The Governor From Grundy

By Daniel Gilbert
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: November 7, 2008

It’s a long and winding road from the coal-dusted environs of Harman, Va., to the state capital of North Carolina and the threshold of the governor’s mansion.

It’s a road that Bev Perdue has lived, from humble beginnings as the daughter of a coal miner and parents without a high school education, and a journey she reflected on Tuesday when she became the first woman to be elected governor in North Carolina.

“It just goes to show you, what I learned as a little girl growing up in rural Appalachia was right,” Perdue, currently the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, told supporters in a prepared speech. “If you get a good education, work hard and stay true to yourself, you can accomplish anything.”

In a close race, Perdue defeated Republican Pat McCrory, mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to become the 30th woman governor in U.S. history.

It’s not uncommon for Perdue, 61, to hark back to her roots in political speeches.

“If you’re on the campaign trail with her for a week, you’ll hear her talk about it,” campaign spokesman David Kochman said.

As she hastily assembled a transition team Thursday, she took time to reminisce on her rural roots in an interview with the Herald Courier.

“When I was a little girl, twice a year my mother and I would drive to Bristol to shop,” she said by phone. “We’d buy German chocolate cake and go shopping for clothes. It was a big treat. You all were the big city,” she said.

In time, the girl relatives now describe as “smart,” “outgoing” and “successful” would graduate from Grundy High School, get a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky and a doctorate at the University of Florida before settling in North Carolina. Her professional life evolved from school teacher to hospital administrator to a frustrated state employee who stormed into public office 22 years ago.

“My parents convinced me: Even a little girl from Grundy could be somebody if she worked hard and got an education. Those beliefs and values, they’re why I am who I am. They have defined me,” she said.

And as she stood on the threshold of North Carolina history Tuesday, she took a long look back.

“To think my parents never even graduated high school, and yet here I am. I bet they are looking down on us tonight saying, ‘You go, girl – you go!’”

In her hometown, others were watching.

Harman is a coal-town satellite of Grundy, a dot on the map with a population too small to register on the U.S. Census. It was where Virginia Landreth, 91, stayed glued to the television on election night for news on her niece’s race.

Never, Landreth said in a phone interview Thursday, did she imagine she would be watching on television as the little girl who accompanied her to Harman Memorial Baptist Church became the chief executive of a state.

“It certainly has been such a joy that my sister’s child has been so successful in politics,” Landreth said.

Not that political instincts don’t run in the family.

In January, Carl Landreth, Virginia Landreth’s son, was elected to the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors. And come to think of it, he said, his father, Frank Landreth, was on the county School Board.

“She was just a typical girl – intelligent, outgoing, involved in all the activities,” Carl Landreth, a retired school teacher, said of Perdue.

“She’s a doer, not a sayer,” he said by phone. “I’m just immensely proud that she has stepped up and taken a position to help people in [North Carolina].”

Neither Landreth nor Jim Arrington, another first cousin, expressed any surprise at Perdue’s victory.

“I’ve never been surprised about any of her success,” said Arrington, a personal-injury lawyer in Bristol who went through school with Perdue.

“She’s a hard worker. All through school, she was very outgoing, she always made really top grades,” he said.

Did he recognize the girl he knew in North Carolina’s governor-elect?

“She would be successful in whatever she went in to,” Arrington said.

Carl Landreth said, “I know that women can do anything a man can do – and more.”

Indeed, a presidential campaign featuring two women vying for spots in their respective parties’ tickets has raised the profile of prominent women politicians.

As Sen. Barack Obama cast doubt on the prospects that Sen. Hillary Clinton would lead the party, a New York Times article in May explored the possibilities of other women who might follow in her footsteps.

In the article, writer Kate Zernike predicted the next woman to seek the presidency would come from the South or west of the Mississippi, and “will be a Democrat who has won in a red state, or a Republican who has emerged from the private sector to run for governor.”

On the Democratic side, Perdue was mentioned along with Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

For now, Perdue is keeping her head down and focusing on ruddering a state out of economic crisis. Her administrative priorities, she said, are “new transparency and real accountability.”

And though she has lived in Chapel Hill, near the state capital, for the past 12 years and grown to love urban areas, she has not forgotten about the places in which she grew up and lived.

Later Thursday, she said in the interview, she had a meeting with the state’s head of rural economic development.

North Carolina, with its pockets of prosperity and urban progress and economically depressed rural areas, is much like Virginia and Tennessee, she said.

| (276) 645-2558