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Note: The following was a newspaper article from The Rocky Mount, N.C. Telegram, Sunday December 13, 1959.:
During a public ceremony last Wednesday, the head of the NC Medical Care Commission handed Walter Clark Hargrove a license to operate Edgecombe General Hospital.
The document, giving official permission to open the first county-owned hospital in Edgecombe's history, was a milestone for Hargrove and the people of the county.
As chairman of the Board of Commissioner for 23 years, he has had a strong role in shaping the county's future. As head of government, he has, in turn, seen advancements and setbacks. He regards the new hospital as a definite advancement.
Soon, the new medical center will be regarded as just another working part that makes Edgecombe a functioning unit. Hargrove and the commissioners will be busy with other problems which in their time and place, will be just as necessary as the hospital.
With the voters' permission and they have never turned him down, Walter Hargrove will serve five more years. Before he steps down he wants to see a new headquarter for the county.
First it was a county nursing home, then a hospital and now a courthouse.
Walter Hargrove has spent all of his 68 years in Edgecome County. He has held public office of one kind or another for 26 years. He has seen the county break its shell of aristocracy, at least to a degree, and emerge as a working unit.
Though he owns and sees to the farming of 1500 acres, the chairman feels the need for diversification. There is no answer to the farmer's dilemma, he says, as long as there are too many farmers producing more and more each year.
He was born at a crossroads called Logsboro in the north of the county. He attended Wilkinson Academy, that once stood on Tarboro's Common. He also studied at Massey Business College in Richmond, Va. He worked first for the Pinetops Bank for a year and a half. He spent seven years as an Eastern Carolina Railroad conductor, and another stretch as a yardmaster for the Atlantic Coast Line.
In 1916, he married Helen Edwards, of Spring Hope. She gave him two children, Walter Jr. and a daughter who is now Mrs. Herbert Bailey (Sally Gray Hargrove), before her death in 1942.
In 1919, he began a small mercantile house in Tarboro. During WW II, he opened a hardware store here, but both businesses have been discontinued.
Editorial from The Rocky Mount, N.C. Telegram, Tues, July 26, 1960:
Leadership is Eternal
Last week, Edgecombe citizens closed a chapter in their history that began in the depths of The Great Depression and ended in the throes of the county's rebirth.
Taken from the scene was a leader who held the reins of county government 24 years. But as the county mourned the loss of Walter Clark Hargrove, it found new leadership to guide it into what could be an era of unprecedented progress. That is as it should be, for leadership is, and must be an eternal quality that flows from man to man.
Since he was elected to the Board of Commissioners and picked as its chairman in 1932, Walter Hargrove had become a fixture wherever important decisions were made. An intelligent, patient man, he was beloved for his ability to mix a working knowledge of human nature with keen administrative insight. A numbness spread over the county when he was stricken suddenly at 68.
It was Walter Hargrove who did things in the county. When he was serving as Tarboro's mayor, 1928-31, he pushed a program to continue municipal production of electricity. He converted the town's plant from coal to diesel engines and the plant showed a $60,000 profit at the end of a year. As a commissioner, he immediately launched a drive to provide a new nursing home for the aged. In 1935, the new facility was a reality.
His third dream for the people of Edgecombe was a new headquarters for the county government. That wish did not come true in his lifetime and appears now in the distant future. Hargrove and the board he headed worked for a school building and improvement bond issue. Recently, the county school superintendent reported not a singgle child in Edgecombe will attend class this fall in a drafty, ramshackle frame building. It would take only recollection of the county schools four years ago to grasp the signifiance of that report.
The Tarboro Southerner spoke for the county when it editorialized: "Walter Hargrove is gone, but the good that he did as a member of the board remains as a lasting reminder that public service can indeed be a high calling."
Editorial from The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, N.C.
Walter C. Hargrove
Walter Hargrove's career of service to the people of Edgecombe as a member of the board of commissioners spanned a period which is unique in the history of our county.
It began in a year of economic chaos and depression and ended at the climax of a decade of spectacular public building which saw the county fulfilling its obligations to all of its citizens.
As a county commissioner Walter Hargrove saw construction of a modern county home which replaced a group of shanties. He saw construction of a county-owned tuberculosis hospital which modern medicine and additional state facilities finally made obsolete. Only last week he saw the relization of a dream when it was announced that beginning in September not a single child in Edgecombe would have to attend school in a drafty, poorly heated wooden school. He spent his last hours in on othe most modern 75-bed hospitals in the state. That building started on the road to reality when Walter Hargrove and the other four county commissioners signed their names to a resolution calling for a public hearing on the new medical facility.
His judgement over those 24 years of service was often questioned. But time has proved him right on a number of issues.
When Mr. Hargrove was serving as mayor of Tarbor, the old municipal power system was about to fall apart. When a new plant was being considered two factions developed in the community. One wanted the town to remain in the power business: the other wanted the town to get out of the power business and sell the system to the Virginia Electric Power Co. Mayor Hargrove strongly backed continuation of the municipal system and got the support of the commissioners. At the end of the first year's operation the new plant showed a pofit of between 60 and 70 thousand dollars. Today, the system supported by Hargrove continues to make it possible for citizens to enjoy a number of municipal benefits because of the power plant produced revenue.
Hargrove was almost single-handed responsible for the county's annual appropriation to the Edgecombe Library. When municipalities of Edgecombe decided they wanted a share of the net profit of the ABC store, he was dead set against it. At a showdown meeting it soom became evident that Hargrove was on the losing side. In a surprise move he made a motion that before any profits were divided the Edgecombe Library be given $5,000. That appropriation continues today. Earlier leaders had received permission to build the library in the town commons but Mr. Hargrove insisted, despite opposition, that it be built at its current location to spare further loss of the commons.
Walter Hargrove is gone, but the good that he did as a member of the board of county commissioners remains as a lasting reminder that public service can indeed be a high calling.
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