News

Meeting space in new veterans center is the Col. Grady Hawkins Community Room

By Bill Moss, Published: July 4, 2024

The second-floor meeting space at the new Hedrick Rhodes Veterans Center has been named the Col. Grady Hawkins Community Room in honor of the most decorated military veteran to have served on the Henderson County Board of Commissioners in recent decades.

As a U.S. Air Force navigator-bombardier aboard a B-57 bomber, Hawkins flew 310 missions and logged 770 hours of air combat during the in Vietnam War in 1967 and ’68 and after that piloted dozens of Cold War air missions.

First elected to the Board of Commissioners in 1996, he won re-election in 2000 before losing to Chuck McGrady in 2004 then regaining a seat on the board in 2012, defeating incumbent Bill O'Connor, and serving two more terms. During his four terms in office, current chair Rebecca McCall said in announcing the honor, the county:

• Instituted the county manager form of government.
• Codified county ordinances.
• Clarified the corporate governance of county-owned Pardee Hospital.
• Instituted property readdressing.
• Began the first countywide zoning.
• Replaced four obsolete elementary schools —Hillandale, Mills River, Fletcher and Edneyville; added four new ones — Glenn Marlow, Sugarloaf, Clear Creek and the Innovative High School; and completed the $60 million new construction-renovation of Hendersonville High School.
• Added the new jail and sheriff's office.
• Opened the new human services building.
• Completed the new Emergency Services complex.
• Authorized a $7 million bridge loan to help Conserving Carolina purchase the Hendersonville-Brevard rail lines for the Ecusta Trail.