Remembering Mary Ann Enloe: Female pioneer leaves legacy of service and controversy

Apr. 27—In a lifetime spanning nearly five decades of public service, Mary Ann Fisher Enloe is remembered as a trailblazer — a female pioneer in politics and the business world.

Enloe, 83, passed away April 13. Her legacy will be seen decades from now in efforts she fought for — from the Waynesville library that she helped start to the Historic County Courthouse she insisted on preserving to the orderly merger of Hazelwood into the town of Waynesville.

Those who knew her well describe Enloe in her younger years as movie-star fashionable, motoring around town in a convertible with the top down, a head scarf and sunglasses.

During her public service years, she was just as flamboyant, wearing a large, signature lapel flower that matched every outfit and oversized partially darkened glasses she would pull down on her nose when making a point not to be missed.

But her hallmark was serving as a plain-speaking, problem-solving leader who still remains the only elected female mayor in Haywood and who was the second female ever elected as county commissioner.

"She firmly believed government could be a force for good," said her daughter, Elizabeth "Libby" Enloe. "She believed that government should serve the people, and she lived and breathed it."

She was also an early pioneer in the business world as she worked her way up the ranks at Dayco from an administrative assistant to the corporation's purchasing agent. She juggled her career, her public duties as Hazelwood mayor and being a single parent after her husband, Jack Enloe, had died of heart problems at age 44, when Libby was just 5.

Alex McKay, Enloe's shirt-tail cousin, described her as a political whiz who he regarded as a mentor. He remembers the early days when she looked like "someone out of the movies," and mostly cherishes long visits on her porch as they discussed Hazelwood history.

McKay's mother, Jeanette Price, described Enloe as "her own person, a woman ahead of her time."

"She was a very forward thinker, and she did it her way, be damned," Price said. "She was always involved in the community; very energetic and very engaged."

Lawyer and lobbyist Chip Killian worked with Enloe both as the Hazelwood town attorney and the county attorney.

His earliest memory of her was when she was a teen singing in the church choir with his mother.

"I remember asking my mother, who was that beautiful girl singing that was so much younger than everybody else," he recalled.

As Hazelwood's attorney, Killian had a birds-eye view of events that led up to Hazelwood's eventual merger with the town of Waynesville under Enloe's tenure. It was something many of the old-time Hazelwood residents never forgot, but something Killian saw as inevitable.

"I don't see that she had any choice," Killian said. "Waynesville was ripping them off on water costs and had the town surrounded."

During this month's county commission meeting, Chairman Kevin Ensley paid tribute to Enloe, praising her work on the board, and especially for her leadership in chairing the county's bicentennial celebration, including commissioning an official county history book.

The early years

As a young girl, Enloe grew up listening to her father, Clyde "Dutch" Fisher, conduct town business on the family's front porch or in the living room when residents stopped by to talk about their problems. Fisher served as Hazelwood's mayor from 1941 to 1972 with a six-year hiatus, and passed away in office.

In multiple interviews, Enloe said she knew she would follow in her father's footsteps but could have hardly known what hard times she'd be facing when elected in 1983.

In a 2022 article in The Mountaineer, Enloe said she was pulled into local politics sooner than she'd envisioned after murmurings of corruption in town hall landed on her doorstep.

Someone needed to do something, people implored her.

"So, I answered the call," Enloe said.

The very night Enloe was sworn in as mayor, the board abolished the town administrator position and put Enloe in charge.

"After getting sworn in, the first thing I did was take all the books and paperwork home and spread it out under my grand piano," she said in the interview. "I got under that piano and started looking, and it just didn't gee-haw with me. I soon realized what I'd found."

In a special-called meeting the following week, she told the board they had to get to the bottom of the problem.

"I'm hearing some rumors and there's nothing as unfair to everybody as a rumor," she said at the time. "This is my decision, and it will include an audit and an SBI investigation. I'm going the whole nine yards."

In the end, the former town administrator spent time in jail and moved back to Hazelwood just down the street from Enloe after serving his sentence.

Running the town required Enloe to put in plenty of time after coming home from her day job.

"I watched her sign checks and pay bills every week," Libby Enloe said. "She promised the business of the town would be handled the way it should be on her watch, and she did that."

Seven months after putting Enloe in charge of day-to-day town business, Hazelwood aldermen hired a town administrator, a signal of several battles ahead between the board and its female mayor who didn't even have a vote.

After she was relieved of the town's administrative duties, Enloe was quoted saying the councilmen left her with little to do but polish her fingernails.

"I was there the nights she would come home from those board meetings in tears," recalled Libby Enloe, who was in middle school at the time. "She felt men could be very dismissive sometimes, and it hurt her. I was her sounding board, and I listened to it every week. There's a lot she doesn't get credit for."

Enloe's focus on town functions, from infrastructure to water lines, made a difference and gave the town additional years of life, her daughter stressed. "She wanted the town of Hazelwood to work."

The last 12 years of Hazelwood's existence is chronicled blow-by-blow in the archives of The Mountaineer. Parts of the story are not pretty.

There were the cost-cutting efforts, battles with the state over how street funds were used, and a long-running issue where some houses in town dumped their wastewater directly into Richland Creek. One of those homes belonged to an alderman, a situation Enloe called "an embarrassment and a health hazard," before she set her mind on finding a solution.

Stories cover not just the political strife between town leaders, but their unified front against a merger with Waynesville. Both towns were actively pursuing annexation efforts for Dayco, commonly referred to as the "rubber plant" for its signature fan belts once made locally.

Dayco didn't like either option but eventually chose Waynesville. Hazelwood's attempt to annex the Plott Creek community was nixed by the state's Supreme Court which ruled the territory could be annexed by Waynesville instead. That annexation meant Waynesville town limits completely enclosed Hazelwood. The losses left Hazelwood with a shriveled tax base following the closure of several major industries, and nowhere to expand.

The reality placed Enloe in the heart-breaking position of shutting down the town she and her father had led for a combined total of nearly 40 years.

"If the town couldn't survive mathematically, she wanted the ability to shepherd it into a new life in a different form and wanted it done in an organized and dignified way. It could have been a godawful mess," Libby Enloe said.

She looks at how Hazelwood has grown and can almost see the thriving community her mother so fondly remembered during her early years growing up there.

Chris Mehaffey, now Waynesville's assistant fire chief, formerly worked for Hazelwood and remembers Enloe as getting his name, as well as that of every single Hazelwood town employee's name, immortalized in the North Carolina statutes.

Merging towns requires legislative action, and Enloe had three specific terms she and Killian worked to include in the 1995 merger bill. Waynesville was to hire every single Hazelwood employee, and they were listed by name in the legislation. Waynesville was also to maintain a bill-paying station and a fire station in Hazelwood.

Commissioner years

Within three years, Enloe jumped back into politics, throwing her hat in the ring for a county commissioner seat.

She won the 1998 election, garnering the most votes of any candidate, but butted heads with the good-old boys right out of the gate. It was the first time the chairman's post wasn't a separate race and the elected board was to select its own chairperson.

As the top vote-getter, Enloe spoke to each commissioner asking whether they would support her as chairman. In the end, the four others chatted among themselves and wouldn't support her for either the chairperson or vice-chairperson position.

She served two terms as commissioner, 1998-2002, and again from 2004 to 2008, with an unsuccessful run for state representative in between.

The challenges for the commissioners included building a justice center, addressing thorny issues just surfacing at Haywood Regional Medical Center and facing a major remodeling project at the Historic Courthouse that ended in a legal battle.

Enloe was appointed to head the county's bicentennial celebration and wrote the introduction to the "Haywood County: Portrait of a Mountain Community," which is considered a definitive history book funded by the commissioners as part of the county's 200th birthday.

"For those who have Haywood County roots, this effort has reaffirmed who we are and where we came from," she wrote. "To those who have more recently chosen this beautiful county we hope you will enjoy learning about where you live. This history book is dedicated to the people of Haywood County — people of strong traditions marching toward a strong future."