The Board of Directors of the N.C. Apple Festival has selected Wanda & Roy Williams to serve as this year’s Parade Grand Marshals.
Both Roy and Wanda are natives of Western North Carolina and own a home in Kenmure. Wanda is the daughter of Fred and Cleo Jones. Her father grew up in Crab Creek and graduated from Flat Rock High School. Jones self-published a book called “Darkness Comes in the Morning” detailing the lives of his parents, who were from the Jones, Stepp and McCall families, all early Henderson County settlers The story takes the reader back to the mid-19th century, before the Civil War, to family roots on both sides.
Wanda’s family moved to Asheville in 1955 when she was 5, After they bought a farm in Mills River, she attended Mills River School for grades 6, 7 and 8. Her family still owns the property, “The Farm of Three Sisters,” named for Wanda and her sisters.
Wanda and Roy met in ninth grade Algebra I class at T.C. Roberson High School in 1964. They both went off to UNC-Chapel Hill and started dating there. They married in 1973 and lived in Asheville for five years. They have two children and four grandchildren living in the Charlotte area. They returned to North Carolina in 2003 and spent 20 years in Chapel Hill, where he coached the Tar Heels to three national championships.
Roy is a Biltmore boy, attending school there until two schools consolidated for the 1961-62 school year. He attended TCR from 1964 until his graduation. After graduation from UNC, Williams took his first coaching job. at Owen High School in Black Mountain. He coached basketball and golf and even a little football before heading back to UNC to serve as an assistant under Dean Smith for 10 years. He accepted the head coaching job at Kansas in 1988 and returned to his alma mater in 2003. Coach Williams has a total of 903 wins, guided teams to nine Final Fours and won national championships in 2005, 2009 and 2017, all at Carolina.
He became a Henderson County landowner when he joined with friends in 1995 to invest in the Kenmure golf community. At a time when Wanda and Roy began to look for property to build a vacation home, Kenmure had just purchased the adjacent area known as Berwick Downs, and they bought a lot.
In time for Christmas of 2012, they built and moved into their house in Flat Rock as a vacation/future retirement home. Their family had outgrown the accommodations at her parents’ house in Mills River, where they were living full time, and building a new home in Flat Rock was like coming full circle.
“We are happy to be here, using Flat Rock as our permanent address, although we spend time in other places seasonally,” Wanda said upon accepting the Grand Marshal honor in this year’s King Apple Parade. “We enjoy Little Rainbow Row and alternatively spend time on an island off the coast of Charleston, home of the original Rainbow Row.
“We love the Flat Rock Playhouse, Hendersonville, the Friday night car shows, local restaurants, the bears, the ice cream trail, apples in all their forms and the ability to stroll or cruise Main Street,” she added. “We are excited to be part of the Apple Festival and look forward to viewing it from the inside out.”
The King Apple Parade will once again be held on Labor Day, Sept. 2, beginning at 2:30 p.m. Applications for entries are still being accepted at www.ncapplefestival.org. Those interested in renting a professional float may contact the Apple Festival office at 828-697-4557.
You can find this article online at https://www.hendersonvillelightning.com/news/14205-wanda-and-roy-williams-to-be-grand-marshals-of-king-apple-parade.html
Photo courtesy of the ACC.