
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 25, 1995                   TAG: 9501280021
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ALBERTIS HARRISON

FORMER Gov. Albertis S. Harrison Jr., who died Monday at age 88, rarely makes historians' short lists of Virginia's ``great'' governors. His gubernatorial years from 1962 to 1966 unmarked by major initiatives, Harrison is often remembered as a transition-and-tranquility governor. Carter Lowance, adviser to a series of the state's chief executives, described the Harrison years as the ``very happy bridge" between two eras of political change and realignment.

Harrison, though, was no mere caretaker. In providing calm and the beginnings of racial reconciliation after the storms over school integration, the gentlemanly Harrison's good judgment helped steer Virginia through the transition from the old order.

A country lawyer, Harrison rose through the ranks of the Harry Byrd machine, but eventually split with the organization and its leader on several issues. Like most white Virginia politicians at the time, he had opposed school integration. But he also had opposed Byrd's "massive resistance" policy as immoderate and unreasonable.

Less visible, but no less important, was Harrison's readiness while governor to assist Virginia's transition from a sleepy rural state to an urbanized, industrialized one. Much of his time in the governor's office was spent courting new industries and manufacturing jobs. In this, too, he departed from the machine's vision of a slow-growth agrarian state. He championed teacher pay raises, support for higher education, and vocational-training opportunities, and his call for a state sales tax paved the way for his successor, Mills Godwin, to get it passed.

Throughout his long public career in all three branches of government - first a state senator, then Virginia's attorney general and governor, finally a justice of the state Supreme Court - Harrison put great weight on personal integrity and honor. A transitional figure, yes, but one whose qualities made the transition easier than it might have been.

by CNB