Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds, 87, former state senator, Transportation Board chairman

SAEED AHMED

sahmed@ajc.com

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Steve Reynolds, a former state senator and Transportation Board chair whose contributions to improving Georgia's roads and highways led to his own name being immortalized in asphalt, died Monday. He was 87.

Mr. Reynolds had been battling lung cancer for about two years. He was admitted into a hospice Thursday night from his Lawrenceville home after his condition began deteriorating rapidly. He died Monday morning.

"I was so relieved he went home," said his son, Dr. David Reynolds, of Birmingham. "Nobody should have to live with that sort of pain."

Born in Commerce, Mr. Reynolds graduated from Commerce High School and joined the military, serving in World War II.

Until moving to Lawrenceville in the early 1960s, Mr. Reynolds had held a variety of local posts on the Commerce school board and City Council. Once in Gwinnett County, he started his string of election victories, winning every office he sought — surprising his son.

"I just never saw him as a politician," he said.

The rest of his life, Mr. Reynolds was seen as nothing else but that — a silver-haired power broker who usually had a pinch of tobacco in his lower lip. He could be gruff and tough when it came to fights, and became best known as a man preoccupied with road building.

Beginning in 1968, he served 14 years in the Senate, staking out territory where he would concentrate his legislative career: transportation. He served 12 years as chairman of the Transportation Committee.

"Nobody foresaw in those years the extent of growth that we have today, but Steve did," said former Gov. Roy Barnes, who served in the Senate with Mr. Reynolds. "He was always pushing to have a greater transportation plan for the Atlanta region."

Mr. Reynolds helped start the Georgia Clean and Beautiful campaign. And former Dept. of Transportation Commissioner Wayne Shackleford credits Mr. Reynolds with being instrumental in ensuring in the 1970s that the motor fuel tax was dedicated to building and repairing roads and bridges.

After leaving the Senate, Mr. Reynolds served for two decades in the state Transportation Board, many of them as chairman. The board allocated more than $1 billion each year for road construction in Georgia.

In 1991, Gwinnett County commissioners named one of the county's busiest traffic arteries after him — Steve Reynolds Boulevard at Exit 39-A on I-85.

The honor, he said sheepishly at the time, was both embarrassing and humbling.

Mr. Reynolds left the board in 2004, a year after he stepped down from the chairmanship under pressure from Gov. Sonny Perdue.

Around the time, the board was trying to disassociate itself from an image that it was dominated by older white men. Its average age had hovered in the 70s for years.

Mike Evans, the current chairman, overlapped with Mr. Reynolds when he first joined the board in 2003 as part of a new guard of significantly younger members.

Though Mr. Reynolds "was well in his 80s," Evans said, "I told several people, 'He's one of the best politicians I've ever run across.'"

"He had a knack for making everybody feel important to the process and that's an important characteristic in this business," Mr. Evans said.

"I suspect," he added, "that there was a time that he could have easily been governor." "He was really still a very active individual until last year," said Bill Atkinson, his Lawrenceville neighbor for 45 years. "His motto was to help somebody, and I don't think there was anything he got a bigger kick out of."

Mr. Reynolds is survived by his son and two granddaughters: Melissa Turner and Anna Reynolds, both of Birmingham.

Visitation will be at Wages & Sons Funeral Home in Lawrenceville between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Wednesday. A celebration of his life will be held at Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church on U.S. 29 at 11:30 a.m. Thursday.

A few days before Mr. Reynolds' death, an ailing family member called him and lamented how they won't be "running with the big dogs anymore," his son recalled.

Mr. Reynolds' reply? "But we sure will growl at 'em."

— Staff writers Ariel Hart, Nancy Baderstcher, Ben Smith and Duane Stanford and news researchers Nisa Asokan and Joni Zeccola contributed to this article.