More than 12,000 people have received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

That's the best-guess estimate from Phillip Fisher, the former president of the National Association of Real Estate License Law Officials and a recipient of the award in 1991.

Starting in 2000, Fisher made a list of the recipients by going through boxes of governors' papers at the Offices of Archives and History in Raleigh.

The list, which is in a three-ring binder alphabetized by last name, sits in a room at the state archives. Although it is not numbered, it has 131 pages with about 100 names on each page, said state archivist Dick Lankford. 

A recent article in Our State magazine says the first award was given to George Ringgold, editor of Film Careers magazine in Los Angeles, in 1965.

"The award appears to have been given in its early years as a gesture of goodwill or friendship to visiting dignitaries," notes reporter Janet C. Pittard. "Consequently, many of the earliest recipients were from out of state." 

Records from the first 17 years of the award are piecemeal, however. 

Previously: Gov. Mike Easley inducted 4,000 into Order. 

John Hagler believes he was the first American to receive the Order of the Long Leaf Pine.

The 77-year-old Raleigh resident says he received the award from then-Gov. Terry Sanford in February of 1964 in the old Senate chambers of the Capitol.

But he says he was not the first to be inducted. He believes that honor goes to several Laotian and Vietnamese officers who were undergoing specialized training at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg.

He contacted Dome after learning that former Gov. Mike Easley gave out more than 4,000 awards, including one to his in-laws. 

"I'm certain that the award was then not what it later was supposed to signify and become," he wrote in an e-mail to Dome. "And I'm terribly sorry that during the administration of Governor Easley it obviously became something like a prize out of a Cracker Jack box which significantly lowered it's value and meaning."

Hagler, who later worked at the N.C. Office of Archives and History, said he never could find definitive information about how and when the award was created.