37

OverviewVersionsHelp

Facsimile

Transcription

Status: Complete

The Governor also appointed the following committee to present
to the Legislature the needs of the Greater University:
Kemp Battle,
S. B. Alexander,
Mrs. E. L. McK.ee,
Miss Easdale Shaw,
Haywood Parker,
Rev. C. E. Maddry,

Rocky Mount
Charlotte
Sylva
Rockingham
Asheville
Raleigh

The following memorials to deceased trustees were presented:

C. A. PENN
"And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs
Goes down with a great shout, upon the hills.
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky."
Such was the passing of C. A. Penn of Reidsville, North Carolina,
one of the State's most distinguished citizens.
Born in 1869, Mr. Penn was in the zenith of his manhood and
accomplishments. Of outstanding business ability, Charley Penn
had a genius for friendship and his friends, numbered by the hundreds,
extended from the heads of the great American Tobacco Company, of
which he was a brilliant executive, to the humble negroes in his
home town, who had known and loved "Mr. Charley" since his childhood.
His business career is a fascinating and vivid story which
merits emulation and might be dwelt upon at great length. Placed
in charge of the production department of the American Tobacco company
by James B. Duke, who was noted for his acumen in the selecting of
able men, Mr. Penn took command of this department at a crucial
period, when the domestic companies were struggling for supremacy.
How well he succeeded cannot be told at length here.
By his leadership, his knowledge of men and his unceasing
activity, he built up a corporation, which, with more than a quarter
of a billion dollars in assets, stands as a monument to this contributive
power in the field of big business and quantity production.
This monument of success in his life's work, great as it is,
comes second to that invisible one receted to him in the hearts
of his friends.
Charley Penn will ever be held in loving memory for his
unfailing response to the finer things of life; the joys and opportunities
for service in the community where he was most intimately
known - the welfare of Reidsville, and the contentment of his fellow
citizens there, many of them employees of his own company, were
ever close to his heart. His benefactions and his generosity in
every direction were unfailing and constant. In his business
connections, he never lost contact with his fellow man and though he
was a King of Finance and "walked with Kings" he never "lost the
common touch".
While his native State mourns an illustrious son, "falling on
sleep", while yet young and vibrant with life, Reidsville, his home
town, mourns, not a business leader, an official of a gigantic corporation,
but a friend and neighbor, faithful and helpful to the end.
Written with sympathy and appreciation by "One of These."
Mrs. Lily C. Morehead Mebane, Chairman
R. A. Doughton
Burton Craige

Notes and Questions

Nobody has written a note for this page yet

Please sign in to write a note for this page