A lot of folks say they don’t like to talk about themselves and then proceed to blather their listener into an unconscious state.
Not Earl Hoyle Withers Jr., who goes by Hoyle but is perhaps best known to the folks in Dallas as “Chief.”
When he says he doesn’t like to talk about himself, he means it. Luckily his son, Earl Hoyle Withers III, is present at the interview to help goad the conversation along.
We’re sitting in the most appropriate place in the world to interview Hoyle — the office of the Dallas Rescue Squad, a squad that his father, Earl Hoyle Williams Sr., helped establish and of which he has served as chief for the past 34 years.
That’s just one of the many ways Withers has served his community — we’ll get to the others in a moment — but it is the primary reason he was recently honored with receipt of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award by Gov. Roy Cooper.
The Long Leaf Pine award is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a civilian in North Carolina.