Bankruptcy Section Honors Pitt

Wrennie Pitt, right, accepts award from John Bircher.

Walter W. “Wrennie” Pitt of Winston-Salem recently became the 8th recipient of the North Carolina Bar Association Bankruptcy Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was presented last month in conjunction with the section’s 41st Annual Bankruptcy Institute in Pinehurst.

“I was very honored and proud to be included in the group of lawyers who have received this award over the last few years,” Pitt said. “To be included in that select group is very humbling.”

“What made receiving the award so special,” Pitt added, “is being with the prior recipients. I have been involved on the committee that selects the recipients, and John Bircher had all of them who were in attendance come up front.”

That group included Buzzy Stubbs, Dick Hutson, Billy Brewer, Christy Myatt, Al Durham and Dave Badger. Only John Northen who had a previous commitment was not in attendance.

“Wrennie Pitt is one of the foundational building blocks of the Bankruptcy Section,” said John Bircher, who presented the award in his capacity as chair of the Lifetime Achievement Award Committee. Bircher is also a past chair of the section.

“Wrennie was the first chair of the Lifetime Achievement Award Committee,” Bircher added, “and that is where I really got to know him. His tireless efforts to improve and continuously support the bankruptcy bar and its members have not gone unnoticed, and it is most appropriate that he receive this award in recognition of those and countless other contributions.”

Pitt has been involved in the debtor-creditor field for most of his career, has served as an adjunct professor of law at Wake Forest University School of Law, where he taught debtor-creditor relations, and is a past chair of the NCBA Bankruptcy Section.

He is also a former vice president of the NCBA Board of Governors, and his wife and law partner, Elizabeth Repetti, currently serves in that same capacity.

“I am very proud of Elizabeth being on the Board of Governors,” Pitt said. “She has also been chair of the Bankruptcy Section and is committed to the bar association. I am very proud of her and her accomplishments.”

Pitt has spent most of his career with Bell, Davis & Pitt, which he founded along with Bill Davis and Frank Bell in 1980. The firm has since grown from three lawyers to thirty-five lawyers with offices in Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

Pitt is a native of Rocky Mount, where he attended Rocky Mount Senior High and was a member of the 1962 North Carolina High School Athletic Association State 4-A championship football team. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a football scholarship and graduated in 1967.

Pitt is a 1971 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law.