[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12885-S12886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             TERRY SANFORD

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, earlier this year, this body mourned 
the passing of a former colleague and a political pioneer: Terry 
Sanford of North Carolina. Terry Sanford served honorably in the Senate 
from 1987 to 1993, but he is primarily remembered as the progressive 
Governor who guided the state of North Carolina from the days of 
segregation into the modern era of economic prosperity and racial 
tolerance.
  Elected in 1960, four years before the Civil Rights Act, Terry 
Sanford aggressively pursued an agenda of racial equality, creating a 
biracial panel to work on solutions to end job discrimination against 
blacks. But as crucial as desegregation was to North Carolina's future, 
Terry Sanford realized that it would have a limited impact without 
investments in education.
  As much as any figure in modern American politics, Terry Sanford 
recognized that education was the key to opportunity and economic 
growth in this country. He established North Carolina's community 
college system, invested heavily in the public schools, founded the 
North Carolina School for the Arts, and set up a school for the state's 
gifted students. He also promoted the use of the research facilities at 
the state's universities as the foundation of Research Triangle Park, 
which has become one of the nation's leading hubs of high-tech economic 
activity.
  After leaving the Governor's office, he went on to serve as the 
President of Duke University for 16 years, and he led this university 
to national prominence.
  Many people have expressed their admiration for Terry Sanford in this 
chamber and in publications across the country, and, in my opinion, one 
of the most eloquent pieces honoring this Southern statesman actually 
appeared in a newspaper in Connecticut. Keith C. Burris of The Journal-
Inquirer did an excellent job of capturing the essence of this great 
man who forever changed the face of his state and our nation. His piece 
reminded me how fortunate I was to serve with Terry Sanford and to call 
him a friend.
  I ask that an article by Mr. Burris be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

                [From the Journal Inquirer, May 1, 1998]

                    Terry Sanford, Sower and Builder

                          (By Keith C. Burris)

       Terry Sanford died last week at the age of 80. The New York 
     Times and other august publications noted his extraordinary 
     accomplishments: a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for 
     paratrooping into the Battle of the Bulge during World War 
     II; governor of North Carolina from 1961 to 1965; president 
     of Duke University from 1969 to 1985; and U.S. senator from 
     North Carolina from 1986 to 1992. But none of these facts or 
     titles quite captures the greatness or the goodness of the 
     man.
       The greatness of the man was that, finding himself at odds 
     with the folkways of his homeland, he rose above them and 
     then changed them. It's a lot easier simply to be a rebel.
       The goodness of Terry Sanford was that he found a way to 
     contribute wherever he was. He accepted the setbacks of his 
     life not only with grace but with valor. When one door shut, 
     he opened another, walked in, and started to build something. 
     It's a whole lot easier to sit on your resume and stew on 
     your defeats.
       Sanford was a proud man and he had a politician's memory. 
     But his mind and his heart were as expansive as a Carolina 
     mountain vista. No matter what life dealt him, he kept on 
     trying to improve his state, region, and country.
       As he fought his last battle--with cancer--Terry Sanford 
     was the principal fund-raiser for a new center for the arts 
     in the North Carolina ``research triangle,'' the North 
     Carolina Performing Arts Institute. He spent his last days on 
     his latest dream. His colleagues say they will need two 
     healthy men to match the dying man's energy.
       Terry Sanford's first dream was Martin Luther King's: equal 
     opportunity, an end to Jim Crow, and an integrated society 
     where everyone is judged by the ``content of his character.''
       In 1960 Sanford ran for governor of North Carolina on a 
     platform of racial progress and economic opportunity, making 
     good schools the core of his message. In 1998, big deal. But 
     in 1960, almost suicidal.
       This was before the great crusades of King and the landmark 
     civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. Just to make 
     things a little more interesting, Sanford also endorsed John 
     F. Kennedy for president in 1960. Many people, in many parts 
     of America, knew one thing about Kennedy, and it wasn't that 
     he was young or liberal or rich; it was that he was Roman 
     Catholic. Endorsing Kennedy was not something that would help 
     Sanford carry the mountain towns.
       But he won. And good and bad came of it.
       The good was that Sanford was a superb governor--judged one 
     of the 10 best in the century by the people who vote on these 
     things up at Harvard. Those who are brave, and smart, and 
     prophetic in politics are seldom the ones who can keep the 
     streets clean too. But Sanford was the exception. As governor 
     he was efficient, effective, and innovative. He integrated 
     the parks; he built a community college system; he founded 
     the North Carolina School for the Arts in Winston-Salem and 
     the Governor's School for Gifted Students; he started his own 
     war on poverty before LBJ did. As Albert Hunt has written, 
     Sanford preached states' responsibilities when other 
     governors preached states' rights. And while George Wallace 
     stood in the schoolhouse door, Terry Sanford built 
     schoolhouses.
       He also raised taxes. And for this, as well as his Southern 
     liberalism, Sanford was hated by many North Carolinians for 
     many years. Forced to leave office by a term limit in 1965, 
     he was not elected to anything again in North Carolina for 
     more than 20 years.
       Sanford paid a huge price for his political courage. But in 
     the long run he reaped a proud harvest. In many ways Sanford 
     cut the path for the modern North Carolina: the great schools 
     and universities, the research base, the medical schools, the 
     educated and skilled work force, the social cohesion and 
     tolerance.


                         creating the new south

       Someday someone will write the modern version of W.J. 
     Cash's classic ``The Mind of the South'' and call it 
     something like ``The Rise of the New South.'' The New South 
     is not all sweetness and light. But it has provided economic 
     opportunity and education for the many, which Connecticut 
     cannot always say about itself, and it is the most racially 
     integrated and harmonious region of the nation.
       Sanford and a few other progressive Southern governors--
     like Leroy Collins of Florids--also paved the way for the New 
     South governors who changed the face of American politics--
     governors like Jim Hunt, Lawton Chiles, Richard Riley, 
     Douglas Wilder, and Zel Miller. And two others: Jimmy Carter 
     and Bill Clinton.
       What a shame that Sanford did not make it to the White 
     House--he tired in 1972 and 1976--instead of the president 
     who was crippled by his sense of morality and the president 
     who is crippled by his lack of morality. In 1972 Terry 
     Sanford's fellow Democrats in North Carolina voted not for 
     him but for George Wallace in their presidential primary.
       The mark of the Southern progressive governor was and is 
     trashing ideology to do what works; fiscal sanity; and 
     emphasis on education. Two generations of these governors, 
     starting with Sanford, have moved the center of the 
     Democratic Party and saved it from national extinction. And 
     they have pushed politics, especially Democratic politics, 
     away from philosophy to nuts and bolts.
       Not all of that has been good either. But when you project 
     Sanford's programs and positions in the 1960s into the 1990s, 
     you see that he was the prototype. His accomplishment as 
     president of Duke was no less important.
       Higher learning is the Southern liberal's core value. And 
     just as Sanford was a precursor for others, Frank Porter 
     Graham was Sanford before Sanford. Graham led a generation of 
     Carolina progressives and had mixed success at the polls. But 
     his base and great accomplishment was the University of North 
     Carolina at Chapel Hill. Graham made it first-rate.
       Sanford, who was a Chapel Hill graduate, in turn made Duke 
     first-rate. He did it through sheer energy and ambition: 
     hiring the best he could find; raising the money to afford 
     those hires; eliminating quotas; building new programs, 
     departments, and facilities; and bringing gifted and 
     controversial thinkers and writers to the campus for long and 
     short visits. Sanford was a big dreamer, but a practical one. 
     He wanted one of the state's best schools to be one of the 
     nation's best. And the dream came true. Today Duke is rated 
     one of the nation's top 10. Chapel Hill, only a few miles 
     away, is too. Their rivalry has not been bad for North 
     Carolina.


                         the southern humanist

       It is hard for Northerners and children of the 1990s to 
     comprehend the Southern liberal of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. 
     The Southern liberal had to have physical and moral courage. 
     He had to stay focused. He did not have the luxury of class 
     wars, race wars, rights talk that extends to trees and rocks, 
     and ideological fratricide. Properly, he is not called a 
     liberal

[[Page S12886]]

     or a progressive at all but a humanist. Terry Sanford was the 
     great Southern humanist of his generation in politics.
       The Southern humanist never trivialized himself like the 
     Northern liberal, for two reasons. First, he was always so 
     much the underdog that he had to stay attuned to people who 
     didn't think a bit like him. This kept the Southern humanist 
     humble. Second, Southern humanism was based in gospel-
     inspired neighborliness, as opposed to fads, modernism, and, 
     ultimately, rationalism.
       It is also hard for the Northerner and the modern to 
     understand a guy like Sanford. What made him go?
       It wasn't sheer ambition, because he did so much that hurt 
     his career and so much that was irrelevant to it. More than 
     one political reporter remarked that Sanford lacked the 
     ``killer instinct'' that Carter possessed and Clinton 
     possesses in spades.
       The answer is that Sanford was a citizen--a public man in 
     the ancient Greek sense. Education and politics were one to 
     him; public life was citizenship, and it came before and 
     after office. It lasted all your life.
       This sense of mission and duty is a much deeper thing than 
     the vanity that seeks and clings to office--any office--like 
     life's blood.
       For a politician Sanford was wonderfully stoical. When he 
     ran for the Senate I was working in Winston-Salem as an 
     editorial writer. He came in for an endorsement interview 
     with the editorial board (an endorsement he did not receive) 
     and answered our questions for an hour or so. I thought him 
     every inch a senator--in fact, a president. But I was also 
     impressed by his lack of pretense.
       Another writer asked him, as he was about to go: 
     ``Governor, aren't you taking a big risk? If you lose, you go 
     out as a loser and you'll be remembered as a loser.''
       Sanford shrugged and smiled and skipped a beat as if 
     considering self-censoring and dismissing it. And then he 
     said: ``So what? Most folks don't remember you, win or lose. 
     You're just an old politician. . . . People don't remember 
     what little good I did. And that's fine. But I do, and I take 
     my satisfaction there.''


                         the instinct to serve

       Sanford did go out with a loss. His disastrous reelection 
     campaign for the Senate was sunk by a long hospital stay and 
     a roguish opponent--a former Democrat and Sanford protege--
     who ran on the brave slogan that Sanford was too sick to 
     campaign.
       I wrote to Sanford after that loss--just a one-liner to say 
     I was sorry. To my surprise he wrote back in his own hand. He 
     said that his defeat might be for the best. For now he'd be 
     home in North Carolina, he said, and could see his 
     grandchildren, do some teaching, and maybe pursue some 
     projects for the state--like the arts institute.
       Yes, he did lack the killer instinct. Terry Sanford has the 
     serving instinct. It helped him to change a state, a region, 
     and a nation.

                          ____________________