By Robert Fox
I moved to Holly Springs with my family in the winter of 2012. We arrived during mid-growth for Holly Springs. The town was already booming. We heard stories of what a small town it was not so long ago. In the early 1990s, the town had about 900 residents. It was the fastest growing town in the state for the decade of the ’90s, and by the time the decade was over, there were about 9,000 residents. When we arrived in 2012, that number had already climbed to about 30,000 residents in just 12 short years. Now our population is around 50,000, just 14 years later.
With all of this growth, I’m certain that a lot of people don’t know the recent history of Holly Springs, and with this being the town’s 150th anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to highlight one of the most important Holly Springs figures in recent memory.
Richard “Dick” Sears served as Holly Springs mayor from 2001 to 2021. We lost Mayor Sears in 2022 after a nearly two-year battle with cancer, but I was able to sit with his widow, Mollie Sears, and town historian Barb Koblich to learn more about Dick. I knew him well, but since I wasn’t here from the beginning, I decided to meet with the experts.
Mollie, Barb, and I met at the Holly Springs Community Center, which, fittingly, was built while Dick was in office. Barb came prepared with a head full of town history and fond memories of Holly Springs, and Mollie brought a collection of clippings and articles from when Dick was mayor. Mollie will tell you that her memory at 87 years old is faded, but don’t let her fool you. She’s still sharp as a tack.
Mayor Sears was elected to office in November of 2001, defeating former mayor Ham Womble. Dick made the decision to run for mayor after being frustrated with how some of the deals were being handled between the town of Holly Springs and Wake County. Even before serving as mayor, Dick organized a multi-bus trip to the North Carolina Legislature to protest the dumps that the County had planned.
Back in the late 1980s, Wake County had bought 311 acres for a South Wake Solid Waste Management Facility. They chose Holly Springs due to low property values and the sparse population. The county and town worked together in the early ’90s, and in 1994, Wake County forgave $298,000 in town wastewater debt in exchange for the town’s agreement to treat 50,000 gallons/day of leachate from the landfill. In 1997, the town council approved a site sustainability letter.
In 1998, the residents of Holly Springs got together to try to block construction of the landfill site. The Holly Springs Town Council rescinded its approval, but Wake County had already spent $7 million on property purchases and site preparation. After long litigation, a settlement was reached, and the landfill eventually opened in 2007. In 2012, the town bought back 42 acres — land the county was pulling fill dirt from to build the landfill — and created the North Main Athletic Complex.
At the center of the long litigation with Wake County was Dick Sears, making sure that Holly Springs would secure something positive from a deal that was done before he took office.
Richard G. Sears was born in 1939 in a small town in Indiana. He attended Purdue University and worked part time at Sears & Roebuck on the loading dock in Lafayette, IN. Dick and his wife, Mollie, were married before he was out of college, and Mollie was still in nurses training. He never intended to work for Sears once out of college, but that’s exactly what he did. Although he was only part time while he was in school, as soon as he finished, they invited him to work full time. He was transferred to Chicago, then Midtown Manhattan. He managed several different divisions during his career at Sears, and ultimately retired from there.
In 1995, Dick and Mollie moved to Holly Springs. The town population had already grown from about 900 residents in 1990 to about 5,000. Five years later, in 2000, the population had increased to just over 9,000 residents. The town continued to grow by leaps and bounds. In the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, the population more then doubled. By the time Mayor Sears left office in 2021, town population was north of 40,000 residents, having more than quadrupled in the time that he was in office. Responsible growth is a term that comes up a lot these days in Southwest Wake County. It’s an easy task when you grow by 1%-3% per year. When you’re growing by 100% every 10 years, it becomes more like trying to tame a tornado rather than planning to build infrastructure to get ahead of strong growth.
Mollie looks back fondly on their early years in Holly Springs. “Dick was at his best when we moved down here. He was shocked when we got down here about how the town was treated. It was a little [sic] southern town filled with wonderful people.”
In 2001, Dick decided to run for mayor, feeling he could make a difference in how Holly Springs was being treated by Wake County. He won the election and went straight to work. Clearly there was more to being mayor than just trying to fight a dump, and Mayor Sears embraced all of it. The landfill, however, was the driving force behind Dick getting into Holly Springs government.
Mollie shared that Dick was so involved with trying to get Wake County to stop the dump that, at one point, he even bought a plane ticket and flew to Minneapolis to learn about Clean Burn dumps. He brought the idea back to Wake County as a possible solution, and Wake County struck it down citing the cost being far too high.
Along with opposing the landfill, Dick had a lot of work he wanted to get done while in office. He had a simple motto, which you’ve probably alread heard, if you knew him or spent any time with him. “If it’s good for the kids, it’s good for Holly Springs.” To him, it wasn’t just a saying; it was the backbone of how he made decisions while in office.
Under Mayor Sears, and the town council teams and Holly Springs staff during his tenure, many of the sights you see around town today were built. In addition to the North Athletic Main Campus, there are the Town Hall, the Cultural Center and Community Library, Rex Hospital, Holly Springs High School, several local parks, and many more.
“He was a great ambassador for the town,” Barb shared. “He was endearing, well spoken, educated, and he understood how business worked. He was loved by so many people in the town. But he was met with a lot of opposition while in office as well. The idea to build the North Main Athletic Complex wasn’t popular with everyone. I can’t tell you how many people were saying that he was going to bankrupt the town by building a stadium where the county had a landfill planned. Now look at it. What a success story.”
Mollie added, “I remember one council member who fought him tooth and nail on the park, telling him he would never attend an event at the park. I think he’s still around, and I’ll tell you that I’ve seen him out there [at the park].”
Outside of the more typical aspects of the mayoral job, Dick loved connecting with local kids. One of his passions when he was in office was the Mayor’s Anti-Bullying Campaign. Year after year, he led students who were on the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to fight bullying. He was so passionate about it that he even took it to an adult level at one point.
Mollie recalled, “Back in the day, people had to come into Town Hall to set up their water service. With Dick’s office being at the top of the stairs, he’d hear the echo of a child’s voice and come down with his pocket full of lapel pins and business cards. He would give each kid a pin and hand them a business card. Of course, the kids think they’ve got the keys to the city, they’re so excited. He did the same any time the scouts came into Town Hall. He would see a lot of these kids year after year, and some of them made Eagle Scout. As an Eagle Scout himself, he had a lot of respect for them. Dick would get invited to their Eagle Scout ceremonies, and that was so important to him.”
Mollie and Barb and I talked a lot about the town and Dick’s time as mayor, and they shared some great stories with me. Here are just a couple more of their many memories of the man behind the mayor’s hat.
Barb remembered, “We had an African delegation coming through town. They had presented Dick with a headpiece that was beautifully done in tribal colors and whatnot. Dick puts it on with a big smile and says, ‘It’s just a like a yarmulke.’ That was just him.”
Another of Barb’s memories was from when Target was announced. “We were having a press conference,” she said, “and he was all excited about it. There were all these suits there from corporate, and Dick goes up in front of all these people and says, ‘Yep, we’ve really arrived. We’re getting a Tar-jay.’ Oh, Lord, he tried…”
Mollie chimed in, saying, “You can’t take the boy out. Even though he spent 30 years in Manhattan, he was still just this little boy from Indiana. He loved this town. He just loved it.”
There were many people who wanted to contribute to this article, but we only have so much space. One wonderful email I received was from Anthony Perna, the Holly Springs Citizen of the Year in 2011.
“I worked closely with Mayor Sears in the formulation of a food cupboard in Holly Springs. He was instrumental in helping us obtain our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and provided us with access to the town attorney and other members of the town council so that we could get this important endeavor started. Over the years, that food cupboard has become a very successful and important part of our community. Today, it provides food to more than 100 families each week in Holly Springs, helping people get through difficult times and giving them an opportunity to survive, recover, and move forward…What stands out to me most about Mayor Sears is not simply what he has accomplished as mayor, but the kind of person he has always been…He always made an effort to listen to people, and he treated people with respect, regardless of their position or circumstances.”
Long-time resident and friend Chris Dickson shared, “Back when we were fighting the South Wake Landfill, we needed a place for all of us to meet and Dick offered his house since it had a nice great room which would fit a good crowd. We used his house a time or two to meet. Then at a town council meeting in the old town hall, I was seated next to him and we chatted a bit. I told him with his background and demeanor, he really needed to run for mayor in the next election…so I take a little credit for getting his career started!”
Former town councilman Hank Dickson served with Mayor Sears. “Dick became mayor at exactly the right time for the town. It really did not take him long after he was elected in 2001 to get the attention of nearby mayors and start some positive regional dialogue. Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly and Fuquay Varina Mayor John Byrne and Dick formed an informal pact which encouraged positive communication. Mayor Ronnie Williams of Garner later joined in. It seemed as if anyone who was somebody in Wake County politics wanted to be associated with Mayor Sears. He was able to forge good relationships with key people in government and was able to break through their bureaucracy and get things done.
He brought a different type of professionalism to the mayor’s job that the town had not seen previously. I think people mostly saw the fun, grandfatherly Mayor Sears. But behind the scenes he was a disarmingly skilled businessman and statesman.”
On this 150th anniversary of the Town of Holly Springs, let’s remember a man who was the mayor for 20 of its most impactful years. Mayor Dick “Papa” Sears, may you rest in peace.
