Anyone who’s now getting along in age and grew up in the city of Greensboro is highly aware of the tremendous impact that former Mayor Jim Melvin had on shaping of modern Greensboro.  Sadly, the man who devoted so much of his life to trying to improve and advance the city died in the early morning hours of Sunday, Aug. 10, leaving behind a very long list of lives he had helped improve and ways his existence had benefited the city he loved.

Though everyone knew him as Jim, his full name was “Edwin Samuel ‘Jim’ Melvin.”

Born on December 24,1933, in Greensboro – during the depths of the Great Depression – he achieved major financial success in life and, more importantly, he garnered a great deal of respect from the residents of Greensboro who repeatedly chose to elect him as their mayor.

Later in life, he was active in improving the community as the head of the Joe Bryan Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has funded a large number of high-profile projects meant to better Greensboro and Guilford County.

Melvin grew up in humble beginnings in the Warnersville community of Greensboro, the city’s first planned African-American community, established in the 1860s by Yardley Warner – a Quaker who sold plots of land to freed slaves.

 In 1952, Melvin graduated from Greensboro Senior High School – now called Grimsley High School.

While there he was a football star along with a cast of others who went on to become prominent men in the city.

 After high school, Melvin attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from which he graduated with a business degree in 1959.

He achieved his financial success during his life in the banking industry.  His first job in the business was with what older Greensboro residents remember as North Carolina National Bank – better known then as NCNB. The bank later went through several transformations through acquisitions and many of those customers landed at Wells Fargo.

He also was a lifelong member of West Market Street United Methodist Church and, among other methods of service there, he taught Sunday School classes.

He met and married Susan Melvin, and, in the late 1960s, he was campaign manager for Richardson Preyer in Preyer’s congressional race.

It was also in the late ‘60s that Melvin became involved in local politics and pursued leadership roles in the City of Greensboro.  In 1969, his bid for a seat on the Greensboro City Council came up short, but two years later, Melvin was appointed mayor of Greensboro by the City Council.

That was the start of a long tenure in that position: He was re-elected in 1973 and 1975 and he eventually ended his ten-year stint as mayor in 1981. Stepping down  from that job allowed the former mayor to focus on his career and his philanthropic interests.

The decade under his leadership was a time of great growth and advancement for the city, but it was also a period of great challenges as well.

 In 1996, Melvin retired from his job at Central Carolina Bank after serving in the industry for nearly four decades.

But his community service didn’t scale down after he retired from banking: Melvin later served as the CEO and president of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation, one of the best known philanthropic organizations in the region.

Until his death, Melvin remained involved with many civic activities and organizations, including the Greensboro Jaycees. He famously served as the president of that organization in 1965 when the club was selected as the “Best Jaycee Chapter in the World.”

 Melvin also helped establish Action Greensboro in 2001 and First Horizon Park in 2004.

In 2023, Melvin’s friends honored him with a massive 90th birthday party in an large event venue in downtown Greensboro.

That same year, he was interviewed by Point University President Nido Qubein, and, at that time, he reflected on the influences, values and vision that had guided his decades of public service and philanthropy.

Melvin said that his father – who ran a small service station in south Greensboro and was later killed in a robbery – tried to instill in him the importance of making the community better as part of one’s life mission.

Melvin credited his mother and his early involvement with the Greensboro Jaycees with teaching him that “if you do something for somebody else, you keep it forever.”

As mayor and later as chairman and CEO of the Bryan Foundation, Melvin focused on education, economic growth and job creation.

He recalled advice he once got from former Congressman Preyer: Educate young people and give them good jobs, and “you’ve done your job.”

When Greensboro and the surrounding region lost thousands of textile jobs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Melvin helped form the Piedmont Triad Partnership to “get back in the game.”

One of his biggest undertakings was helping develop the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite to attract major manufacturing.

A megasite, Melvin said, is “more than a big piece of land” – it requires utilities, transportation, zoning and rail access.

Over 10 years, a group of 20 key partners assembled 1,825 acres on the Guilford-Randolph line. Finally, after several close calls, in 2022, Toyota announced plans to build there, in what Melvin called that year “the largest construction project east of the Mississippi”.

In that interview two years ago, Melvin also recalled meeting philanthropist Joseph Bryan when seeking a larger United Way donation. That meeting, Melvin said, led to a long friendship and, after Bryan’s death in 1995 and the creation of the Bryan Foundation, Bryan left his entire estate to benefit the greater Greensboro area.

Under Melvin’s leadership, the foundation funded projects such as First National Bank Field – built and paid for at a cost of $22.5 million – and continued to prioritize economic development.

Melvin spoke with pride in the HPU interview about the Piedmont Triad International Airport’s role as an aviation manufacturing hub, home to HondaJet and the future Boom Supersonic plant, noting the region’s long runways and proximity to the ocean for testing.

He did get a lot of criticism over the years from some members of the media including Alan Johnson of the News & Record and John Hammer of the Rhino Times.

Asked about criticism he saw, Melvin said, “It’s never wrong to be right and it’s never right to be wrong. Politicians think about the next election – leaders think about the next generation.”

He pointed to the Osborne Wastewater Treatment Plant, begun during his time on the Greensboro City Council, as essential infrastructure without which “we would have no megasite.”

Melvin said his drive came from staying active, working for others and keeping “a purpose for the tomorrows of one’s life.”

Just before his death, his forecast for the Triad was highly optimistic; he believed that the next decade would be “the best 10 years we’ve had in a long time.”

From the standpoint of economic development, that prediction certainly seems to be right on target.  It’s too bad Melvin left the community before he got a chance to see that promise fully realized; however, in recent years, it became evident to everyone including Melvin that very big and very good things were happening in and around Greensboro.

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