By Ty Chandler
Sitting at her desk at the Legislative Building in Raleigh, State Representative Becky Carney just stopped. Not by choice. Quit isn’t a word in Carney’s vocabulary. But her body had quit on her. She had suffered cardiac death. For some the story would end there, but for Rep. Carney this was just one of many life challenges that her strong will and intense drive would power her through.
“It never crossed my mind that I should step away,” Carney said. “I will keep on as long as God gives me the strength and the directive to do it; I’ll keep going,” she declared.
And she did. Not long after this 2009 incident, Carney returned to working for the people of Mecklenburg County as the Representative for North Carolina’s 102nd House District with the help of a pacemaker.
“I’m still here. I’ve got work to do,” she asserted.
Carney’s political career could be described as the byproduct of her desire to serve and her ability to dream. As a young girl in a modest duplex in Raleigh, her imagination allowed her to see greater possibilities.
“As a child, I played out in our backyard,” she recalled. “My girlfriend and I would go back there and sweep the dirt and we would make rooms,” Carney explained. “We’d take string and map out rooms and say this is the living room. We would dream that it was a castle…we weren’t not grateful. But as a kid you dream and I know that propelled me, I could be more and I never have stopped,” Carney stated.
Carney moved to East Tennessee after high school and began volunteering with the Girls Club of America. Her service caught the attention of members of the Border Guild and they invited her to join. The Border Guild eventually became an affiliate of the Junior League. This membership would support Carney when she returned to North Carolina.
“I’ve moved several times,” she explained. “You don’t sit at home, you go out and get involved in your community, it doesn’t always come to you.”
Carney became active in the Junior League of Raleigh. She created her own placement with the Girls Club of America and her efforts were instrumental in merging of the Boys and Girls Clubs.
“I’m extremely proud of that,” she beamed. “It was through the League that I was able to have that focus on girls brought to the forefront.”
By the time Carney moved to Charlotte in the 1990s, she had gained substantial training through the League and clocked hundreds of volunteer hours. She transferred into the Junior League of Charlotte, Inc. (JLC) as a sustainer. Carney became PTO president at South Charlotte Middle School, where her daughter and JLC member, Monica Carney, was a student. However, she quickly became dismayed by the building conditions and concerned by district wide inequities.
“I said, ‘look we need to bring the PTO presidents together, let’s just invite all of them in Mecklenburg County together for a meeting and invite Dr. Murphy,’ who was the Superintendent,” she recalled.
Carney’s efforts resulted in a packed auditorium at Providence High School and a united force of parents who wanted Charlotte-Mecklenburg School officials to hear their concerns.
“Sunday morning there was a front page article: parents organize around bonds, and there I was on the front page of the Charlotte Observer,” she said. “Never in my life had I been involved that way.”
Carney’s organizing led to a run for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board in 1995. Her run was unsuccessful, but Democratic party leaders were impressed by the newcomer’s showing. She was encouraged to run again, this time for the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners. Months after her school board defeat, Carney was a County Commissioner At Large. She served until 2002, when she was elected to the State House of Representatives.
“Politics is about leadership, but it’s also about organizing and knowing your community,” she explained. “And I already had all that training prior to ever stepping out there, saying yeah I’ll run for school board,” Carney reflected. “Through the League we had incredible training.”
Education has remained Carney’s focus in Raleigh. She has pushed for legislation that supports greater access to the arts.
“The arts are the basic core of our humanity in my opinion and every child in North Carolina should have that exposure,” she said. “I’ve been a part of expanding and making recurring dollars for arts programs in the state. I’ve done that; I’m proud of that.”
However, in Raleigh, turning your ideas into a reality isn’t easy. Carney has sponsored bills to require art education in North Carolina schools four times. She is hopeful it will become law this legislative session, but she hasn’t been discouraged by these setbacks. Carney has had several of her own since that day her heart stopped in her office back in 2009.
“I died twice, literally, and I bounced back,” Carney proclaimed.
In 2015, Carney’s pacemaker defibrillator kicked in and restarted her heart. Her doctors decided to do open heart surgery and place a Left Ventricular Assist Device or LVAD in her chest.
“It’s a heart pump,” she explains. “There is a drive line that comes out of my side literally and it attaches to a backpack that I wear. Every day I get up and hook up to my battery pack that I wear and at night I hook up to my electrical wall unit. So I’m always powered up,” Carney revealed.
In 2018, another health scare. This time it was stage two breast cancer.
“We’ve conquered it,” Carney declared. “Cancer-free now and I never quit. I never gave up because I have a very strong faith and it has gotten me through my entire life,” she said.
“Do I take time off, yes. Do I step back, yes. Do I quit, no,” she proclaimed.
