Margaret Rose Sanford

Margaret Rose Sanford (née Knight; June 6, 1918 – August 26, 2006) was an American civic leader, teacher, and philanthropist who, as the wife of Terry Sanford, served as First Lady of North Carolina from 1961 to 1965. Prior to entering public life, she worked as a teacher in North Carolina and Kentucky. As first lady, Sanford hosted the first annual North Carolina Symphony Ball in 1961, established a library of North Carolinian books at the North Carolina Executive Mansion, and planted a rose garden on the mansion's grounds. She was the first governor's wife to decorate the Governor's Western Residence in Asheville. Sanford sent her children to the first racially integrated public elementary school in Raleigh, North Carolina, while the family lived in the executive mansion. She served on the board of the Methodist Home for Children, the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Stagville Plantation Restoration Board, and East Carolina University. She was also a member of the Education Commission of the States and the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. While Sanford's husband served as president of Duke University, she was appointed by Governor Jim Hunt to serve on a delegation of university faculty and administrators to China in 1975.

Early life, family, and education Sanford was born Margaret Rose Knight on June 6, 1918, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to John Richard Knight IV and Elizabeth Adams Foard Knight. She had a brother, Colonel John Richard Knight V. When her husband was serving overseas during World War II, she returned to Kentucky and worked as a teacher there. Her inaugural gown, a shrimp-colored peau de soie dress, is in a collection of the North Carolina Museum of History. They married on July 4, 1942, at her aunt's home in Hopkinsville, just before her husband enlisted in the United States Army as a paratrooper. She and her husband had two children: Elizabeth Knight Sanford and James Terry Sanford Jr. The family were United Methodists.

While living in the executive mansion in Raleigh, Sanford enrolled her children in Wake County Public Schools. She frequently invited her niece, who was a student at Saint Mary's School, to spend weekends with the family at the mansion.

Death and legacy Sanford died on August 26, 2006, at Duke University Hospital. She is buried in the chapel's crypt, next to her husband.