Hickory gets a new mayor

By Staff
April 6, 2003
Voters in the town of Hickory have elected alderman and acting Mayor John Brand to the mayor's job. In unofficial returns on Tuesday, Brand, 35, a Republican and plumber by occupation, defeated Michael Evans, 25, a Democrat and upholsterer at the La-Z-Boy plant in Newton.
Brand will serve the remaining 18 months left in the four-year term of former Mayor Wayne Griffith, who resigned in March to seek a Newton County Justice Court judgeship.
The new mayor will preside over a small town that doesn't have large financial resources and one of his first goals is to seek an occupant for an abandoned, deteriorating middle school building on U.S. 80. He said Hickory will also repair a deteriorating roof on the town's gazebo.
We offer our congratulations to Mayor Brand and wish him well as he officially takes the reins of Hickory town government.