By Eric Johnson

CHAPEL HILL (October 14, 2021) – I don’t remember what first prompted John Sanders to come looking for me in The Daily Tar Heel office, but I know he was carrying a book. He was always carrying a book, usually with a type-written note paper-clipped to the front, directing wayward undergrads to some arcane but important bit of North Carolina history. He must’ve read an article I’d written about student government or University politics, and he decided to pay me a visit. 

John shuffled into the cluttered DTH office wearing a brass-buttoned blazer and a dark tie, impeccably formal even in the late-summer heat, and handed me an essay about the history of Carolina, and how it came to be that UNC Chapel Hill was one of 16 public universities in our great state. “Call me sometime and we’ll talk about it,” he said, an invitation I’d accept dozens of times before graduating. 

It took me a while to realize I was talking to a giant of North Carolina’s civic life. John Lassiter Sanders, the man I knew as a soft-spoken, semi-retired professor in the School of Government, passed away last month at the age of 94. In his long and very full life, John did more than almost anyone in the 20th century to strengthen our public universities, modernize state government, and recruit generations of young journalists, lawyers, and university officials to the cause of serving North Carolina. And he did it almost entirely out of the limelight.

By the time I met John, he had been director of Carolina’s Institute of Government twice; helped lead an overhaul of North Carolina’s constitution; played a key role in creating the State Community College System; served as a trusted advisor to UNC President Bill Friday during the politically fraught years after the state’s public universities were consolidated into the UNC System; and guided more young Tar Heels than we’ll ever know into lives of public service. If there had been a foundation dedicated to achieving all that John did, it would have needed a staff of 20 and a major endowment. 

“He made me understand that focusing your life’s work on improving one state—North Carolina—was worthy of your best efforts,” wrote Mike Smith, Dean of UNC’s School of Government, in an email to faculty last month. “John communicated that our mission was important and meaningful, and he was right.” 

It was a message John carried well into his ninth decade, always scouting for Carolina students who showed a glimmer of interest in student government or state politics. With every conversation, every shared book, every encouraging note, John nudged me and countless others to recognize what we owed back to our state. He made sure I didn’t just see UNC as a great place to study and eventually leave behind, but as a vital piece of civic infrastructure, a cause I could serve for years to come.

John was from Four Oaks, a small town in Johnston County. Not so far from Chapel Hill by road, but probably quite a distance in culture, even in the more conservative midcentury era when John was an undergraduate. One of the things I always appreciated about him, for all his quiet formality, was that John seemed utterly at ease with the titanic changes in society and higher education over his lifetime. (I once overheard John and his wife Ann arguing, politely but intensely, about when they’d first seen an avocado in a North Carolina supermarket; the man saw a lot of progress in his life.) John served the cause of justice by making sure the vital institutions of our public life could bend without breaking, that our universities and governments could be reformed in service to all North Carolinians. He relished the growth of his beloved University into a place that looked more like the state it serves.

We didn’t talk politics very much, but I think it’s fair to say that John was a New Deal liberal at heart and a small-c conservative by temperament, aware that the infrastructure of society is a fragile thing in need of constant tending. That’s why he was so diligent about raising up new generations who would care about the committees and commissions and constitutional reforms that keep our democratic experiment on the rails. He played a major role in preserving the State Capitol; he gave his time and support to a series of biographies about UNC Chancellors; he patiently marked up manuscripts for UNC Press. It was all part of the bigger project for John, all an act of devotion to his home state.

He never explicitly told me that civic upkeep was a satisfying way to spend a life, but I could tell. To this day, when I go over the bookshelf and pick up a volume on North Carolina, I’m as likely as not to find a note from John tucked inside, a short missive suggesting that I “might find this useful” or “may wish to consult this from time to time.” He is still, after all these years, pushing me to pay close attention to my home state, to take care of the University that he and others so patiently built.

Eric Johnson works for the College Board, the UNC System, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He can be reached at ericjohnson@unc.edu.