Former Congressman Broyhill Dies At 95

Jim Broyhill, a longtime North Carolina Republican congressman who served briefly in the U.S. Senate died early Saturday at age 95.

The Lenoir native served more than 23 years in the House.

Frank Drendel, founder of cable producer CommScope based in Hickory, said on Saturday that Broyhill’s work to get a law passed in 1978 so that cable companies could connect their cables to other utility poles helped the cable industry soar. Broyhill “set an example that sadly we don’t have much of today and that is to cross the aisle and come up with solutions that are nonpartisan,” said former Glaxo Wellcome CEO Bob Ingram, a North Carolina resident who knew Broyhill while working in Washington. “He wanted to get to the best answer to solve problems.”

James Thomas Broyhill graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1950, according to his official congressional biography. His father, J.E. Broyhill, began the family’s furniture dynasty in 1926 as the Lenoir Chair Company.