| Host Robin Minietta hosts the first of this series of Biographical Conversations. In the first episode, Senator Terry Sanford shares his early years as a boy and college student, leading up to his eventual political ambitions. Terry was born and raised in Laurinburg. His father owned a hardware store named JD Sanford and Son, and his mother was a teacher. After his parents started having children, his mother took a leave of absence from teaching, but she returned when the Depression forced his father to close his store. Sanford says that his experiences growing up during the Depression made him more sensitive to the plight of people in poverty and especially to the black population.
As Sanford grew as a child, he became involved in the Boy Scouts, and he attended the Methodist church with his father. Although his parents had little money, they encouraged the children to go to college, so Terry chose to go to UNC-Chapel Hill. While he was there, he came to admire President Graham, who brought to light some of the injustices that abounded, including sharecropping and issues of working people. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also shaped many of Sanford’s ideas.
He met the woman who would become his wife when he was attending college, and when Sanford seriously began thinking of asking her to marry him, it was clear that war was imminent. In fact, the US became involved in World War II shortly after Sanford began law school, so he left school to join the FBI. However, his need to fulfill a military obligation haunted him, so he asked President Hoover for a military leave, and he was accepted into the Army as a paratrooper. He quickly escalated through the ranks from a private to a 2 nd sergeant four months later.
He resumed his law education after the war was over and set up a law practice in Fayetteville. During that time, he was beginning seriously to consider an eventual campaign for governor, so practicing law in Fayetteville gave him an advantage that the larger cities would not have. He chose Kerr Scott’s state senatorial campaign as the first one he would run, and running the campaign gave him ideas about his own campaign years later.
As Sanford became more aware of the political climate of the state, he began to realize that race issues often decided elections. The emotional Smith/Graham Senate race gave him ideas of issues that would further his campaign, so he ran on an educational platform, playing down hints of racial bias and often using his opponent’s accusations to his advantage. His campaign was honest; he limited contributions and refused any contributions that arrived with expectations. He says that he wanted to be governor because he wanted to make a difference; not just to be governor.
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