JOHN F. HESTER

I graduated from NC State University in 1972 in history, political science and education. Also I graduated from NC Central University School of Law in 1975. I joined Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company in 1985, retiring in 2020.

I met Belinda when we were freshmen at NCSU in 1968. She was a first grade teacher for more than 32 years and was the National Teacher of the Year in 2000. She created a Nature Park in Cary in 1995, which is now part of the Wake County Parks System.

In 1988 we united our neighbors to purchase and establish the Charlotte Hilton Green Park in Raleigh and presented the park to the City of Raleigh. The park is bounded by East and West Lake Drives, crosses White Oak Road and joins the Raleigh Greenway at Crabtree Creek.

In April 2013, I was surprised by the Triangle Business Journal with the Corporate Counsel Lifetime Achievement Award. A good time was had with all the family attending the award ceremony.

I am very happy that three of our four sons also attended Broughton. My Dad was in the class of 1929 and Mom was I the class of 1934 at Raleigh High School. Brother Bill is a proud member of the NBHS Class of 1963. Broughton High is very important to me and my family.

What started as a persuasive writing assignment for Ms. Rogers in my junior year English class in 1967 at Broughton, resulted in the successful passage of the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18. In 1967 Governor Moore appointed me to several state and later national organizations where I could seriously lobby for the passage of this Amendment. Beginning in 1968 I began working at the national level with several members of Congress. I also worked with our foreign policy nemesis, President Nixon. While President Nixon and I agreed to disagree about the War in Vietnam, the draft and the invasion of Cambodia, we did agree that the voting age should be lowered to 18. I am sure he understood that I supported the Amendment in the hope that the young voters would elect candidates that opposed this and future wars. While I now understand that my hope of avoiding involvement in future wars was very naive, perhaps the passage of this Amendment has been somewhat successful in preventing the establishment of another unpopular mandatory draft of college age men and women into forced military service to fight those wars.