Winner of North Carolina Press Association Profile Feature Award
2004 Citizen of the Year: Lucy Toole DeLaine
JOAN PLOTNICK
January 19, 2005
Raising crops, raising people, raising communities – that is what Lucy Toole DeLaine, 93, is all
about.
DeLaine, the 2004 Clayton Area Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year, has spent 70 years
serving the community, both in paid employment and volunteer activities.
Born Lucy Hicks, she was married twice, to Harold M. Toole and Moses DeLaine.
Reared on a farm in Cary, she graduated from Teachers College in Winston-Salem (now
Winston- Salem State University) in 1933 with a bachelor of science in home economics. She
initially wanted to become a nurse, but her parents, Armstead and Virginia Hicks, didn’t approve
of a profession where she might have to bathe men.
“Back then, parents had a big influence over what you took in school,” she said.
She graduated with hopes of becoming a home demonstration agent with the national
Cooperative Extension Service. After a two-year stint as a home economics teacher in P.S. Jones
High School in Washington, N.C., she finally achieved her dream of becoming a full-time home
economics agency in Johnston County in 1935, a position she held for 30 years.
Much of her work revolved around teaching skills to help black tenant farmers advance in life.
These farmers worked and lived on the landlord’s property picking cotton and tobacco. DeLaine
said that many landlords underpaid the tenant farmers and cheated them out of money.
Therefore, one of the main skills she taught was record-keeping.
“Of course, we had a lot of problems with that because they (landlords) did not want them
(tenant farmers) taught how to keep records,” she said.
The landlord provided the tenant farmers with housing and – if he wasn’t satisfied – the family
had to move on. Many families routinely moved from community to community. DeLaine taught
budgeting and encouraged her clients to save about a quarter of the money they had left after
expenses to purchase land on which they could later build a home.
She also encouraged these clients to save what they could to send their children to college. Many
of their children have since attended college, becoming doctors, lawyers, minister and teachers.
In addition to money management, she taught such skills as raising and preserving vegetables
and sewing – including lessons in converting feedbags into house wear and garments.
“Feedbags used to have beautiful designs – flowers, stripes. You could open them up and make a
pillow case, put four together to make sheets, make garments for children to wear, even some
garments for adults,” she said.
Life as an African-American home demonstration agent was not easy. Management jobs were
reserved for whites, who sometimes looked down on their black employees, she said. Many
landlords did not appreciate what she was teaching their tenants.
“It was a strenuous job. We were responsible for working from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., but very few

landlords let them off work to go to meetings, so we had to work day and night to get this
program over,” she said.
“It’s almost unbelievable what we had to go through in those years to help the blacks. So many
couldn’t read or write, so it made it even harder to get the work done.”
Before retiring from the Extension Service in 1965, DeLaine had received additional educational
certifications from Hampton Institute in Hampton, Va., Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. and
North Carolina State University.
Shortly after retiring, she was asked by a friend, Paul Keller, a retired oil mill owner, to help
head up a new federal program in Johnston County to serve the elderly. She was assigned the job
of visiting mayors of each town to ask for money to hire a full-time person to head the program
and a supporting secretary. She held that position for 13 years.
Together, they established senior centers throughout the county in vacant store-fronts, schools,
houses and churches. At these centers, senior citizens received hot meals, socialized, played
games and learned crafts.
Since 1965, eight senior centers and six senior apartments have been built in Johnston County.
When the last senior facility was built in Clayton in 1996, the Council on Aging honored
DeLaine and others by placing their names on the front of the Village Gardens Apartments on
Dairy Road.
Despite her hard work, DeLaine always found time to volunteer, such as chairing the Johnston
County Cancer Crusade, which involved – among other things – educating people about cancer
risks and transporting them to health examinations.
Her volunteer work only increased after she retired. Among the agencies she volunteered for
over the years are Johnston/Lee Head Start, Johnston County Public Library, the Progressive
Women’s Club in Smithfield, the National Association of Extension Women, the YWCA and the
NAACP.
She has been a member of St. Augustine’s AME Church since 1935 and has served as acting
financial secretary and on its steward board. She’s still active in the church, sewing cloth books
for the children and helping in any way she can.
The only other organization in which she still volunteers is the National Association of
University Women, in which college graduates work with youth and the community. DeLaine
was involved in both the Raleigh and Smithfield chapters of the NAUW before becoming a
founding member of the Clayton chapter in 1981.
The Clayton chapter began with 10-15 members. It now has 32, of which seven are original
members. Every year, the Clayton NAUW sponsors a Green and White Ball, which raises money
for college scholarships. Over the years, it has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for such
scholarships.
Despite her many accomplishments, many people know DeLaine simply as the unofficial fashion
plate of Johnston County. A profile for a family reunion called her “The Family Fashion Model.”
“Lucy DeLaine is well known at our DeLaine Family Reunions,” it said. “During the
Fashion/Talent Shows, she is expected to model at least three outfits per show.”
She has won fashion awards from both the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs
and the Progressive Women’s Club of Smithfield.

Of all the things she accomplished, DeLaine said she is most proud of convincing people of the
importance of education and home buying.
“And those that finally grasped the idea that ‘I have been helped and I can help someone else,’”
she said.
In presenting her with the Citizen of the Year Award, Mayor Jody McLeod said, “It is no wonder
that someone who has done so very much for the young and the old, someone who has touched
so many lives, has been selected for this award.
“She does not believe in down time. She is always on the go in her efforts to help others to see
and enjoy the beauty of living.”
DeLaine said she is proud of the honor because it shows that the community understands and
appreciates the value of what she’s tried to do.
“I just never dreamed this type of thing would happen,” she said. “I just worked because I saw a
need.
“My mother said, ‘Don’t look for people to praise you. God will praise you.’”