By Larry Efird

Have you ever had the experience of trying to describe the personality of your hometown to someone who has never heard of it before? For the first 18 years of my life, I had the good fortune of growing up in Kannapolis. The second 18 years of my life were spent in Tennessee, Texas, Georgia and Mississippi. During that time, I also spent a year in England; therefore, I had a great deal of experience answering the question, “Where are you from?”

To be honest, adequately explaining a cotton mill town to someone from another part of the country wasn’t all that easy. My description often began with the mantra, “I’m from a small town outside of Charlotte.” That gave them a geographical location at least, but that answer alone could not describe the true heart of a textile town and the exceptional people who also called it “home.” 

If I simply told them, “Kannapolis, North Carolina,” that didn’t really answer the question, but if I added, “Dale Earnhardt’s hometown,” I most often got the hearty response, “Oh yeah, Dale Earnhardt!” He then became my secondary identity during my sojourn away from my dear homeland, even though the closest association I ever had with him personally was going to elementary school with some of his cousins. 

Apart from my loose association with the Michael Jordan of NASCAR, I often enjoyed describing my hometown with other descriptors. I naturally told inquisitors about the massive cotton mill, the hundreds of factory “Monopoly houses,” the downtown’s classical architecture, the once, internationally known high school marching band, the historic Concord/Kannapolis football rivalry, and how I grew up in the same neighborhood as all four of my grandparents. It was a simple place, but an idyllic one. I just didn’t realize it until I pictured it for others.

I also tried to explain the unusual spirit of Kannapolis. I couldn’t help but mention that we were called “lintheads” by surrounding communities and consequently looked down upon because we were thought to be “common.” All of my friends and the people I grew up with understood we had to work a bit harder to prove ourselves because of the small chip we had on our shoulders of being from a mill town that others could not respect nor understand.

I saw the defining pride of Kannapolis in my humble grandparents who built their adult lives there in a community where our churches and schools encouraged us to embody the traits of honesty, common sense, fairness, integrity, kindness, diligence, truth and faith. 

Our teachers were the best of the best, most of them spending decades in the classroom as icons and legends. I realized when I went away to college that I had been blessed with an exceptional education in that little mill town. Many of those stellar educators set the standard for all the teachers I would eventually encounter during college and beyond. 

When I moved back to Kannapolis in 2006 for a teaching job at the high school I had, myself, graduated from, I wondered how I would find the schools and the town following my 30-year absence. I had wondered when my grandparents died years earlier if the original spirit of Kannapolis would quietly pass along with their generation. Fortunately, I found that spirit not only to be alive and well, but thriving. I also was privileged to teach alongside other children and grandchildren of those pioneer “Kannapolis commoners” who had gifted all of us with their priceless legacy.

One of those “children” was Barry Lentz, who recently moved away to his heavenly home only days ago. If anyone would want to know how to personify the spirit of Kannapolis, Barry Lentz would be their guy. His life was, and will always stand, as a towering monument to the indomitable spirit of Kannapolis. The constant stream of tributes on Facebook alone during the past week is a testament to that. 

The spirit of Kannapolis is alive and well because of human beings such as Barry Lentz. This child of a “common mill town” has successfully passed the torch of greatness to future generations in the lives of his students. I am tempted to say from now on, whenever someone asks me, “Where are you from?” to proudly reply, “Kannapolis, North Carolina, the hometown of Barry Lentz.” And there is nothing “common” about that.