Terry Sanford: Paratrooper, Education Governor, Duke President, Senator

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Terry Sanford was born in North Carolina in 1917, and when the Depression closed his family's hardware store he picked cotton, raised pigs and delivered newspapers. He put himself through the University of North Carolina and its law school, became an FBI special agent, then enlisted as a paratrooper, fighting in Italy and southern France and earning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. In the Battle of the Bulge he ran down a German major and hauled him in by his belt. After watching a mentor lose a 1950 Senate race to race baiting, he wrote down never to let the opposition put him on the defensive. In the 1960 governor's race he beat segregationist I. Beverly Lake using polling and television, and he backed John F. Kennedy over Lyndon Johnson.

As governor he pushed a quality education program that raised average teacher pay 22 percent, paid for by ending sales tax exemptions on food and prescription drugs, which hurt his popularity but roughly doubled school funding. With a Ford Foundation grant he created the private North Carolina Fund, a model for Head Start and the War on Poverty. He integrated state parks, enrolled his children in an integrated Raleigh school, and in 1963 became the first Southern governor to call for an end to discriminatory hiring. He later led Duke University from 1970, ran twice for president, and won a U.S. Senate seat in 1986 at 69 before losing to Lauch Faircloth in 1992.

• He used the State Highway Patrol to protect Freedom Riders and sit-in protesters from mobs.
• Booed by Black student activists who said he moved too slowly, he replied, "I'm not a dictator, son."
• At Duke he defused anti-war unrest by inviting students to Tea with Terry.
• In the Senate he voted against authorizing the Gulf War and opposed the 1989 flag desecration amendment on First Amendment grounds.
• Heart surgery kept him off the campaign trail during his 1992 loss.