HARRELLS — Faith, family and the great outdoors.

Dean Thomas’ greatest joys in life trace to each of them. Often, they overlap.

More time for them is coming. The owner and operator of Thomas Timber here along N.C. 210 has announced his retirement from logging after 50 years in the business.

“At this age in my life, I get a tremendous amount of joy from my grandchildren,” he said.

The 68-year-old and his wife Vivian have enjoyed nearly a half-century of marriage and dote on three grandchildren.

“We both enjoy that,” he said. “We look forward to everything that goes on, whether we’re with them or hearing of them doing good in whatever it is that they are involved in.

“One just got a driver’s license, another is about to turn 16, so things are changing. It’s all important to us.”

The son of the late Allie Beal and George W. Thomas, he’s spent a lifetime in the timber industry and enjoying the outdoors with his family. A sawmill, chipping, logging and most recently swamp logging have been his calling card with a business well-respected throughout and a little beyond southeastern North Carolina.

He’s taught his children a love for hunting, and now it’s the grandchildren. He’s as comfortable sitting on a pickup watching a herd of deer without a gun as he is teaching a preteen about the safety of one, and how to know the moment to squeeze the trigger or release an arrow.

He lost his father to a logging accident when he was 18. Two weeks later in the spring of 1971, the men of the company having come to say they would support him, he chose to keep the business running.

He soon married Vivian, got through the 1974 recession, and spent 50 years providing the kind of fair and honest business that would make any parent proud. He changed the focus of the company within the industry a couple of times with no regrets.

He’s looking forward to a future that definitely includes time with ViviAnn, Willa Grace and Robert.

“We can go through life, like I was at a young age, not concerned about tomorrow,” he said. “Then, a tragedy, when one hits you, with the loss of my dad, my best friend that I turned to with any questions, he was wiped away and I had to come to the realization that life could be hard.

“And that will humble you and cause you to realize that you don’t naturally have the ability to deal with things that may come your way. But that God made a way, and He’s standing ready and willing to extend his hand out to lift you up out of whatever you’re in to. I think faith was a tremendous asset to be able to make it through those years.”

Thomas Timber, the 1989 successor to G.W. Thomas Inc., has operated with eight to 12 employees. Equipment changes, like most industries, have allowed more to be done with less people. His numbers never wavered much.

Thomas, like many leaders, won’t ask of his employees what he won’t do himself. He takes pride in solid working relationships, and admits that can be a business hindrance simply because, “I like to be a friend to everybody.”

Safe to say, the industry is his friend.

In an email response to Thomas sharing the news with colleagues, forester Joe Evans of Georgia-Pacific wrote back, “You have represented the logging business with integrity and professionalism. You are always concerned for the environment and others in this profession.”

Gene Allen, a forester consultant, recalled jobs by Thomas in Colly Swamp.

“It’s a tough area to work, arduous and challenging,” he said. “He seems to roll with it. He’s made a go of it.”

With Thomas, Allen said he and everyone else have always known where they stood.

“When you talk about someone being a man of his word, he’s that,” Allen said. “With Dean, I sure don’t need it in writing.

“His demeanor permeates that honor and integrity in everything he does.”

Dean Alsap of TriState Land & Timber came to know him three decades ago working with Squires Timber Co. He describes his friend as “top of the line, top notch.”

“He had good morals, good character, did a good clean job,” Alsap said. “He’s honest.”

His colleagues speak about his care for all parts of the job. There are the people involved, his and the landowners, but also the product and what’s left behind in the environment.

“It’s a renewable resource,” Thomas said. “It’s one of the biggest renewable resources we have. There are all kinds of management opportunities for tracts of land that have not been quite what they should be. I’ve enjoyed converting them back into production, clear cutting and seeing them replanted.

“With property taxes, they need to be reproductive. Like any other farm land, if it’s not managed, it’s not going to be.”

Thomas’ challenging early years he describes testify to a steep learning curve. He recalls being 18 and getting a deal with C.A. Brown Lumber Co. in Ivanhoe, “a big deal for me” he says.

“Ernest Brown, when I met him he was 74, and I was 18,” Thomas said. “It was a relationship that I will cherish for the rest of my life. He taught me an awful lot in the first two or three years.”

But Brown wasn’t necessarily the only one.

Thomas was sharp, and he picked up on things. The people he came to deal with would recall his father, and share stories about him. Young Dean listened, and though his father was not there, his lessons for how to work with people were.

The son paid attention. The standard stayed high.

“One thing he always said,” Thomas said of his father, recalling an old saying, “if you want to get anything, you got to go again’ the collar.

“He was referring to a mule or horse. He had to push against that collar around his neck. That was what he was referring to. I didn’t know that for a long time.

“You’ve got to keep pushing forward.”

Dean Thomas did. For 50 years, he’s ran the family business and earned an unwavering trust and respect of those around him.

“When daddy was living,” he said, “and I was around him quite a bit, before the accident, I didn’t never feel like … I thought everything we were doing was not necessarily for the fun of it, but there was no complications. There was not any reason to be concerned with how well certain things went. Just get out and work.

“And then one day, I realized there was a lot more to it after daddy died. There were a lot more decisions in areas I had not been associated with. But I did have that desire, to be hands on, in that type of work early on. Two weeks after daddy died, some of the men came to me, and said if you want to try it, we’ll stay with you. There were about 15 of them. We cranked the mill up and started back up again. The next three years were hard.”

Satisfaction in the yield was great.

“Some of the times when I have actually had a long hard day, but got something accomplished, maybe something I tried to get done for several days, and it all came together,” he says, “that’s something, as a man, we can all appreciate. We all get a certain satisfaction to be able to get something behind us that we’ve been struggling with for a while.”

Days of trudging through swamps for the highly valued timber, deciding on whether to take jobs, figuring out how best to handle requests of land owners — they’re moving into the rearview mirror. There’s an auction coming on April 14, and he’ll shift into a retirement that includes a level of consulting.

“Over the past several years, I’ve got more and more involved in the market and more in touch with the land owners,” he said. “To be able to go on their property, and harvest their timber, and leave there with their approval that everything was done the way they expected it to be, no road issues or with ditches or fields, and to know that they got the very best deal they could get, and how and the amount they were paid for their standing timber — that’s gratifying, to have a land owner that feels he’s been treated completely fair.

“If there’s one thing I’ll miss, it’ll be that.”

Honest and fair, guided by faith, devoted to family and the outdoors.

The logging industry will miss Dean Thomas, too.

Alan Wooten can be reached at 910-247-9132 or awooten@bladenjournal.com. Twitter: @alanwooten19.