Reva Jennings was both fiercely loyal and unfailingly warm, friends said, a charismatic fixture of Georgia’s Republican party ever since there was one. If she wasn’t having fun, she’d say, it was her fault.
“She probably gave the best hugs in Forsyth County,” friend and GOP colleague Will Kremer said.
Jennings, 77, and her Toyota Camry were pulled from Lake Lanier on Saturday afternoon, several hours after Forsyth County authorities believe she accidentally drove into the water near Tidwell Park.
Her sudden death sent shockwaves through the GOP community.
“I never, never, never met a single person that did not love her,” friend Carolyn Fisher, the first vice chairman of Forsyth’s Republican party, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday.
Fisher said Jennings, a Cumming resident, was instrumental in starting Georgia’s Republican Party, even while raising three children after her husband’s early death from Agent Orange exposure in the Vietnam War. She was the president of the Georgia Federation of Republican Women in the 1980s, and had tea in the White House Rose Garden with both Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush.
A tiny, proud Southern woman, she wasn’t afraid to stand in the middle of the road during crucial campaigns. She never dated or remarried, saying she’d gotten in right the first time.
Friends believe Jennings was on the way home from a GOP Christmas party at the Governor’s Mansion when she died. Jen Talaber, a spokeswoman for Gov. Nathan Deal, called Jennings “a good friend” of Deal and his wife.
“Gov. Deal admired her energy and was grateful for her support during his congressional reelection campaigns to his gubernatorial race,” Talaber said in an email. “She was a foundation of support in Forsyth and northeast Georgia.”
While authorities don’t know what may have caused Jennings to drive into the lake, they do not suspect foul play.
“R.I.P. Reva Jennings,” United States Congressman Doug Collins, a Hall County native, wrote on Facebook. “Your passion, energy and work on behalf of the GOP will be missed in this state.”
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