Charlton Owens is the Chief of Security of the Asheville YWCA, a position he has held for the past 14 years. Owens, an Asheville native, has had plenty of experience working with law enforcement. He served as the deputy sheriff of Buncombe County for six years, as well as Chief of Airport Security for two years. Mr. Owens prides himself on his Security duties, proudly claiming that “In the fourteen years that I’ve been here, I’ve never had a child hurt on my watch”. One of Owen’s proudest moments working at the YWCA is rescuing a young child from traffic.
Charlton Owens Interview
Recording Transcript
Maddie: Alright. You gonna start out?
Blaine: Sure, um, so I guess we’ll start with the first question we got here. Where are you from?
Charlton Owens: Asheville, North Carolina.
B: And you’ve lived here your whole life?
C: My whole entire life
B: Okay, alright. What’s your, you know, favorite thing about living in Asheville, or Asheville in general?
C: Well, it would be a whole lot. One is fishing. I love fishing here.
M: Where do you fish?
C: French Broad, ‘cause they did a lot of clean up back some years ago…
M: Thank goodness
C: Back in the 80s, early… late 70s, or like 78, 79, 80, 81, they did a major clean up down at the river, ‘cause once upon a time, raw sewage went through there, but now it’s fairly clear and everybody —
M: I still wouldn’t swim in it though
C: There’s a lot of people have swam in that river before, especially up there near Westgate area and it’s a cleaner area ‘cause you got, it’s where the French Broad River merges in with the Swannanoa River, right there by the Biltmore Estate area.
B+M: Yeah
M: Do you fly fish, or..?
C: Gimme a good ole, nice Mitchel 301 and I’m alright.
(laughter)
M: You’re speaking my language.
C: I’m not tryin’ to fish with a fly rod… that’s just too much work
M: I only do that with stream fishing.
C: And any river bank, _____
M: Well we know where to find you then
B: Yeah
(Laughter)
M: So, growing up, um, what schools did you go to?
C: I’ve gone to quite, just about almost every school in Buncombe County almost.
M: Really?
C: Mhm. ‘cause moving around a lil bit.
M: Alright, so, did you ever go to Vance?
C: No, I’ve gone to Oakley School, both A.C. Reynold’s Middle School, High School, North Buncombe, Erwin.
M: Wow, you really have been to like all of them.
C: And um, but the old South French Broad School is next door to us here, it’s now torn down now. And it converted to Asheville Middle that we know today. Then I graduated from Asheville High.
M: Oh, sweet. Me too!
C: And I graduated with one of our famous, um, North Carolina Tarheel players,
M: Really?
C: If you know anything about Buzz Peterson
B+M: No?
C: Buzz Peterson and Michael Jordan played ball together and they was the best men at each other’s weddings.
B: Awesome!
M: That’s so cool!
B: Yeah!
C: Yeah,
M: From Asheville High?
C: Mhm.
M: That’s so cool.
C: Yeah, if you go to that wedding center out there at Overlook Village, there’s a picture of Mike Jordan and then Buzz in tuxedos together, in a big ol’ huge picture together.
B+M: (mumbling)
M: So, you said you moved around a lot, um, what kind of neighborhoods did you live in, like, when you were living, like in the city?
C: Well, I moved into Hillcrest Apartments, it is still to this day – Back in the day when Hillcrest first opened up, it was one of the best places in the world to live in: peaceful. You could leave your front door, your back door open, you could go to the grocery store with your doors, front and back door open and nobody’d go in your house. See, by today’s standards, there’s no way without locking your doors up real good.
M: Unfortunately.
B: Now, is that the one that’s over in West Asheville.
C+M: No.
M: That’s Pisgahview.
C: Yeah, that is more central. From the Y to the —
M: It’s like near Merrimon
C: Hillcrest maybe, no,
M: Right?
C: Near Patton Avenue as you going down towards the Jeff Bowen Bridge.
B: Okay.
C: It’s the projects right to the right as you going down.
B: Okay, yeah, now I know.
C: Yeah, it’s a bridge going over to it.
B: Okay, I was thinking of a different one.
M: You were thinking of Pisgahview.
C: Pisgahview’s way out there, that’s another, and that’s another project you would not want to go in to, ‘cause that right there – if you don’t live there and you, kinda like look odd there, you ‘bout believe you’re gonna get a swarm of people around you real fast and they’re gonna be asking. Often times they prefer you as a police pimp.
B: Ohh, okay.
C: Why you here? You getting ready to rat us out, so if we can rat- get out here to give out information, we’re gonna take you out, so basically, just being honest.
M: I used to live there.
C: It’s not a good place to stay.
B: Um, how long have you been involved with the YWCA?
C: I’ve been Chief of Security here almost 14 years.
B: Wow, that’s a long time.
M: What brought you here?
C: I got referred here by one of my former LTO officers. He was in the YW, he gave my name to personnel upstairs, and then then brought me on May the 25th of 2003, and next thing I know, I came and did an interview and I was hired on the spot.
M: Of course you were.
C: He referred me here. He told staff here that I was the ex-deputy sheriff of Buncombe County. Not only was I the former deputy sheriff of Buncombe County, I was also, I served two terms as a federal airport police officer.
B+M: Woah!
B: How long were you deputy?
C: I was the deputy for six and a half years.
M: What years were those?
C: Oh, it’s kinda hard to even go back that far. But I served under Sheriff Thomas Harrison Morrissey.
B: Now, there isn’t a bridge named after him, is there? ‘Cause I feel like I recognize that name.
C: That might be a different Morrissey.
B: Okay.
C: ‘Cause Sheriff Tom Morrissey, he was just the sheriff, he was a four term sheriff. That’s pretty rare, for a sheriff to be a four term sheriff.
B: What’s the usual?
C: You’d get lucky if you had a sheriff that served… Well, I take that back, ‘cause our current sheriff is almost at record right now himself. Van Duncan. He’s our current sheriff.
B: Ah, okay. So, what are your favorite memories of working here, at the YWCA?
C: Well number one is taking care of the kids. ‘Cause in the fourteen years, almost fourteen years that I’ve been here I’ve never ever had a child hurt on my watch.
M: Aw, that’s a good record!
C: Yeah. I’ve been dinged up a few times, ‘cause we had a toddler got away from his momma and darted out, and by the time handed the child back, this lady had hit me in the kneecaps with her car.
M: Oh my gosh!
C: And then this guy came in, he tells my boss, he says ‘your security chief just got hit by a car, by saving a toddler’, then he goes and writes a story about it. Then he finds out that I lost my youngest son to a traffic accident down here on the bridge. And he made a remark, my boss called me into the office one day and she said ‘you need to pull a chair up and take time out to read this article he wrote up’. He said ‘your security chief save a toddler in the parking lot of the YWCA, but he couldn’t save his own son’.
M: That’s terrible… How long ago?
B: When was this published?
C: I lost my son June the 16th of 2010.
M: Oh wow…
B: I’m sorry.
C: He was my youngest. But then, other things I enjoy about the YW, I have an amazing, amazing, staff that I work for. Those who’ve come and gone, and those who’re currently here. They’re some the best people you want to ever meet, I mean, I can’t give them enough accolades. They’re just awesome, awesome, awesome people. If I had to go back and do this journey all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.
M: Aw, that’s great!
B: Is there anyone, not to diminish anyone else, but is there anyone who you’ve particularly enjoyed working with?
C: Well, my current boss, Marybeth Herman. She is just one amazing person. Me and her have been partners for almost- I’ve had the pleasure of working under her for the past almost fourteen years. She is just amazing, I mean, you can’t ask for a better boss. She’s top notch. My opinion of her is thumbs up, and it’ll be thumbs up until the day I die.
M: Did you know Holly Jones?
C: Holly Jones is the one exactly who hired me. She was my immediate boss when I first came here. And then she became vice mayor for the city, city council, and she’s Buncombe County Commissioner now. I worked under her my first year and a half, as my immediate boss, and then she put me with my current boss.
M: Gotcha. That’s so cool! I know you said before that your first experience here was when you had swim lessons, when you were younger?
C: When I was much, much younger.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zVkj4yv_fIW2_CjsWbUmmozQP7TD910DfqA2S3YC7Gw