From humble roots to a place of prominence

ELIZABETHTOWN – County Commissioner Ray Britt is North Carolina born and bred and although he has become a respected politician, successful businessman and trusted friend, he came from very humble Bladen beginnings.

Britt remembers some of his earliest memories working with his grandfather who was an early mentor and hero. At 5 years of age, he was allowed to go with his grandfather who was a sharecropper in the tobacco fields and would follow the tobacco bins and make sure every errant and missed tobacco leaf that had fallen to the ground was harvested. At that age, Britt learned how important it was to be meticulous and how to make sure that there was no waste.

It was a tough and grueling job – he learned the value of hard work and how good a compliment from his hard-driving mentor could be. He knows now that it was that tough love from his grandfather that was forging him in a fire – preparing him for life that he couldn’t see coming.

According to lib.ncsu.edu, “Starting in late July or early August, depending on how the weather was that year, the tobacco harvest begins. The harvesting process was the most physically demanding part of tobacco farming, and the fact it happened during the hottest part of the year in North Carolina, it was also the most miserable part.”

As Britt grew, he found that he had a talent for business and a passion for hard work. His family moved to Wilmington at a young age and he learned to adjust and adapt to the flow of his environment.

In the midst of family tragedy while he was only 13 years old, Britt moved from Wilmington back to Elizabethtown to live with his grandparents.

“I didn’t really care for Wilmington, and I asked my grandparents here in Elizabethtown if I could come live with them – a good Christian family,” Britt said. “My granddaddy had started working with the town, on the street side of it, and my grandmother was a nurse’s aid. I knew that financially they couldn’t burden the expense of me without telling me. So immediately I got on the street looking for a job because I didn’t want to be a financial burden. That first week I made $15 and gave my grandmother $5.”

At that time, in 1968 Elizabethtown had two shoe shops (Melvin’s Shoe Shop and City Shoe Shop) and the boldness bolstered by a love for his grandparents caused him to approach a trade that he would learn and use for many years. Even at that age, he was persistent.

“City Shoe Shop was run by a local pastor, Emerson Martin,” Britt said. “I went in there four times in one week and kept following up about a job. The fourth time he finally said, ‘boy, quit aggravating me and put on an apron and go to work.”

By the time Britt became a junior in High School at East Bladen, he had earned enough to purchase a partial ownership of the shop.

“He was so good to me,” Britt said. “He was really like a father to me. I learned the shoe trade. As a matter of fact, I’ve still got the equipment in the back of my store right now that I worked on when I was 13.”

Those may just be material things to most, but to Britt – it represented the kindness and caring of yet another mentor that spoke into his life by way of a divine nature. Britt hangs on to the sentimental things almost as a journal – recording each and every step he took to get where he is today. He will never forget where he came from or those who helped him along the way.

“We repaired shoes here at the store for a long time,” Britt said. “Then so many started closing it was overwhelming. If I could do what I really wanted to do that I could make a living at, that’s what I’d be doing today. In high school, I worked at the shoe shop until I graduated.”

In high school, Britt was drawn to government and history and he discovered yet another talent.

“While in high school, Danny Priest, myself and three others wrote the constitution for East Bladen High School in our government class,” Britt said. “Willis Nichols was our government teacher and he’d be proud today to know that I am a county commissioner. He was a good instructor and a good teacher and a fine man.”

It seemed that hearing the path that Britt has walked, it may have never been easy, but it was fraught with fine men and women who were willing to mentor him. And Britt was slow to speak and quick to listen.

Also, while still in high school, Britt purchased land in Bladen County and learned how to invest in the community and in his future. He put skin in the game and never forgot who was the architect of his life.

He was singing tenor in gospel groups with his partner Martin’s influence, although Britt says that the older he got, he could probably sing bass.

“One of the biggest honors of my life was when he (Martin) passed, I was listed on the program at the funeral as one of his children,” Britt said. “He had been a good mentor and a very good man. He actually had his own church right here in New Town. The simplest and most precious thing I can say about him was that he was a man who just wanted to preach, fix shoes and go fishing. I learned from this good man and that was some of the foundation for me.”

A smile came to Britt’s face as he recalls a trip to New York to hear a famous pastor speak as he drove Martin in Britt’s new Ford Mustang.

After graduation, with eyes wide-open and excited about what God was about to do in his next chapter, along came the next mentor to help shape and groom this young upstart who had already had many years of work experience under his belt.

In the interim and before his actual career in management and retail began, he was finishing up his life’s course, working at the nuclear plant.

“I was making twice as much as they were making around here,” Britt said. “I started out as a pipe-fitter’s helper and in three months I was in what was called the “bull-gang crew.” We hung the hangers for the big pipes… a job other workers didn’t want to do.”

Britt stayed for a year and earned enough money to get his residence paid for. Through some very good friends at his church, he found the path for the next journey.

The job would be with retail mogul, Cape Craftsmen. With a man who refused to be called by Mr. Puglia, but always, just… Sammy.

“I had never met Sammy Puglia until I went in for the interview,” Britt said. “I was very comfortable; I was 19 and he was 28. We talked for a while and I said, ‘Sir… all I’ve ever done is work. You got a lot of people in there with a lot more education than I do, but I promise you after about 38 hours I will be ready to eat lunch because it may take me a while, but I don’t believe anybody in that building will outwork me.’”

Little did Britt know until a call that evening from another Cape Craftsmen employee to congratulate him on his hire. He said, “Ray you don’t know, but there were two openings and you got a job in human resources. You’ll probably be handing me my check on Friday.”

Puglia took Britt aside and told him that he was going to be going to the school of SWP. Samuel Wang Puglia. He personally took Britt under his wing and created something very special in his workforce. He had an eye for talent and saw something very special in Ray Britt.

“I give credit – at least 70% of the foundation and my business savvy and knowledge from Sammy Puglia,” Britt said. “I wouldn’t be here today. I worked there until we sold the company. When I was 20 they moved me to Myrtle Beach to run that location and then at 22 he wanted me to go to Panama City, Florida, to get a store built and I stayed there until 1979 when I got another call to go back to Myrtle Beach to address some issues and to grow some more stores. It was a good ride working with him.”

Panama City was not only a place where Britt had his nose to the grindstone, but also a place that would provide the foundation for his family.

“I met Wanda in a dentist chair,” Britt said. “My Sunday school teacher was a dentist and he would work on patients who were close friends every Friday. Wanda went in to help him on that particular Friday when I needed some work done. She put the little bib on me and they prepped me and had to go numb up another patient. She said they’d be right back. As soon as she started to walk out, I lifted up the chair arm and started to follow. She asked me what I was doing and I said, ‘Girl, let me tell you something. I’ve looked for them brown eyes a long time and I’m not going to let them get out of my sight.’ She told me I was a crazy man and we had breakfast the next morning and breakfast ever since. So, I’d say it was love at first sight.”

The couple were married in 1980, Puglia treated the newly formed company of Britt & Britt to a honeymoon in the Bahamas and as of today they have had two boys together. Britt also has a son from a previous marriage and it was always “my three sons” in the Britt home. To Britt, his wife is everything to him.

“Some people ask how we do it together all the time,” he said. “Number one, that’s my best friend, the mother of my children, she’s the queen at my house, she’s my business partner. We eat breakfast together, lunch together, supper together and we literally do everything together. We just have that close bond and we enjoy the company, the camaraderie and the companionship.”

Evan, Britt’s 43-year-old works with him at the Elizabethtown store. Tyler is in the dental business, living in Shallotte, North Carolina. Heath is his oldest son. The family has grown with grandchildren and even two great-grandchildren.

“Life’s been good,” Britt said. “But when you have the opportunity to be around people like I have had the pleasure to work with, it’s like I told my kids. Feed off of people. If you talk to an elder statesman for 30 minutes and you don’t learn but one thing, you listen to him. You talk to 100 people and you learn 1%, you bank it. I always have enjoyed the wisdom of older people. We used to close the shoe shop on Thursday afternoons. I’d pick up seniors, Mr. Mase Ward and people like that. They’d be around 75-80 and I’d be 16 or 17. We’d go to Wilmington and go bowling or go to Raleigh. We’d ride all the way to Fort Fisher and ride the ferry, get off of it, turn the car around and come right back. If you just listen, they have a world of knowledge and experiences.”

Britt was in politics first to the board of elections at the request of Billy Ray Pate where Britt served for 15 years.

“I took maybe two years off after I left the board of elections and I had no idea I was going to run for commissioner,” Britt said. “I was asked by Mr. Pate and David Clark who came into this store at 10 minutes to 12. Last filing time was 12:00. He said, ‘son, will you please go file for commissioner?’”

Britt then walked over to throw his hat into the ring with two minutes to spare. That was 2016 and he has been serving the community as a commissioner ever since. He said that his biggest challenges were during both hurricanes and COVID – being a chairman.

“That was tough,” he said. “After the hurricanes, flying over with the sheriff in a helicopter and seeing some of the destruction that I saw, I don’t see how anybody could not shed tears… looking down to see what I saw. It was horrible.”

Britt also serves on the committee to help rebuild Bladenboro, he works with Bladen’s Bloomin’, he serves on the board at Bladen Community College and is just starting to serve on Trillium’s board. Britt says that all the hours and the effort is not about himself and certainly not for fame or fortune, but simply the satisfaction of helping someone. And to have a passion for a community that he is passionate about.

“It’s about trying to leave something here or trying to rebuild a community for the ones who are going to follow us,” Britt said. “There’s no reason why we are not bursting at the seams as a community, but everybody’s got to work together. We need to be able to give of ourselves and to be passionate about each other’s feelings and to be able to listen and understand. So, we can go forward.”

The wisdom coming from Britt as he stands across his jewelry counter and converses with his customers is almost magical and, on some days, many don’t come to buy – but they come to have a chance to converse with him. He makes each and every customer feel as if they’d hung the moon.

“When you’re in a rural area like we are, you learn quick that your field of opportunity with numbers of people is limited,” he said. “So, you better cherish each customer. You better treat them right. Because if you don’t have repeat business, you’re done. The old golden rule that I taught myself is, ‘If you run your business like a business, you’ll always have a business. If you seek to run your business like a business you will no longer have a business. Your number one asset is your customers.”

Britt, in essence is speaking to the need for the genuine. Britt is the genuine article. He has no filter at times and will tell you not just what you want to hear, but what you need to hear and what he needs to say. Those who need to grow… need to hear. He is a strong man of faith, family and community. Again – the genuine article.

“I couldn’t do anything without the faith,” Britt said. “Faith is what’s brought us here, faith will lead us home. And faith and understanding will help resolve and help us take the next steps we need to take.”

Undoubtedly, knowing Ray Britt, those steps will be monumental.

Ray’s, Inc. Furniture and Jewelry is located at 209 W. Broad Street in Elizabethtown and the hours are Monday – Thursday 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., Friday 8:30 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. For more information, you can call: 910-862-2586.