‘A great loss’: Former CMS leader remembered for her advocacy, passion for education
Nora Carr was 50 years old when she lost her father, a man she compared to the Energizer Bunny and she thought would “go on forever.”
In her January 2010 blog entry “When you lose someone you love,” Carr described how her world was forever divided by a new sense of before and after that loss.
“For me, time is standing still, even though the earth has rotated six times,” she said.
More than a decade later, Carr’s words resonate with those who knew her.
Carr, who once worked in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and more recently for Guilford County Schools, died June 30 after suffering a heart attack. She was 63. She was nationally known for her work in public relations, marketing and crisis communications.
Carr fought tirelessly for children, challenged everyone around her to do better and was a champion for equity, inclusiveness and diversity. Now, many of the people she touched are trying to make sense of how their world will go on without her passion, empathy and heart.
Carr is survived by her husband, Kevin, three children, two grandchildren, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews and cousins.
“She just fought so hard for children and it seems so incredibly unfair,” Guilford County Superintendent Sharon Contreras told the Greensboro News & Record. “What I’ll remember her most for is the humanity she saw in every person she interacted with.”
Carr had worked for the last year at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a statewide, private, family foundation based in Winston-Salem “dedicated to improving the quality of life for all North Carolinians,” according to its website. Previously, she worked 13 years as chief of staff at Guilford County Schools.
Carr was posthumously honored with The Order of the Long Leaf Pine award by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper at her funeral service July 5. The award is given to those who have made significant contributions to the state and their communities.
“She was an extremely special person,” said Maurice “Mo” Green, who worked with Carr. Green is the executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a former Guilford County Schools superintendent and former deputy superintendent and general counsel for CMS.
“She was so amazing — it’s hard to boil it down to just one thing,” Green said. “Nora was just always present. Always there when you needed her. It’s a great loss for the entire state.”
Advocate for public education
Ann Doss Helms, the longtime education reporter for The Charlotte Observer who now covers the beat for NPR affiliate WFAE, said Carr led the CMS communications department through some of its most historic and tumultuous years. Carr was recruited to Charlotte in 1999 to work for Superintendent Eric Smith. She worked for a CMS for a total of six years until 2008, with a three-year break mixed in that span.
“Nora told me she had worked in several cities but never seen one where (the) media and public focus on education was so strong,” Helms said. “Bear in mind CMS had just come through a long legal battle over desegregation that had torn apart the community, so her role was essential.”
Helms said Carr showed her the ropes as a new education reporter, not only giving her facts and figures but filling her in on who was media-friendly in CMS at the time and who wasn’t.
“She especially warned me that the deputy superintendent did not like talking to reporters,” Helms said. “But when we did a walk-through of the offices, he was there and she introduced me. I beamed and said something along the lines: ‘Nora tells me I can just pop right in and talk to you whenever I need something.’
“She found a graceful way to get me out of there, and got a chuckle out of that.”
As a public relations expert, Carr was committed to getting in front of a story, even if it was bad. She and district leaders experimented with weekly news conferences and reports to the media when there was a safety incident on a district campus.
Helms said one of her most vivid memories was when CMS held a special news conference in 2007 to announce an elementary school teacher had been found locked in his classroom preparing to inject heroin.
“It was tremendously embarrassing to CMS, but it led to improvements in their background checks and some thoughtful coverage of how a good teacher with addiction landed in this position,” Helms said.
Carr, many told the Observer, was a highly-respected advocate for public school education. Her husband was a CMS teacher and administrator, and she had a daughter with special needs who attended CMS schools.
“She was as invested in public education as it’s possible to be,” Helms said.
‘She knew it was important to help’
In 1999, Carr was one of four national experts asked to provide on-site assistance to Jefferson County Public Schools in Golden, Colorado, during the aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre that took the lives of 12 students and one teacher.
More than 20 years later, Green said the chairperson of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth school board reached out to him to find Carr after a student was shot and killed at Mount Tabor High School last September.
“She was always looking out for people that needed help, whether that was students, administrators, nonprofit boards, anyone she was affiliated with,” said Philip Tate, who wrote a remembrance for the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) College of Fellows. Both Carr and Tate were inducted into the group. “She had such a spirit of advocacy for those less fortunate. She was on so many nonprofit boards — she didn’t have time to be doing it, but she knew it was important.”
Throughout her career, Carr received numerous recognitions, including the Barry Gaskins Service Award, the highest honor awarded by the North Carolina School Public Relations Association (NCSPRA).
“She had a big personality, a larger-than-life personality,” he said. “She challenged people who worked for her to do better. She wanted to build a community wherever she went. She really brought people together.”
But her life wasn’t all about her work.
“Nora loved to laugh. She’s Irish, and she loved her Irish heritage,” Green said. “She loved to swim and loved to go kayaking. She loved to read and had multiple books going on at one time. She loved to sing. She was one of these people who truly embraced life.
“It wasn’t all about work, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone who would work more than Nora.”
‘Hope heaven likes it loud’
Carr blogged periodically from September 2009 until about four years ago. She wrote on everything from how beautiful the autumn seasons are in North Carolina to school budget cuts to how educators are patriots to the pains of dieting.
“Does adding blueberries make vanilla ice cream a healthy snack?” she wrote May 3, 2018.
When her father, a B-24 bomber pilot during World War II, died at 85, she imagined he was in heaven making the angels laugh.
“I’m sure he’s drinking beer and singing Irish songs in heaven with his brothers and sisters while my mom plays the piano and my grandparents smile and nod,” she wrote. “I hope heaven likes it loud.”
And during Christmas one year, she wished she could wave a magic wand and give the gift of “a caring, competent adult to lead every young person through childhood.”
“We wonder why they’re not all on grade level? Children are incredibly resilient,” she wrote. “They can overcome any obstacle. But they need more help from the adults in their lives, in their schools and in their communities.”
Carr’s zeal for education and helping others prompted Guilford County Schools to leave this message on its website: “We miss you already Dr. Carr.”
This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 11:35 AM.
