Most trips I make to Jackson County are in daylight. When I do make the occasional after dark trip, I’m always surprised for a moment when I descend the Haywood side of Balsam and look at the lights covering the side of Eagles Nest.

When I moved to Waynesville in 1968 there was a lone security light on top of the mountain that was visible from many parts of town. There are hundreds of lights up there now.

It would be good to think that growth equals progress. It would be nice to know that Waynesville has taken giant steps forward to be part of a New South.

The petty squabble over renaming Old Asheville Highway for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. shows Waynesville at its worst. The name of the road is obsolete. What better way to rename the new, improved road than for one who is not just a great African-American, but a great human being?

I worked for The Mountaineer when I came to Waynesville almost 37 years ago. When school opened that year, I took a camera with a telephoto lens to a bank overlooking Central Elementary School and took pictures of students, some of whom happened to be African-Americans, at play. One of those pictures celebrating school opening was used as a full-page cover of the paper’s weekly TV guide. The paper received some complaints about the big photo of kids being kids at the school playground!

A colleague who joined the staff at the same time I did gave the complainers something else to complain about. His photo of an African-American majorette at Pisgah High School ended up on the TV guide cover.

I did a lengthy feature on an African-American minister who ran an after-school tutoring program with white volunteers at an old house on Pigeon Street. I received a lot of praise and a few crank calls on that one. Really, people helping people upset a few people!

When Western North Carolina Methodists integrated the the Lake Junaluska Assembly, a reporter did a splendid three-part series on the successful change. A community leader, now deceased, got wind of the project and pressured the paper to kill it because he said it would destroy the assembly even though this series contained nothing but praise. To the credit of the managing editor, the articles were published.

One of the most meaningful compliments ever paid to me came from an African-American resident of Waynesville. He said until I came to The Mountaineer, black people were only mentioned in the paper if they were arrested.

One of my strongest memories of living in Waynesville was a conversation with a very successful African-American educator. Many whites were upset at that time about the busing of students to achieve racial balance in some areas. He told me he didn’t recall any whites being upset when he was bussed from Waynesville to Canton to go to school in the days before integration. He recalled that the dense fogs caused by Champion were more frequent then and that he often feared for his safety as he rode past schools attended by whites in Waynesville on his way to Canton. That wrong was righted when Haywood County schools consolidated in the late 1960s.

Now it is time to right another wrong. The county and the town governments that do not recognize Dr. King’s birthday should join our nation and state in doing so. The new road that replaces Old Asheville Highway should be named for the Nobel Peace Prize winner who has taught us the right way to treat each other. When those things happen, I will feel that those small steps a few newspaper folks took nearly four decades ago have finally paid off for all of the people of Haywood County.

(Bruce Steinbicker may be reached at bsteinbicker@yahoo.com.)