This journey begins, innocent, in the backseat of a patrol car.

Vance Furr, a school teacher and ball coach in Cabarrus County in the early 1970s, attended a community law enforcement get-together, where he took an interest in the fancy, spiffed-up police vehicles. A nice officer showed him a car’s interior, and took him for a little ride.

“And then, they began to chase criminals, and the car sped up, and the sirens came on and he thought, ‘Man, I got to get into this,’ so he went to the SBI.” DeLina Furr remembers the day that instigated her future husband’s 30-year career with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation.

DeLina, a teacher, met Mr. Furr at Mount Holly Junior High in 1976. “He came to give a drug talk,” she says. “And at that time, quaaludes and marijuana were the big drugs, and my family knew the chief of police, and Vance asked a policeman who I was. We dated a few times, and I thought that was it, that I’d never see him again. We met again at a church retreat, and committed to marriage.”

They wed in 1980.

Their 31-year love story, before Mr. Furr’s death in November 2011, chronicles a man devoted to his faith, his wife, his SBI and law careers and, entwined with all that, his devotion to the children and youth of Mount Holly.

It’s that volunteer work – his ceaseless involvement with the Mount Holly Optimist Club, the town’s Field of Dreams project, the athletic building at Tuckasegee Park and a multitude of youth activities – that makes Mr. Furr the 2024 recipient of the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame Community Spirit Award.

“Vance was a pretty lively fellow, and he got several awards throughout his life, but I think he would enjoy this the most,” his wife says, “because he loved the youth of Mount Holly and he wanted to work for his community. I’m sure if he were here to accept it, he’d have something witty to say. He might also have a tear or two, because this would mean so much. He got the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, some coaching awards and some from the SBI, but he would say this means the most. He would be witty, but there would be a sincere part.”

Mr. Furr wasn’t always known for sincerity.

“One of the things that attracted me to Vance was the twinkle in his eye,” DeLina says, “especially when he was up to mischief.”

She recalls the day a teenager rang their doorbell and asked for her car keys. “There was one of my students, and he said, ‘Mrs. Furr, we’ve come for your key.’ My key? ‘To your car,’ the teen said. ‘Vance said we could use your car to go to the prom.’”

He got the key.

Mr. Furr’s calling to serve the town of Mount Holly’s children took some getting used to.

“Sometimes he worked undercover with the SBI, but sometimes he didn’t,” DeLina says of their early years. “He’d work long hours, and mostly he’d work drugs and the drug deals took place at night. In fact, I never learned to cook. When we got married, everybody gave me cookbooks, and I tried but Vance would never show up for supper, so I told him, ‘You’ll have to get food where you can.’ So he got stuff out, and sometimes he’d bring stuff home.”

She knew, from the onset, he would be busy weekdays and weeknights.

Weekends, she assumed, would be reserved for her-plus-him.

Then she heard about the children.

“I knew when we got married, if we needed anything done around the house, it would have to be weekends,” she says. “And weekends came, and he was never home. My honey-dos were not getting done. And I kept nagging him and nagging him.”

One day, they had a heartfelt discussion. As was the way in their household, they called each other by last names, him using her maiden name. 

Mr. Furr explained he was at the Optimist Club weekends, or coaching youth leagues, or mentoring children who needed someone to listen. He was a big man – 6-foot-7 and well north of 200 pounds – but he was a gentle friend, with the kids.

“He called me Greene, and I called him Furr, and he’d say, ‘Greene, I see so many things in my line of work, and this is the only place I have to see good things. I see good things in children.’

“And after that, I never bothered him again. He’d go on Saturdays, and from that point on, I understood.”

The honey-dos could wait.

“It was like having two jobs,” DeLina says. “You work with criminals, and you work with youth. And he loved both. I couldn’t keep up with Vance. By Friday (after a week of teaching), I was dead tired and spent the weekend trying to reconstitute myself. And he had so much energy.”

The Optimists concocted a haunted house each Halloween. Scott Pope, president of the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame and 2019 recipient of the Community Spirit Award, remembers Mr. Furr’s contribution. “He was a big guy, and we’d make about $5,000 or $6,000 a year on the haunted house, but he’d dress up like (“Friday the 13th” movie character) Jason,” Pope says, “and walk through the parking lot, and he’d scare them before they got in. And I’d tell him, ‘Vance, let them get inside. Then scare them.’ He was a big guy with a kid’s heart, one of those people who stands out and has a deep voice, but he was a gentle giant.”

“To me,” DeLina says, “he was a handsome guy. He was so interesting. And faith meant a lot to him; he was a real Christian. He could come across as gruff sometimes, but he had a heart of gold. He was a really good man.”

Mr. Furr graduated from the University of North Carolina and was a fan of Tar Heel basketball and football. He was a member of Tuckasegee Baptist Church. After retirement from the SBI, he formed Vance Furr Private Investigations. He played softball with the Mount Holly Police Department.

Then came lymphoma.

He fought it 16 years before it spread throughout his body. For a while, he was in a medical facility. “Then I brought him home and kept him home for three months,” DeLina said. “It was a choice of going to a home or being in our home.”

Mr. Furr passed away on November 19, 2011. He was 66.

“I called him my Renaissance Man because he had so many interests. He looked on the bright side of everything, and the one thing he taught me is forgiveness,” DeLina says. “He would always forgive and forget and want to be friends again. He really believed in that.”