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The name Ed Fitts is likely a familiar one to students, faculty and staff members, and alumni of the College of Engineering.

The newest engineering building on NC State University’s Centennial Campus, Fitts-Woolard Hall, bears his name. So does the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the first named academic department in the College.

It’s also becoming a familiar name in his hometown of Littleton, North Carolina, where Fitts and wife, Deb, have undertaken the kind of revitalization that so many rural communities across the nation dream of and need. The goal is to help eliminate the kind of generational poverty that is endemic to so many small towns.

What we are trying to do is add to the town… Add value. Add opportunities.
– Deb Fitts

Fitts graduated from NC State in 1961 with a degree in industrial engineering. After buying part of his employer’s carton division and turning it into an industry leader called Dopaco, Fitts sold the company in 2004. He and Deb then turned their attention to a Napa Valley winery and now to the small town in northeastern North Carolina where he spent most of his childhood. At the same time, he has focused on supporting NC State, helping move the College and his home department forward through leadership and philanthropy.

In the span of a few years, the Fittses have remade Littleton’s Main Street by adding a coffee shop, wine store and restaurant, have opened a private school in the dilapidated high school where he graduated, connected downtown to the rest of the world with free wireless access and helped to rehab local housing. There are plans for an outdoor amphitheater, a brewery and more.

The focus will be on what Littleton and its residents want to see. Since taking up the effort, the couple has worked with residents to help the town thrive.

“What we are trying to do is add to the town,” Deb Fitts said. “Add value. Add opportunities.”

Chipping in

Much as he did with NC State, Ed Fitts stayed in touch with Littleton as he built a career.

He and Deb chipped in to help fund town projects, like planting crepe myrtles or improving the local library, and they came back for reunions with his former classmates at houses on nearby Lake Gaston.

It was during one of those get-togethers that the couple was approached with a bigger ask. The old high school, which had been turned into a performing arts center, was in terrible shape. One of his classmates asked for help paying off a loan taken to repair the building.

“There was a hole in the roof,” recalls Deb, a Philadelphia native trained in statistics at Penn State University. “The walls were falling in. It was a disaster. That was the beginning of it.”

The Fittses had sold their winery in 2019 and were looking to move on to a new endeavor. The couple, clearly a team, like to bite off more than they can chew and then figure out how to chew it.

“We don’t know what we can’t do,” Ed said during an interview in Littleton in 2022, looking over at his wife with a sly grin.

That investment in the Lakeland Cultural Arts Center soon led to others. Starting on Main Street.

A tribute to Daphne

Ed Fitts’ mother, who passed away 20 years ago at the age of 87, was a practical nurse who also painted portraits of townspeople to help make ends meet. She moved Ed and his older brother, also an NC State engineering graduate, to Littleton from Macon, North Carolina, when Ed was 5.

“She was so frugal,” he remembers. “She could stretch a dollar further than anyone you ever saw.”

When Ed and Deb bought a row of 100-year-old buildings along Main Street, one that had been used as a garage for 65 years was full of 40,000 pounds of junk that had to be removed. Folks in town had mentioned a desire to have a place where people could gather. Ed and Deb decided to pay homage to Ed’s mother, and Daphne’s Coffee Shop was born.

Next door, the Blue Jay Bistro provides patrons with quality crafted cocktails and meals that rival any city’s 5-star restaurant. Main Street Wines offers Littleton and lake residents a selection practically unheard of in a rural North Carolina setting and hosts tastings once a month.

Chef Ashleigh Fleming oversees it all. A veteran of the restaurant business who was looking for a change, Fleming was attracted to a life in Halifax County by an opportunity to build a restaurant environment that is welcoming to all and to better use her skill set.

The crown jewel is Littleton Academy, a K-6 private school in that formerly ruined school building that brought Ed Fitts home. Out of 54 students enrolled in fall 2022, 52 were on scholarship. They enjoy a curriculum that is heavy on learning job-ready skills and providing experiences that most children in a rural setting don’t have access to.

Cornerstone

Ed had been to Raleigh exactly once — for a field trip — when he enrolled at North Carolina State College and moved into Tucker Dormitory. After graduation, he worked for 18 years for Sonoco Products Company, which eventually sent him to Pennsylvania to run its carton division. When Sonoco wanted to divest itself of that business, he sold two plants and bought the third one himself. Fitts founded Dopaco in 1979 and when he sold it in 2004, it was the number-one fast-food packaging producer in the world.

When he turned his attention to the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the goal was to make it one of the country’s top five departments in national rankings. Fitts endowed his first scholarship in industrial engineering in 1999 and his first professorship in the department in 2002. But he had plans for something bigger.

In 2005, he donated $10 million to NC State and the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering became the first named academic department in the University’s history. Several years later, he and fellow industrial engineering alumnus and former DuPont CEO Edgar S. Woolard donated a combined $25 million toward the College’s newest engineering building on Centennial Campus, and the University named it Fitts-Woolard Hall.

As with Littleton, Fitts has supported NC State to give back to a place that he says has given so much to him.

“I’ve always attributed NC State as being the cornerstone of my career.”