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GREENSBORO — They’re both the youngest sons of North Carolina farmers, the journalist and the crafty oil tycoon.

The oilman is Walter Davis. Don’t confuse him with the hoops star once known as “Sweet D.’’ No, this Walter Davis made a mint and gave away a mint to help everyone from gubernatorial candidates to a toothless waitress.

The print guy? Ned Cline. It’s his fault I’m here. He hired me nearly 20 years ago when he managed the News & Record newsroom. But don’t blame him for that. Do give him props for finding the Walter Davis no one knew.

In his new book, “The Walter Davis Story,’’ Cline recounts how the son of a soybean farmer in Pasquotank County became one of the most powerful nonelected North Carolinians for three decades.

Davis was the Wizard; North Carolina was his Oz.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Davis operated mostly out of a big hotel suite in Research Triangle Park and confabbed constantly with North Carolina’s power elite as he raised and gave money for what he believed in.

He smoked cigars, drank gin, played blackjack, ate tomato sandwiches, wore tailored suits from Hong Kong and bought the Kitty Hawk Pier when he couldn’t find any Orange Crush in the icebox — and then stocked his favorite soda.

And he disliked journalists. Yet, 14 years ago, he called Cline and told him he wanted the newspaper to investigate his criticisms of C.D. Spangler, then-president of the UNC system.

Cline said no. No documentation. No supporting evidence. No go.

“I don’t know much about you, Mr. Davis, other than you’re from North Carolina, you’re a rich man from Texas and you don’t like journalists,’’ Cline told him. “Maybe you should check me out.’’

“I did,’’ Davis responded in his recognizable rasp of a voice.

That began the relationship between Cline and Davis. It started as reporter to source. But over the years, the relationship evolved from acquaintance to friend to biographer.

Cline took research initially started by writer Howard Covington and began doing sit-downs with Davis in August 2007. After a series of mini-strokes, Davis tired easy, his memory slipped and his once raspy voice had become a mumble.

For nearly a year, once or twice a week, Cline visited Davis and got what he could. He filled at least six legal pads, interviewed more than 50 people and sifted through six boxes of letters in a $65,000 project financed by Davis’ wife, Jo Ann.

Cline won’t say how much he got paid. But he found a story that’s so American.

Davis never spent a day of his life in a college classroom. Yet, he served on both the Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill board of trustees — at the same time — and raised the money needed to build the biggest building on any campus in our state: the Walter Davis Library at UNC.

He was married six times to four women, and had a secret marriage and a secret daughter — one that Cline and none of Davis’ stepchildren knew about until the day he died in May 2008 at age 88.

You’ll find it in the book. Cline only found out about it at a reception after Davis’ funeral when he overheard Jo Ann introduce her children to their new sister.

“Tell me about this person,’’ Cline told Jo Ann a few minutes later, “or I can’t do the book without including this.’’

She did. So did the secret daughter. Cline found another facet of a man who feels like something straight from Southern fiction, larger than life.

Long ago, in another time, Cline covered the Ku Klux Klan. And today, Cline — the son of a dairy and cotton farmer from Concord — has unearthed another vestige of the Old South.

“I don’t see these kinds of people out there now,’’ said Cline, 70. “I really don’t.’’

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com.