By Alex Bass
Alex.bass@triangletribune.com
RALEIGH – The paradox of keeping the name Conen Morgan in one place on North Carolina roads has been achieved.
The legacy of Morgan – a political strategist who traveled state roads perpetually before his May 28, 2023, death in a boating accident – is preserved eternally at the “Conen Morgan Interchange,” dedicated April 30 at Interstate 440 and Capital Boulevard.
“Somebody has got to direct us on how to get through that sucker,” said former U.S. Representative Bob Etheridge to a laughing assembly gathered in the Andrew Goodwin House. “Conen Morgan was about interchanges in everything he did, putting us in the right direction.”
Morgan, 42, managed campaigns for Etheridge, and more local efforts that led to groundbreaking achievements by women, including Vi Lyles and Elaine O’Neal becoming the first African American female mayors of Charlotte and Durham, respectively. Beyond legislative and executive races, he also worked in the judicial realm.
“There would be no Judge Shamieka Rhinehart without Conen Morgan,” said Rhinehart, a N.C. Superior Court judge.
N.C. Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton recalled visiting Morgan on the day she was elected as the country’s youngest state party chair, 25, in February 2023. “I was nervous as all hell,” Clayton said. “I think about how many young people he looked at, and he gave a chance to. He said, ‘You’re going to be able to do this.’ He put the support and the love behind them that they needed.”
The Garner High School and N.C. State University graduate received his greatest support from a Tar Heel – his wife, Reyna. Conen Morgan was president of N.C. State’s Student Senate. Reyna Walters-Morgan, while an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill, was elected the first African American female Student Body president for the 1998-99 academic year.
“His legacy is going to live on in not just an interchange, but in the people that he inspired, the people that he encouraged, the people that he motivated to make a difference,” said Walters-Morgan, now the vice chair of Civic Engagement and Voter Protection for the Democratic National Committee.
Raleigh Mayor Pro Tem Stormie Forte read aloud the city’s resolution to the N.C. Department of Transportation endorsing the interchange being named after Morgan. The N.C. Science Olympiad, in which Morgan participated as a student and volunteered for over 30 years, has an endowment fund in his memory.
A teary-eyed Tim Morgan, the honoree’s father, concluded the ceremony by framing the interchange as representative of how we all should live: “always moving things forward, always connecting people, and always finding a way to build something lasting,” he said.
