A former Washington Redskins defensive lineman who traded professional football for a business suit to save his family’s legacy, Don Stallings died on June 9, 2026, at the age of 87. He was widely recognized as the powerhouse behind Eagle Transport Corporation and one of the most influential philanthropic figures in the history of the University of North Carolina.

Alva Donald Stallings was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on November 18, 1938, to Alva Randolph Stallings and Mabel Saunders Stallings. Long before he became a businessman or a benefactor, he was a boy in Rocky Mount who worked Fridays and Saturdays pumping gas and helping at his father’s Coal and Ice business on Ricks Street. At 12, while attending Boy Scout Troop 113, he arrived at a camporee covered in coal dust and earned the nickname “Coal Bucket,” a label that followed him from the football field into the boardroom.

He graduated from Rocky Mount Senior High School in 1956, where he lettered in football, basketball and baseball. The next step took him to Chapel Hill on a football scholarship, where he was recruited by Jim Tatum and played for the North Carolina Tar Heels on both the offensive and defensive lines. He became a Tar Heel All-American and earned a place on the 1960 college All-Star squad that played against the NFL’s Baltimore Colts, signs of a player whose value was measured as much by leadership and toughness as by statistics.

The Washington Redskins selected him in the 1960 NFL Draft, and he played nine games for the team that season. But the more consequential turn in his life came when his father became ill and he returned to Rocky Mount to help run the family business. What might have looked like a detour from the NFL became, for Stallings, a return to the place where his work ethic had been formed, and where the “Coal Bucket” nickname still made sense.

That return became the foundation for Eagle Transport Corporation, which he founded in 1968 and grew into one of the nation’s largest petroleum and chemical tank line companies. WBTV reported that he started the company in 1969 after returning to North Carolina, and the details of the date mattered less than the arc itself: a former lineman from Rocky Mount building an enterprise that reached far beyond the town where he had once pumped gas. He also served as chairman of the National Association of Truckstop Operators and as a board member of the National Tank Truck Carriers, roles that reflected the same steady, practical authority he had carried from the line of scrimmage.

His company’s motto, “Bigger and Better,” was more than a slogan. It described the way he approached growth, but it also seemed to govern the way he gave back. He and his wife, Billie J. Stallings, described in the obituary as his “love of his life and partner of 45 years,” endowed professorships at UNC in the School of Dentistry and the School of Exercise and Sport Science, along with a distinguished professorship in congenital heart disease. Their philanthropy was not ornamental; it was built to last, the same way he built his business.

Stallings remained tied to Rocky Mount even after his business success. In 1962 and 1963, he volunteered as the offensive line coach for Rocky Mount Senior High School, and the team won the State 4-A Championship both years. Decades later, the honors kept coming: he was named Boy Scout Man of the Year in 2015, received the Rocky Mount Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Citizen of the Year honor, and was inducted into the Twin County Hall of Fame in 2021. Those recognitions fit a life that never really left eastern North Carolina, even as his influence widened.

At UNC, his service deepened over time. He chaired the Rams Club in 1998 and 1999, then served on the UNC Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2009. In 2014, he and Billie received the William Richardson Davie Award, UNC’s highest alumni honor for service and dedication. By then, his support for Carolina had become part of the university’s own story, and Michael Lombardi, UNC football’s general manager, later called him “a great man” and said, “Don Stallings loved UNC Football, he loved playing, he loved helping build the program and everyone here is extremely grateful for his incredible support.”

Lombardi’s tribute captured the bridge Stallings had built between his athletic past and his later life. He had been a player, a coach, a trustee and a builder, and in each role he seemed to carry the same plainspoken discipline that began with coal dust on his clothes and gas pumps under his hands. Even his family’s nickname for him, “Big D,” suggested a man whose presence was larger than any single chapter of his life.

Stallings died on June 9, 2026, and his funeral service was scheduled for June 13 at Lakeside Church in Rocky Mount, with burial at Rocky Mount Memorial Park. He is remembered in North Carolina as a man who turned early labor into lasting enterprise, and who treated success not as an endpoint but as a responsibility. From Rocky Mount to Chapel Hill, from the Redskins to Eagle Transport, his life followed the logic of “Bigger and Better,” and he left behind a legacy of work, loyalty and generosity that was rooted firmly in the state that raised him.