You’d have to call them rivals.

Ted Bess and Tom Starnes ran against each other in 1986, the first time Radford voters chose their mayor. But the two men were also friends. And when Bess knew he was about to die, he asked Starnes to speak at his funeral.

So Starnes stood at the Fairlawn Church of God on Monday morning and talked about Ted Bess — and Starnes wore a bow tie while he did it.

“I don’t ever remember wearing a bow tie before unless I had on a tuxedo,” Starnes said. But Bess always wore bow ties. So Starnes wore one Monday to honor his friend. “Ted was a very caring individual. … He was really just an A-1 type of individual.”

Bess died Friday at age 80.

He was born in Sandstone, W.Va. But he fell in love with a Radford girl named Joann Hedge. A preacher introduced them at a tent revival. They would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary July 31.

Bess also fell in love with Radford. His campaign slogan declared him a man with a heart for the city.

Bess spent more than a decade on Radford City Council and served two terms as mayor. In 1978, when council elected the mayor from its ranks, it picked Bess to replace Starnes. When Bess’ term ended, the council elected Starnes, who held the post until council picked Bess again in 1984. Starnes voted for Bess that time, telling a reporter, “I think it was probably time for someone else to take it for a while.”

Two years later, the two men squared off in the city’s first direct election of its mayor. Starnes won.

They had been friends for two decades by then. The campaign “never affected the relationship one bit,” Starnes said.

“He always kept it in perspective, the politics,” T.W. Bess said of his father.

Two years after the mayoral election, in 1988, Bess lost the race to keep his council seat. He left politics after that. People begged him to run again, Bess’ son said, but he wanted to spend more time with his family. Besides, his business kept him busy enough.

He’s probably better known for that — for running Ted’s Market in Radford for more than 40 years — than he is for his time in city government.

A lot of things got done while Bess was on council — an expansion of the library, new tennis courts, a new intermediate school — but those things might not be as important as Bess’ work at Ted’s Market.

Bess had already developed his habit of wearing bow ties and calling “just about every southern bell ‘honey.’ ” when The Roanoke Times ran a profile of the then-newly elected councilman in 1976.

“We have two things that keep our customers coming back,” Bess said then, “friendliness and service.”

That service included delivering groceries to customers’ homes, giving customers rides home and extending credit — sometimes knowing that credit was more like a gift.

“Some people would have probably gone hungry at times if not for Ted being willing to sell them groceries knowing that he probably wouldn’t get paid for them,” Starnes said Monday.

The store originally belonged to Joann Bess’ father, Charlie Hedge. Bess worked there, then bought it, then built a bigger store. The Bess’ daughter, Thea Reid, worked in the meat department. T.W. Bess helped with deliveries, even as a little boy.

“I was more of a hindrance, probably, than a help,” he said. He grew up to manage a Kroger store — and maybe to raise another grocery man. “My son, he’s 11, and he wants to get started in the grocery business as soon as he can.”

But whether he was arranging vegetables in the produce department or casting votes on city council, Ted Bess seemed driven by his love for Radford and its people.

“He just loved the community,” Ted Bess’ son said. “The community loved him also, I think.”