News & Observer - Funeral celebrates lifetime of service to state, university, nation, April 22, 1998

By ROB CHRISTENSEN, Staff Writer

DURHAM -- With military pomp and old-fashioned Methodist hymns, North Carolina said goodbye to Terry Sanford on Wednesday, fondly remembering the former governor, U.S. senator and Duke University president as "a creative genius'' who helped shape the state.

About 1,700 people crowded into the soaring, Gothic-style Duke Chapel to remember Sanford's achievements, laugh at his stories and remember the man behind the public persona.

The mourners included the powerful -- governors, senators, congressmen and a member of the president's Cabinet.

But they also included Duke students, college professors, teachers and people from all over North Carolina who had fought in the political trenches with Sanford during the past half century.

After the funeral, which was televised statewide, Sanford's body was interred in the Duke Chapel crypt in a private ceremony. Sanford, 80, died Saturday after a battle with cancer.

During the service, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, Sanford was hailed as the driving force behind the community college system, the N.C. School of the Arts, the Governor's School, the development of Research Triangle Park, the American Dance Festival's move to Durham, and many other innovations that have helped transform North Carolina.

"Terry Sanford was my hero,'' Gov. Jim Hunt told the gathering. "He was my hero because of what he did, but also because of the way he did it. His approach. His ideas.''

"In fact, I suspect that by now he almost certainly has had his orientation session with the Lord -- and it was not a one-way conversation,'' Hunt said.

Sanford, a native of Laurinburg, was described as a small-town Southern boy who helped break down racial barriers for blacks and who ended the quota for Jewish students at Duke.

One of the most poignant moments of the service occurred when state Rep. Dan Blue of Raleigh spoke. Blue, who rose from a Robeson County farm to become the first black House speaker in the South, said it made a tremendous difference that North Carolina had a governor in the early 1960s like Sanford who refused to engage in racial demagoguery -- unlike such Southern governors as George Wallace of Alabama, Orval Faubus of Arkansas and Ross Barnett of Mississippi.

"Terry Sanford was a man at least two generations ahead of his contemporaries,'' Blue said.

Noting that Sanford had opened doors for black North Carolinians, Blue offered a prayer: "Oh Lord, open wide your gates for Terry Sanford. He never closed a gate on anyone. God bless him.''

Traditional service

The funeral was the "old-fashioned Methodist service'' that Sanford had requested, and it included his favorite hymn, "In the Garden.'' But it had the atmosphere of a state funeral because of the presence of an honor guard from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Sanford's beloved old World War II outfit.

A paratrooper presented the American flag that draped Sanford's coffin to his wife of 55 years, Margaret Rose Sanford, who rose from her wheelchair to accept it. Mrs. Sanford has been ailing.

The service featured six speakers recalling aspects of Sanford's broad career: Hunt; Blue; Judge Dickson Phillips of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; philanthropist Mary D.B.T. Semans of Durham; Joel Fleishman, a Duke professor and former Sanford aide; and Duke President Nan Keohane.

A delegation of about 14 U.S. senators flew in from Washington on a military transport plane, led by Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth of Clinton, an old friend who defeated Sanford in 1992 after a falling-out.

Among the senators at the funeral were Democrats Chuck Robb of Virginia, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Republican Dick Lugar of Indiana. Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of Raleigh and his wife, Dorothy, also attended, although he did not fly from Washington with the others.

Representing the Clinton administration were Education Secretary Dick Riley and Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff. Bowles, a North Carolina native, delivered to the Sanford family a hand-written note of condolence from President Clinton.

There were many other mourners who traveled to Durham from out of state, among them journalists Hodding Carter and Judy Woodruff, talk-show host Charlie Rose, former White House aide David Gergen, actress Rosemary Harris and presidential confidant Vernon Jordan.

Jordan, a longtime civil rights leader, recalled his visits to the Duke president's residence, where Sanford would awaken him at 5:30 a.m. and make him a breakfast of grits, country ham, red-eye gravy, scrambled eggs and coffee.

"He was my friend,'' Jordan said. "He was a great Southerner. He was at the very cutting edge of the new South. By my standards, he was the ultimate Southern gentleman.''

Carter, a former Mississippi newspaper publisher, said of Sanford: "His legacy is a reminder that the South is not bound to its history, nor is it doomed to perpetually create politicians who are insistent on appealing to our worst nature.''

Because Sanford's career covered half a century, his funeral was the occasion for an extraordinary gathering of Tar Heel politicos.

They included many of the young Turks of Sanford's governorship from 1961 to 1965, now gray and aging -- Bert Bennett, Tom Lambeth, John Ehle, Fleishman, Hugh Cannon, Wallace Hyde, Clint Newton, Eli Evans, Martha McKay, Faircloth and others.

"Those three years were the highlight of my life,'' said Raymond Stone, who was Sanford's education adviser.

Gathering of governors

Most members of the state's exclusive governor's club were present as well. There was Hunt, whose political career was launched by Sanford. There was Bob Scott; Sanford had managed his father's 1954 U.S. Senate campaign. And there was Jim Holshouser, more recently Sanford's law partner.

Former South Carolina Gov. John McNair, a former law partner of Sanford's, also attended.

Others present included comrades in arms from Sanford's Senate campaign and his two presidential campaigns -- people such as Sam Poole, Tom Drew and Bill Green. There was the academic royalty -- Duke's Keohane and the past and current presidents of the University of North Carolina, William C. Friday and Molly Broad. And there were other members of Sanford's Duke family, including Dr. William Anlyan, who headed the medical center during his presidency, and men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Most of the state's top Democratic politicians also showed up -- including Agriculture Secretary Jim Graham, who was first appointed to the post by Sanford, and State Auditor Ralph Campbell. Campbell recalled that when his brother Bill -- now mayor of Atlanta -- became the first black child to attend a previously all-white school in Raleigh in the early 1960s, Sanford transferred his two children, Terry Jr. and Betsee, to the school as a show of support.

Friends tried to keep the service from becoming too somber, injecting some humorous stories about Sanford.

Fleishman, a former Sanford gubernatorial aide, recalled the time that Sanford was meeting with some Northern business executives who were thinking about moving a plant to North Carolina. The governor took a phone call from his son, Terry Jr., then a young boy, who told him that he had captured a turtle that had been giving him trouble, and wanted to know what to do with it.

Without explaining the conversation to the visitors in his office, Sanford advised his son: "Shoot him and throw him in the back of the truck. We'll decide what to do with him later.''

© 1998 The News & Observer Publishing Co. / Raliegh, NC  Used by permission.

Sanford Building
Sanford Building