About the Author

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Stephen R. "Steve" Little

Marion, North Carolina

Steve Little is the senior attorney in the Marion, North Carolina law firm of Little, Lattimore, and Ledford, P.A., with a personal emphasis on elder law issues. He is licensed to conduct trials and appeals in all the Courts of North Carolina, in the federal courts, and was admitted in 2003 to practice and present legal arguments to the United States Supreme Court.

Steve is in his fourth four-year term as the Mayor of Marion, North Carolina, first elected in 2009 after serving 24 consecutive years as a publicly-elected member of the Marion City Council. He has served on several policy committees over the years for the National League of Cities and for the North Carolina League of Municipalities.

Steve is an active member of First Baptist Church in Marion, NC, where he has been a teacher of the 3rd - 5th grade Sunday School class since 2008. He continues to serve as a Deacon, Endowment Fund Trustee, and member of the adult choir and the adult handbell choir. Steve has, for a dozen years, managed the logistics of food purchasing, vehicle utilization, and general support for medical and construction mission teams on trips to the poor interior of Belize, sponsored by FBC- Marion.

His involvement with Baptist matters includes serving four years as a member of the national governing board of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship based in Atlanta, Georgia. From 2010-2011, he served as State Moderator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina. Also, Steve previously served 10 years as a Trustee of NC Baptist Hospital of Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, NC; 4 years as a Trustee of Wingate University in Wingate, NC; and 6 years as a Trustee of Baptist Children's Homes of North Carolina. In other civic matters, he has been a director of many local non-profit groups in Marion and McDowell County, NC, including 25 years as pro bono legal counsel for McDowell County Habitat for Humanity and 14 years as Trustee of The McDowell Hospital in Marion, NC.

Steve has been a speaker at numerous estate planning seminars in North Carolina, speaking at many professional continuing education conferences for the National Business Institute and also at seminars and programs for the North Carolina Baptist Foundation. The topics on which he has written and presented at conferences include drafting of wills and trusts, probate of wills and administration of estates, civil litigation, drafting and administration of special needs trusts, and ethics in the preparation and probate/ administration of estate planning documents.

Steve has authored seven self-published works, including Tunnels, Nitro, and Convicts (both the original edition published in 2010 and the revised edition published in 2023), the history of the construction of the railroad and tunnels from 1875-1879 on the Western North Carolina Railroad as it climbs the eastern continental divide in western McDowell County; The Home Tree, a child's bedtime story illustrated by an elementary school art teacher in Texas (published in 2011); The Mighty Locomotive, a vignette from the Tunnels story written for children to read and enjoy history, illustrated by a local artist (published 2012); Andrews Geyser: Star of the Mountain Railroad, the story of the unique and fascinating man-made "geyser" monument, located west of Old Fort (published in 2012); Our Life is Very Good, a true story of his inspiration from a child Steve met during a mission trip in the remote village of La Gracia, Belize (published in 2013); and Nature Hike in the Blue Ridge (published in 2018), identifying and describing wildflowers, plants and trees on a north-facing slope of the Western North Carolina mountains.

Steve frequently has spoken to civic clubs, train clubs, church groups, elementary school students, and others about the railroad history of the Western North Carolina Railroad. Until developing a vocal cord impairment, he often presented historical re-enactments as the "Railroad Convict," speaking in first person as a prisoner working in the late 1870s on the railroad and tunnels west of Old Fort, NC. He was a featured speaker/re-enactor at the 2013 and 2014 train shows sponsored by the NC Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. Steve was the commencement speaker at the 2014 McDowell Technical Community College graduation ceremony and also spoke frequently, advocating and promoting economic development in Marion and McDowell County, NC.

In 2021, Steve co-presented for the WNC Historical Association a virtual review and commentary on the late John Ehle's historical novel, The Road, with Dr. Richard D. Starnes, history professor and Provost of Western Carolina University. In July 2020, Steve co-founded with Dr. Dan Pierce, a history professor at UNC Asheville and a published author, an organization (The RAIL Memorial Project Inc) that has brought recognition to the mostly Black prisoners from the NC State Penitentiary who were forced under severe and brutal conditions to construct the Mountain Division of the Western North Carolina Railroad, 1875-1879. On this topic, he was interviewed in 2020 in an Emmy-nominated program by anchor-reporter Tim Boyum of Spectrum News in Raleigh, NC. The organization installed a memorial monument on the grounds of Andrews Geyser in September 2021 to recognize these incarcerated laborers.

Steve was born and raised in Smithfield, North Carolina, and graduated with honors in 1973 from Wake Forest University. After receiving his Juris Doctor degree from Wake Forest University School of Law in 1977, he moved to Marion, NC. Steve is married to the former Alice Hobbs, formerly an elementary school teacher and guidance counselor, and they have two wonderful daughters and one magnificent granddaughter.