The ones we lost: Wilmington-area notables who died in 2023

A newspaper editor. A trailblazing broadcaster. A young athlete gone before his time. And one of the last living links to the Battleship North Carolina's World War II exploits in the Pacific.

They're among the notable people from the Wilmington area we lost in 2023.

More: The ones we lost: Wilmington-area notables who died in 2022

Dave Allen, UNCW swim program founder

Dave Allen, who established the competitive swimming program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 1977 and coached college swimming for 44 years, died June 21 at the age of 75.

Over the course of his career, Allen led UNCW to 16 men's and women's championships in the Colonial (now Coastal) Athletic Association and was nominated for CAA Coach of the Year 15 times.

In 2022, UNCW's swimming facility was renamed the David B. Allen Natatorium in his honor.

Charles Anderson, newspaper editor

Charles M. "Andy" Anderson, who served as executive editor of the StarNews from 1977 to 2001, died May 7. He was 84.

As editor of the StarNews, Anderson led the paper through huge changes in the newspaper industry, including the transition to digital pagination and editing.

Anderson also was a regular writer of editorial columns, poking fun at public servants who failed to keep their promises to voters and keeping a "secret meetings scorecard" of public bodies deliberating out of public view.

Cynthia Brown, community advocate

Cynthia Jevette Brown, who ran New Hanover County's Head Start Program for many years as director of the nonprofit New Hanover County Community Action, Inc., died Nov. 23 at the age of 68.

Brown was a descendant of famed Wilmington educator Mary Washington Howe, and of survivors of Wilmington's 1898 coup and massacre. Whites killed dozens of Blacks during the events of 1898, drove others out of town and forced elected officeholders who supported a biracial governing coalition to resign.

Learning about the massacre, Brown told the StarNews in 2006, shaped her life and drove her to try and better the lives of people in Wilmington's Black community.

In 2020, Brown's story was featured in a lengthy Washington Post article about her family's connection to 1898.

Judy Galloway, mayor of Varnamtown

Judy Galloway, who served as mayor of the Brunswick County hamlet of Varnamtown for 30 years, died on Aug. 9. She was 77.

Galloway became mayor of Varnamtown in 1989, just a year after it was incorporated in 1988. When she retired in 2019, she was the longest continuously serving mayor of any municipality in North Carolina.

Deb Hays, public servant

Deb Hays, a sitting member of the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, died unexpectedly on March 25. She was 64.

Hays, a real estate agent and a Republican, was elected to the Board of Commissioners in 2020. She also sat on numerous area boards and commissions over the years, including the city of Wilmington's planning board, Wilmington Downtown Inc., the Airlie Gardens Foundation, the N.C. Azalea Festival, the New Hanover County Airport Authority, Cape Fear Habitat for Humanity and the Wilmington Area Rebuilding Ministry (WARM).

In April, area leaders planted a tree in Hays' honor at Airlie Gardens.

Dewey Hill, politician, businessman

Dewey Hill, a Brunswick County businessman who served in the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1993 to 2013, died June 27 at the age of 97.

Born in Columbus County in 1925, Hill took over a grocery store business started by his father and later ran it with his late wife, Opal. It grew into a chain of nearly three dozen stores before the family sold the business.

Hill later started Hills Supermarket, which operates five stores in North and South Carolina.

As a legislator, Hill, a Democrat, fought for "higher pay for hard-working families affected by foreign trade" and was "a strong voice for our district and for all of rural North Carolina," former N.C. Gov. Mike Easley told the StarNews in June.

Ann Hollingsworth, booster, volunteer

Ann Hollingsworth, known as "the lady in the hat" who served as a booster of and volunteer for numerous organizations in the Southport area, died Nov. 7. She was 80.

Hollingsworth volunteered at Dosher Memorial Hospital for 19 years. She also volunteered with the town of Boiling Spring Lakes Appearance Committee and won the Southport-Oak Island Chamber of Commerce Ambassador of the Year Award in 2022.

In 2024, the award will be renamed the Ann Hollingsworth Ambassador of the Year Award in her honor.

Wayne Jackson, broadcaster

Wayne Jackson, who spent decades as a Wilmington broadcaster and helped shape the form in the Port City, died May 29 at the age of 96.

A native of Illinois, Jackson started working at Wilmington television station WECT in 1954, when its call letters were still WMFD. Jackson worked at the station for 35 years before retiring in 1989.

He remained a prominent Wilmington figure in retirement, working as an aide to late U.S. Rep. Charlie Rose and broadcasting games for the University of North Carolina Wilmington's Seahawk Sports Network for nearly 14 years.

Thym Kennedy, performer

Thym Kennedy, an actor, dancer, director and choreographer who appeared in dozens of productions for Wilmington's film and theatrical communities, died July 26. He was 55.

Kennedy graduated from Hoggard High School and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts. He scored roles as an actor and dancer with numerous locally shot film and television shows, including "Dawson's Creek," "Matlock," "Weekend at Bernie's," "The Ditchdigger's Daughters," "Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored" and "Stompin' at the Savoy."

In 2003, Kennedy, a trained mime, starred in the feature "Jacob's Sound" on the Showtime cable network, playing a mute clown in a traveling circus who falls in love with a local girl.

DJ McLeod, football player

Darnell "DJ" McLeod, who played football for Wilmington's Laney High School, died March 10 after battling cancer. He was 18 years old.

McLeod participated in his high school graduation ceremony from UNC Children's Hospital in Chapel Hill. He was able to maintain a positive attitude even while fighting cancer, and McLeod was open about his battle, speaking with the media even when he was confined to a hospital bed.

Walter Pancoe, developer, philanthropist

Walter Pancoe, a developer who also donated substantial amounts to such Wilmington institutions as the Cameron Art Museum and the Temple of Israel, died Dec. 23 at the age of 100.

A native of Chicago who served in World War II, Pancoe later moved to Wilmington, where he served on the boards of the Cameron Art Museum and Thalian Hall Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2003, he and his wife, Beth, who survives him, donated $750,000 for the Pancoe Art Education Center at the CAM.

Pancoe is also known for one of Wilmington's quirker displays of art.

In 2000, he installed a flamboyant fiberglass cow titled "Accowmodations" outside the 2200 Wrightsville Office Park that he developed. The cow, which was part of Chicago's 1999 "Cows on Parade" public art project, was commissioned by Pancoe's daughter, Polly Pancoe Kortlander, and brought by Pancoe to Wilmington. It still stands on Wrightsville Avenue.

Harold Gary Pless, veteran

Harold Gary Pless, one of the last surviving wartime crew members of the USS North Carolina, the ship that's been moored across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington as the Battleship North Carolina since 1961, died June 26. He was 102.

Pless was one of the last living links to the Battleship North Carolina's World War II exploits in the Pacific. He served on the USS North Carolina for three years and earned seven Navy battle stars.

At his funeral June 29 at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Wilmington, Pless received full military honors.

James Smith, chef, restaurateur

James Smith, who owned popular Wilmington restaurants Fork-N-Cork and Smoke on the Water, died unexpectedly on July 30 at the age of 48.

Smith started a burger-centric food truck called the Patty Wagon in 2011, later parlaying that into a storefront, Fork-N-Cork, on Market Street downtown in 2013. The restaurant got a boost when Food Network star Guy Fieri visited Fork-N-Cork in 2018 for his show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

With his brother, Dustin, Smith also opened a Fork-N-Cork in Carolina Beach and a barbecue spot called Bone & Bean, though both have since closed.

Linda Pearce Thomas, trailblazer

Linda Pearce Thomas, who founded Elderhaus, a nonprofit that serves hundreds of senior citizens in New Hanover and Brunswick counties, and who was the first Black woman to chair the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Board of Trustees, died Sept. 24. She was 77.

Thomas served on several community boards, including for the former New Hanover Regional Medical Center, and was active in the Williston Alumni Association. She graduated from Williston, which at the time was Wilmington's high school for Black students, in 1963.

She started Elderhaus in 1981 to care for and provide services to the elderly. In 2007, Thomas received the StarNews Media Lifetime Achievement Award for her community service.

Larry Reni Thomas, writer, activist

Larry Reni Thomas, whose writing and activism help expose the truths behind the Wilmington Ten in the 1970s and the Wilmington coup and massacre of 1898, died June 30 at the age of 73.

Thomas was living in Chapel Hill when he died but grew up in Wilmington, where he was born in 1950. Growing up near The Barn, a legendary local club that has since been demolished, fueled a lifetime interest in jazz, which Thomas preferred to call "American classical music."

His books included "The True Story Behind the Wilmington Ten" and, in 2022, "Carolina Shout," a tribute to North Carolina's connection to such jazz legends as Nina Simone, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, who were all born in the state.

His 2014 book "The Lady Who Shot Lee Morgan," about Helen Morgan, the common-law wife of the jazz trumpeter she shot dead in 1972 at the age of 33, became the basis for a documentary film, "I Called Him Morgan," in which Thomas appeared.

Lela Thompson, thespian

Lela Thompson, who in 1967 was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of North Carolina Wilmington (then Wilmington College) and who helped start the first theater troupe in the Port City to regularly perform plays by Black authors and with predominantly Black casts, died Dec. 30, 2022. She was 87.

Thompson had a three-decade career in the New Hanover County Schools, teaching at Williston Junior High (now Williston Middle School) and Wrightsboro and Snipes elementary schools.

She was best known for her work with the Willis Richardson Players, named for the Wilmington native who is the first Black playwright to have work produced on the Broadway stage.

Thompson acted in the Willis Richardson Players' inaugural 1974 production at the Community Arts Center on Second and Orange streets, and with her husband, Melvin Thompson, who died in 2015, ran the troupe for well over 20 years.

In 2012, Thompson was the first recipient of the Lela Thompson Enduring Contribution to Wilmington Theater award at the first Wilmington Theater Awards at Thalian Hall. The award, which still bears her name, has been given annually ever since.

Madafo Lloyd Wilson, performer, storyteller

Madafo Lloyd Wilson, a musician, storyteller and performer whose mission was to keep African culture alive through his art, died Sept. 14. He was 76.

Wilson performed his show, which paired African and African-American folk tales with musical accompaniment, at schools and libraries around the world. He helped run a mentoring program at New Hanover High School, and he produced and hosted "A Season's Griot," the first nationally syndicated radio program for Kwanzaa, at Wilmington public radio station WHQR.

He was active in the Wilmington music and theater communities, backing late flamenco guitarist William "Paco" Strickland and late folksinger and storyteller John Golden, and performing in shows for the Willis Richardson Players and Tapestry Theatre Co.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Notable people from Wilmington NC who died in 2023