NAVASSA — The Town of Navassa’s second-ever mayor’s tenure is officially up, with new leadership taking the reins this December.
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Tuesday night, Rose Terry was elected as mayor — Navassa’s third, but first woman.
“Being the first of anything is always exciting,” Terry told Port City Daily, “and especially being the first woman to hold this office. With that title comes responsibility … Women have the same challenges as men, but we often use different methods to solve the same problems.”
Terry, who grew up in the area but left for 15 years before returning in 2019, beat two current council members, including Mayor Pro-Tem Jerry L. Merrick and Ernest “Big Mo” Mooring Jr. with 42.52%, or 162, votes.
She said it is an honor to now be leading the town, though is familiar with its inner workings already. Terry served on the planning board for two years, from 2023 to 2025, and said this has given her ideas of where the town needs improvements.
Terry cited the growing population of Navassa as one of its biggest challenges and the infrastructure needed to match it. In 2020, the population stood at only 1,400 people, and now sits at over 2,000. According to Landin Holland, the town administrator, projected growth for 2045 is set between 7,000 and 12,000.
The mayor-elect said the town was working with the North Carolina Department of Transportation to fix the roads leading to I-140 and work on developing town streets to keep up with the traffic and growth.
Economic development is also important to her.
“We do have an aging population, and many people do come here to retire,” Terry said. “But we know in order for a town to grow, we need all generations, and we want to have some economic development so they can get jobs and stay in town.”
Terry, a former educator, expressed wanting to start an afterschool youth program so kids could participate in more extracurricular activities, like field trips, but also have a mentorship program with employees.
Her family moved to Navassa in 1958, she said, so she has a long history in the place she calls home. Terry plans to continue carrying the last mayors’ legacies. She has known Mayor Eulis Willis from working together within town government.
“One of the things that is important to the previous mayors is to have genuine love for the people,” Terry said. “The motto of the town is: ‘people working for people.’ … In other words: We are better together.”
Willis decided not to run for re-election this year despite his love for the town being clear. At 77, he leaves behind a legacy of growth, community, and the adaptability to work within a system. A jack of all trades, Willis has coached baseball for the Navassa Rams, which no longer exists, attended his church, Davis Chapel, and served on council before becoming mayor.
In his office — a refurbished computer room in the Navassa community center, since the town’s new $2-million town hall has yet to make a debut — he pointed to the town’s capital improvement plan spanning from 2003 to 2013. Willis described it one of the highs from his tenure.
He said a man from the Department of Commerce helped him put it together; the document included water tank refurbishment, water line installation, sewage treatment, bike path construction, road paving, town hall expansion, construction of a community center, construction of a fire department, new roads, and upgrading the town park.
“We did every one of these things,” Willis said, holding the packet out.
In all, Willis has served 47 years leading the town since its founding, almost half a century ago. He explained to Port City Daily he’s tired.
“I realized the eyes are getting weaker. The memory is getting weaker. Technology is running all over me,” he said. “It’s time to let the staff and whoever else try to run the town and see if we can’t make it.”
Before becoming mayor, Willis grew up in the segregated South and became a North Carolina A&T University graduate in 1971. He had a brief post-grad stint in New Jersey before returning to Navassa. The five years he spent in the North was enough to convince him that Navassa was where he belonged and wanted to stay.
Willis was one of the founding council members in Navassa, joining the five-person board when he was nearly 30 in 1978. The town had only been named a municipality by the state one year earlier. Willis’ mentor, Bobby Brown, had petitioned for Navassa to officially become a legal municipality to legislators in Raleigh. When Brown came back, he was the first mayor the town had elected.
Willis described those first few years as “crazy.” Everything was new and he was so young, having never worked in politics before. He also took up the mantle of handling the town’s budget. It was during this time he became more curious about the town itself.
“I decided, I’m gonna learn about Navassa,” Willis recalled. “I decided I was gonna take a local history course down at Cape Fear Community College.”
While he was under Wilmington history scholar Bill Reaves’ tutelage, he studied the town’s history and ended up writing a book about the Gullah Geechee diaspora in the Cape Fear — “Navassa: The Town and its People 1735-1991.”Willis wrote of the history of the rice plantations once on Eagle Island.
The Gullah Geechee people, West and Central African slaves, were brought to the area and forced to work. They harvested rice in plantations now made up of marshes and wetlands, where evidence of their work remains. They also created indigo dyes for textiles, planted peanuts and sweet potatoes, were responsible for integrating basket-weaving techniques, and making naval stores that have had a cultural impact on the region.
“The Gullah Geechee were considered the best rice farmers ever,” Willis said.
The freed slaves settled in what was once called Gabriel’s Bluff, according to Willis. The town got the name “Navassa” from a factory, which in turn had been named after an island off of the Caribbean. It officially became Navassa in 1903, when a post office was established there.
Willis wrote about the family trees of the Gullah Geechee descendants, those who lived in Navassa, and documented plantations from the Antebellum period, as well as the settlements, economy, and evolving infrastructure. He was able to document their lives, and the book holds photographs of families, including his own, his wife’s family, and more. In fact, most of the town is made up of Gullah Geechee descendants, according to Willis.
In July 2025, the Gullah Geechee Heritage Trail was approved by the General Assembly to be created in Brunswick County. The trail is to be supported by the state and in Navassa, a Superfund clean-up site is underway from the EPA. Around 80 acres is planned for development of a Gullah Geechee Heritage Center and state park. Willis is very proud of this work and also one of the leading voices in preserving the Reaves Chapel, a relic from the Antebellum period.
He attributed part of the success of his first mayoral campaign to his deep well of knowledge about the community and town’s history.
Willis’ decision to run for mayor in 1999, at the end of Brown’s tenure, was his mentor’s idea. Because of the work Willis did as council member and part-time historian, he won the election handedly in 1999.
When he started his first term as mayor, Willis said the town was already experiencing financial hardship, with a small $10,000 budget. Part of the issue with Navassa’s financial situation was that most of the rural town lived below the poverty line, and thus limited the amount of money the town could accumulate through property taxes.
Willis also said the town was a victim of redlining, a practice that began in the 1930s as government officials would outline neighborhoods with predominantly minority, or Black, populations in red. The people in those neighborhoods would, and still do, have a harder time getting loans or mortgages, due to discriminatory practices.
It was when Navassa annexed the land north and south of the CSX Railroad by Old Mill Road NE in 2001, however, that the town got to steadily increase its budget.
But Navassa endured further budget troubles and low funds throughout the years. In 2021, the town had $180,869 in outstanding debts. In 2022, there was no administrator, as former administrator Claudia Bray resigned, nor a finance officer or official budget for that year. Council also couldn’t form a quorum for multiple meetings to conduct town business. The town was understaffed per state regulation and ran into some trouble with the state’s Local Government Commission for it.
In 2022, the state also almost took over the town after the municipality submitted its audit late for three years in a row. Navassa had trouble finding and keeping an auditor, particularly as no new contract could be written up in 2022, given issues with its budget and statement. Even before 2022, Navassa was a regular on LGC’s Unit Assistance List, which tracks localities with governance or financial issues that require more oversight by the state.
But Willis said he was never really worried because he was able to keep all his town staff, and Navassa now has a town administrator once again.
“I knew that it was high on some folks’ mind, but we never had to lay anybody off,” Willis said.
The budget and staffing have posed further challenges for Willis’ tenure, which has included issues with hiring a police chief in 2023. The spot was vacant for five months and they replaced the position three separate times since.
The department was only recently formed, as Navassa did not have a police department for years, nor did the police department ever cover night shifts. Navassa currently doesn’t have any officers working at its department since May 2025 and have had to get help from the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Department. When asked about it, Willis said it boiled down to the fact the town government didn’t want to pay the police more, and that contributed to why Navassa couldn’t keep a chief.
“The policemen want to get more money,” Willis said. “But you got a rule out there that says for every 500 people you got, you need to have one policeman. So that means we never need over five policemen, but how can you get 24/7 coverage with five policemen? … The thing is, communities such as this one right here, we don’t even need a policeman.”
Willis recalled the community’s solution to solving problems of crime being rooted in heritage and familial responsibility. He lauded the town’s mothers and grandmothers as the foremost disciplinarians, due to how far the roots of the community go and its close-knit atmosphere. Other than that, Navassa had the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office to call if they ever truly needed it.
Despite the town’s disorder, Willis said there is much to be proud of in population, budget, land and acreage — but foremost with the town’s growth. The town’s population also quadrupled in size from where it stood at 479 people in 2003. Today, the town’s 2025-2026 budget and revenue are a little over a million dollars each.
During his tenure, he also boasted about the completion of U.S. I-140 in 2017, with a bridge in Navassa named after the town’s first mayor, Bobby Brown.
When asked to describe his legacy, Willis could only focus back on community. He is a people’s person first, he said, and his heart and passions still, and will perhaps always, lie with the town.
“I have a strong passion for Navassa and its people,” Willis said. He added, anyone who knew him, the real him, knew that.
He hopes to be a full-time Navassa historian and preservationist upon retirement and will continue being an active member at his church. He wants to digitize old photographs that document the town’s history for accessibility and to mentor new leadership in the history and context of the town.
Willis is also excited about continuing to work independently on historical preservation and documentation. Furthermore, he is interested in the preservation of Eagles Island and setting up a Gullah Geechee Heritage Center. He hopes to establish a partnership with the oversight committee on the center’s site and the town’s planning board.
Of Terry, Willis called her a good fit for Navassa.
“She’s well-rounded,” Willis said. “She’ll be able to handle herself with aplomb, with the changing environments. She’ll be able to deal with the natives here with one culture, and she’ll be able to deal with the folks coming in here with a different mindset.”
“I know Mayor Willis very well,” Terry said. “We’ve had a relationship over the years, and I hope to continue that.”
Willis said he’d come back if the town ever needed him to.
“If it looks like things are going the other way, and I can do something to help, I might come back,” he said. “But I’m not planning to.”
Have tips or suggestions for Emily Sawaked? Email emily@localdailymedia.com
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