WINSTON-SALEM (March 25, 2022) – Linda Garrou was one of the boys. But then again, she wasn’t.
Garrou, who died suddenly last week at 79,1 was first and foremost an advocate for children.
“A woman who lived for others,” her obituary proclaimed.2
“We pray for children,” said the prayer on the program for her memorial service yesterday.3
She worked first as local, then regional, director of North Carolina’s Guardian ad Litem program, representing the interests of abused and neglected children in court.
Then she served as a state senator representing Forsyth County from 1999-2013.
Garrou was part of the team led by Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight and Rules Chair Tony Rand that demonstrated strong support for public education in North Carolina, and particularly for the state’s systems of higher education.
Not just with words, but with actions – and dollars.
She rapidly ascended to become Co-Chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee with future U.S. Senator Kay Hagan of Greensboro. The two roomed together in Raleigh and were close, though they employed different styles – Hagan more aggressive, Garrou more understated.
As two of the few female members, they managed to navigate yet somehow fit in with the boys’ club that prevailed in the Senate.
But Garrou was no Basnight puppet. Representing a town with two cigarette brands in its name, for example, she struggled with efforts to increase tobacco taxes.
“In more than one set of budget negotiations over the years, she said ‘no’ to Senator Basnight when he insisted that his most recent pet project absolutely had to be funded,” her obituary noted. “He usually ranted, but usually relented.”4
Garrou’s support for higher education extended to both public and private universities.
As an Appropriations Chair, for what was originally dubbed the Soldiers Institute for Regenerative Medicine because it aimed to build replacement organs for soldiers who lost limbs to IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan, Garrou helped secure $12 million in state funds for the Wake Forest University Center for Regenerative Medicine. At about the same time, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr and Rep. Virginia Foxx helped earmark $5.4 million for the center from the Department of Defense and Department of Energy.5
Those efforts – along with Wake Forest’s investments – led to creation of Winston-Salem’s Innovation Quarter, which breathed new, see-what-science-will-bring-us life into the moribund former R.J. Reynolds factories, warehouses and power plant in downtown Winston-Salem.
Ain’t science amazing?
She also was proud of the Center for Design Innovation, a joint project of the UNC School of the Arts, Winston-Salem State University and Forsyth Technical Community College.
LINDA GARROU CACKLED when she laughed.
“She was a devoted and treasured friend with a ready sense of humor and memorable laugh,” said former state Sen. Margaret Dickson, who was named to Rand’s Cumberland County Senate seat when he stepped down.
When Dickson first arrived as a member of the state House, she said, Garrou and Hagan took her under wing and advised her to talk to key representatives about certain issues – but also: “Oh, my goodness! Never do that again!”
Dickson recalled how individual legislators would make a pilgrimage to the sterile room in the Legislative Office Building where the Senate budget was hammered out to plead their cases for state expenditures – and how Garrou would sometimes offer a piece of cake if she couldn’t include their project.
She also recalled a beach weekend when their husbands all went to bed and “the three of us stayed up, rehashing the foibles of the General Assembly and giggling like teenage girls at a slumber party.
“My last, now-treasured memory of Linda is from barely a month ago. We shared a tomato-soup lunch at my dining room table, plotting and planning with a young woman currently seeking a seat in the North Carolina General Assembly, just as Linda and I had done a generation ago,” Dickson said.
As always, she was looking out for the next generation – advocating for the children.
“She was a remarkable legislator and a kind and delightful friend. I will miss her,” Dickson said.
1 https://journalnow.com/news/local/former-forsyth-county-sen-linda-garrou-dies/article_8a565384-a883-11ec-b37a-f7069f26912c.html.
2 https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/winstonsalem/name/linda-garrou-obituary?id=33757658.
3 http://www.appleseeds.org/childpry.htm.
4 https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/winstonsalem/name/linda-garrou-obituary?id=33757658.
5 https://www.bizjournals.com/triad/stories/2008/04/21/story1.html.
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