Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series on U.S. Sen. Samuel James Ervin Jr. Find part two in Monday’s edition of The News Herald.
One can easily argue that U.S. Sen. Samuel James Ervin Jr. is one of the most prominent figures in Burke County history and made his mark on the country during his time serving in the U.S. Senate.
Elisabeth Ervin, known to family and friends as “Betty,” is a resident at the Grace Ridge Retirement Community and the daughter-in-law of Sen. Ervin. She recently shared her memories of him.
She met the senator in the early 1950s while she, in her early 20s, was dating his son, Judge Samuel James Ervin III. She remembers the first time Judge Ervin brought her to Morganton to meet his parents and other family members.
“It was a Sunday dinner,” Betty said. “At the dinner table, he (Sen. Ervin) always promoted discussions, and then he’d get a good argument going. He would take whatever side he could get you to argue with — it didn’t matter whether he believed it or not. Sam (III) and his two sisters were used to this, but I didn’t know that, so I just kept my mouth shut and stayed out of it.”
His wife, Margaret Bell Ervin, did her best to avoid those debates as well.
“My mother-in-law was a wonderful person,” Betty said. “She never argued with him a bit in our presence. They were very close.”
After marrying and settling in Morganton, Betty became a history teacher at Morganton High School and later, Freedom High School.
Judge Ervin, Betty and their children would sometimes travel to Washington, D.C., to visit Sen. Ervin and his wife.
“During the Watergate hearings, I took the three youngest, because I thought it was important that the kids see that,” Betty said. “Jimmy (her son, Samuel James Ervin IV, who is now an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court) was a page (in the U.S. Senate).
“We went down the street to get something at a nearby restaurant. The proprietor put us in the window of this small restaurant, and people gathered outside the window, and he (Sen. Ervin) didn’t pay them the least attention, although I’m sure he knew they were there. He was visiting with the family.”
One time when she was faced with having serious surgery for cancer, Sen. Ervin called her the night before.
“He was so sweet,” Betty said. “He said he would pray for me, and he thanked me for his grandchildren. I was just stunned. I couldn’t say anything, hardly, except ‘thank you.’ He really was a sympathetic kind of person and always supportive of us.”
Three out of Betty’s four children pursued law as a career, and one of her granddaughters is currently in law school.
“It was important for me to make them think about other things than law,” Betty said. “I did that with Jimmy, but he was absolutely sure he was going into law. After that, I just let it go.”
She thinks Sen. Ervin’s integrity was his greatest contribution to the U.S. Senate and the nation.
“He was just a member of the community, a real person,” Betty said. “He would walk uptown and know lots of people and just chat. He was on speaking terms with everybody he saw on the street. Everybody was his friend.”