NCACC mourns death of its original field administrator

By Jason King
Assistant Communications Director

Say this for Frank Lewis: You knew when he had arrived.

Lewis (with son Frankie and former NCACC Executive Director Ron Aycock) joined Association staff for Lina Imes' retirement celebration in January 2006. (Photo by Jason King)

It was during the 1977 NCACC Annual Conference in Mecklenburg County, as Deputy Director Patrice Roesler recalls, that Lewis, hauling a trailer full of conference materials and supplies, pulled into the conference hotel's parking garage. Unfortunately for Lewis – and everyone else at the hotel – the trailer, standing a little too tall, struck a sprinkler head, knocking it off and setting off the other sprinklers as well as the alarm system.

"So there we are at check-in with all the commissioners," Roesler recalls, "and there are fire trucks and ladders everywhere. Of course they evacuated the hotel."

It wasn't his most graceful entrance. He probably experienced a handful of other mishaps during his travels across the state as the NCACC's field representative from September 1969 until his retirement in December 1981, but there was no doubting Lewis' knowledge of and dedication to North Carolina's counties and their elected and appointed leaders.

Lewis, who was responsible for bringing North Carolina county membership in the NCACC and the National Association of Counties (NACo) to 100 counties during his 12 years on the job, died June 4 at the age of 93.

He was hired Sept. 15, 1969, making history by becoming the first field representative for a state association of counties in the nation. According to former NCACC Executive Director Ron Aycock, a NACo grant paid Lewis' salary for his first couple of years at the NCACC.

As a five-term mayor for the Town of Lillington in his native Harnett County, Lewis had first-hand knowledge of what it was like to walk in the shoes of a local elected leader. According to Aycock, that knowledge became an essential component of the Association as it began to evolve and grow in the mid- to late-1970s.

"He did a good job of teaching me about the real side of county government," said Aycock, who joined the staff in 1973 and ascended to executive director in 1977. "I viewed it from law books, but he knew it from the ground and helped me understand … it was the people that were important.

"We would go to district meetings and he would explain the people and the politics and the relationships in every county we went through."

Lewis was adept at taking new employees under his wing. Ed Regan came aboard as a fiscal analyst in November 1979, and later ascended to deputy director.

"Frank was the oldest member of the staff when I came aboard," Regan said. "You expect someone like that to be a curmudgeon … he was just the opposite. He was someone who nurtured folks along. He wasn't warm and fuzzy, but he would help people along."

While the NCACC staff was growing, Aycock credited Lewis with helping to maintain the family atmosphere within the Association, calling him "a grandfather in residence" to his two children when staff and membership gathered at conferences and meetings. At NACo legislative and annual conferences, his wife, Mary Lee, also helped build the Association as a family operation. The two frequently held court in the NCACC's hospitality suite, and Mary Lee made a lot of the food served in the suite, Roesler recalled.

Butch Gunnells, who joined the staff in 1977 as counsel for intergovernmental relations, and his wife thought of Frank and Mary Lee as a second set of parents – for good reason.

Roughly 150 friends turned out Jan. 28, 1982, for a retirement reception for Frank Lewis (speaking). Also pictured are Lewis' late wife, Mary Lee, and then-NCACC Executive Director Ron Aycock. (Photo courtesy Lina Imes)

Gunnells said he was driving to a county attorneys association conference in Nags Head one year along with Office Manager Gail Johnson – and since she was between boyfriends at the time – was talking to her about fixing her up on a blind date with one of his friends from Charlotte.

One day during the conference after the day's events had wrapped up, Gunnells headed out to the beach with Lewis. As the pair sat on their beach towels, Johnson walked by in a bikini.

"Frank elbowed me and said, 'You ever think about that?'" Gunnells remembered. "I said, 'No, Frank, actually I haven't.'" He started thinking about it at that moment.

"I owe my getting married to Gail to Frank, for getting me off my butt," Gunnells said. "I loved him dearly."

It was fitting, then, that the Gunnells held their wedding reception at the Albert Coates Local Government Center.

If opposites do indeed attract, Lewis may have also found his perfect match at the Association in Director of Information Jerry Elliott, who was hired two and a half months before Lewis in 1969.

"Jerry Elliott was our newspaper guy," Regan remembered. "Jerry was a big tall guy, and very hyper. Frank on the other hand was very laid back, and short."

Regan recalled one day, as Lewis sat in Elliott's office, a young man with no apparent handicap pulled his car into the Association's lone handicap parking spot - which happened to be just outside the window of Elliott's office - got out and walked off.

"Jerry says, 'Look at that guy! There's nothing wrong with him! What nerve!'" Regan said. "Frank just leaned back in his chair and said 'Maybe the guy can't read.' Jerry said, 'That's no excuse!' … Frank just tipped his head to the side and said, 'That's a handicap too.'"

It was Lewis who began the "internal employment agency" service of matching boards of county commissioners with county managers, Aycock said, "a process for the Association that paid dividends for years and years."

Robert Hester, who was serving as NCACC second vice president and as a Bladen County commissioner at the time of Lewis' retirement, later succeeded Lewis as field administrator and continued and built upon that program.

"He set the standards that we are still trying to reach today in terms of touching base with people in the field and visiting each county in the state," Hester said. "He was well-known in every county in this state. I never heard a bad word said about the man."

According to Hester, Lewis worked with numerous counties to set up the commission-manager form of government, which in some fashion is now used in all 100 counties.

"When he first came on board, there were not that many counties with managers," Hester said. Many of those counties designated their finance officers as the person in charge, Hester explained, but those designees were not administrators.

"Many times he would get a county manager who was perfectly happy where he was, and a county commissioner in a county that had a manager, and send them as a team to the county considering that form of government," he said. "He made a great contribution there."

Lewis created a lot of perfect matches for many counties across the state. According to Hester, Roesler, Aycock and many others who knew him, he was also a perfect match for the Association.