The ‘drone guy’ gave us a new way to look at Randolph County

ASHEBORO — I’m heart-broken to reveal that my cousin, my childhood buddy and my lifelong friend, Tom Allen, has died.

Most people in the Asheboro area knew him as the “drone guy.” Tom was kind of a pioneer around here in flying drones.

In fact, I interviewed him in 2013 when we met at a field across from the farmhouse where he grew up. He showed me how he flew what he called his “quadcopter” with its four rotors. At the time, Tom disdained the term “drone,” thinking it had a bad connotation.

In the article that appeared, I noted that Tom learned to fly by trial and error. He was flying his first, ahem, quadcopter over Deep River in Franklinville when he lost contact with it. After searching for an hour, Tom gave up and contacted the insurance company, which soon sent him a check.

In the article, I wrote: “Allen admits that people call his quadcopter his toy. But he has other ideas. 

“‘My intention is getting good videos and pictures,’ he said. ‘It’s a tool. But, they are fun to fly on a pretty day.’”

After a period of flying and taking videos over the Holly Spring Friends Meeting cemetery, Lake Lucas, Randleman Lake, Bicentennial Park and other locations, Tom came up with the idea of informing the public. That’s when he started filming construction of the US 64 bypass project and posting the videos on his Youtube page, along with voiceover information.

That led to another interview, not just with Tom but with the superintendent of the project, Michael Prince.

Tom told me he had been filming construction one day and had brought his drone back to earth. Then he saw a man wearing a bright yellow vest approaching. 

“Uh-oh, I’m in trouble,” Tom thought. It was Prince and when he got to Tom he asked what model drone he was flying. That started a conversation on the relative merits of drones, or quadcopters, if you prefer.

But what Prince then told Tom was surprising. He said his crew of builders reviewed his videos and looked for ways to work more efficiently. He encouraged Tom to continue what he was doing.

The end result was probably 200 or 300 videos of various stages of construction over a period of years that the public could view on YouTube to know the progress of the highway construction. When the new road opened in late 2020, Tom moved on to other projects.

Most notable was his coverage of the Zoo City Sportsplex construction. Then he started filming the Farm, Food and Family Center (Ag Center) construction on Dixie Drive, but in recent months health problems forced him to stay at home.

Tom grew up on a farm on Buffalo Ford Road, the third of seven children. He was just six months younger than I was so we soon became fast friends, even as toddlers.

Many were the Sunday afternoons when I begged my parents to go to the farm. Tom’s mother was sister to my mother and their husbands got along well, so more often than not my pleas were granted.

So, for two or three hours Tom and I had the entire farm as our playground. We could go down to the creek, which they called the branch, or roam the woods, or ride bicycles down the dirt road. On warm summer days there was the pond to keep us cool.

Then at 5 o’clock sharp it was milking time. Tom had to be at the milking barn to help with the cows. I followed along and saw close up how milk was coaxed from those ladies.

We sometimes spent the night with each other. Once when we were young teens, we decided to camp out in some woods a distance from the house. 

I had a two-man pup tent and we piled in with one of Tom’s younger brothers, the pet dog and various snacks. To say the tent was crowded would have been laughable, except we were in no mood to laugh.

Adding to our misery was a dripping rain. There was an old wives tale that if you touch the tent fabric when it’s raining, it will leak. We found that to be true.

I’ve often described that campout as the longest night of my life. But it’s fun to remember it.

Another memory I have concerns the time Tom’s family bought a tape recorder. We used it to make man-on-the-street-type interviews with one of us being the interviewer and the other answering the questions. We could have made a pretty good comedy team.

But over the years I’ve come to realize that Tom and I both wound up as communicators to the public. We just took different paths.

The first time I interviewed Tom for real was when he was a teacher at Southwestern Randolph Middle School. He had established and oversaw the school’s morning news program that was heard in all the classrooms.

Tom had chosen audio and visual communications while I was more comfortable with the written word. I like to think that it all started back when we were too young to be concerned about vocations or avocations.

I would be remiss, however, not to mention Tom’s book, a spiral-bound volume of self-illustrated poems called “Empty Pockets.” It was his way of portraying country life.

Although we attended rival schools — he went to Ramseur, the big rival to my Franklinville, and he studied at NC State while I was at UNC — we still spent plenty of weekends together, sometimes bowling, other times playing miniature golf or just cruising Asheboro. I’ve said many times that blood is thicker than rivalry. We even worked together one summer on a construction job.

While our lives parted ways as we got older, there were times that brought us together. When I had hip surgery and needed help at home, Tom, having retired from teaching, agreed to fill the bill.

He would come over every morning, make sure I took all my meds, check off items in a notebook and, most important, help me put on and remove those ornery compression stockings. Tom would also drive me to medical appointments and even took me to community events and to revisit an old stomping ground out in the country.

Later, after Tom became known for his aerial videos, I took to dropping his name. I would ask someone if they were familiar with Tom Allen, the drone guy. When they responded affirmatively, I would proudly say, “He’s my cousin.”

Tom is gone now but all those memories will live on. Not to mention his videos.

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Jeff Allen’s memories

Note: Jeff is Tom’s youngest brother

It was probably mid-70s when Tom bought an old log house that we helped him tear down and move to property at Christine’s (Tom’s wife) home place. I spent a few weeks helping him rebuild a cabin there. We had to trim and notch several logs to fit the plan he had. We used cement to fill in the gaps between logs. 

That was a summer I got to spend a good bit of time, just me and Tom. 

Other times growing up are memories of playing softball several years on our church team where he pitched for us, primarily. Had a lot of fun then!

The other joy for me was singing in our church choir as Tom was really our only true bass singer. I sang bass as well but couldn’t hit the really low notes like he could.

Mark Allen’s memories:

I do have a couple small events that stand out in my memory and involve Tom. 

Story #1 – BB Gun

I am the 5th of the Allen children. Tom was my next oldest brother, he being 8 years my senior. Due to his physical makeup and being older, he was much bigger than me when I was 8 years old. As was common with brothers, we would not always agree on things. Whether it was arguments over who was supposed to do certain chore, or something less meaningful. I do vividly remember walking from the milkhouse barn toward the house one day. Tom was about 30 feet in front of me. I was carrying my highly lethal Daisy BB gun. Now anyone from the ’50s or ’60s will know that is stretching the truth because you could hardly wound a bird with it from 10 feet away. Regardless, it was a symbol of our growth into manhood. I remember being mad at Tom about something, what, I do not know.  Since it was evident that I would lose in any physical altercation with my elder brother, I decided to send him a message with my BB gun by shooting at the ground near him, sort of a warning shot across the bow of a warship. Well, I had ye t to take any physics class at 8 years old and did not understand that a projectile striking the ground was likely to ricochet back up. You can imagine my horror when my shot at the ground between me and Tom resulted in him being hit square in the back! The image of Tom’s face when he turned around to face me was such that I remember thinking, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life at least through the age of 8.’ Honestly, I don’t remember much after that, but he must not have harmed me, or he would have suffered much worse from our parents. I don’t remember Tom ever believing that I did not intend to shoot him directly in the back but had accidentally done so by unwittingly shooting at the ground between us. Now that he has moved on to his heavenly body, free of the ills of this world, I can only hope he knows the real story of what happened that day.

Story #2 – Fall from Barn Loft

This story should be told by my sister Karen. My reasons for this comment will become evident shortly.

I’m not sure how old I was at the time but I’m guessing 5-6 years old. Life on the farm included many other buildings for equipment, life stock, milking of cows and storage of crops. We had a large two-story barn. Cows frequently inhabited the ground floor while the upper floor was for storage of hay and/or certain crops.  We all became very familiar with storing hay and straw in the barn during the summer months. The reverse was true during the winter months when you had to use the hay or straw. Straw was used to “bed down” the cows so they had a clean place to sleep in the barn.  That chore fell to the younger siblings. I also remember throwing hay down to feed the cows in the colder months. The upper floor was cavernous and a bit spooky, especially if you wandered around in it at night. We were all familiar with how to get around in it, regardless of whether it was day or night.  

This barn was unique in that the silo many dairy farms had was positioned in the middle. Consequently, there was some space between the silo walls and the second-floor level. We were all familiar with this feature. However, there was one broken board near the edge that was missing. I, my sister, Karen and brother Tom were in the barn when I stepped where the floorboard was missing. I fell roughly eight feet from the upper floor to the lower floor. The remainder of this story comes from my sister. I evidently struck my head in the fall and was unconscious. My memory doesn’t resume until I awake at the house while being attended by a family doctor. (Yes, doctors made house calls back in those days.) Here is where my brother Tom comes in. According to Karen, when I fell and was obviously unconscious, Tom propped me up against the barn wall and stated that I would be all right just give him a little time. I’m sure he was thinking our parents were going to crucify him for not paying better attention to his younger siblings. Whether he decided it was best to “fess up” and take me to the house to determine whether I was dead or not and then face the music if the outcome was not good, or whether my sister Karen ratted him out, I don’t know. Regardless, I plan to get his version of this story the next time we see each other.

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Tom Allen’s YouTube channel

Until we see up-in-the-air shots like this one from Tom Allen’s drone video collection, we might forget just how close Asheboro is to nearby mountain ranges.

Tom’s YouTube channel @TomAllenDrone has more than 1,200 videos and nearly 3,000 subscribers. Many are also listed on his Thomas E. Allen Facebook page. You can find newsworthy videos of events like the tearing down of the BB Walker building on US 64 or regular updates from the construction of the Zoo City Sportsplex and the US 64 Bypass around Asheboro. But he also took time to offer bird’s eye views of Ramseur Lake, Randleman Lake, Lake Lucas, Badin Lake and more. He’s shot night-vision videos, a video of the Ramseur Rail Trail from above and much, much more from his 10 years of drone work.