The News & Observer published an editorial describing the "astonishing life and legacy" of Parker Poe's Raleigh office co-founder Terry Sanford, who would have turned 100 recently. Terry Sanford was a World War II combat paratrooper, a North Carolina governor, a U.S. senator, a Duke University president, and a titan of the state's public education system.

"He seemed to come out of nowhere when as a young lawyer from Fayetteville he won the governor’s office in 1960," deputy editorial page editor Jim Jenkins wrote. "He had a disarming sort of charm, an easy manner, a broad smile, an ability to speak the language of the farmer and the factory worker and the teacher. His mother was in fact a teacher and saw that her boy was raised with strong values and a healthy respect for schooling. The raising stuck as he became a force for public education, even when a raise in taxes, including a food tax, were required in his mind to get the job done."

In 1965, Terry and several other attorneys founded a Raleigh law firm that later became known as Sanford, Cannon, Adams & McCullough. In 1990, that firm merged with a Charlotte firm then known as Parker, Poe, Thompson, Bernstein, Gage & Preston. Today, the firm has more than 200 attorneys across seven offices in the Carolinas and Georgia.

You can read more about Terry's life and the impact he made on politics and education in the full editorial. The News & Observer is the leading newspaper in the Raleigh area.