news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Bill Knight keeps a cross in his right pocket.

He got it from a friend, a retired Methodist minister. It’s a constant reminder of who he is, why he’s here and why he ran for mayor.

“The thing says 'God loves you,’ ’’ he says. “You gotta believe in something.’’

He does. He believes in family, education, hard work and the need for fiscal conservatism in his hometown. When he runs into people, he hears all too often, “I’m between jobs.’’

And of course, he believes in himself. He knew he’d win.

A month ago, he ousted incumbent mayor Yvonne Johnson, a 16-year veteran of local politics. He beat her by 935 votes and became the first challenger to unseat an incumbent mayor in 36 years.

It surprised scores of people. But it didn’t surprise Knight. He believed that voters wanted change, wanted new leadership and wanted to see the dysfunction of the City Council cease.

As his slogan proclaimed: Enough Is Enough.

Now, after pulling the biggest local political upset since bell-bottoms were big, he finds himself as the symbolic face of Greensboro, the leader of North Carolina’s third-largest city.

And he’s never held political office before.

He has spent his working life as a certified public accountant crunching numbers in an office.

On election night, as he stood freezing outside the old Guilford County Courthouse, with a crush of TV cameras hanging on his every word, he thought to himself, “What have I done?’’

And after his first meeting two weeks ago, when he voted against a proposed $18.8 million aquatics center and lost, he looked at his new watch from Walmart and saw it nearing midnight. Surrounded by eight strong-willed personalities, he’d heard all about the strong-arm tactics that go hand-in-hand with leadership in Greensboro.

But he believes he’ll be OK. At 70, he’s a man who first learned about leadership the way many former mayors did — through the Greensboro Jaycees.

And like many from his generation, he has a by-the-bootstraps mentality that has helped guide his moral compass.

“I’ve never known anything but work, and if you want to go anywhere, hard work is the roadway,’’ he says. “You got to get up and get off your doofus and go after it.’’

Knight talks about pride, trust, accountability, opportunity and economic recovery.

But it could be tough. He has a new city manager and a new City Council.

And he has to gain trust and build coalitions with people he doesn’t know in a city where the issue of race sometimes takes center stage.

That’s always bothered him. On the campaign trail, he said so. He believes Greensboro needs to move beyond talking about race and talk more about providing jobs to encourage traits that know no color, no class.

Hard work. Initiative. And desire.

“Money,’’ he says, “can cure a lot of ills.’’

How Knight will fare is anyone’s guess. But he brings a new voice to Greensboro’s political chorus and offers a conservative philosophy that springs from a simpler time.

He loves lighthouses, eats banana-and-mayonnaise sandwiches and reads the latest books from Republicans Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee.

He likes nothing better than driving to Cary to see his two granddaughters or sitting around with his buddies at Your House on Battleground or Danny’s on New Garden Road and hashing out how to solve the world’s problems.

He sees himself as a “small-town guy.’’ He has lived in Greensboro since he was 12, and he can look out the window of the mayor’s second-floor office, see the smokestack near the GTCC building and recall that pretty girl he met outside his accounting class in 1964.

Back then, that was Guilford College’s downtown campus. And that pretty girl Knight met was Pam Angel, a co-ed who grew up on Walker Avenue. She became his wife. They’ve been married for 44 years.

He can tell you how he collected bottles to buy tickets to see baseball games at War Memorial Stadium, stared at the electric train displays in the window at Meyer’s Department Store, and sold linoleum and tires at the old Montgomery Ward (now Triad Stage) before enrolling at Guilford College.

So, Knight is old Greensboro. He came of age here, met his wife here, paid his way through college here, goes to church here, started his own accounting firm here and raised a family here.

He was the first generation in his family to go to college — he earned an economics degree from UNCG in 1968 — and was influenced by family members such as Aunt Ora, now 88, a retired mill worker in Eden.

When his daughter Jamie headed off to college, Knight gave her $100 a month. “Your food and room is paid for,’’ he told his only child. “You don’t need much more.’’

And what else did he tell her?

“It takes a long time to build up trust,’’ he said, “and it only takes a moment to tear it down.’’

Knight has tried to follow that advice through his 36-year career as an accountant. And now, he’s trying to use those same skills as he learns to navigate the rough-and-tumble world of Greensboro politics.

Meanwhile, Pam Knight worries. She doesn’t watch the council meetings or read anything about politics in the papers. And every night, she recites the same prayer: “Lord, you put him here. Use him as your instrument.’’

Already, the mayor’s wife has run into the in-your-face frankness of local politics. She realized that when she ran into an old friend and talked about her life.

“You’re married to him?’’ the friend asked. “I’m really disappointed in him. He didn’t vote for the aquatics center.’’

“He’s not against the aquatics center,’’ Pam Knight responded. “He’s all about kids swimming. His thing is how are we going to pay for it.’’

That’s Bill Knight’s big thing. Fiscal responsibility. Not political legacies.

He says he wants to help his hometown get back on track and make way for someone else from the next generation to take over. Then, he wants to get back to playing golf and seeing his granddaughters.

With a cross in his pocket.

As he gets better acquainted with his new role, he thinks often about Dave Williams. He was the city’s deputy police chief, a 32-year city employee. He also was Knight’s friend and running partner for a quarter century.

Williams was one of the first people Knight told he was interested in running for mayor. But Williams never saw his running partner win it. He died of cancer in February.

Ask Knight about Williams, and he says he misses him every day. Then, he stops and gathers his thoughts before he continues.

“It’s funny,’’ Knight says in a voice barely above a whisper. “Some of the guys I talk to from time to time tell me that Ol’ Dave is looking down and smiling and …’’

Knight doesn’t finish his sentence. He just gives a thumbs-up. But you know what he means.

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