Former Georgia Governor Carl E. Sanders, Sr., a statesman, businessman and philanthropist, champion of education and better government, died Sunday. He was 89.

As a young man, Sanders gave up his role as a quarterback at UGA to go off to fight a war, now nearly 70 years gone. He learned to fly a bomber, which he named in honor of his home state. He dated a Hollywood starlet. He became a lawyer, then a lawmaker, then a governor — all by the age of 37 — then went on to become a leading business figure.

As a state representative, Sanders beat a segregationist political machine, bringing a moderate Democrat’s voice and vision to Atlanta. As a state senator, he urged then-Gov. Ernest Vandiver to desegregate Georgia’s public schools. As a governor, he oversaw a period of unprecedented growth, underscored by the growing demands of an increasingly urbanized state. Schools and airports flourished during his tenure. Big-time sports — the Atlanta Braves and Falcons — came to Atlanta while he was in office.

As a businessman, he and two partners took about $300 and launched a law firm that now employs about 600 attorneys and has offices from Atlanta to Hong Kong.

Sanders spent his final working years looking at the Atlanta skyline from his 52nd-floor office.

“Georgia is a different place today,” Sanders said in a 2006 interview, when he was nearing 81. “In some ways, it’s better; in some ways, it’s not. It’s certainly bigger.”

Georgia, better and worse, owes much to Sanders.

A reformer, Sanders helped bring a progressive government to Georgia, which had been dominated by lawmakers from rural areas. He sought to create a New South.

Sanders was born May 15, 1925, in Augusta, the eldest of two sons. His father, Carl T. Sanders, was a salesman and later a member of the Richmond County Commission. His mother, Roberta Sanders, worked at a dime store.

In 1954, Sanders ran for the state House against a candidate from the Cracker Party, a segregationist organization that controlled most of the political machinations in Augusta and Richmond County. Recalling the victory, five decades later, still pleased him.

In 1956, he was elected to the first of three terms in the state Senate, representing Richmond, Glascock and Jefferson counties. There, he caught the eye of Vandiver, then the lieutenant governor.

Vandiver assumed the governorship in 1959, and Sanders became his floor leader, then the Senate’s president pro tem.

In 1961, another lawmaker — Zell Miller — joined Sanders in the Senate, and was immediately impressed by the Augusta legislator.

In 1959, a federal judge had ordered the Atlanta Board of Education to submit a desegregation plan. A statewide commission also recommended the repeal of segregation laws as a “local option.” Georgia, like other Southern states, was in turmoil.

Vandiver called 60 advisers to the Governor’s Mansion to discuss the state’s options. Desegregate, per court order, or close? Fifty-eight, according to historic accounts, urged the governor to defy the government and close schools. Two — House Floor Leader Frank Twitty and Sanders — recommended desegregation.

Vandiver listened to the minority, shutting schools long enough to allow a special legislative session, during which lawmakers amended segregation laws.

Those were anxious days. Martin Luther King Jr. had been sentenced to jail for attempting to desegregate public buildings in Albany. Former Gov. Griffin, an ardent segregationist, was running again in the Democratic primary. The issue of race was an undercurrent never far from the surface.

Sanders easily won the 1962 primary, and the general election. He was 37.

Sanders, recalled Miller, was young, but decisive. He “was the last governor to so totally dominate the Legislature.”

The Sanders administration built 6,000 classrooms, hired 10,000 new teachers and raised annual teacher salaries by an average of almost $1,500 — no mean amount of cash four decades ago. He increased the state’s income from $445 million to $617 million. He also got lawmakers to increase the tax on alcohol and tobacco. When he left office, the state had a $140 million surplus.

He appointed a Governor’s Commission for Efficiency and Improvement in Government. The panel oversaw reforms in the state’s prisons, mental health, merit system and highway department, now the Department of Transportation.

Sanders recalled getting a 1963 telephone call from Pete Rozelle, then the commissioner of the National Football League, who told the governor he wanted to establish a new franchise in Atlanta. Sanders called a college buddy, Rankin Smith, and asked him if he’d be interested. Smith said yes, and the Falcons landed in Atlanta.

Baseball, too, flourished; the Milwaukee Braves became the Atlanta Braves during Sanders’ tenure.

Bill Shipp, a longtime political writer, editor and television commentator, said he considered Sanders the best governor to serve during his lifetime.

In 1970, he ran for governor again. His opponent: Jimmy Carter of Plains.

The Democratic primary was not a polite one, with Carter portraying Sanders as a big-city type beholden to urban interests. He called himself a conservative Democrat — Sanders, a liberal. The tactics worked. Carter won the primary and general election, which helped spring him to the Oval Office in 1976.

That 1970 campaign, Sanders admitted, never lost its sting. “He (Carter) is not proud of that election, and he shouldn’t be proud of it,” Sanders said.

Carter declined to comment for this article.