THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160272
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MANTEO LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Alvah Ward Jr., a Manteo businessman with a proven record as a public and private economic pump-primer, has been named executive director of the Dare County Tourist Bureau, officials announced Monday.
The 66-year-old Ward will take over Feb. 1 as chief officer of the biggest business on the Outer Banks.
``We made a good choice. All of us are excited about getting Alvah,'' said Warren Judge, a Dare County restaurateur who also is chairman of the 13-member Dare County Tourist Bureau.
Ward will be paid between $65,000 and $70,000 a year under an agreement that Judge plans to announce in a few days.
Tourist bureau members have been searching for a new director since Gene O'Bleness gave notice in July that he planned to retire as head of the Outer Banks' biggest promotional agency.
Ward's acceptance of the Dare County position came only a few days after officials with the Northeast North Carolina Economic Development Commission in Hertford said they were actively recruiting him for their organization.
``That's out now,'' Pasquotank County Commissioner Jimmy Dixon, chairman of the economic commission, said Monday. ``But we still hope to work out something that will let Alvah Ward be an occasional consultant.''
``His new position with the Dare County Tourist Bureau will make him even more valuable to our commission,'' Dixon said.
In recent years, Ward has held several executive positions with the state Department of Commerce, most lately as a marketing director of the Global TransPark Authority that seeks to create a world-wide air cargo trans-shipment center in Kinston.
Between 1980 and 1995, Ward was a planner and developer with the commerce department and was responsible for bringing many large national manufacturing corporations to the state. He retired from the state Commerce Department last year and returned to his home in Manteo.
Ward's most visible Dare County monument is the North Carolina Seafood Industrial Park in Wanchese, a huge commercial fishing harbor at the south end of Roanoke Island.
As the owner-operator of a family iceplant in Manteo during the 1950s, Ward became interested in developing a deep water port behind Oregon Inlet that would rival some of the larger New England fishing harbors.
For years Ward was a self-appointed emissary for the planned seafood park - buttonholing political leaders as well as boat captains to line up support. Ward's efforts eventually led to greater federal concern about the safety of Oregon Inlet as an all-weather passage.
His enthusiasm for the seafood park project was backed up by his master's degree in business from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor of science degree in commerce from The Citadel.
Eventually, the present $10 million Wanchese seafood park took shape with state and federal money. The park has a sheltered safe-harbor with big-city facilities and Ward said this week that ``it will become one of our greatest tourist attractions some day.''
As early as 1956, Ward was chairman of the Oregon Inlet Stabilization Project, which resulted in an Army Corps of Engineers program of year-round dredging and deepening of the channel.
During the Korean War, the U.S. Army selected 2nd Lt. Alvah Ward Jr., to be a special projects officer assigned with the dangerous job of planting Claymore anti-personnel mines. He was one of many salty sons of the Outer Banks who ended up in harms way far inland. by CNB