Gibsonville mayor Leonard “Lenny” Williams this week made it official: he’s stepping down after 23 years as the town’s mayor on January 26, which will be one day after his 91st birthday.
In a one-paragraph letter on January 8 to the town manager and his colleagues on the board, Williams set his resignation date as “beginning January 26.”
Williams had been most recently re-elected in November 2023 to a sixth, four-year term. But he had announced at a board of aldermen meeting in August that he would probably retire at the end of 2024, although he added a caveat at the time that he “could change my mind.”
A retirement reception is now scheduled for Saturday, January 25, 2025 from 11:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the Gibsonville Community Center located 314 Tenth Street. Additionally, a retirement dinner is also scheduled for Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. at the Gibsonville Community Center.
His first mayoral election, in 2001, was for two years to complete a partial mayoral term; he defeated fellow board member Sandy Moulton, who had been appointed the previous year on a 3-2 vote after long-time mayor Bill Moricle died in office. Williams has gone on to win six, four-year terms in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023.
Williams, has missed several meetings during 2024, most recently on December 16. The mayor had said August he did not like missing meetings of the board and revealed at that time that he has had some recent health issues. “It’s time for somebody else to take over, time for somebody younger to take over,” he said in a brief interview with The Alamance News after the meeting.
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Williams has served as mayor since 2001 and served as a member of the board of aldermen for eight years (two terms) prior to that. He also served earlier as a member of the town’s planning board for five years.
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He is the town’s longest-serving mayor, having now surpassed Dwight Davidson, Sr. who held the position from 1913-1933 (20 years) and William F. Moricle who was mayor from 1985-2000 (15 years).
Williams came to Gibsonville in 1984, he recalled in an August interview, when the Internal Revenue Service transferred him to work in its Greensboro office.
“Gibsonville has been fair and good to me,” the mayor said at the time. Williams, who is black, said he had found no racial issues or animosity.
Indeed, in his election campaigns, Williams has often won against white candidates in a town that is two-thirds white, according to the latest Census data. In only two of his seven mayoral races (including 2023) has he run unopposed.
Williams has often been a budget hawk on the board, consistently urging that the tax rate be kept low or lowered further, and often working to rein in spending ideas of town staff and some of his colleagues. He noted that the tax rate, now 49 cents per $100 valuation, was 64 cents per $100 valuation when he was first elected.
Williams recalled during the August interview that his father was a sharecropper near Enfield in eastern North Carolina. Williams attended North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, where, he said, Gibsonville did not have such a good reputation, according to his college friends.
He also interrupted his studies at A&T to attend Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey before graduation. He then served two years in the U.S. Army.
Williams began work with the Internal Revenue Service in 1961, which ultimately sent him to its Greensboro office in 1984.
By the first year after his and wife Connie’s arrival, Gibsonville neighbors recruited him to be on the town’s planning board. The couple has now been married 64 years.
In 1993, he ran for alderman. And, as he proudly noted in August, “I’ve never lost an election.” Williams has also received the state’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.
“I’ve had a good time working as mayor,” Williams said in a subsequent August phone interview.
