Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401310298
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
\ Beverly Sgro smiles steadily, poses gracefully for the photographer. First on the corner of the desk. Then seated behind it, looking professional in her solid black suit.
Patiently she moves a cushion that protects her from the old pains of a slipped disc and an arthritic spine.
"I know who's in charge here," she tells the man with the camera, her eyes twinkling.
Gracious words, from the quintessential hostess. But nobody in the room believes for a moment that they are true.
Sgro, Virginia's new secretary of education, commands attention in a quiet, yet uncompromising manner.
"She has presence," one former associate remarked. "Whatever group that she's in, she's going to emerge as a leader in that group."
"The Silver Fox" - as she is known to some of the students with whom she worked as dean at Virginia Tech - is not a wallflower. She is not a "yes woman."
Her colleagues call her "a straight shooter," a Texan with "fierce independence" and obvious intelligence. The kind of woman who will speak her mind, but tactfully.
A self-styled moderate Republican of "contemporary thinking," Sgro may find herself at odds on occasion with the conservative governor who appointed her. She is older yet less conservative, it appears, than most in his Cabinet.
If she disagrees with her new boss she'll tell him, she said. But don't expect her to tell the public.
"I represent the governor," Sgro said, in response to a question about whose views she expressed on Family Life Education.
Sgro told state senators during her confirmation hearings that she supported the controversial sex education classes now required in Virginia's public schools. In contrast, newly appointed Superintendent of Schools William Bosher - her point man on issues affecting elementary and secondary education - told lawmakers he pulled his children out of the program.
Allen has fought in the past for legislation that would make Family Life optional for schools.
In an interview last week, Sgro - whose own children attended private boarding schools - said she and Allen agreed "philosophically" about Family Life classes. Asked whether she thought they should be mandatory, Sgro responded, "The governor does not support mandated Family Life Education and I represent the governor."
That was her view, she added, as well as his.
Neither did she balk when Allen's press secretary canceled a media interview she had scheduled before his inaugural address. Allen asked his Cabinet members to refrain from discussing policy until after his first speech - and she did.
"I don't think there's any question about that. . . . She will carry out his agenda," said Tom Goodale, Sgro's old boss at Tech. "She'll also have her own, though."
Certainly there are many areas in which the two clearly agree. (Sgro says there are none in which they disagree, that she knows of.) On outcome-based education, for example: They both hate it.
And on the issue of rising college tuition fees, Allen and Sgro fear the cost of higher education has climbed out of reach for many young Virginians. It will be Sgro's job to determine how to keep tuition costs in line with inflation during the next four years.
She has been on the job for only two weeks - too short a time to have even hung her paintings on the freshly painted gray walls of her office. She hopes to get some Virginia landscapes from the state museums to add color to the room.
Sgro earned the position largely because of her 13 years of experience at Virginia Tech, most recently as dean of students, Allen spokesman Ken Stroupe said.
That, plus her family's long-time commitment to the Republican Party - a commitment few on campus knew about.
If they did, they connected it to Sgro's son, Anthony, who took an active role in party politics after working as a Senate page in Richmond 12 years ago. It was Anthony who introduced his mother to state Republicans - including the late former Del. Jeff Stafford and his wife, Barbara - and spurred her involvement in the party.
Through Anthony, the Sgros attended Republican fund-raisers during the 1980s for former President Reagan; U.S. Sen. John Warner; and the 1985 statewide ticket of Wyatt Durrette, John Chichester and Buster O'Brien. With party encouragement, Sgro briefly considered making her own run for office in 1991, against former Democratic Del. Joan Munford.
She decided against it, she said, in favor of continuing her work in education.
"I really made a choice," she said. "Whether I wanted to go into a life of political service, which is very important, or whether I really wanted to stay in education. . . . So this is the best of all worlds."
Sgro's political life was virtually unknown to Paul Torgersen, now president of Tech and a longtime friend of the Sgros. He recruited her husband, Joe, to campus 27 years ago, when Bev Sgro's main occupation was raising children and volunteering in the PTA.
Her silence on the subject may have been a holdover from her childhood in Fort Worth, when people frowned upon discussing politics in public.
"She does have a political orientation that I didn't know about," Torgersen said.
"It was a shocker," agreed Sean Kohl, former president of the Interfraternity Council, a group with which Sgro had regular contact as a student advocate and liaison. "I didn't realize that she was political."
Allen knew. He drafted Sgro to work on his education advisory committee before he earned the Republican nomination. The two had their first official contact when she spoke in support of him at a breakfast for Republican women just before the convention in June.
Allen was so impressed by Sgro that she immediately became his first choice as education secretary and was the first of several people interviewed for the job, said Secretary of the Commonwealth Betsy Beamer, who took part in the selection process.
"She came across just as particularly knowledgeable about issues in education," said Stroupe, who added that she was one of the most charming people he'd ever met.
The governor chose Sgro, Stroupe said, without even knowing that as a little girl in pigtails and overalls, she once shared his penchant for cowboy boots.
A young tomboy raised in an all-white, middle-class Fort Worth neighborhood in the 1940s and '50s, Sgro seemed to know even then what she wanted.
She loved to play house, according to her mother, Dorothy. With one twist: She insisted on playing the daddy, so that she could go to work.
An only child and daughter of a railroad-car inspector, Sgro spent much of her time with her grandmother, whom she refers to as one of her strongest role models. The two often walked with the family dogs to a creek, where they would catch frogs or watch the water run by.
Her grandmother gave her "unqualified love," she said, and knew how to administer discipline in a loving manner - a trait her own children and later Tech students would attribute to her.
But discipline was something young Bev rarely needed, her mother said. Even those who barely knew her in high school considered her a role model.
"She was highly thought of by all the teachers and all the students," said Louise Nelson, a former classmate. "She was never mean to anyone. Never unkind. And she was helpful to everyone. And so even though there might have been some bad things about her, nobody can remember them."
Sgro was a classic overachiever, rising to the top of her class and getting involved in many activities.
The tennis team (she won a city championship). The pep club. The National Honor Society. The drama club. A teen civic group organized by the YMCA. Even the girls' rifle team of the ROTC, a group that allowed women at that time to serve a mostly social role.
Appropriately enough, Sgro belonged to the Future Teachers of America - a group she remembers as doing nothing "that made a lasting impression."
Yet even then Sgro knew she wanted to go into education - special education, she thought at the time.
"There was never any real doubt that I would go into teaching," she said.
Toward that end, Sgro earned a degree in speech pathology and audiology from Texas Woman's University in 1963, then took a job at Texas Christian University doing research on mentally retarded children. The first in her family to go to college, Sgro planned to pursue an advanced degree.
Her plans changed abruptly when the man whose desk she was using returned from a research project. Joe Sgro came in to retrieve a book and said, "Who's the woman at my desk?"
Two weeks later he summoned the courage to ask her out, then showed up more than an hour late. She abhors tardiness, so her parents were surprised when Sgro went on the date anyway. Five weeks later she agreed to marry the Connecticut Yankee. Within five months she became his wife.
The quick romance was uncharacteristic for Sgro, by all accounts cautious and level-headed in her decision-making. She couldn't even pronounce her husband's "weird" Italian name, she said.
"There was just a certain rapport, I guess. If I knew what it was, I'd bottle it and sell it."
The two adopted a team approach to marriage, making all of their decisions together - including a conversion to the Episcopal church. In the compromise, he left Roman Catholicism, she her ties to the Disciples of Christ.
A year later, Sgro became pregnant with her first child and postponed plans for a career. The couple moved to Norfolk in 1965 when Joe Sgro got a job teaching at Old Dominion University. Later, they moved to Blacksburg, where he accepted a joint appointment to the industrial engineering and psychology departments.
In a few years, Bev Sgro gave birth to a second child, Jennifer. While she devoted her time to her children - a choice the couple said reflects their family values - her husband rose to a nationally recognized position as head of Tech's psychology department.
Sgro resumed her career gradually, first as a tennis pro at the Blacksburg Country Club, then working with the fraternities at Tech. When she decided to go for her master's degree in management, housing and family development - and then a doctorate in educational research - her husband helped pick up the slack at home.
While Sgro juggled her duties as student, mother and a rising career in administration, her husband learned to do laundry and spend more time with the children. Now that he and his wife live separately, he is also learning to cook.
He makes the changes happily, he said.
"Now it's her turn," Joe Sgro said. "She sacrificed for me and now it's my turn to sacrifice for her. She's the star now and her star is rising."
If there's anything her husband worries about as the couple takes on the challenges of a commuter marriage, it's that his wife - known to be a workaholic - won't take care of herself in his absence.
"She's going to try to do too much," he said. "She'll work from 7 a.m. until midnight. And she'll do it well. She'll work herself to the bone and I hate to see her do that."
She may have to. As top educator for the commonwealth, she faces many challenges in the four years ahead. Chief among them is finding a solution to the state's educational disparity problem.
Lawmakers already have been busy lobbying for her support on a bill to pump an additional $100 million into the schools this year.
Sgro said she's open to studying a variety of solutions, including rewriting the state's school-spending formula. As for the $100 million?
"I don't know," she said. "I honestly don't know. I just got here. I'm still trying to find a bathroom, let alone $100 million."
\ BEVERLY HUSTON SGRO
Age: 53.
Birthplace: Fort Worth, Texas.
Married: 30 years to Joe Sgro.
Children: Jennifer, 21, and Anthony, 28.
Hobbies: Cooking, gardening, travel, readingi
Education: Virginia Tech, doctorate in educational research and evaluation (1990) and master's in management, housing and family development (1974); Texas Woman's University, bachelor's in speech pathology and audiology, 1963.
Former position: Dean of students, Virginia Tech, 1989-1993.
Salary: $99,566i
Plans: After four years in Richmond, return to Blacksburg to resume a position at Virginia Tech.
Favorite places: San Francisco and New Orleans, because of the food.
Favorite music: Classical, new age, acoustic guitars. Keeps a "boom box" in her office.
Favorite expression: "We will agree to disagree."
Quote: "I've always been fascinated by politics. It would be hard to grow up in Texas and not be interested in politics."
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