Starlite changes owners after 50 years

After running a local motel for 20 years, Linda and Russ Singer decided it was time to retire.

An offer was made by someone, and it was too good to refuse. The offer came from Dan Castor, owner of A-1 Personal Storage, and they signed on the dotted line.

At the end of this month, the Starlite Motel will have a new owner, but Singer said not much else will change. The red-and-green handpainted sign and its matching green building will remain, only the Pawn shop will close.

Singer’s father, Tappley Johnson, built the motel in 1954. But when Hurricane Hazel came through, they had to rebuild, and the motel wasn’t opened until 1955.

Singer said the motel was originally built because of Wake Forest College.

“Then in 1956 it moved,” she said. “It was hard times, but we never knew it as children.”

The motel had a restaurant and a swimming pool until 1977, when the four-lane highway was constructed.

“The restaurant used to be a hangout for everyone,” Linda Singer said. “All the locals used to come up and drink coffee like they do now at The Border.”

The Starlite may have been a local hangout to many, but to Singer and others, it was home.

Johnson built a home on the property of the motel so he could raise his family there. The kids grew up in the motel, and eventually worked there.

“It was always home to me because I could wake up in the morning, go to the restaurant and have a hamburger before I went to school,” Singer said. “Mom and dad both worked in the restaurant, and I worked there from 10 years up.”

Singer said it’s the home that she’s going to be sad to leave.

“There’s a lot of memories in that house, both good and bad,” she said.

Singer said she thinks the new owner will keep the home as is, and will rent it along with the motel rooms.

Castor was unavailable for comment.

Singer and her husband have been running the hotel since her father died in 1986. In 1989 the pawn shop opened when Singer’s husband was laid off from CP&L.

Singer said the favorite part of growing up in a motel was her parents.

“I had my mom and dad around 24-7. I think it would be any child’s wish if they could have it,” she said.

But the Johnsons and Singers aren’t the only ones who have made a home for themselves at the motel.

Bill Southerland has been living at the Starlite Motel for 28 years and has no plans for leaving.

“I don’t have no place else to go,” Southerland said.

Southerland ended up staying at the motel first in 1978 when he worked at the Capital Boulevard truck stop on the corner of Burlington Mills Road, where he worked for 10 years.

“It was convenient for him to stay here and work there,” Singer said.

Southerland still eats at the old truck-stop restaurant every day.

He said he stayed at the motel for so long because he was never bothered and he had everything he needed right there.

Southerland had a stroke in 2002 and was put in a nursing home in Garner by his family.

When the nursing home called Singer to tell her Southerland’s money had run out, she went and picked him up and took him back to the motel.

“He’s just like my dad,” she said. “He is a part of my family.”

Singer said the new owner has promised that Southerland can stay in the motel as long as he needs to. There are also two other long-term tenants at the motel that have been grandfathered in.

When they close on the property Nov. 13, the Singers will have two months to gather their things and move to their new home in Virginia.

The couple purchased 138 acres for their six horses that includes three ponds.

Singer is excited because she said it’s a great place for her three grandchildren to come and visit.

“I’m going to go enjoy my grandchildren and my children,” Singer said. “I’ve worked all my life, and they probably feel like they need a mom, too.”