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2009 Watauga Medalists

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2009 Watauga Medalist E. Norris Tolson 

 E. Norris Tolson

For more than four decades, E. Norris Tolson (’62) has served the citizens of North Carolina as a business and policy leader. After a stint in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, Tolson worked with Dupont for 28 years before moving into state service as a legislator, as Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Revenue.

“NC State was sort of my first home away from home,” Tolson said. “It opened doors to me into the world that I didn’t really know as a farm boy out of eastern North Carolina, to go places I hadn’t been and to do things I’d never done before.”

Tolson, of Pinetops, N.C., serves on the NC State Board of Visitors and the Alumni Association board, as well as the College of Education Foundation. He also is a member of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Society.

“NC State is truly the people’s university, in that it is the university that touches the rural people of North Carolina where I came from,” Tolson said. “It introduced us to people who came into our state from other places around the U.S. and the world to study, and gave us an outlook on the world that we would have never gotten anywhere else.” – Dave Pond