S.C. Sen. Dick Riley with then Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter campaigning for president at the Darlington 500 in South Carolina in 1976.
Winston Churchill could have been describing former South Carolina Gov. Dick Riley when he uttered the famous words, “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”
Former Governor and former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley is a South Carolina icon who has continued to live a life of giving to his family, his community, his state, and his country through public service for more than 60 years.
Governor Riley, the state’s first two-term governor, has long been highly respected across the political spectrum in South Carolina and nationally. A common theme that weaves throughout his lifetime of success as a public servant is his positive approach, his innate ability to cultivate strong personal relationships, and his willingness to meet people where they are.
“His success is built on his tenacity and his ability to work with people even if they come from different backgrounds and have different interests and different lifestyles,” says Dwight Drake, a Columbia attorney who has long been part of Governor Riley’s inner circle of political advisors and friends. “It’s just the way he is built.”
Terry Peterson, a long-time friend and education advisor, says Governor Riley has a genuine way of connecting with people and listening to their ideas. “Sometimes we would go out to visit a school, and he would pick up an idea from someone. He would write it on a piece of scrap paper and later have one of us check it out.”
Terry recalls a visit to a high school in Manning when Governor Riley was traveling the state promoting passage of the Education Improvement Act in the early 1980s. “We walked in and were met by the principal, teachers, and students. We probably visited 10 classrooms and shook some 150 hands,” Terry says. “When we left, some of the students who had greeted us when we arrived were there to see us off. The governor spoke to the students again by name. I remember one boy proudly saying, ‘The governor knows my name!’ That’s just who he is.”
Early Life
Governor Riley’s inclination toward public service and understanding of South Carolina grew naturally from his parents. Martha and Ted Riley grew up in the early 1900s in rural Barnwell County, which was the power center of state politics for decades. They went to Greenville for college, where Ted attended Furman University and Martha the Greenville Women’s College, which later became part of Furman.
“My father had such a big head of black hair that people said he played football for Barnwell High without a helmet,” says Governor Riley. “He played third base, and he was quarterback. My mother followed him to Greenville for college.” They married and stayed in Greenville to raise their family.
Ted Riley went on to the Furman Law School, which later closed in 1932. He was involved in local government as the Greenville county attorney and was active in the state bar association and the S.C. Democratic Party. The Riley sons, Dick and Pat, grew up with the perspectives of small-town rural living because of their family ties to Barnwell and a bigger city life in a growing Greenville with an industrial economy based in textiles and manufacturing.
Governor Riley credits his father for being a role model as a lawyer and a politician. “Ultimately my dad was my chief political advisor and my most trusted friend,” he says.
When it came time for Governor Riley to make his college decision, Furman was the natural choice. His family’s allegiance to this upstate university weaves prominently throughout his life and his priorities. “I got a good education at Furman University, and that’s helped me through the years,” he says. “When I finished my political life, Furman created the Riley Institute, which deals with leadership and development of good ideas and public service. Those are things that are important to me.”
Furman has honored Governor Riley in many other ways, including bestowing an honorary doctorate in 1979 and naming the building housing math, economics, and computer science in his honor in 1993. Plus, as a life member of the Furman Board of Trustees, Governor Riley continues his legacy of service to his alma mater.
After graduating from Furman, he joined the Navy. “I was an officer on a mine sweeper on the coast of Africa,” he says. “The war had just ended, but we had lots of mines in the shipping lanes, and we had to clear those out. That was very dangerous work but important work for our country.” It was during this tour of service that he was struck with a rare form of arthritis that left him with lifelong spinal damage. This was an experience that increased his empathy and compassion for others throughout his life.
When Governor Riley returned to South Carolina after his naval stint, he attended the USC School of Law, where many of his classmates would become his lifelong friends. “I developed a lot of great friends in law school, and many of them ended up in politics or working as judges and business leaders,” he says.
It was during law school that the future governor began seriously dating Ann “Tunky” Yarborough from Florence, who would become his wife of more than 50 years. They were introduced by their mutual friend, Billy Webster, when she was 14 and he was 16. Their fathers had known each other at Furman and were both trial lawyers. While the two students dated other people during college, they stayed in touch and eventually married in 1957.
An often-told story about Tunky recounts the origin of her name. When she was a child, a nanny dubbed her “Tunky,” a Gullah word for sweet little baby. But on the campaign trail, she was known to tell people jokingly that it meant “governor’s wife.”
The Rileys raised four children — Richard, Anne, Hubert, and Ted — first in Greenville and later in the Governor’s Mansion. Not only was Tunky his partner in their family, but she was also his partner in politics throughout his career. Although, according to son Ted, she wasn’t naturally inclined toward public speaking.
“Tunky had to come out of her shell, learn how to speak, and become an advocate for him,” Ted says. “Public speaking wasn’t her thing at first, but she got very good at it later.” Tunky died in 2008 after a battle with breast cancer, leaving behind a beloved legacy in the Riley family and in South Carolina political circles.
When Governor Riley officially entered the political arena in 1962 upon his election to the State House, he did so with a clarity of mission and purpose that his focus would be on ensuring a quality education for every South Carolinian. This was at a time when state leaders were beginning to wrestle with tough questions around educational equality and more diversified economic development.
“I had an interest in a lot of issues, but, of course, education was the main one. Always has been, always will be,” he says. Governor Riley served two terms in the South Carolina House and three terms in the Senate before running for governor in 1978.
Setting the Stage for Reform
Governor Riley is considered to be the driving force behind the most sweeping education reform legislation in South Carolina history, the Education Improvement Act. However, the EIA never would have come to completion if he hadn’t won a second term in the governor’s office — something that wasn’t possible when he was first elected in 1978. Until then, the S.C. Constitution allowed a governor to serve only one term. At that time, most states had moved to a two-term limit on gubernatorial service.
During Governor Riley’s time in the S.C. Legislature, he had served on a committee to study changes to the state’s constitution. He championed several of the committee’s recommendations, including allowing gubernatorial succession. It would eventually become part of the constitution under his leadership as governor.
Governor Riley says, “You’ve got to be able to have a second term to support what you did and what you’re going to do. I watched what was going on in other states and with other governors. I had become very close with all the Southern governors.”
Only one election cycle fell between Governor Riley’s initial election in 1978 and when he would have to run for reelection in 1982, assuming a constitutional amendment would pass in 1980. It’s not an easy process to change the constitution. Both the bodies in the General Assembly must pass a constitutional amendment. Then it must go to a vote of the people. All of that had to happen between January 1979 when Governor Riley took office and the November 1980 election.
The amendment to the constitution passed in November 1980, allowing Governor Riley to run for a second term in 1982.
Terry says, “The first time right after he got elected, the people said, ‘Let’s change the constitution.’ The second time after he got elected, he didn’t have time even to sit down. We knew that in the second term we wanted to dramatically change education. And it was going to take all of his time for the next two and half years to do that.”
Work on the Education Improve-ment Act started immediately. Tunky became one of the most visible and vocal supporters with the “first couple” visiting more than 500 schools drumming up support and talking with thousands of people during that time. The strategy was to listen to and involve the largest number of teachers, parents, business leaders, and political supporters as possible. Terry remembers a trip to Myrtle Beach when he and the governor were meeting with a group of people who didn’t all support the EIA.
“We walked into the men’s restroom where there was a sign above the hand dryer. It said, ‘Push the button and get a hot air message from your governor,’” Terry says. “Instead of getting upset, the governor almost died laughing. He always wanted to hear from everyone. Sometimes he didn’t like what he heard but knew he needed to hear it.”
Passage of the EIA happened because it comprehensively addressed the state’s education challenges. People from all over the state got involved to advocate for the legislation knowing it would force widespread reforms in every pocket of the state.
“An enormous thing happened, not all of a sudden, but over several years of people working together. That was what was important to me — to get everybody, people on the street, talking about it,” Governor Riley says. “I had to get across to people and really emphasize the importance of education. There was a movement going on that was positive for education. The passage of the EIA was certainly, to me, a major moment in terms of my public service.”
The EIA passed the S.C. Legislature in 1984 funded by an unprecedented penny sales tax increase to create dozens of new locally led programs to improve the state’s education. The legacy of this legislation lives on today as “the EIA penny” continues to be a dedicated funding source of at least $1.2 billion annually for education programs.
Education Leadership at the National Level
After leaving the governor’s office and practicing law for several years, Governor Riley was approached by President Bill Clinton after the 1992 election to be his secretary of education. The two had become good friends during their years serving as governors of their respective states. President Clinton tapped Governor Riley for this role because of his success in South Carolina of changing the trajectory of education success with the EIA. The former S.C. governor served in this role during President Clinton’s entire eight-year term.
Terry again worked with Governor Riley on his team in the U.S. Department of Education. He says the dynamics of national education policy were quite different from working with education at the state level. “At the national level, you don’t have control over anything. The states have the control. Having been a governor, he knew that,” Terry says.
Governor Riley’s approach at the U.S. Department of Education was to be very involved with people on the ground in the states. “When you propose something, you know it has to run through the states. Everything Secretary Riley did at USDE involved consulting a lot with governors, state superintendents, and real people out in the field outside of D.C. Educators knew about the EIA. When he was appointed, superintendents and teachers all over the country said, ‘He’s for real,’ and that gave him a wealth of support in all he did.”
Later in his term, President Clinton approached Governor Riley to gauge his interest in a seat on the Supreme Court. “I told him to let me think about it,” Governor Riley says. “I said, ‘Bill, I can sit down at my desk with a couple of my key people, always with a teacher in the room, and make a decision impacting 50 million children just like that.’ And I said that means a lot to me.” Ultimately, Governor Riley turned down the opportunity for the Supreme Court seat, which eventually was filled by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
After leaving the Clinton administration in 2001, Governor Riley returned to his law practice at Nelson Mullins in Greenville and has maintained a busy public life focusing on the same issues he’s always championed — education and public service.
“That’s the important part of public service,” he says. “You’ve got to really believe in what you’re doing. And that’s how I got so much into education. You couldn’t change anything in South Carolina of any importance without changing the attitude the state had toward education.”
Today, the former governor is actively practicing law and enjoying his family. Since 2011, he and his longtime family friend, Betty Farr, have enjoyed a relationship that has combined their individual families into one large one that includes their 11 children, 29 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren, with another on the way.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a wonderful life,” says Governor Riley. “I urge all my friends and children to be supportive of public service and do their part. I plan to keep on doing that.”
And at age 91, he is doing just that. During a “Bourbon in the Back Room” podcast at a Furman forum just before his 90th birthday, the former governor was asked, “What’s next after your 90th birthday?” He replied, “What’s next for me is 91.”
