Two veteran Haywood County commissioners were sworn into office Monday after winning re-election in the November election.

Both Mark Swanger, the current board chairman who was re-elected to the chairman post, and Kevin Ensley, the lone Republican on the county board, took their oaths of office administered by Superior Court Judge Brad Letts.

Both had their their spouses by their side holding their family bibles.

The Bible the Ensleys selected for Monday’s ceremony had special meaning. It belonged to their daughter, April, who died in a car accident in 1998 when her car plunged over the bridge at Lake Junaluska. She was 16 at the time.

“April would have been 31 now,” Ensley said, and the couple noted they think of April daily, as well as their first-born child, Levi, who died at age 5 ...