SALISBURY — Leaving behind a legacy does not always require building a physical monument. Sometimes, it’s just about the people’s lives that you touch. In Reid Leonard’s case, he did both.

Reid Leonard, 96, died on Wednesday surrounded by his family. The man who was born in Lexington made Salisbury his home decades ago and, since then, left his mark in more ways than one. 

He ran a dry cleaners downtown, held the position of Salisbury school board chair and served in the Salisbury Rotary Club for more than 70 years. He wore a lot of hats around this town, but at home, Reid carried his proudest title as father to his three children, Gary, Beverly and Susan, and husband to his wife, Mary Sue.

“My dad would not flower you with compliments unless they were 100 percent sincere,” Beverly said. “If he told you he was proud of you, he meant it.”

Beverly made a career teaching elementary school in Rural Hill. When she got ready to go out for her national board certification, she knew it was going to be a massive undertaking. 

“When I started, Daddy did everything he could to make me a quiet little place in a room where I could be by myself, away from the phone and from any kind of noise that would disturb me,” Beverly said. 

The desk that she was going to use was a little short.

“He thought I was not going to be comfortable,” Beverly said of her father. “He notoriously saved all kinds of scrap wood. He made risers so the desk was high enough that I was comfortable.

“He gave me a kiss on the forehead and said, ‘Now get to it.'”

Moments like that encapsulate the man that Leonard was at home. When Beverly officially received her national board certification, she called her parents, and Leonard told her how proud he was.

On Friday, Susan said that two moments she will always remember were when her father handed her a high school diploma and when he walked her down the aisle at First United Methodist Church. 

It won’t be a joyous occasion on Nov. 25, but Leonard’s daughter will have one more chance to be in that sanctuary with her father during the scheduled funeral service. It will take place at 2 p.m., with a reception in the fellowship hall to follow. 

To the community at large, Leonard was a leader and someone to look up to. 

Salisbury City Councilman David Post remembers calling him “Mr. Reedy” as a child. 

“He has known me longer than I have known me,” Post said. “I called him Mr. Reedy because he would come over to our house and pick up our dry cleaning and bring it back … that is the way all the kids in my family got to know him.”

As Post got older, he and Leonard’s love for tennis thrust them into the same spheres.

“He got involved in tennis, and the tennis courts were built in the mid-’60s,” Post said. “Tennis was more popular back then, and you had to have a reservation to get a court. The tournaments were pretty big … he would referee the finals. They got him a big chair to sit above the court. He had a deep voice and would say ’30, love.'”

As is bound to happen in athletics, a difference of opinion emerged regarding a call that Leonard made. 

“I said get down off your chair and come look,” Post said. “I lost that conversation.”

When the school systems, Salisbury and Rowan County, consolidated in the late 1980s, Leonard was on the board. The state of North Carolina had been pushing for all the counties to consolidate school systems.

“The Salisbury School Board had a number of community leaders, and Reid was always even-handed,” Post said. “The community leaders were, too. He was up to the task. There were a lot of capable people there.”

Leonard was a studious man who always asked questions. Beverly talked about how her father loved music and singing, especially old show tunes and classical. He instilled in her a similar love for music, which she would employ in her classroom. 

In fact, the music hall at Salisbury High School is actually named in Leonard’s honor. In his younger years, Leonard also performed in a few plays. 

Ironically, he shared a name with longtime Piedmont Players Theatre director Reid Leonard, who was several years his junior. On Thursday, Leonard said that they were regularly confused for one another. In a brief story in Thursday’s Salisbury Post about Leonard’s death, this writer was guilty of making the same mistake. 

On several occasions, the confusion did lend itself to humor, as the younger Leonard explained. He was frequently approached by high-school-aged applicants for the North Carolina Governor’s Schools to write recommendation letters. Several applicants knew that Leonard would not be out of rehearsal at the theater until late at night and would wait to call. 

However, those applicants would mistakenly call the wrong Leonard household. His wife, Mary Sue, would answer, and on the other end of the line could be a young woman asking for her husband. They would share more than one laugh over that one.

The correlations did not stop there. Both men were from Lexington, and the younger Leonard’s father also ran a dry cleaner.

Over the years, Leonard was increasingly active in the Salisbury Rotary Club. Through that membership, he was instrumental in championing a project near Salisbury City Park for a veterans memorial. Leonard served himself as an infantryman. He joined the U.S. Army towards the end of World War II but never saw combat before Japan surrendered. 

Honoring other veterans was a significant goal for Leonard. 

Longtime friend Ed Clement said, “It was Reid’s idea that he worked on for years and developed over the years. It was a wonderful legacy that he left to Salisbury, Rowan County and our country.”

The end result was the Salisbury Rotary Honor Concourse.

Monuments at the park capture the U.S. Constitution and Gettysburg Address. 

“Walking around the concourse is a real lesson in American history,” Clement said. “Then it has the war memorials, the memorial flags from all of the different branches of service.

“Salisbury has been blessed over the last six or seven decades with some outstanding leaders, and Reid Leonard certainly was one of those who served his community for many years. He was visionary, dedicated to principals, a very hard worker, creative, and all of these came out in his work on that memorial where he put it together, he envisioned it.”

Leonard worked with Salisbury landscape architect Stephen Brown on the project. 

“Reid was a great person to work with,” Brown said. “He would have an idea for the Patriots Flag Concourse, and I would draw it up for him. 

“Reid was friendly, knowledgeable and patriotic. He loved his family, the City of Salisbury and his country.”

Earlier this week, Leonard was able to visit the memorial. His family took him out there one last time. 

Plans to construct an archway at the concourse are still in the works. In lieu of flowers, Leonard’s family is asking for a donation to the Salisbury Rotary Club so that his vision can come to fruition.