Community mourns as former Mayor Chuck Allen passes

Wayne County lost a champion today.

Chuck Allen, former mayor of Goldsboro and longtime City Council member, has died after a long battle with brain cancer.

Allen was a hometown boy. He was raised in Goldsboro/Wayne County and graduated from Goldsboro High School in 1979 and from North Carolina State University in 1984.

He is founder of Allen Grading Company, a business that under his leadership has grown to 75 employees and has been a part of numerous economic development and nonprofit activities throughout the community.

But that was business. Where Allen really made his mark is what he gave to his community — often behind the scenes, with little fanfare.

He made community service look easy. And he took the slings and the arrows that often come with the work it takes to get the job done.

But Allen left his mark all over this community — engineering alliances, connections and partnerships that have led to significant advances for not only Goldsboro, but for the county and state as well.

Allen knew how to get a job done — and to enlist others to be part of the effort, too.

And you can see the results of that work all over our community.

When 3-HC was building its latest addition, Allen assembled a group of site-work contractors and convinced them to donate their services for the project, saving 3-HC more than $200,000.

Allen, in conjunction with local philanthropist David Weil, was also instrumental in coordinating donations of services for the reconstruction of the Paramount Theatre in downtown Goldsboro.

When the Boy Scouts were building bathrooms at Camp Tuscarora, Allen Grading was part of the project.

In addition, Allen and his company were instrumental in the renovation of the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce offices as well as the Wayne County Developmental Alliance board room.

Allen’s work for the community did not stop with his construction-related activities.

Allen worked with a number of community organizations, including the Red Cross, the Goldsboro YMCA; the Downtown Goldsboro Development Corporation — investing not only his time, but also his own funds in helping to create a thriving and growing downtown; and the boards of the Boy Scouts of America and Wayne Country Day School.

He worked to form relationships across the state and the country, capturing the attention and the dollars that have helped Goldsboro, Wayne County and Eastern North Carolina thrive.

He was a member of the Wayne County Development Alliance for many years — and served as chairman and vice chairman.

He was an active member of the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce board, serving for 11 years.

Allen also was a dedicated and important member of the chamber’s Military Affairs Committee and the North Carolina Military Affairs Commission and Friends of Seymour.

He was instrumental in helping to form the relationships between the community and the military that have kept Seymour Johnson Air Force Base here for decades and kept North Carolina’s designation as a military-friendly state.

He was also active in the development of the SJAFB and Dare County Range Joint Land Use Study as a member of the JLUS committee, monitoring the implementation and adoption of policies and strategies.

Allen also has been active in transportation in the county, serving as a member, and for the last 10 years, chairman, of the Goldsboro Transportation Advisory Committee, which oversees and plans the multi-modal transportation program for the city of Goldsboro’s urban area.

And he was a charter member of the Highway 70 Corridor Commission, which, along with local and state officials as well as the North Carolina Department of Transportation, made the 2016 opening of the Goldsboro Bypass possible.

Allen pushed to accelerate the completion of the bypass, which now provides more efficient access to SJAFB, the Port at Morehead City, the Global Transpark and the Crystal Coast.   

But those were many of the contributions that Allen made behind the scenes, the ones that only people in the know knew he was a part of.

Allen’s most visible contribution was at City Hall.

He served as a city council member for 21 years — that’s right, two decades. Eight of those years he was mayor pro tem.

And Allen served as the city’s mayor since 2015, until resigning this summer to focus on his cancer fight.

Not too many people can say they have devoted that much of their adult life to taking care of their community.

And take care of it he did.

There might have been times when you wondered what Allen was up to — or you might have questioned his decisions or motives.

But if you look at his record and think about what it takes to be an elected official these days, you will get it.

No one who doesn’t love his community puts himself through decades of tireless work to make it a better place to live. They don’t accept the phone calls, the emails and the criticism. They don’t begrudge the missed family activities or the interrupted meals.

Allen worked for the city of Goldsboro and his community every day of his life in some form or the other. And he did so while battling his own health concerns and when he really should have been just taking care of himself.

We think he did it in part for his family — including grandchildren now.

But we also think he did it for our families, too.

Chuck Allen loved Goldsboro, Wayne County and North Carolina.

It is the kind of dedication that runs deep.

He wasn’t going to let his community decline or be less than it could be while he could have something to say about it.

And that is the legacy he will leave — and the example of what we need more of today: People who are willing to get involved, even when they are busy running their own business, taking care of their families and just trying to get through a day.

There are not enough Chuck Allens anymore.

And that is a shame.

Allen’s spirit will be around the community he loved for a long time.

You will see his memorial every time you look at downtown Goldsboro, travel down the Highway 70 corridor or watch an F-15 or KC-46 streak across the sky.

But there will be small places, little ways that he touched lives that will long impact the community he has now left in our care.

And we can say thank you by not just remembering what he did, but also by making sure his mission of growing and protecting this community carries on.

It is a legacy that he left for all of us — and a lesson, too.

One man can’t save a community.

But a leader can inspire others to go further, to do more and to speak up.

That was Allen’s gift.

And now, it is our turn to see his dream through.

Rest in peace, Mayor Allen. We will take it from here.