Monument unveiled: honors native son/astronaut — and town’s former school, where he got his start

FAISON — This day was seven and a half years coming, but it was well worth the wait for those in attendance.

Friday at 10 a.m., despite temperatures barely clawing into the 40s and a breeze that kicked up every so often, dozens of people bundled up and gathered at the site of the town’s former school gym for the unveiling of a monument honoring native son William Thornton. Fittingly, the monument also pays tribute to the school that once stood here and from which Thornton graduated.

Born in Faison on April 14, 1929, Thornton became a physician, author, inventor — and most famously, the first NASA-chosen astronaut from North Carolina. He served as a mission specialist on two NASA flights, in 1983 and 1985. He died in Fair Oaks, Texas, Jan. 11, 2021 and is buried in the Historic Faison Cemetery.

Throughout his life, Thornton received many awards — the Air Force Legion of Merit, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, two NASA Space Flight Medals, and the University of North Carolina Distinguished Alumni Award, to name a few — and the idea for a formal honor by his hometown was hatched in January of 2017 by then-Mayor Carolyn Kenyon and Anne Taylor, a childhood friend of Thornton’s and Chair of the Library/Museum Committee, the group that would go on to spearhead the effort.

Kenyon, one of several speakers at Friday’s ceremony, noted that it took “many discussions, many meetings, many debates, and many, many ideas” to achieve what she, Taylor, and members of the Committee envisioned. When Covid hit, their plans stalled for quite some time, but the effort was revived in April of 2023 and they began seeking funds for the monument a few months later.

William Thornton’s son, Simon Thornton, who came from his home in Texas to attend the event, noted, “The fundraising started in August of 2023, and in one month, they raised all the funds from the citizens of Faison and donations from Treehouse Foods and the Duplin County Commissioners.” In addition to thanking those who contributed financially, he also expressed his appreciation to former Mayor Kenyon; current Mayor Billy Ward; Executive Administrator Jimmy Tyndall; Anne Taylor; Andrew Taylor, president of Faison Improvement Group (FIG); and the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Honor Guard — all of whom participated in the ceremony. Additionally, he thanked the McLamb Monument Company in Goldsboro for creating the monument.

“A monument,” Andrew Taylor said, when he addressed the crowd, “is a tap on the shoulder from one generation to the next, meant to gently remind the next generation not to forget the important things or the important people of that previous generation.”

When Anne Taylor spoke, she shared various aspects of Thornton’s life, including his time spent growing up in Faison. When he was in the second grade, she recounted, Thornton had what he referred to as his “crazy dream” of one day building an airplane and flying it over the Faison school. “He never built his airplane,” Taylor said, “but much later in his life, he really did fly over this schoolyard in a supersonic jet. And he drove it just as low and just as slow as he possibly could. And then he popped both the afterburners on the plane, causing the windows of the old school to rattle, and William said that was his way of saying ‘thanks’ to his school…”

Taylor underscored Thornton’s lifetime accomplishments by naming several of the previous awards he received, and then noted, “He always credited his achievements to three aspects of his life. The first one was good parents. The second was a good Duplin County education. And the third thing was a nurturing community. Whenever he was asked to give a lecture or was to be presented with an honor somewhere, he would always mention these things.”

She summed up Thornton’s importance this way: “His research and vision and contributions have improved and enriched three major things in our world: the practice and the teaching of the art of medicine, and the strength of our military force, and the advancement of space exploration.”

The celebration made it clear that Faison is proud of Thornton — but it was also pointed out that this feeling was reciprocated: Thornton was proud of his hometown. In his opening remarks, Mayor Ward said, “Dr. Thornton made sure that everywhere he went and everything he accomplished, that people knew Faison was where he got his start in life.”

Ward also noted that, while Thornton was the focus of the day, “The monument also pays homage to the Faison school that stood where this park is now until the 1960s.”

And when Jimmy Tyndall told the crowd, “They say that every journey begins with a single step. Dr. William Thornton took a lot of those steps right where we are today,” he meant that literally. Since the site where the monument is located was originally home to the school’s gym and lunchroom, Thornton would have, indeed, taken many steps in this exact spot.

When, at the end of the ceremony, Simon Thornton and Mayor Ward unveiled the black granite monument, it revealed, on one side, a tribute to William Thornton — with exquisite likenesses of the man and the space shuttle on which he flew — and, on the opposite side, a beautiful rendering of the old school. Adjacent to the school’s image is a quote from Thornton from when he attended a Faison High School Reunion in 1991, and it seems fitting to give him the final words of the day: “For most of us, the time in that school affected our lives more than any other experience except that of our family life…The best way we can repay our debt to this school and to all the people…is to keep alive the good things — the necessary things we learned.”