Longtime North Carolina state Sen. Jim Forrester, whose 41st District included more than 60 percent of Iredell County, died Monday at the age of 74 after a brief stay in a Gastonia hospital.
Forrester’s daughter, Mary Paige Forrester, told the Associated Press that her father “died very peacefully” and that he was surrounded by family members at the time of his passing.
Forrester was a family physician who championed conservative causes. Chief among them in recent years was his effort to thwart any attempt to allow for gay marriage in North Carolina.
He sponsored several pieces of legislation aimed at specifying that marriage be between one man and one woman and was finally successful this past year at having the last of those bills pass both chambers of the General Assembly. The result is that the matter will appear on a constitutional referendum ballot during next May’s primary elections.
Along with a more than 20-year career in the state senate and nearly half-century as a medical doctor, Forrester was also a general in the United States Air Force.
Those credentials created a dilemma for Iredell County Commissioner Ken Robertson.
“I’ve joked that I never knew how to introduce him,” Robertson said. “So I would just say, ‘Senator Doctor General Jim Forrester.”
Robertson said he had never met a person as accomplished as Forrester.
“To win an election as a senator takes a lot of work and a great commitment,” Robertson said. “And, of course, becoming a physician requires a tremendous amount of training and education. And it is very rare to become a general officer in the military. And he accomplished all three of those things. It’s incredible.”
But, Robertson said, Forrester never presented himself as a man of such stature.
“He was about as down to earth as a person can be,” he said. “He was never boastful or had any airs about him. And if someone had a right to be it was someone like him. But he was just really good guy.”
Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger said Forrester, who emigrated to the United States from his native Scotland as a child, “embodied the American Dream.”
In a statement, Berger said Forrester tried to help other achieve what he did.
“I will remember him most for his dedicated and thoughtful service as he worked to make sure his constituents had the chance to fulfill the American Dream,” Berger said.
North Carolina Republican Party Vice-Chairman Wayne King called Forrester “a crusader for right versus wrong” whose legacy will live on “in the laws he worked so hard to pass.”
Forrester was forced to clarify his position last year after he made comments to the Iredell Young Republicans in which he said state government had gotten too liberal and that Raleigh was overrun with “slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies.”
Mary Forrester said her father died at Gastonia Memorial Hospital shortly after being taken off life support late Monday morning. Forrester had been in declining health this year. His condition took a turn for the worse over the weekend while visiting the mountains to watch the leaves turn, according to his sister-in-law, Sally Beach. Forrester’s survivors include his wife, Mary Frances, a Republican activist in her own right; four children; and several grandchildren.
As of Monday afternoon, no funeral arrangements had been made.
The Associate Press contributed to this story.
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