Last Tuesday evening, June 19, 2007, I learned from my father that my mom had suddenly died from a heart attack earlier that evening. She was 75. There was a front page article about her in the local newspaper, which I’ve reproduced below so I’ll have a permanent archive. The article summarizes her life nicely, so I’ll only add a couple of comments.
Even though I’m fairly liberal, especially on social issues, I was raised in a conservative Republican household. When I say “conservative,” I speak of the Goldwater tradition of limited government, individual freedom, low taxes etc. My mom was originally from Pennsylvania and moved to Georgia shortly after my parents got married in 1957 (my dad grew up in rural Georgia, near the Florida border). When she got there, you could fit all the Republicans in our living room. My mom set about changing that. She was extremely active in the party right up until her death, and her greatest claim to fame is probably that she knew and actively supported Newt Gingrich when he was a nobody history professor at a never-heard-of-it school (West Georgia College). He lost the first two times he ran for Congress to the incumbent Jack Flynt (who ironically also died last week), but he broke through in 1978 by winning an open seat after Flynt retired.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and Georgia is one of the reddest of red states and my hometown is overwhelmingly Republican. A lot of that is due to the work of my mom and a lot of other true believers. Unfortunately, it’s also due to the rise of the religious right, which my mom always distrusted and actively campaigned against at party conventions and primaries. (While she never described herself as an atheist, I know she did not believe in an afterlife. Though she went to church semi-regularly when I was in high school and college, she stopped going in the 90’s and pointedly did not want a religious service for her funeral. In fact, she didn’t want a service at all. Just a reception where family and friends could gather informally one last time to remember her.) That said, she was always a party loyalist and would rather have eaten uranium than vote for a Democrat.
Her other passion was art. Our house is full of her paintings and she was very active in the local art association. She was at one of their events when she died. Her heart attack occurred right after she had laughed at joke and turned to go to the kitchen set up food for the gallery showing. (This is how I want to go – laughing and never knowing what hit me.) At the funeral reception we had a display of some of her paintings, including the last one she ever painted, which we borrowed from a traveling exhibit.
My mom raised me to love America and to believe that any opportunity is available to me if I wanted to pursue it. She always encouraged and supported all her children in our extracurricular activities (in my case it was mostly soccer and marching band) and never tried to push me in one direction or another.
I am grateful to have been her son.
Scruggs remembered for work in art, politics
Published 6/21/07 in The Times-Herald
By W. WINSTON SKINNER
winston@newnan.comBarbara Scruggs, a leader in politics, education and art in Coweta County, collapsed at an art reception Tuesday and never regained consciousness.
Mrs. Scruggs, 75, “was in on the beginnings of the Republican Revolution in Georgia,” remarked Jean Cleveland, who covered Mrs. Scruggs as a reporter for The Times-Herald in the early 1980s. Although Coweta County Board of Education posts are non-partisan, Mrs. Scruggs was the first well-known Republican to be elected to that body.
Mrs. Scruggs attended the opening reception for the Newnan-Coweta Art Association’s exhibition at the Centre for the Performing and Visual Arts on Tuesday evening. She collapsed in the kitchen at the arts center and was taken to Piedmont Hospital. Longtime friends Audrey Bray and Bette Hickman followed the ambulance to the hospital and met W.G. “Bill” Scruggs, the local civic leader’s husband, there.
“She died, if you have to go, under perfect circumstances, doing the thing she loved so much,” her husband reflected. Grantville artist Deborah Smith, who runs the Images Gallery in Moreland, said Mrs. Scruggs had a strong commitment to attending openings for NCAA and its members.
Barbara Gangawere was born March 10, 1932, in Connellsville, Pa., the daughter of Clyde Ernest Gangawere Sr. and Margaret Ellen Pate Gangawere. “She was always interested in politics,” her husband said.
Her father followed politics and was a staunch Republican. “They talked about [politics] at the dinner table when she was growing up,” Bill Scruggs said.
After high school, she attended St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing, where she graduated in 1954. She was proud of being a registered nurse and of her nursing training. She served in the U.S. Air Force as a nurse in 1957-1958.
“She was a nurse in the Air Force, and I was a pilot in the Air Force. We were based in Houston, Texas,” Bill Scruggs said Wednesday afternoon, recalling how he met his wife. They married in Miami, Fla., in 1957.
The Scruggs moved to Coweta County, settling along a rural stretch near Grantville, in 1970. Their three children — Valerie, Greg and Derek — all were educated in the Coweta County schools.
“It was only after we moved down here that she got into the community and got interested in art,” her husband said.
Mrs. Scruggs’ interest in politics blossomed. “She followed it very closely over the years,” her husband said.
“She was active in the Republican Party, and it was when there weren’t many Republicans around,” said Ms. Cleveland, who is now on the staff at the University of Georgia. “She was very dedicated to the Republican Party and had a lot of energy.”
Others involved in Republican politics in the early days included John Stuckey, Emma Hinesley, Audrey Bray and Phil and Betty Todd. “She was ever so involved,” Betty Todd said, remembering Mrs. Scruggs.
“Barbara was there in the beginning. They worked really hard,” Mrs. Bray said.
Mrs. Scruggs served in positions of leadership with the Coweta County Republican Party and the Coweta County Republican Women’s Club. She was in charge of the women’s group’s newsletter for years — most recently spreading the news via e-mail.
“She was very good at sharing information we should have,” Mrs. Bray said.
In 2000, Mrs. Scruggs attended the memorial service for U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell at Peachtree United Methodist Church in Atlanta with Mrs. Hinesley and State Rep. Lynn Smith.
The same year, Mrs. Scruggs was a delegate for George W. Bush at the convention in Philadelphia. She wore her trademark patriotic colors and was spotted by local family and friends during one telecast.
Mrs. Scruggs said it was “a thrill” to join the other 53 Georgia delegates in casting her vote for Bush. She was an alternate at the 1980 convention when Ronald Reagan was nominated.
At the 2000 meeting, Mrs. Scruggs was one of the delegates bringing books for the Laura Bush Reading Center. “They were hoping to get 2,500 books to be distributed throughout Philadelphia,” she said. “I don’t know how many books were collected. I took six.”
Mrs. Scruggs ran unsuccessfully for a Coweta County Commission post. She was successful in seeking a school board seat in 1984. She held that post for 12 years and — at least once — was re-elected without opposition.
Former Coweta County School Superintendent Bobby Welch remembered Mrs. Scruggs as “seeing the big picture.”
Mrs. Scruggs “was devoted to children,” Welch said. “She would support whatever was of benefit to the students. She placed a high priority on the faculty and staff.”
“She’s been into so many things,” Mrs. Bray said. “She was a volunteer who was not afraid to say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’”
In addition to her political activities, Mrs. Scruggs was president of an organization for the wives of Eastern Airlines pilots and of the local Heart Association. She also served on the board of Coweta Festivals, the umbrella organization for the annual Powers’ Crossroads Country Fair and Arts Festival.
The Newnan Toastmasters Club was another organization that she supported.
In the last years of her life, art grew in importance to her. “She had more leisure time for art,” Bill Scruggs said.
She was active in NCAA and served as president of Southern Crescent Alliance of Visual Artists. Paintings by Mrs. Scruggs adorn the walls of many homes in Coweta County and elsewhere.
Bill Scruggs said politics and art were “her two consuming passions.”
In recent months, Mrs. Scruggs had taken part in a Coweta County Republican Women’s Club presentation to the Ferst Foundation for Childhood Literacy, participated in a meeting with Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle at Central Educational Center and attended the reception for renowned artist Francoise Gilot at the Centre.
Mrs. Scruggs’ body was cremated, and McKoon Funeral Home will be announcing plans for her family to receive friends.
No funeral service is planned. “That was what she wanted,” Mr. Scruggs said.