Election Day overlooked in Sleepy Surry County town

The Associated Press
Published: March 7, 2008

SURRY - A husband went to the hospital. A wife passed away. Cancer struck. Grandchildren were born. The full-time job and the two young kids just got too overwhelming.

And so it came to be that in Dendron, no one remembered to run for Town Council or mayor this year.

“We forgot,“ said Ruth Sheffield, a current councilwoman in the tiny Surry County town of just under 300 souls. “We usually have a reminder and we didn’t get that reminder. We should have known. It’s our fault.“

There was a time when this wouldn’t have happened in Dendron. Once — more than 70 years ago — the Dendron Town Council dealt with weighty matters, made big decisions.

Dendron used to be a bustling place of thousands, built from the ground up by Surry Lumber Co. The company located there in the late 1800s to take advantage of the vast surrounding pine forests. The town’s name — Dendron — comes from the Greek word for tree.

Back then, the council talked about issues involving the towering lumber mill, the railway that passed through, and the crime brought by the rough men who came along with railways and lumber.

“Murder every weekend,“ said William Richardson, president of the Dendron Historical Society. “That’s how you know it’s a boom town.“

Then the lumber company folks left, less than 50 years after they showed up. They took all of it — the railway, the men, the crime — along with them.

Today, the Town Council’s duties — they meet once a month, in the town’s tiny red municipal building — involve sending letters to property owners who aren’t maintaining their homes and dealing with citizen complaints about barking dogs.

On a recent afternoon, Dendron’s main street was completely empty, except for the occasional car passing through every 20 minutes or so. An elderly woman broke the stillness by crossing the street. Most of the action took place at the town’s only market, where people wandered in throughout the day to buy cigarettes.

These days, Dendron is a place where filing to run for re-election can slip the minds of its council members.

“It just escaped my attention,“ said Councilwoman Misti Furr. “I work full-time, I have two young kids, and I just missed it.“

The council’s part-time clerk usually lets the council members know when it’s time to file again, Sheffield said. But she was just busy this year — she also staffs the town post office. By the time she left panicked afternoon messages on the council members’ answering machines the day of the filing deadline, it was too late.

Thus, as of 7 p.m. Tuesday, no one had turned in their paperwork to fill Dendron’s six open council seats, or even the mayor’s chair.

Longtime Mayor Ben Muncy, known for being so devoted to his little town that he would personally collect utility bills and fix water connections, is in the hospital with cancer. His wife passed away the day before the deadline.

The current council members plan to run write-in campaigns for their seats, Sheffield said. Shouldn’t be too hard. After all, everyone in Dendron already knows who they are. And who’s going to run against them?

“Anybody can run that wants to,“ Sheffield said. “But it’s not like we have a whole lot of citizens.“

At the local market, the owner jokes that he’s going to run for mayor this year. His customers tap out their cigarettes, chat outside and occasionally discuss Dendron politics, if someone’s willing to listen.

The water system doesn’t work, they say. The new taxes are too high. Water bills are too high. Water quality’s too low. Why haven’t those potholes been fixed?

Sure, they aren’t rezoning ordinances or new development projects. But someone’s got to run this town, right?