Edythe Colton Harrison

Boca Raton, Fla. – Edythe Colton Harrison, a Virginia civic leader, arts advocate, legislator, and political pioneer, whose career was closely identified with Norfolk and the development of performing arts in Virginia, passed away peacefully in the presence of her devoted family and caregivers on the afternoon of September 1, 2026.

Harrison came from Detroit, Michigan. She grew up in a loving home, a home filled with music. Her mother, Lottie (Sultan) Colton, trained in Paris to be a concert pianist. Her mentor was Wanda Landowska, one of the most influential keyboard musicians of the 20th century. Her father, Dr. Arthur Colton, a prosperous dentist, was a talented tenor and opera enthusiast. Harrison revered her parents, revered how they frequently sang together, how her father danced with her, his zest for life.

She credited the love and trust of her parents for the fearless self-confidence with which she led her life. “They had faith in me. They never corrected me. I never, ever felt fear,” Harrison said.

In 1954, Harrison met Stanley L. Harrison, a young real estate executive from Norfolk, at a fraternity social weekend. It was love at first sight. The two became inseparable. They married at the Colton home in Detroit, on December 3, 1955, and remained deeply in love until Mr. Harrison’s death on June 11, 1991.

The newlyweds settled in in Norfolk in 1956. There, they raised a son, Tim, and two daughters, Jody, and Julie. Although an outsider from north of the Mason-Dixon Line, at a time when that mattered much more than it does today, Harrison loved her city as fiercely as any native, and Norfolk, in time, came to love her back.

Harrison’s civic conscience became apparent during the Jim Crow era. She allied herself with the civil rights movement, campaigning door to door in her Larchmont neighborhood against Massive Resistance to Brown v. Board of Education, when Norfolk closed its public schools rather than integrate them. These were difficult years. Her advocacy required courage. She never wavered. Nor did her husband, on whose constant support, support courageous in its own right, she relied more on than many people understood. She saw what was right, and advocated with conviction for what was right, and prevailed. Thus, was established a major theme of her life, a theme that influenced everything that followed.

Asked her occupation, Harrison liked to answer, “professional volunteer.” That was a characteristically modest description of one of the broadest civic careers Norfolk has ever known. She gave her energy to causes ranging from the arts and education, to day care for working mothers, to equal rights for women, to interfaith understanding, serving variously with the Women’s American ORT, the Greater Norfolk Corporation, the Norfolk Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the President’s Advisory Council of Old Dominion University, the Board of Trustees of Norfolk State University, the Regional Hospice Council of Tidewater, the Virginia Alliance for Arts Education and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which honored her with its Brotherhood Award in 1978.

Her most enduring gift to the Commonwealth began in 1974, when the daughter of a concert pianist and an opera-loving tenor organized the Virginia Opera Association and became its founding chair. That first season consisted of two productions at the Norfolk Center Theater, a largely abandoned WPA-era arena in Ghent. From that modest beginning grew one of the most important and successful cultural institutions in the Commonwealth, an institution that brought national recognition to Norfolk for the quality of its performances. In 1994, the General Assembly designated Virginia Opera the Official Opera Company of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Harrison led a campaign that raised some $10 million, an unheard-of amount at the time, to transform the Center Theater into an architecturally significant modern opera house. The facility was named the Edythe C. and Stanley L. Harrison Opera House, in honor of her and her husband’s contributions to the cultural life of the city, and remains the home of the company she founded. In 1979, in recognition of her leadership, President Jimmy Carter appointed Harrison to the Advisory Committee on the Arts of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

In 1979, Harrison sought and won election as a Democrat to represent Norfolk in the Virginia House of Delegates, taking office in January 1980. She served on committees concerned with the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, conservation, and natural resources, education, interstate cooperation, and labor and commerce. She championed the cause of women’s medical rights, fighting for legislation requiring physicians to obtain informed consent from women with cancer before performing mastectomies. Redistricting brought her House career to a close after a narrowly decided 1982 primary, but she was far from finished. In 1984, Harrison won the Democratic nomination to run for election representing Virginia in the United States Senate. She became the first woman ever to seek statewide office in the Commonwealth. In a difficult year for Democrats, she won more than a million votes, all across the state. Her campaign opened a door that to women had been forever closed, and she is remembered as a prominent member of a pioneering generation of women in Virginia statewide politics.

She loved teaching what she had learned. She founded the Women’s Studies Department at Old Dominion University and became its first chair. Among the courses that she taught was one titled, Women in Leadership. Her papers, including those documenting her political life and her 1984 campaign, are preserved in the University’s Special Collections and Archives. In 2010, the Library of Virginia included her as one of Virginia’s Woman in History, recognizing her contributions to the Commonwealth in both civic life and the arts.

Arts founder, volunteer, legislator, advocate for women, educator, candidate: to those who knew her, those were never separate careers. They were different expressions of a single conviction – to do what was right, to advocate for what was right, to have, as she often repeated, “the courage of your convictions.” She advocated with warmth, humor and the fearless self-confidence with which her parents had imbued her. She knew that a community is only as good as what its citizens are willing to make of it.

Harrison was preceded in death by her beloved husband, Stanley. She is survived by her son Tim (Caroline), her daughters, Jody (Martin) and Julie, her grandchildren Leila, Sharla (Dan), Noah, Tim, Alice, Aliza and Josh, her great-grandchild Caroline, and her brother, Dr. Victor Robert Colton.

A graveside service took place at Forest Lawn Cemetery, followed by a memorial service Ohef Sholom Temple. The family suggests memorial gifts to Women’s American ORT and the Cleveland Clinic, Florida, or to a charity of the donor’s choosing.