Veston Colbourne Banks (1899-1973)

 From the 1924 Wake Forest University "Howler" Yearbook. 

   Joining an already lengthy list of strangely named North Carolina legislators who've been profiled here, Pamlico County educator Veston Colbourne Banks was elected to one term in his state's house of representatives in 1926. The son of Pamlico County businessman Noah Harvey Banks and his wife Deborah Alice Downs Banks, Veston C. Banks was born in the town of Grantsboro, North Carolina on March 13, 1899. He graduated from Grantsboro's Alliance High School in the class of 1917 and would later study law at Wake Forest University, being a member of the university's Masonic Club. He earned his law degree here and graduated in the senior class of 1924. Banks is also recorded as having enlisted in the U.S. Army in September 1918, although it is unknown at this time if he saw armed combat during WWI. 

   Following his graduation, Veston C. Banks married on June 25, 1925 to Ms. Daisy Mason (1907-2004) and would later have one son, Myron Carroll Banks (born 1931). Prior to his legislative service Banks was a justice of the peace in Grantsboro and in November 1926 won election as that county's representative to the North Carolina General Assembly. Taking his seat at the start of the 1927-29 session, Banks would serve on the house committees on Commerce, Election Laws, Immigration, Insurance, the Journal, the Oyster Industry and the Revision of Laws during his one term in office.

  After the completion of his term Banks returned to private life and in 1928 took on the position of principal of the Cove City, North Carolina Elementary School. He would serve fourteen years as principal and in 1942 began a twenty-year stint as a supervisor for the North Carolina Department of Labor's Wage Division. 

   From 1962-64 Banks was employed by the U.S. Department of Labor, retiring in 1964 at age 65. He resided in Raleigh during the latter portion of his life and died at age 74 on September 27, 1973, his cause of death being given as the result of a "massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage of 24 hour duration due to ruptured esophageal varices." He was survived by his wife Daisy, who, following her death at age 97 in 2004, was interred alongside her husband at the Grantsboro Cemetery.