Former state senator dies

J.J. Harrington, 89, called 'Monk'

Former state Sen. J.J. "Monk" Harrington, one of the last of North Carolina's rural political barons and host of a legendary deer hunt, died Wednesday.

Harrington, 89, of Bertie County, who served in the state Senate from 1963 to 1988, was a fixture in Tar Heel politics for three decades. He was known as a champion for Eastern North Carolina in the legislature and a connoisseur of pigtail soup and other Southern delicacies back home.

"Monk was a giant of a man in the Senate," said former Gov. Jim Hunt. "He was a great big man physically. He was a big man in his influence and friendliness in the state Senate. He was always deeply devoted to his county and to his community and the whole of northeastern North Carolina."

Harrington may have been best known for the annual deer hunts he held in his lodge -- one of the last of the state's rural political traditions that included the Rat Killing in Pitt County and the Ramp Festival in the mountains, where governor wannabes would prove they were not stuffed shirts by eating venison stew, drinking bourbon or eating smelly wild onions.

Every December, Harrington would host hundreds of lawmakers, lobbyists and candidates at his Bertie County lodge. The menu one year included 38 deer hams, four bushels of sweet potatoes, 15 bushels of oysters, 60 pounds of barbecued pork, 30 pounds of beans, a pickup truck load of collards, and copious amounts of whiskey. Cigars and chewing tobacco were not frowned upon.

"You had to prove that you weren't wedded to culture," said former Secretary of State Rufus Edmisten. "You don't go down there and act like you are from New York City. If you didn't hunt, you ate what they hunted."

If one missed a deer, there would be a ceremonial cutting off of the errant hunter's shirttail.

"I lost a shirttail to a brand new shirt," Hunt recalled. "My wife never forgave me for that."

Hunt was one of a number of big-name politicians who made the pilgrimage, including former Gov. Terry Sanford, former Gov. Bob Scott, former Sen. Robert Morgan and countless lawmakers.

"You'd think it was a special session of the legislature," quipped state Sen. A.B. Swindell of Nash County, a family friend.

Harrington got his nickname as a child when he visited a moonshine still and sampled a homemade alcoholic concoction called monkey rum. He played minor league baseball in Mississippi.

He took over the family farm implements business, providing equipment for peanut, cotton and tobacco farmers. Years later, a fellow legislator, state Rep. Ron Taylor, went to prison for torching two of Harrington's buildings in a business dispute.

As a lawmaker, Harrington was a man of few words. He worked behind the scenes for East Carolina University, for agriculture, for hunting and fishing laws, and for roads. There is a bridge on N.C. 11 over the Roanoke River named for him. Rising to become Senate president pro tem, he was regarded as a moderate conservative.

"I don't have much to say on the Senate floor," Harrington once observed. "But I never lost a battle on it. When I want something, I know how to get it. I've always been a behind-the-scenes man."

When he did speak, his speech evoked the colonial cadences common among Albermarle natives.

Everyone chuckled at the incongruous site of such a big man carrying his toy poodle, Pierre, around the legislature.

Harrington was a white legislator in a black-majority county, and with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, his days were numbered. In the face of certain defeat, Harrington retired in 1988, giving up his seat to Frank Ballance, an African-American.

Harrington lobbied in Raleigh after leaving the legislature but spent most of his time back home in Bertie County.

"This used to be one beautiful wood," Harrington once told a reporter. "Good deer country and good land."