highway Commission to pave the Dunn-to-Newton Grove Road; but these citizens were never able to make any headway, due to the fact that more powerful adverse influences were at work, and able to secure committments to the exclusion of Newton Grove Highway.

EFFORTS SEEMED FUTILE

All through the administrations of three Governors: Morrison, McLean and Gardner, did the citizens of Dunn try to secure the road. Always there was an impediment. No delegation of citizens of Dunn seemed able to surmount the difficulty.

Along the road from Newton Grove to Dunn lived hundreds of substantial citizens of Sampson County who had traded in Dunn for fifty years, but who because other paved highways leading from Newton Grove to other towns in Eastern North Carolina had been forced to trade in these favored towns, to the detriment of their natural trading town of Dunn.

Finally, in the Ehringhaus administration Luther Hodges, a young man of ability, was appointed to the State Highway Commission; and because of his interest in the future of Dunn this Luther Hodges used his influence with the Commission to take notice of the need existing in respect to Dunn; and through and by his efforts the long-awaited and much needed Newton Grove Highway came into being.

When the road was completed Dunn recaptured its former business friends, much to their delight as well as to the delight of the Dunn Community.

How much this Newton Grove Highway has meant to Dunn, and to the people in Sampson County who use it, can not be calculated; but suffice it all to say that we became beneficiaries of the good offices of Luther Hodges and Capus Waynick and Governor Ehringhaus, and others in authority at that time when the die was cast in favor of Dunn and Newton Grove.

This is the first of a series of articles written in gratitude to Luther Hodges for a deliverance from the mud of the swamps and low places; and is signed by those who know by what influence and efforts we were delivered.