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Ask Matt ... what presidents, governors and stars have visited

President Trump touted the Farmers to Families Food Box program when he visited the Flavor 1st packing house in Mills River in August 2020. [LIGHTNING FILE PHOTO]

By Matt Matteson, Published: July 31, 2024

Q. Gov. Roy Cooper was on the short list for VP. I saw where he visited Asheville earlier this year. When was the last time a governor visited Henderson County? What other governors and presidents have visited?

Gov. Cooper made a stop at an elementary school in Asheville to highlight his “Year of Public Schools” initiative. He returned to the Blue Ridge Parkway a month later to celebrate Earth Day.

The most recent trip to Hendersonville we could find was Cooper’s visit in January 2020 to the Henderson County Career Academy on the Blue Ridge Community College campus to promote the state’s Jobs for North Carolina’s Graduates program.

“It has done so well that I’ve come to this school to announce that we’re going to provide $825,000 to continue this program (statewide),” Cooper told the Career Academy students that day.

We did some quick checking on other visits by sitting governors and learned that Pat McCrory, a Republican, rode in the King Apple Parade during the 2013 Apple Festival and that Democrat Bev Perdue checked out the Sierra Nevada construction site in 2012. (Along with Henderson County, the state Commerce Development had been part of an aggressive recruiting effort to land the brewery.) Democratic Gov. Mike Easley appeared alongside U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton on a sunny day in May 2008 during her presidential primary campaign and Republican Gov. James Martin rode in the 1992 King Apple Parade. In August 2020 President Trump visited the Johnson family’s Flavor First packing house in Mills River to promote the Farmers to Families Food Box program. Election-year appearances in the City of Four Seasons might be regarded as a jinx. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Martin and Trump all lost their elections in the years they visited, and Gov. McCrory lost his re-election bid the next time he was on the ballot, in 2016.

Jim Hunt, a Democrat who served as governor from 1977 to 1985 and from 1993 to 2001, almost surely would have visited the county during his 16 years as the state’s leader. But he has a lasting contribution to our region. In October of 2000, Hunt and the Council of State voted to acquire 2,200 acres of DuPont property through eminent domain to save it from development. Years later, Chuck McGrady, a leader of the Friends of DuPont Forest who had become a state representative, got a call from Hunt asking if he would show Hunt and his wife Carolyn the property for the first time. McGrady was happy to oblige. “With help from the Forest Service, we met the Hunts at the visitors center and drove to see Bridal Veil Falls and Triple Falls,” said McGrady, who firmly believes that Jim Hunt, more than any public official, was why we have DuPont State Forest today. Hunt is 87 and lives in tobacco-rich Wilson County some 300 miles east of Hendersonville. His daughter, Rachel, is the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in the Nov. 5 election.

Other visits from luminaries

Many will recall the visit of President Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush to the 1992 Apple Festival, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign rally and Trump’s Mills River appearance. Here’s what we know about some other well-known figures:

Heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey trained in Laurel Park for a title fight with Gene Tunney in 1926. Dempsey lost.

Ronald Reagan, then an actor, visited the General Electric plant in East Flat Rock in 1960 to promote the GE Theatre television show.

Bob Dylan and some friends drove into Flat Rock unannounced in 1964 and looked up fellow poet Carl Sandburg. It was a brief encounter because Sandburg had never heard of the folk troubadour. Dylan gifted Sandburg his latest album, “The Times They Are a-Changing.”

In the early 1990s, actor Burt Reynolds, who once performed at the Flat Rock Playhouse, bought two lots in Kenmure with then-wife Lonnie Anderson. The couple soon divorced. 

Oprah Winfrey visited Hendersonville, stayed at a B&B on Fifth Avenue West, and was spotted walking to town. OK, that one was all a hoax but it got local media ink in the mid-1990s.

Ben Stiller came to town to star in “Heavyweights,” a 1995 movie about a fat camp. Kenan Thompson, later an SNL star, was in the film. Lou Rawls of “Lady Love” fame got stranded on the interstate here in 1997 when his limo broke down en route to Asheville. They got him a taxi. And most recently Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Eugene Levy and other Hollywood stars were spotted around town during the filming of “Summer Camp,” which was set at Camp Pinnacle in Flat Rock.