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December 5, 2005

Get to know your new city council...

at least a little bit. High Point city reporter Kory Dodd and I did a pair of profiles that ran over the weekend about High Point's two newest city council members. They'll both be sworn in today for their full terms.

You can read about Lisa Stahlmann here

The Michael Pugh profile doesn't appear to be on the Web site, so I cut and pasted it below the jump.

Pugh ends up following father’s path
By Kory Dodd
Staff Writer
HIGH POINT — Since his father’s death, Michael “Mike” Pugh has been trying to follow his father’s path in his own way.
Pugh grew up watching the Rev. Worth Pugh minister to the congregants at Cloverdale Church of the Living God in High Point.
“As a pastor he would visit people and talk to people,” Pugh said. “I learned from him that you have to communicate with people, and if you care for people you’ve got to listen to their concerns.”
Pugh helped his father by playing organ at the countless funerals where the elder Pugh preached. Many of those funerals were for people who were members of another church but requested Worth Pugh, said James Cumby of Cumby Family Funeral Service. The Pughs would attend no matter how inconvenient.
“He and his dad never said no to anybody,” Cumby said.
Worth Pugh served at the church for about 50 years. When he died in July, his son decided to honor his father by putting his upbringing to use and serving the public as his father had.
“He always wanted me to kind of follow in his footsteps as a minister, and I just felt that I’m not a minister, but I could serve the public ... in this capacity in city government,” said Pugh, a real estate broker who will be sworn in Monday to High Point City Council. “And show the compassion and the caring and all those attributes he taught me.”
Pugh said his door-to-door style of campaigning was born from his father’s practice of meeting with congregants and listening to their concerns.
From the day Pugh registered for the election in August until the night before the election, he went door to door speaking with as many people as he could in south High Point’s Ward 3. Only in the week before the election, when there appeared to be areas he might not reach, did he enlist the help of his wife, Donna.
Pugh’s campaigning style worked — he beat out incumbent John Linton. Although it is his father’s death that finally pushed him into public service, Pugh said his wife’s plight also inspired him to give back.
Mike and Donna Pugh married in 1984, the same year a degenerative corneal disease took her eyesight. Pugh said his wife suffered through a series of failed cornea transplants and left her job as a flight attendant for US Airways.
Donna Pugh said the eight and a half years she was blind were the hardest of her life.
“I had a terrible attitude. I didn’t want to learn anything,” she said. She wouldn’t speak for days and often refused to leave the house.
“He was always there for me,” she said. “No matter how impossible I made the situation, he stuck with me and I respect him for that. And I don’t know many people who would have done that.”
About two years ago, they found a doctor in Boston who had pioneered a special lens that would be placed over her cornea. The lens allowed Donna Pugh to see again.
Her plight was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show, and she has served as a spokeswoman for the procedure, Mike Pugh said.
“That has been a very inspirational thing to me,” he said. “That good things can happen and when good things happen you want to reciprocate ... And that’s one thing that I wanted to do — reciprocate some of the blessings that God has given me back to the public.”
Pugh’s pastor, the Rev. David Perry of Cloverdale Church of the Living God, said the man began giving back to the community before running for public office. Pugh has often sponsored sports teams for church members and helped out in other ways, Perry said.
Donna Pugh said her husband cannot turn down a request for help. A man recently called her husband because his water heater had broken and he couldn’t afford a new one, she said. Mike Pugh bought him a new one and installed it for free despite his own tight budget, she said.
Donna Pugh said her husband tries to help strangers all the time. His concernsabout south High Point finally led her to suggest running for a council seat, she said.
“He just wants things to be nicer and better for the people who live in this ward,” Donna Pugh said.

Contact Kory Dodd at 83-4422, Ext. 241, or kdodd@news-record.com

Posted by Jonathan Jones at December 5, 2005 10:19 AM