She loves the people too. At a recent meeting of the Aberdeen Town Board, which she presides over as mayor, Mofield said that they (meaning the leaders of Aberdeen) only allow nice people in town.
She routinely says that Aberdeen’s water is the best-tasting in the world, and she believes it. She’s incredulous every time a developer comes in with a plan that would require the cutting down of trees. She specifically hates the loss of longleaf pines, those native to the area that have a beautiful flowering cone and tend to produce most of the visible pollen that dusts the Sandhills every year about this time.
She prefers to believe that this particular family of pines couldn’t grow anywhere else.
“A man told me once,” she says, “and I don’t know if it’s true — that the longleaf pine indigenous to this particular area can’t live anywhere else. It can’t live in Maryland, just in this 60-mile circumference. We need to recognize that that pine tree is ours.”
Mofield is well aware that she could be painted as a “tree hugger,” especially since her daughter, who majored in environmental law at Tulane, is always pushing her to protect the resources of Aberdeen. But she’s willing to take the chance because she loves nature and marvels at the miracle that allows a tiny seed to grow into a majestic pine. She calls it “God’s gift to man.”
Firmly Rooted
Like those indigenous pines, Mofield is firmly rooted in Aberdeen. She couldn’t live anywhere else. She resides on Poplar Street in the house where her mother grew up, across from the house where she herself grew up.
“One of my friends once asked me, ‘Where would you live if money were no object?’” she says. “I said, ‘Aberdeen.’ He said, ‘Where in Aberdeen?’ I said, ‘Poplar Street.’ (Laughs.) I’m very tied and devoted to the town.”
Mofield is a descendant of the McLean family. Her grandfather, T.D. McLean, moved the family in 1909 to Aberdeen because, as director of the Cotton Growers Association, he needed to ride the train to meetings in Raleigh. Before that, the family lived across from Little River Farms. Mofield represents the fourth generation of Moore County residents on her grandfather’s side and the fifth generation on her grandmother’s.
Her grandfather began a long tradition of service to Aberdeen by serving on the board of commissioners.
Among McLean’s 10 children, six were girls. He opened a dress shop called McLean’s on South Street and added it to his collection of downtown Aberdeen properties — a collection that included a furniture and grocery store. McLean bought the dress store as a way to buy wholesale clothing for his daughters. He operated the store along with his daughter-in-law. When he died, Mofield’s mother inherited it.
Love at First Sound
Susan McLean, Mofield’s mother, attended Greensboro College. In 1940, She met and married a traveling salesman named James Kelly Bridgers. He was from Nash County, where she taught school , and he was almost always known as Jake.
Bridgers worked a five-state area and wound up spending most of his time on the road. Susan McLean decided that, rather than be alone, she would return home. She moved back to Aberdeen and worked at the dress shop. She would never live anywhere else again, and Bridgers eventually got to stay at home more and served on the Town Board.
Betsy Bridgers was born on Nov. 30, 1945. She remembers growing up in Aberdeen and walking from her house to the theater that stood on what is now a vacant lot next to the Town Hall. Her mother either played the piano or took tickets.
Young Betsy Bridgers went to Aberdeen High School, and one night after a movie at the Sunrise Theater in Southern Pines she fell in love.
Betsy and a girlfriend had gone to see a movie. When it ended, the two got into a car to talk. There were two boys in the back seat. Betsy sat in the front passenger side, and behind her sat Gary Mofield, an Aberdeen High School football player. She had never met him before despite being a cheerleader.
It wasn’t just love at first sight. She didn’t even need to look at him.
“I fell in love listening to him speak,” she says.
As the football player chatted away in the back seat, Betsy was listening, wondering who in the world he could be. She turned to look at him and knew.
“I fell in love that very night,” she says. “He chased me until I caught him.”
The two dated for five years before marrying in 1967. He went to East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and she went to St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, just like her sister Susan (who went by the name Susie).
“I was Presbyterian,” she says, “and that was the thing to do.”
The Mofields have two daughters. Kelly is 35 and Susannah is 20. Betsy named Susannah after her grandmother, mother and sister, all of who are named Susan.
The same year as their marriage, Gary Mofield was drafted and sent off to Vietnam. In the meantime, Betsy worked briefly for Eastern Airlines in Charlotte. But she couldn’t resist the pull of home. In 1968, she returned to Poplar Street and worked at the dress shop with her mother.
They were close. They lived across the street from each other, worked together every day, and sat beside each other in the same pew at church every Sunday.
After his tour, Gary returned from Vietnam to Aberdeen where they would begin raising a family. Betsy Mofield’s life went on in relative peace for 25 years.
Saving the Depot
During that time, she decided to give back to the town. She began her political career as a volunteer trying to save and restore something she thought was important to the town of Aberdeen. It’s a sentiment that has defined her work with the town government.
She spent four years with a group of 10 or 11 others working to restore the train depot, which had fallen into disrepair. She names people like Eldiweiss and Forrest Lockey, Helen and Richard Crabbe and Pat Ann McMurray. (McMurray is now an Aberdeen commissioner.) The group received one grant, but for the most part, they were raising money themselves. They had all types of fundraisers.
“It’s amazing to think about it now,” she says. “We did it just through donations. One member said that if she had to sell another ticket to a barbecue she’d die.”
Mofield, who knows a lot about Aberdeen’s history from even before the McLeans came to the area, suggested the group should hold a wine tasting at the depot as a nod to Aberdeen’s pre-Civil War reputation as a center for wineries. It was a great success, she says with a nod. Unfortunately, it was also against the law.
CSX has deeded the depot to the town. During the wine tasting, a police officer showed up and informed the crowd that it was illegal to serve alcoholic beverages on town property.
“It was too late,” she says laughing. “We’d already done it.”
The group managed to restore the depot and then turned its upkeep over to the town.
In 1979, Mofield ran for commissioner for the first time. She ran with Art Parker, and the two have continued their political partnership to this day. They ran against two incumbents. Parker won going away, but Mofield pulled off the upset by only a solitary vote.
“I had hundreds of people telling me whose vote it was,” she says.
Difficult Year
She served three terms on the board and left in 1992. The next year would prove to be a difficult one.
The U.S. government had put out word that some soldiers in the Vietnam War had been exposed to Agent Orange and that it could lead to health problems. Gary went to the doctor to have himself checked out. He found out that he had kidney disease.
“We don’t know that (Agent Orange) caused his problem,” Betsy says.
The disease sometimes just goes away, but it can also result in kidney failure. The disease struck Gary hard, and he would need a kidney transplant.
Around that same time, Betsy’s mother died. Betsy admired the strength of her mother, who continued to work at the dress shop until she was quite elderly — though she would never tell anyone her exact age and wouldn’t even let it be put on her gravestone. But without her, the shop had to be closed.
“Fifty percent of the staff passed away,” Betsy says in the manner of someone sharing an inside joke. “I miss it. We had such wonderful customers.”
Her mother had been a teacher, and there had been four other teachers on her mother’s side of the family. Her father’s side had produced two teachers. So in this difficult time, Betsy turned to substitute teaching.
The good news was that Gary’s brother Carl had agreed to donate a kidney. It was a perfect match. Doctors at Duke Hospitals told them that only identical twins could produce a better match. Gary has now spent 10 years in good health.
A Love of Teaching
In the meantime, Betsy had found her calling. Being around children and teachers was a joy for her.
“I always loved listening to teachers talk,” she says. “I think teachers are so interesting. They have such wonderful knowledge.”
Mofield also feeds off the energy of the students.
“I love teenagers,” she says. “They probably are my most favorite people to be around.”
She worked as a substitute for more than two years until a job became available at the front office of Pinecrest High School. She was a receptionist for five years, after which she became the marketing teacher. It was a natural fit, because Mofield studied marketing at St. Andrews.
As a marketing teacher, Mofield indulges her students’ creative sides. The student store is called “Paperclips,” a play on the office supply chain Staples. The students thought of the name themselves and buy all the products to sell without her guidance. When a student makes a poor purchase, he becomes the butt of some good-natured jokes until the item is sold (oftentimes to the offending student).
She loves the work, even if it does take her away from home. Pinecrest is, after all, in Southern Pines.
“I like everything there is to like about education, from beginning to end,” she says. “I’ve got the perfect job.”
A Century of Service
Mofield sometimes takes grief for being such an Aberdeen-o-phile. Her sisters make fun of her, saying she not only never left the state or town, but never even left the block. When people ask her if she never leaves Aberdeen, she simply replies that she drives to Southern Pines every day for work.
In 1999, she became the mayor, cementing her connection to the town. The board she leads has reinstated the Historic Preservation Commission, stuck to a plan for developing the Aberdeen corridor of N.C. 5, and strengthened the town’s landscaping requirements while still working with developers.
Mofield jokes that the Historic Preservation Commission is sometimes known as the “hysterical” commission, but she says it’s important for Aberdeen to remember its history — as she does, sometimes unexpectedly.
She was once drawn to her window by the sound of a jackhammer. She saw a crew digging up the sidewalk on Poplar Street so that it could be replaced. She thought back to the many aunts and uncles that who trod that path and how many times she and her mother had walked it on their way downtown. She was startled to find tears streaming down her cheeks. She laughed and thought: “What am I doing? I’m crying over concrete.”
She understands that it is silly to fight for a worn-down sidewalk, but she says she’ll continue to fight for Aberdeen’s character and its trees. People who cut down trees, she says, don’t stop to think that the tree has probably been there in the same place, out in the elements, for longer than a human lifetime.
“The longer you stand there, the more right you have to stand there,” she says.
If that’s true, then no one has a right to question Betsy Mofield’s station as the pinnacle of a family tree that has been watching over Aberdeen for over for almost a century.
