Senator features

Rountree begins new chapter of public service

Above: On a 2024 trip to Greece to celebrate daughter Rachel’s elopement ceremony, Sen. Victor Rountree and his wife Cheryl, along with son Isaac and daughter Naomi, visit the village of Kastraki.

Whether describing the tobacco fields he worked as a young man in the South or being struck by the beauty of his future wife after catching a glimpse of her across a JCPenney department store, Bellevue Sen. Victor Rountree tells a great story.

When asked about that meeting in Georgia with Cheryl, his wife of more than 40 years, his response was a hearty laugh and a question. “How much time do you have?”

Rountree was born in his aunt’s house in Wilson, North Carolina — his mother assisted by a midwife — and grew up in nearby Elm City. The fourth child of nine siblings, he spent his summers and weekends working in the fields and helping with his father’s construction business, laying water and sewer lines and building manholes by hand.

“That’s how we paid for our school clothes and earned our spending money,” he said. “Hard work was all we knew.”

That work ethic served Rountree well as he developed an interest in politics through various youth programs. In 1977, as a high school senior participating in the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans in Washington, DC, he met legendary US Rep. Shirley Chisholm — the first Black woman elected to Congress and first Black candidate to vie for the presidential nomination of a major political party.

“My luck, she was in her office that day,” Rountree said. “I went in and she took the time to speak with me. I was 17 and she was so inspiring and encouraging. She told me we need good people in government.”

The encounter stayed with Rountree, though it took nearly 50 years for those youthful ambitions to be realized.

After joining the US Air Force, Rountree enjoyed postings all over the world, including two tours in England and a stint at Sembach Air Base in Germany right as the Berlin Wall fell.

But it was a fateful posting at Grand Forks AFB that was unexpectedly pivotal in the trajectory of Rountree’s life. Despite the shock of 40 below zero temps and snow to their knees the day of their arrival, over time the family put down roots in middle America and stayed in North Dakota for nine years.

“We found a church and a community there that provided the stability we needed,” Rountree said. “It would have been a difficult time otherwise. The church became our anchor and our rock.”

Always a devout person, the freshman senator became an ordained pastor after his retirement from military life and founded a ministry in Bellevue in 2012. No matter his role, the District 3 senator has always found a way to serve.

“People are my business,” Rountree said. “As a member of the Air Force, as a pastor, as a fellow human being and now as a state senator — I’m here to do the work of the people.”

And if you see him in the Capitol hallways, you should ask to hear the rest of the story of how he met his wife. It’s a good one.

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