THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020609
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Felton Jeffrey Capel has them rolling at the Southern Pines Rotary Club.
Capel, 68, has been behind many a microphone. He is weaving quick wit and self-deprecating humor in with a sales pitch.
Felton Capel knows sales. He's been doing it virtually his entire life. Stainless steel cookware is his product - ``We only sell to people who eat,'' he says - but it's not the only thing he has sold.
He sold the people of Southern Pines on electing him, a black man, to the town council in 1959.
``That was picked up by every paper in the country,'' Felton says. ``Here you've got a little Southern town where a black gets elected, and we're fighting just to get people registered.''
Felton is tooling around in his black Mercedes 560 SEL. The license plate reads ``ELEGANCE,'' the name of his cookware. An Old Dominion University sticker in the back window and a Duke bumper sticker demonstrate his allegiance to the basketball teams of his son, Felton Jeffrey Capel Jr. - Jeff to most who know him - and grandson, Felton Jeffrey Capel III.
Felton passes countless golf courses, lusciously green even in the dead of winter. Southern Pines, outside high-brow Pinehurst, is a resort town of 10,000, double what it was while Jeff was growing up.
When Jeff was young, blacks in town were not allowed on the golf courses. Or in certain restaurants. Or to sit anywhere but in the balcony at the movie theater.
Jeff remembers watching with his two brothers as his mom, Jean, and dad picketed the theater.
He remembers men who had been beaten up by police the night before showing up on councilman Capel's doorstep in the morning, asking for help.
He remembers how Felton and Jean, who has worked in the town's Catholic hospital almost 40 years, always had time to serve people.
``I feel like I'm always trying to measure up to him, and I know I never will,'' Jeff says. ``I should be able to accomplish more because I had a better start than he had, because of him.''
As an elected official in a Southern town, including two terms as mayor pro tem, Felton was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. He served on committees with Martin Luther King. Lyndon Johnson invited him to a White House conference.
``Felton was very well-connected politically,'' says Maurice Waddell, one of Jeff's closest friends growing up. ``That was kind of unheard of, because there were no black politicians back then. He was the trailblazer.''
Just one visit to the predominantly white Southern Pines Rotary Club illustrates how Felton managed to help turn the tables on injustice without turning people against him.
When Jeff was young, the big lot behind the Capels' home was often besieged with kids playing sandlot ball or cowboys and Indians. Felton saw a need for black children to have a place for recreation. And he needed a place to conduct meetings with his sales force.
So in 1962, Felton purchased a 22-acre parcel that included a 7-acre lake, and the Capels turned it into Cardinal Recreation Park. Felton's cookware sales office also is housed there. The park is open to anyone, but caters mostly to large groups and family reunions.
Every summer since he was 10 until last year, when recruiting demands at ODU required he be on the road, Jeff worked at Cardinal Park.
``I must have picked up a billion pine cones,'' Jeff says. ``Hated every minute of it.'' His wistful expression belies his words.
One day while he was the head coach at Fayetteville State, Capel was cleaning up the park. An elderly woman looked at and declared: ``Look at him, he's making $50,000 a year and he's down here picking up trash.''
``I took it as a compliment,'' Jeff says. ILLUSTRATION: COURTESY OF CAPEL FAMILY
Felton Jeffrey Capel, left, served two terms as mayor pro tem of
Southern Pines, N.C., and developed Cardinal Park there. Jeff Capel,
center, with Jeff III at right, worked summers at the park much of
his life.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB