news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Horace Kornegay, who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1960s, died today. He was 84.

Kornegay died at 1:05 a.m. Wednesday at Moses Cone Hospital. He had been living at the Well Spring retirement community.

Kornegay was born in Asheville, schooled in Greensboro and fought in Europe in World War II. He later got his bachelor's and law degrees from Wake Forest University.

After nine years with the district attorney's office, he was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1960. He served four terms and declined to seek a fifth in 1968.

Kornegay later worked as vice president and counsel, president and chairman of the Tobacco Institute, the former trade group of the nation's cigarette manufacturers, from 1969 to 1986. He then returned to Greensboro and practiced law.

In 1986, serving as chairman of the Tobacco Institute, Kornegay ardently fought against a Surgeon General suggestion that the nation ban cigarette advertising.

Such advertising "does not cause smoking any more than soap advertising causes people to bathe or detergent advertising causes people to wash their clothes," Kornegay said at the time.

U.S. Rep. Howard Coble recalls that he sponsored Kornegay's appearance at UNC-Chapel Hill during Kornegay's primary battle in 1960. Kornegay asked Coble if he would like to work for his campaign. Coble said he was tempted. But Coble, a Republican, declined because he did not want to take an oath that committed him to vote a straight Democratic ticket.

"I told him, 'I can't change because I don't want to take that oath,'" Coble said. "We became good friends as a result of that."

Hanes Lineberry Funeral Service will handle funeral arrangements.