Editor’s Note: Western North Carolina is rich with untold stories—many resting quietly in local cemeteries. In this Tombstone Tales series, we explore the lives of people from our region’s past whose legacies, whether widely known or nearly forgotten, helped shape the place we call home.
WAYNESVILLE, N.C. — On the steep hillside above Waynesville’s Pigeon Street neighborhood, a marble headstone catches the morning light. It bears a name, a war, and a quiet story about fate.
Leon Love was born in Waynesville on Feb. 22, 1896, a young Black man coming of age in a segregated South. He learned a trade from his father, Henry, becoming a plasterer whose hands built and mended the walls of other people’s homes.
When the United States entered World War I, the call for soldiers reached the mountains. At twenty-two, Love was drafted and inducted into the segregated Army on April 29, 1918. His papers described him as tall and slender, unmarried, with a tenth-grade education. He was sent first to the 156th Depot Brigade, a unit where African American recruits were often assigned to train and organize others rather than fight themselves…