VIA: New York Times
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Neighbors were chagrined last week when the police here found the body of a 75-year-old woman who had frozen to death, alone in her house, during unexpectedly frigid weather.
But they were shocked this week when they learned that the woman, Juanita W. Goggins, had been a civil rights trailblazer who in 1974 became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina legislature.
Now residents of this normally neighborly Southern capital say they are feeling regretful, and slightly guilty, for allowing one of its most revered figures to disappear into a sleepy ranch house with little company. Possibly mentally ill, living without running water or heat, Ms. Goggins is believed to have died on Feb. 20 — when temperatures dropped below freezing — but her body was not discovered for 11 days.
Several neighbors in her elderly, mostly black community in downtown Columbia said they had learned the full scope of Ms. Goggins’s accomplishments only from her obituaries. At the peak of her political career, in the 1970s, she twice visited President Jimmy Carter at the White House and was the first black woman appointed to the United States Civil Rights Commission.
In the legislature, where she represented Rock Hill, on the northern border of the state, for three terms in the 1970s, Ms. Goggins, a Democrat, helped pass key legislation for improving elementary school education and public health. Last year, a stretch of Highway 5 was renamed in her honor.
“She was truly a mover and a shaker, so well-liked and so well-loved by so many,” said Representative John King, 33, who holds her former seat in the General Assembly.
Family members suspect that Ms. Goggins had developed dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in her final years. She rarely left her small, cluttered house on Carousel Circle, except occasionally to ride the bus to Bi-Lo for groceries.
In 16 years as her next-door neighbor, Erskine Hunter, 83, said he was allowed inside only once, to fix a water heater.
When he dropped off groceries every month, Mr. Hunter said, Ms. Goggins asked that he ring the doorbell and leave the food on her front stoop. “She didn’t let nobody in that house,” he said. “She just wasn’t the type to stop and talk.”
So it came as a surprise when neighbors this week found Ms. Goggins’s obituary in newspapers across the South.
“When I read it in the newspaper and learned everything she had done, I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” said Linda Martin, the longtime property manager for Ms. Goggins’s rented house. “I really didn’t know anything about her.”
But that pride was tempered with sadness and regret. Her death might have been prevented, family members say, if only Ms. Goggins had been more receptive to help. Her son, Horace W. Goggins Jr., and Ms. Martin had both asked Richland County’s department of adult protective services to monitor Ms. Goggins, but she had refused their assistance.
“It’s just so sad,” Ms. Martin said. “You reach out to help a person, and they reject you. What else can you do?”
She added, “I always dreaded that something of this nature would happen.”
Ms. Goggins’s body was discovered on March 3, when the police entered through a window after neighbors reported that she had been unusually reclusive, even by her own standards. It had snowed recently, and temperatures were still in the 30s. Ms. Goggins was found wearing several layers of pants, socks and shirts.
Her thermostat and stove were working, but were turned off, said the county coroner, Gary Watts.
Ms. Goggins’s utility company shut off her electricity for nonpayment on Feb. 23. But the police found $2,500 in cash and uncashed retirement checks in her house, Mr. Watts said.
“This wasn’t a matter of not having money,” he said. “She appears to have been in the early stages of dementia and not taking care of herself.”
A funeral will be held Friday in Rock Hill. Mr. Goggins, 42, of Powder Springs, Ga., called it a “homecoming celebration of life,” adding, “We’re going to focus on her achievements and the positive part of her life, not on her death.”
Those achievements include teaching public school, founding a tutoring company and in 1972 becoming the first black woman from South Carolina to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Ms. Goggins was elected to the State House in 1974, defeating a white male incumbent.
“She had an amazing life,” said Mr. Hunter, her neighbor, before adding, “I just wish I’d knocked on her door more often.”
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