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When Linda Shaw received the state’s highest public service honor, she decided not to mention that she’d already gotten one nearly 16 years ago.

State Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican, presented the Order of the Long Leaf Pine to the Guilford County commissioner at the state Republican Convention in early June.

Shaw, who previously received the award in 1992, is among a handful of North Carolinians given the Order twice.

“I wasn’t about to say, 'I’ve already gotten one of these.’ I really feel honored,” she said.

The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is the state’s highest honor for public service to North Carolina, presented by the governor since 1965.

Shaw is one of about 300 recipients so far this year, earning the award as she ends her final term on the Republican National Committee.

Lewis, who nominated her for the award, said he has long admired the Greensboro resident.

“She’s been a leader in the Republican Party since I was a young college Republican,” said Lewis, who now is running for his fourth term in the state House. “I sort of grew up politically watching Mrs. Shaw.”

And he had a lot to watch.

Shaw has a long and prominent history of service in the party, and she’s been involved in county and local politics for many years, as well.

The Jamestown native is a long-time member of the N.C. Federation of Republican Women, and she has worked with the N.C. Museum of Art, American Red Cross and YMCA Greensboro.

On the national level, in 1992 Shaw won North Carolina’s national spot on the committee and spent six years as RNC secretary.

Then-Gov. George W. Bush appointed her secretary of the Republican National Convention in 2000.

“I said, 'The only reason you want me is because I have that Southern accent, and you want to hear me say Mississippi and Alabama,” Shaw joked.

She successfully ran for her District 3 commissioner seat in 1998, and she said she’s worked across party lines on initiatives such as a school bond in 2000.

Shaw admits that relations among Guilford County’s commissioners have been strained at times, and she owns up to her part in the tensions. She doesn’t like to talk about the time in 2002 that she dumped a cup of water on commissioner Melvin “Skip” Alston — and accused him of threatening her — during a post-meeting squabble.

“It’s been past,” Alston said. “I haven’t thought about it. When we settled it, that was the end of it.”

Alston, a Democrat, said he and Shaw sometimes differ ideologically but also work together. He recalled a recent debate surrounding a new jail, which he opposed, as one such example. Shaw supported the jail, but she also backed Alston’s ideas for alternatives to incarceration.

Public figures sometimes receive the Order of the Long Leaf Pine upon retirement, but Shaw emphatically said that though she’s stepping down from the RNC, she will run in 2010 for re-election to her commissioner seat.

“I’ll have everybody in the world running against me if they think I’m not running,” she said.

She added that she hopes to add a new sales tax in Guilford County before she retires: “I don’t like it, but at least everyone will pay for it. That’s the only way to keep the property tax down.”

Contact Emily Stephenson at 373-7080 or emily.stephenson@news-record.com