Oral Gentry King
On the 28th day of January, 1865, there came into the home of Isaiah and Rebecca (Reddish) King, in House's Creek Township, Wake County, a boy who was destined to become an important factor in the commercial and official public life of the capital city of North Carolina. This boy received the name of Oral Gentry. His father being a successful farmer, of sterling qualities, and his mother a superior woman, who looked well after the welfare of her household, young Oral grew up through the successive stages of childhood, boyhood and youth under circumstances favorable to the development of the best type of manhood. Doing his full share of-honest toil by day and sleeping soundly at night, he developed strength of body and clearness of mind, with a capacity for thinking and doing that has characterized his career in the city, where genius for planning and ability for executing count most in the struggle for supremacy in city life.
While responding cheerfully and dutifully to every demand incident to life on a farm, young Oral attended the public school of the district on winter days, and during the long evenings he pored diligently over his books, thus early displaying the faculty of thoroughly mastering his tasks—a habit that proved of inestimable value in carving out a place for himself in business life after he had taken his leave of rural scenes to engage in the more strenuous pursuits of a position of respect and influence in the city of Raleigh.
At the age of eighteen years, having attended the public schools and a high school, and having heard a whispered call to his inner consciousness to prepare for a professional life, Mr. King decided that he would study medicine, with the view of becoming a physician.
For three years he studied at home, and then matriculated in the Richmond Medical College, at Richmond, Va., where he remained one year; but as the time for the completion of his course approached, he reflected on the matter and decided to adopt the profession of pharmacy.
Returning to his home in the country, in Wake County, he took up his studies, and, without the assistance of a teacher, he so far mastered the science as to pass his examination before the State Board of Pharmacy, receiving his diploma in 1889. Being then well equipped for a business career by the practice of his chosen profession, at the age of twenty-two he opened a drug store at the southeast corner of Wilmington and Ilargett streets in Raleigh. It goes without saying that the business was successful from the start.
Merit cannot, as a rule, be concealed under an outward garb of modesty and unpretension; so it is not surprising that people soon found out that Mr. King was capable, careful, painstaking, reliable and obliging; moreover, that he was a gentleman of such pleasing personality that it was a pleasure to do business with him. So it came to pass that in the course of a few years Mr. King built up a trade that was out of all proportion to the store in which his talents and his activities were exercised.
It is said that you cannot hold a working man down, which is doubtless true. It is equally apparent that you cannot keep an active man of business from expanding. This was exemplified in the case of Mr. King, who, when the Masonic Temple was completed, leased its most desirable storeroom and opened a drug store that was one of the most elegantly furnished and the most discriminatingly stocked of any in the capital city. From that time he conducted business in two stores successfully until he had an advantageous offer to sell the Masonic Temple store, and accepted it. A short time thereafter he built and opened a drug store in Glenwood, within the city limits, on the corner of Peace Street and Glenwood Avenue. The new store, which has been open but a short time, has proved very popular, and the business has been all that could be desired. The appreciative people of Glenwood and Brooklyn have given it a generous patronage. With his two stores—one in the heart of the business section, and the other in one of the most popular suburban districts—Mr. King finds his time and talents well occupied, and has the satisfaction of seeing his business enjoying a high state of prosperity.
While deeply interested, as all good citizens should be, in the public welfare, Mr. King has never been a politician nor an office seeker. He has needed neither the salary attached to a public office nor the "pull" that public position affords to those who have the inclination and the opportunity to profit by it; but his fellow-citizens would not allow his talents for public service to remain unemployed. Thus it was that in 1911 he was called to the office of police commissioner of the City of Raleigh, together with Messrs. James A. Briggs and Lynn Wilder. In the municipal election he received every vote cast, leading his highest associate on the ticket by 232 votes. His services on the board were valuable, and he shared with the other members of the Police Commission in the arduous duties that resulted in promoting the character and efficiency of the guardians of the public peace and safety.
Mr. King now occupies the distinguished position of Commissioner of Public Safety of Raleigh, an office created by the General Assembly of 1913, under the Commission Form of Government act, and, though he has been in office for a brief period, has shown by his official conduct that the people of the capital city made no mistake in electing him to this high office.
In the best sense of the word, Mr. King is a progressive citizen. In every movement for promoting the welfare of the people, intellectually, morally or materially, he is a leader among his fellow-citizens. He is a diligent reader of current literature and is well informed in regard to public matters, and, this being well known, his opinions are sought for and his judgment respected. He is affable, courteous, easy of approach, kind, generous and, above all, gentlemanly.
Besides the numerous other ways in which he has shown his interest in the welfare of his fellow-man, Mr. King has manifested the fraternal spirit by becoming a member of those benevolent and beneficent orders—Masons, Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias, in all of which he takes an active part and has enjoyed the honors which they bestow on worthy members. In politics he is, and always has been, a Democrat.
The domestic life of Mr. King is ideal. In 1885 he won the heart and hand of Miss Amanda Emaline, daughter of Mr. M. Y. and Amanda (Wilson) Chappell. Mrs. King, like her husband, was reared in the country, her father being a well-known citizen and substantial farmer of Granville County. Mr. and Mrs. King have one child, Vera Myrtle. They have a beautiful home, recently built, in Glenwood.
(Source: Historical Raleigh With Sketches of Wake County (From 1771) and its Important Towns (Moses Amis, 1913) Submitted by Amy Robbins)