2023 Inductees

T. Marvin "Marv" Williamsen

In our Party's hour of need -- the sudden resignation of one of our Democratic members from the Watauga County Board of Elections -- Marv Williamsen allowed himself to be nominated to finish out that term, which he did (and then served two more terms until this past spring, for a total of five years service on a board that can be a center of controversy). It was baptism by fire for Marv. His first general election as a voting member of the board came just a month after he was sworn in, in November of 2018, the election when Ray Russell won his seat in the NC House. That election capped a period that saw an increased level of college student voter registration and heightened challenges in helping young people navigate the procedural hoops they have to jump through.

Before his appointment to the Board of Elections, Marv finished a distinguished career as a professor of history at ASU, specializing in the history of China. Because he's fluent in Chinese, he headed more than one early delegation to China to work out exchange agreements for Appalachian State students and faculty both. Eventually, that pilot program in China's Senyang province grew and ASU would develop exchange agreements with universities in some 25 different countries. As Director of International Programs at ASU, Marv had an active hand in all that expansion, which hundreds have taken advantage of to "internationalize" their education. Before his retirement from ASU, he was elevated to Associate Vice Chancellor for International Programs, and he has a scholarship named for him, the T. Marvin Williamsen Global Engagement Scholarship.

For these contributions to our community, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Marv Williamsen among the 2023 inductees into our Hall of Fame.

David Ragsdale

Work and family took Dave Ragsdale away from Watauga County years ago, but his crucial role in bringing the Watauga County Democratic Party out of the doldrums and into the progressive vibrancy that it represents today cannot be over-stated. Dave was elected chair of the Watauga County Democratic Party in the Coup of 1997 at a county convention that at least some of you will remember as the biggest in our history, with hundreds of delegates who voted overwhelmingly to elect new Democratic leadership to the county Executive Committee. Dave was at the top of the list of reform candidates, and with his openness, his compassion, his dedication to doing the right thing, and his unfailing good humor, he launched us as our new Chair in new directions of candidate recruitment and campaign strategies that eventually brought us to our current status as the singular blue dot on the map of western North Carolina.

The General Elections of 1998 proved that change had come when Democrats swept the election for County Commission. That was the year that both Sue Sweeting and Art Kohles took their seats. 

Dave was also always keenly interested and active in the support of public education, serving on the board of the Watauga Education Foundation. He put himself forward for the School Board and didn't stop advocating when he didn't win. Dave also happened to be our party leader when President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore came to the High Country to designate the New River the first of our National Heritage Rivers. That was a big deal for us, as the burden fell on our little Party suddenly to provide literally hundreds of volunteers and the logistics to get thousands of people to an unpopulated spot on the New River in Ashe County. The urgent visit to Boone of the President's "advance team" made for a memorable Sunday. The New River dedication proved just how deep our resources were in volunteers, in technical know-how, and in brilliant organizing. Thousands attended (and I think almost all of them got home). Dave was at the center of that planning and that execution. Plus this little known factoid: His seat on the dais got sniped at the last minute by Senator Burr.

Dave lives now in Hendersonville with his wife Debbie, but we are pleased to welcome him back to Watauga this evening, and for his many contributions to our community as an inductee into our Hall of Fame.

Dana Leon Folk

Dave Ragsdale told me that he's proudest of the new faces that the Party began to bring into races for public office after 1997. One of those new faces belonged to Dana Folk, who was heavily recruited to run for Boone Town Council in 1999 and who surprised the good ole boys down at Boone Drug when he became the top vote-getter in that race -- earned a four-year term, and incidentally proved from his first days on the council that the Dave Ragsdale era in the Democratic Party was going to be different.

Dana was born in Boone, grew up in Philadelphia, graduated there, rose to staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, traveled extensively in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Guatemala, and even Texas. After finally coming home to Boone he was hired as an officer with the Boone police (another first), followed by long-term work with the National Park Service on the Blue Ridge Parkway, maintaining the Tanawa Trail as well as the water supply in Parkway buildings, and overseeing special projects. He trained as a firefighter and fought forest fires in Washington state, Idaho, Montana, and brush fires in Texas. He's an accomplished outdoorsman and incidentally, you better know he rides a Harley. He told me that he recently won a trophy on a toy-run for tots at Chrstmas for being the oldest rider on the run.

The current Boone Town Council voted to honor Dana soon with a memorial archway over what will be named "Dana Folk Way" next to the old Farmers Hardware Building on King Street.

For these contributions to our community, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Dana Folk among the 2023 inductees into our Hall of Fame.

Susan Christman Sweeting

Sue Sweeting was another of Dave Ragsdale's new faces in politics. Her election to the Watauga County Commission -- along with fellow Democrat Art Kohles -- in the General Elections of 1998 was historic, because the Democrats regained control of the county commission for the first time in many years. Sue won her seat over an incumbent Republican who had been considered invulnerable. But scandal involving corruption in the privately owned but taxpayer subsidized ambulance service changed things, and Democrats had a winning night that November. That surprise win brought big changes both to the ambulance service and to Watauga County.

Sue helped pass the official county designation of the Doc and Merle Watson Scenic Highway, which prevented billboards and other commercial clutter on that road. Sue also began immediately making appointments of progressives to boards and commissions, the first steps in the long march that led to the eventual passage of the polluting industries ordinance to regulate the placement of new asphalt plants and other problematic land uses in populated neighborhoods or near historic rivers. What came first was passage of a year-long moratorium on polluting industries, followed by the appointment of a blue-ribbon commission to study landuse -- consisting of equal numbers of pro-zoners and anti-zoners. All that talk of "zoning" put Sue in the eye of a storm bigger than the ambulance service storm. Running for reelection in 2002, Sue, along with fellow Democrat Pat Wilkie, met the fierce, unrelenting gale-force winds of "No Zoners," who evidently thought if you regulated asphalt plants, you'd also tell farmers how many cows they could have and where to park their tractors. That was a bad year, 2002.

But you can't keep a nurse practitioner down. Sue was soon deeply involved in Blowing Rock town governance, first serving six years on the Blowing Rock Planning Board and then successfully running for the Blowing Rock Town Council, where she served for some eight years. As a health-care provider, Sue has blessed the lives of countless people during almost 40 years of dedicated work, including six years fending off mono in the AppState Student Health Service.

For these and other contributions to our community, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Sue Sweeting among the 2023 inductees into our Hall of Fame.

Patricia Wilkie

The election of Pat Wilkie to the Watauga County Commission in November of 2000 became memorable because of not one but two recounts that put her in the seat and made her a colleague of Sue Sweeting. Pat's local race mirrored the presidential election race of 2000, as the morning after Election Day, Pat was trailing her Republican opponent by 16 votes for the District Five commission seat, with some 180 provisional votes still uncounted. After that counting, Pat's deficit was cut to eight votes, and she exercised her right to a recount. By late November, the Board of Elections had not one but two recounts of that race, the final being what is known as a hand-eye recount, which finally and conclusively established definitively that Wilkie had won the seat by 10 votes

The biggest issues in 2000 were environmental concerns arising out the threat of new asphalt plants and a movement to keep billboards off the Doc and Merle Watson Scenic Highway. Pat was serving on the county commission when it sought and accepted the first grant to develop the Brookshire Road Park and Greenway and she was there to help pass the first funding for the Middlefork Greenway between Boone and Blowing Rock, and she served on board of the Daniel Boone Native Gardens.

Before she was recruited to run for Watauga County Commission, Pat had served over 11 years, starting in 1990, as executive secretary of the North Carolina Christmas Tree Association. Bringing skills she had developed in Florida as marketing director for a Florida helicopter and aerial photography company and for a ski magazine, Pat is credited with helping develop the association's first web site, and generally making the Fraser Fir the industry standard for live Christmas trees. Choose-and-cut, that annual post-Thanksgiving migration of lowland parents driving mini-vans who come to Watauga for their tree, came about under Pat's administration. Her work with the Christmas Tree Association sent her three times to the White House and to meetings with Hillary Clinton.

For these contributions to our community, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Pat Wilkie among the 2023 inductees into our Hall of Fame.

Dennis Owen Grady

The late-90s to early 2000s for Watauga Democrats meant a new energy and a volunteer-based activism. Inside the ad hoc Recruitment Committee, a determination to recruit good people to run for office led us to Dennis Grady, a professor of poli sci at AppState who was just coming off seven years of service as the department chair, also running the Master of Public Administration Program which was sending talented graduates into government all over this state and others. We talked Dennis into a race for a seat on the county commission, to run alongside Pat Wilkie as an environmental team. I told Dennis at the time that even if he lost, he could get a book out of it. (Don't know if he's written the first chapter.) I've already said 2002 was a baaaad year.

After that loss, Dennis never wavered or stopped being deeply involved with public policy in Watauga County. He was active in groups and movements that were actually making a difference. He joined the Partnership for Watauga's Future, a large coalition of both citizens and business owners, both Democrats and Republicans, who formed in 2001 and lobbied for land-use planning, successfully fought to keep billboards and clutter off the Doc & Merle Watson Scenic Byway, and became the real movement that demanded what ended up becoming the compromise High Impact Land Use ordinance that is still in effect in Watauga. Dennis was in the middle of all of that.

He also incidentally ran ASU's Energy Center for seven years and was the board chair of the Watauga Youth Network during an ambitious building campaign that included raising money to renovate the old Junaluska Elementary School. He and Martha moved to Radford, Va., so he could become dean of its graduate school, but they came back to Watauga after Dennis retired, and he immediately jumped in again with the Party, serving as precinct chair of New River 1 until very recently.

For these contributions to our community, the Watauga Democratic Party is so very pleased to honor Dennis Grady among the 2023 inductees into our Hall of Fame.