, ,

Allan Head Receives Order of the Long Leaf Pine

Gov. McCrory (right) presents Order of the Long Leaf Pine to Allan Head (left).

Allan Head, executive director of the North Carolina Bar Association, received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine Award on Saturday at the 2015 NCBA Annual Meeting in Asheville.

Gov. McCrory, keynote speaker for Saturday’s General Session, presented the award following a 45-minute question-and-answer session with John Wester, NCBA past president from Charlotte.

“You got me,” Head said to the governor as he stepped on to the stage to accept the award. The presentation caught Head off guard but his family was in on the secret. His wife, Patti, their sons David and Darryl, and five of their eight grandchildren joined Head on stage for the presentation while their daughter Jayme watched via Skype from Houston.

“Among the most sought after and valued awards conferred by the Governor of North Carolina is The Order of the Long Leaf Pine,” notes the website of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine Society, “which is presented to outstanding North Carolinians who have a proven record of service to the State. Persons who have demonstrated a lifetime of service to the State may qualify.”

Criteria for receiving the award are “a minimum of thirty years, significant community service and demonstrated excellence in service.”

Allan Head easily meets and exceeds all of those requirements. He joined the staff of the NCBA as executive secretary in December 1973 following four years of military service as a lawyer assigned to the U.S. Army Security Agency in Kassel and Augsburg, Germany. He has served as executive director since 1981 and is one of the longest-serving bar association executives in the nation.

In addition to the NCBA, he has provided exemplary leadership to the National Association of Bar Executives, where he served as president in 2006-07, and the Wake County Bar Association, where he served for three decades as an officer and treasurer.

Head has also served as a member of the board of directors of the YMCA of the USA; as president and member of the board of directors of YMCA of the Triangle; as a member of the Wells Fargo (formerly Wachovia) Board of Directors (Cary); as an elder at White Memorial Presbyterian Church; as chair of the Camp Kanata (YMCA) Advisory Board; as stadium announcer for Wake Forest University and Broughton High School football games; and for more than two decades as an advisor for the Presbyterian Church’s Appalachian Service Project, leading senior high mission trips to the impoverished coal-mining regions of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.

Awards and honors presented to Head include the Bolton Award (2010), the highest honor presented by the National Association of Bar Executives; the Father of the Year Award (2014), selected by the Raleigh office of the American Diabetes Association; the N.C. State Bar’s John B. McMillan Distinguished Service Award (2015); and the James Iredell Award from Campbell Law School’s Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity (2015).