The old-school way works for this 94-year-old Fayetteville gem

She may be old school, but don’t call her old. Wilma Lytton is 94 years old. And still going strong.
She is the sole owner and landlord of eight apartments on Stedman Street in Fayetteville.
Wilma is a one-woman operation, though she didn’t used to be. Wilma and her husband Jack Lytton worked together building houses in 1951. She kept the books, and he designed and built the houses.
After Jack died in 1995, Wilma had to run the properties herself. She doesn’t use an agency to run her property: She still collects rent from her tenants and makes sure everything is in working order in her apartments.
And she knows who to call to fix things with Jack gone — just don’t expect her to call on a cell phone. She owns one but rarely uses it.
You also won’t find a computer in her home. “I refuse to go to the computer, which makes my daughter (Lee Lytton) mad,” Wilma said.
The beginning with Jack
She hasn’t always been alone. She and her husband Jack married in 1951 and moved from Cheraw, South Carolina, to Fayetteville. Jack was an architect who designed and built houses, Wilma said.
“We were not big builders,” she said. “When we first started out, all of us didn’t seem to have any money to build those big homes.”
Wilma said Jack built a lot of homes in subdivisions such as Montclair and Evergreen. She said he also built all but three of the original houses in the Wickliffe community off Morganton Road. In fact, they lived in about 20 homes Jack built over the years, mostly in the Haymount area, Wilma said. About five years ago, she moved into one of the apartments she owns.
“I heard him say one time that he had built over 300 [houses],” she said. “I don’t know how many [he built]. We were not big builders like Riddle or Floyd.” J.P. Riddle and Sonny Floyd, two of the largest builders in Fayetteville in the mid-20th century, are popular names in local commercial and residential construction.
She and Jack made quite a team for 44 years before Jack died from heart disease in 1995, two months shy of his 75th birthday.
The roles were clear: Wilma was the bookkeeper and Jack was the handyman.
“I always kept the books. I know how to balance a set of books,” Wilma said. “Jack was very good at knowing how to do things [how to build] and liked doing them. I’m not good with a hammer.
“In fact, I used to say, ‘Jack, you need to look at this,’” Wilma remembered. “And [he would say], ‘Nope, that’s your job.’”
She still keeps the books longhand to this day instead of on the computer to stay in practice. Wilma, like her husband, is precise.
“Jack would call the figures out to me and I would write them down, and he would figure up what he had to have [to build a building],” Wilma said. “When he drew plans, he drew with a pencil and a board and a t-square, not like they do now with computers. He was a very exacting person. He didn’t use a calculator. He used a slide rule.”
Jack also built apartments around Fayetteville and they began renting them in 1972, Wilma said. She said they had 45 apartments at one time, but she oversees eight now.
Jack’s death and its aftermath
Jack was always dedicated to his craft.
Once, in the mid-1980s, Wilma finally convinced Jack to see a doctor after he dealt with prolonged health issues and had a heart attack in the late 1970s. The blockage in his heart was so extreme the doctors ended up doing seven bypasses.
“The doctor came in and said, “You need an operation, Jack,’” Wilma said.
He told doctors he would finish building a house that he was halfway done with at the time, and come back later for the procedure.
“The doctor said, ‘Jack, anybody I know in your shape is in the cemetery.’ And Jack said, ‘Well I think I’ll stay then,’” Wilma recounted.
Jack ended up finishing that house and lived about 10 more years after the surgery, Wilma said.
But when Jack died, he was in the process of building another house for the two to live in. After his death, Wilma was dedicated to getting the house done.
A fellow builder, Bert Atwood, who had worked for Jack for about five years in the 1960s before founding his own company, helped her finish it even though he was retired.
True to his word, Bert helped Wilma finish the house, which she then sold, and turned her attention to the apartments.
“Most of our money in his [Jack’s] later years came from rent,” Wilma said. “You don’t pay social security on that. So I needed to work. I wasn’t a multi-millionaire.”
Starting over
At 64 years old, she had to adapt with her longtime partner gone.
“I had always helped him. A house is made up of thousands of decisions, not just one, and I didn’t always think of everything,” she said. “I had never been faced with having to make every decision that you need to make in a house. It made a big difference.”
She followed her husband’s philosophy in running the apartments: Do it right the first time and there won’t be any issues with the building.
“I enjoy seeing things get done,” Wilma said. “I can’t see something that can’t be done better. You can always improve on most anything in life. If you make a mess, you can un-mess it.”
It also helps that Wilma has had few problems with the tenants, many of whom have lived in the apartments for decades. She hasn’t had a vacancy for about two and a half years. They are lovely people, she said. Wilma said she has been fortunate over the years to only have had to ask one tenant to leave “because they just weren’t suitable.”
“They were family as far as we [Jack and Wilma] were concerned,” she said. Past tenants have even helped her work on the yard and other work that needed to be done on the property.
“I try to keep them happy,” Wilma said. “If they have a complaint, it’s always legitimate: They’re not complaining people.”
Like family
Her tenants say she’s much more than reasonable.
Marie Grice, who with her husband Ricky have rented from Wilma for the last five years, said that Wilma is kind, loving and impressive.
“She treats everyone like family. We feel like she is family,” Marie said. “She feels like a second mother to us, actually. That’s how close we feel like we are to her.”
One tenant, Tyler Sutherland, elementary school teacher at Howard Hall, has rented twice from Wilma in the past six years.
“She has known me through the best of times and the hardest of times,” said Tyler, who left Fayetteville before returning when she took a job as an elementary school teacher. “When I moved back, she was the first person I called. I begged her, said, ‘You’ve got to let me come back.’”
“She’s the most delightful person that I’ve ever met,” Tyler continued. “She goes out of her way to support each and every person that she allows to rent her places.”
Wilma has not only helped Tyler, but her students as well, by buying Tyler school supplies for her students for Christmas.
“Even when I call her at 3 a.m. in the morning because I’m late for school and I got locked out, she’s always the first one to come over,” Tyler said. “She’s got a heart of gold.”
Another tenant Wilma helped during a hard time was Lana Peoples, who has lived in her apartment for six years and whose husband Ron Peoples Sr. and son, Ron Peoples Jr., died within three months of each other four years ago. Ron Jr. was a banker in Greenville, North Carolina, who moved back in with his parents for health reasons.
“It’s a pleasure to be here,” Lana said. “She’s a great inspiration to everyone with her vitality and her great sense of humor.
“When we moved here, he (Ron Sr.) said, ‘I think I’m going to live here the rest of my life.’ Which he did. She was so caring and still is so caring about all of her people.”
Being a good landlord goes back to treating people like family, Wilma said, where her tenants can call on her in times of need — even if that means getting in her car and driving to meet them.
“You can call on any of them and they can call on me for anything that we could possibly do,” Wilma said.
On many days, she can be seen working in the yard, planting flowers or trimming hedges. One concession she has made for her age is no longer mowing the lawn at the request of her son John Lytton and daughter Lee Lytton, who are both retired. (Though Wilma says she still thinks she could.)
Tyler certainly thinks she could, too: Wilma, in her 90s, can be found gardening in her yard, pulling weeds, and pulling trash cans. Tyler said she does it all.
“She doesn’t miss a beat,” Tyler said. “She’s a Fayetteville gem and always will be. Everyone wants to live here and they definitely don’t want to leave.”
After talking to Wilma for just a few minutes, her quick wit and humor quickly come through.
“I’m very fortunate in that I have excellent health,” she said, then added with a chuckle. “My mind doesn’t work as well as it used to but I can still think a little.”
Running an apartment complex hasn’t been that hard, even at her age, she said, especially since her tenants treat the property with care and have stayed for the long run.
“That makes all the difference in the world,” Wilma said.
It all goes back to that old-school attitude.
“Jack and I just always tried to do [whatever’s] the right thing to do,” Wilma said. “I just try to treat everybody like I would like to be treated myself and I look on them as friends. And I love them all.”