T

he small houses on County Home Road near Winterville—the older one with tin siding, the newer one with frame siding—hold special significance for Walter Williams ’51 ’55. This is where he grew up in the 1930s, and coming back always evokes memories of when he and his brother and two sisters helped with the chores, worked with their father in the tobacco fields after school and then came in to the kitchen for a hearty supper.

He moved out of the old home place in 1947 to begin a new life as a college student. He became a successful business owner, but he never really left home. He inherited the property after his parents passed, and he’s now painstakingly remodeling the two houses along with his mother’s wash house, the smoke house, chicken house, corn and potato barns and two tobacco barns.

Williams, who is one of East Carolina University’s most loyal boosters, advocates and benefactors, isn’t sure if the expensive remodeling project is the smart thing to do. But he knows it’s the right thing to do.

“You do some things that are crazy, and this might be one of them, but there’s too much sentiment tied up to let it rot down or to rent it or to sell it,” he says. “We may spend a little time there, but my hope is that at least one of our six grandchildren might like to live in a rural setting.”

And if they do, there will be a first-class university just down the road. Williams has made sure of that.

Williams, 77, has done plenty of smart things in his life, like founding Trade Mart, a chain of gas stations and convenience stores that grew to more than 100 outlets and made him a wealthy man. Over the years, he has consistently done what he considers the right thing by generously sharing that good fortune with East Carolina. The basketball arena in Minges Coliseum is named for him. He finances two athletic scholarships and has supported many other fund-raising appeals with his money and his time. Often, it was his major gift that got the ball rolling.

Now he’s excited about a new program at ECU that he’s supporting. The STEPP program in the College of Education— bolstered by a $1.2 million gift from Williams and his wife, Marie ’53—will enable students with learning disabilities to earn a college degree and pursue a career, possibly teaching other learning-disabled students.

Williams rarely seeks attention for his good deeds and has few of the trappings of a millionaire. He and Marie still live in the same home in Greenville they have shared for nearly 40 years. As a way to get some exercise, and to remind himself of his farmboy upbringing, he mows part of his yard and rolls his garbage can to the curb rather than pay for yard service or backyard garbage pickup. Marie helps cut the grass.

Athletics Director Terry Holland congratulates Walter and Marie Williams at the CASE awards banquet

But he couldn’t escape the spotlight recently when his contributions were recognized far beyond Greenville. CASE, the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, named him its southeast regional winner of the Bill Franklin Volunteer of the Year Award. The award recognizes college benefactors whose efforts make a long-term impact on an institution and higher education and who play a significant role in fund raising, alumni relations and student recruiting.

At the awards banquet in Nashville in early February, Williams joked that “the competition must not be very good this year.” Turning serious, he added: “No volunteer is any better than the other volunteers who help. It’s volunteers, employees, friends and colleagues who do so many things together. That’s how our university has grown to what it is today.”


Growing up on a tobacco farm

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e was the second of four children growing up on a tobacco farm south of Greenville. His older brother went to N.C. State University; his two younger sisters would follow him to East Carolina. He attended Ayden High School and started to think about the possibility of going to college only in the summer after graduation.

“Being a farm boy in the aftermath of the Great Depression, I didn’t travel very far,” Williams says. “I got interested in college after high school and finally decided I wanted to go.” He applied to several colleges, but because it was so close to the fall term, they already had picked their freshman class. Except one— East Carolina Teachers College. So Williams enrolled at the college down the road.

“I thought I might transfer to N.C. State after one or two years, but after I got there, I thought I would work on toward graduation.” He pursued a major in health and human performance while developing a strong liking for athletics. He didn’t play sports in college, but he was an avid spectator and went to as many games as possible.

After graduation, he was drafted during the Korean War. But he also became engaged to a girl he met during his last semester at ECTC, Marie Stallings. They became engaged while he was in the Army and were married after his discharge.

She had received her education degree and began teaching in Farmville. After his discharge, he came back to Greenville with GI Bill benefits and enrolled in graduate school. He received a master’s degree in education supervision in 1955.

“I never thought about teaching, but I thought that getting a teaching certificate would help me get a job,” he said. And it did. His first job was teaching eighth grade in nearby Farmville.

He smiles as he recalls the experience. “I thoroughly enjoyed my attempt to be a teacher. At least I know I tried to be a good teacher.” But the pay was small—$2,900 during the year he taught. He and Marie decided that if they ever were to start a family, she would stay home and he would be the provider. Just not on a teacher’s salary.

That’s when opportunity came knocking. Williams’ older brother, Arthur, had graduated from State and gone into the tobacco business in Winston-Salem. He married into a family that owned a fuel company and began working for the firm.

When the company began looking for someone to run its new eastern North Carolina operations, Arthur recruited Walter. For the next 29 years, Walter worked for what was Taylor Oil Co. In 1984, when he became eligible to retire, Walter Williams decided to strike out on his own.

With more than 100 stations, Trade Oil Co. was the nation’s 74th-largest convenience store chain with revenues of $267 million in 2005, the year Williams merged with Amerada Hess.

  “I retired from one job one day and started a new business the next,” he says. He established Trade Oil Co. Inc. with two stores that had been Taylor Oil stations. Over the next two decades the firm grew into a chain of more than 100 stores, mainly in the eastern third of North Carolina. Trade Oil developed Trade Marts, its version of the relatively new concept of pump-your-own gas and convenience stores, called “C” stores in the industry, in small towns like Oxford, Wake Forest, Henderson, Fuquay, Clayton, Fayetteville, Smithfield, Newport and Mount Olive.

The business grew through simple, yet methodical, steps. “We grew our business after we found a piece of property and built a building,” Williams says. “Once our kids came into the business, they did the same thing. I think the growth was fast because the idea worked.”

Trade Oil Co. was ranked as the nation’s 74th-largest convenience store chain by Convenience Store News, an industry newsletter. Company revenues were $267 million in 2005, the year Williams merged with Amerada Hess.

The firm also developed a reputation for service, mainly because of Williams’ operating philosophy: “Treat the other guy like you want to be treated, whether he is a customer or an employee. We operate like a family, and our customer comes first.”

As Williams grew the Trade Mart chain, brother Arthur was doing the same with his string of 140 “C” stores from the Carolinas up to Pennsylvania. In 2001, Arthur’s A.T. Williams Oil Co. merged forces with Amerada Hess, the leading independent oil company on the eastern seaboard, to become WilcoHess. Trade Oil Co. followed suit by merging with WilcoHess in 2005, and Walter Williams became executive vice president. WilcoHess now operates 320 “C” stores and 43 restaurants in seven states. The company had about 2,800 employees and revenue of more than $1.6 billion in 2006, according to a company filing with the Security and Exchange Commission.

During those hectic years while he was growing his business, Williams continued cultivating his roots in eastern North Carolina and supporting his alma mater. “If you like where you are, you’re not too crazy about leaving,” he says. Parents in the region often sent their children to far-flung colleges, “and they never came back home. I think we should give an education here so that you can make a living in eastern North Carolina. We have proved that with the medical school.”


Embodying the Pirate Club

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illiams joined the Pirate Club in 1966 and over the years came to personify the boosters group. His Trade Oil Co. provided the Pirate Club with its first-ever $1 million gift in 1993 during the university’s Shared Visions campaign. The gift went toward renovating Minges Coliseum, and in April 1994 the basketball arena was rededicated as Williams Arena in honor of the gift.

Williams served as executive president of the foundation in 1997, and he co-chaired the Kickoff to Victory fund-raising campaign in 1998, which exceeded its $10 million goal by nearly $1 million. He became executive director emeritus of the foundation in 2002, which was around the time he co-chaired fund raising for the new baseball stadium. By the end of 2005 the campaign had secured $9.4 million to build Clark-LeClair Stadium.

Walter and Marie Williams also endowed two $150,000 scholarships for basketball players and one $100,000 fund for the Spirit of the East Scholarship Endowment. The Williamses have provided $25,000 annually for the past five years to go into a leadership scholarship fund for freshmen.

His interest in education extends beyond ECU to include Pitt Community College, where he serves on the board of trustees. He has been an adult education program volunteer and a campaign volunteer for the college’s baseball capital campaign.

“Pitt Community College has done a super job taking the average hard-working individual and giving that person some opportunities through education. [Pitt County Memorial Hospital] has tons of people who have been through Pitt Community College’s medical-related programs.”


Taking a STEPP forward

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ow, he and his wife are turning their attention to the STEPP program and providing a college education for learning disabled students. Using the Williamses’ founding gift, Project STEPP—Supporting Transition and Education through Planning and Partnerships—admitted its first two students in fall 2006. It should grow to about 50 students over the next five years.

Project STEPP is a collaborative effort by several colleges and schools in the university, as well as community resources and high schools. It opens the doors to higher education to students who traditionally have not gone to college. The process of preparing these students for college begins while they are finishing their high school studies. “This gives us an opportunity to help eastern North Carolina, and it gives ECU an opportunity to learn how to teach those kids,” Williams says. “And it will give the graduates firsthand experience in teaching others, if they so choose.”

“Walter and I have a special place in our hearts for ECU,” Marie Williams said. “The economic and cultural impact [of the university] have influenced our family’s financial success immensely. As a result, we feel we need to give back to our university and our region when possible.”

This kind of thinking does not go unnoticed. “He never stops talking about [East Carolina]; he never declines to represent it; and he consistently provides significant monetary support to it,” says Marilyn Sheerer, vice chancellor for student life. What is more impressive, she added, is that “he doesn’t seek personal recognition; rather, he wants the program that the gift supports to be highlighted.”

ECU Athletic Director Terry Holland says that one of the first things he learned when he arrived in Greenville in 2004 was the impact Williams has had on the university. “There are few individuals that possess the passion Walter has for his university, and whenever his beloved Pirates have needed him, he has come through for them,” Holland says.

Williams considers ECU “the University of Eastern North Carolina” and believes that it will continue growing in academic stature. “I can see an engineering school coming out of its infancy a few years from now. I’d like to see a separate school of journalism. If we really do need more lawyers, we could have a law school,” he says. “I want to see success at many levels.”


Still working every day

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illiams could be living a comfortable life in retirement, but he goes to work daily at the eastern regional affairs of WilcoHess in Greenville. He remains president of Trade Oil, which is now involved primarily in real estate. His son David and daughter Ann both have been involved in the business since their graduation from college, David from Mount Olive College and Ann from Meredith College.

For all he has done for ECU, Williams doesn’t consider himself a philanthropist. “I’m just a hard-working old man. You can’t go through life getting accolades unless you are willing to pay the price of working for those accolades,” he says.

ECU Chancellor Steve Ballard respectfully disagrees. “Walter is humble and unassuming and does not seek the limelight through his philanthropy. His only goal is to see positive things happen for the university, and I hope he will be by our side for many years to come. I find it difficult to visualize East Carolina University without his ongoing support and advocacy.”

The kind words are flattering, but Williams prefers to keep it simple. “I never left the region, which is all the more reason to give back,” he says. “I grew up with a dad who believed that if you lived in a community, you had an obligation to support the community. You had to put something back.”