Bertie County, North Carolina

7 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 10 But they also honor history whenever they can. For example, instead of tearing down their historic courthouse and building a new modern one, they refurbished what they had. “It was one of the largest projects that we’ve undertaken in Bertie County in probably 60 years,” Trent explains. “We made a choice to remodel and refurbish this historical piece of architecture. We did this on our own… It became a star before I knew it. There were people shooting commercials in front of the courthouse!” That project speaks to the heart of the community. “The people in Bertie County are very resilient. The county commissioners are very resilient. We try to do things. We do sometimes live on the edge,” Trent laughs, “but we get it done by ourselves and move forward with it.” Bertie County is no stranger to struggle. They’ve been hard hit with hurricanes over the years. Most recently, with a deadly tornado that spun off of Hurricane Isaias in 2020. Wesson agrees with Trent that “the citizens here in this area are extremely resilient. We have been impacted by natural disasters as much as anybody in this part of the state. But yet, still, our people have learned to recover. Our people have learned to rely on us and be a part of this government… we’ve been kind of a poster child for how you recover from natural disasters. We’ve done a great job of working with people and working with the state. We stay prepared for those kinds of things because we’ve been through it.” Those storms – that history – is why Bertie County put such an emphasis on shoring up their healthcare services. Wesson says they knew they needed better healthcare for their citizens, so they pursued a hospital. They knew they needed better EMS services. So they found a way. Ten years ago, Bertie County had a basic EMS service. The Board of Commissioners wanted more. “We went to privatization,” notes Trent. “And now we have one of the best EMS services that work for the county instead of a volunteer system. We’re EMT as far as a paramedic level, which is Sir Walter Raleigh’s Map of Virginia; the inset is from the British Museum’s scientific examination of the map and shows a fort icon covered by a patch in the vicinity of Salmon Creek. Image courtesy of First Colony Foundation