WASHINGTON — Charles Colgan, Virginia’s longest-serving state senator, who died Tuesday at 90, is remembered as a quiet but influential political force for Northern Virginia who championed his district and was able to bring together members from both sides of the aisle.
Colgan, a Democrat who represented parts of Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park from 1976 until he retired in 2016, was the longest-serving senator in that body’s history.
Colgan is credited for his work shepherding transportation funding to Northern Virginia, including multimillion-dollar, lane-widening efforts on Interstate 66 near Gainesville, and advocating for higher education, including expanding the Northern Virginia Community College.
“He was invaluable to the Senate and to his district. He got an awful lot done for Prince William County. He was able to get a lot of money and a lot of projects not just for his county but for Northern Virginia generally,” said Dr. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Colgan was sometimes known to cross party lines to cast a vote.
“He was one of those people, a vanishing breed, who could engineer compromise between these two very polarized political parties,” Sabato said. “He knew how to bring people together,”
Colgan was never one to tout his own accomplishments.
“What strikes me about Colgan — he was the un-politician,” Sabato said. “We think of politicians as being extremely gregarious and loudspoken, (who) call press conferences a lot and get up on their soap boxes. Chuck was exactly the opposite, and that was one of his sources of his influences.”
Sabato said Colgan was effective in part because he would work behind the scenes to get things done.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe called Colgan a “champion” for residents of Prince Williams County and Virginia.
“His passionate and bipartisan approach to getting things done should serve as an example for all of us as we continue the work he and so many undertook and passed forward to us,” McAuliffe said in a statement.
Born in Frostburg, Maryland, in 1926, Colgan became orphaned at the age of 5 and was raised by his grandparents.
He served in the Army Air Corps and the Air Force Reserves in World War II — he was the last veteran of that war to serve in the Virginia General Assembly — before working as an aircraft mechanic at then-Washington National Airport in the 1950s. He launched his own aviation company in the 1960s.
Colgan moved to Prince William County in 1964. Seven years later, he won a seat as the Gainesville member of the board of county supervisors and was elected to the Virginia State Senate in 1975.
Colgan was the only senator from the county to ever serve as the president pro tempore.
This school year, the community honored their longtime champion when Charles Colgan High School opened to students in Prince William County.
