OUR VIEW

Alice Allen would appreciate the Bladen County commissioners honoring her son.

He was a firefighter killed in the line of duty, the first so recorded in the county, and spent a lifetime helping others. In fact, he was doing just that when he died Sept. 22, 2006.

Memories are still fresh 14 years later. His mother hasn’t forgotten the phone call. Family members remember the way Ron P. Allen Jr. lived his life, the way he touched theirs and those of others around him.

Ron Allen was to have been at the beach that day, his mother said. It was a Friday, and her son knew an insurance inspection was coming that could have an impact on what people paid on their rates as it relates to fire protection.

Fire hydrants needed attention. So he headed out to get the work done. He died when another vehicle hit his truck, which hit him, as he worked along the roadside.

As his mother and Dale Brennan, the fire chief in White Lake, explained on Tuesday, choosing fire hydrants before the beach was Ron being Ron. At Tar Heel Baptist Church he might just as easily be seen helping the children as he would the more elderly.

“He helped everybody,” she said.

Even if, as Brennan pointed out, it wasn’t necessarily his job. The hydrants, after all, are owned by the county.

More than a decade later, five Republicans and four Democrats sit on a board and need to be unanimous in support for the state Department of Transportation to consider naming bridges honoring Allen that span Reedy Meadow Swamp on N.C. 87 north of Dublin going to Tar Heel. Two members of the board last year blocked the effort, and reportedly a third was willing to do so Tuesday before the public hearing on the matter was pulled from the agenda.

All three were part of a unanimous board voting yes to naming a stretch of highway for him in 2019.

The nine-member board doesn’t always see eye to eye on everything — not in 2019, last year, or now. How Ron P. Allen Jr. and a family that still grieves his loss got pulled into the middle of their squabbles is a debate for those that do the bickering.

How and why do not matter. It’s wrong. It has nothing to do with Ron Allen.

The commissioners heard about it Tuesday night. For about eight minutes, his mother gave the board the tongue-lashing they all deserved.

True, four members of the board were not part of the two earlier decisions. But Republicans Charles Ray Peterson and Ray Britt, the chairman and immediate past chairman respectively, and the Democratic trio of Michael Cogdell, Arthur Bullock and Dr. Ophelia Munn-Goins were on the board all this time and, periodically, they are at odds.

Some disagreements are in public records, others could be behind the scenes.

Regardless, there’s no disagreement on whether to honor Ron Allen. His mother said she’s been told as much by those on record as opposed.

She let nine commissioners hear about it Tuesday. Alice Allen told them about their “stupid mess.”

And she couldn’t have been more right.