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Claude E. Billings, Jr., a former Wilkes County Republican Party chairman, died on April 7 at the Wilkes Medical Center, a local publication reported. He was 97.
Billings was a former Wilkes County sheriff and a World War II veteran, the Wilkes Journal-Patriot reported on April 10. He was elected Wilkes County sheriff in 1950 at the age of 28, making him the youngest Republican sheriff of his time. In 1954, he was elected to a second four-year term in the position.
Billings was named the assistant deputy secretary of transportation from 1985-1989 under then-Gov. Jim Martin, Wilkes Journal-Patriot reported. Billings also served as the chairman of the Wilkes Republican Party from 1959-1965 and from 1983-1991.
Charles Parrish, who was the special assistant to Billings while he was secretary of transportation, spoke highly of the deceased.
“He was always honest and witty,” Charles Parrish, who worked with Billings at the transportation department, told the Wilkes Journal-Patriot. “I never heard him say a bad word or anything about anyone. I never saw him get angry in a situation.”
Bill Anderson who was also a Wilkes sheriff and GOP chairman also said Billings worked tirelessly to get the rural roads of western North Carolina paved.
“He recovered from some painful times of grief that would have finished a lesser man,” Anderson told Wilkes Journal-Patriot. “I'm sure he had very few regrets, except that his loving wife, Betty, left this world before he did.”
Ray Stroud was a longtime friend of Billings and took the death very hard.
“Claude was brought up as a strong Christian and imparted the faith to his large family,” Stroud said told Wilkes Journal-Patriot. “He served as a deacon and stood as a man of excellent character. He loved God, his family and our free nation, in that order. I will never forget that day, and I will always remember my great friend, Claude Billings, who showed me how life should be lived.”
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