Oral history interview with Jane Tucker Mitchell, 2004,[text/print transcript]

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PATRICIA FAIRFIELD-ARTMAN ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Jane Tucker Mitchell
INTERVIEWER: Patricia Fairfield-Artman
DATE: August 18, 2004
[Begin CD 1]
PFA: This is a narrative being conducted with Dr. Jane Mitchell on Thursday, August 18, 2004.
Okay, Dr. Mitchell, the only basic question I have to ask you is: Tell me the story of your life?
JTM: Well. [chuckles]
PFA: I know it! [chuckles]
JTM: Well, I guess the first, knowing what your study is, the first thing that comes to mind is my story speaking about my educational background. I know other things will probably come out, but that's what I'm thinking of first—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I guess, primarily, I think of my family mainly my Mother, who stressed education so much—in fact, it was stressed greatly in our family because that was something that couldn't be taken away from you—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I guess too, the fact that they went through the [Great] Depression. You know that was a big influence in their lives always—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —I can, I can't imagine, you know, what they went through. I know my father lost—he was in a grocery company in Lynchburg, Virginia with, two or three other men, the Big Four Grocery. And that went under and so they, they were much influenced by the Depression and as a result we heard about it, you know—
PFA: Yes.
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JTM: —so I recall Mother saying, you know, "Watch your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves." You know?
PFA: Yes.
JTM: My brothers who got to say that they ate something called, I don't remember this. But they talked about some kind of gravy, you know, and it was get the drippings from the meat, I suppose to give you some sort of meat flavor—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —on biscuits or something—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —so they laugh about that, you know.
PFA: [chuckles]
JTM: And so they were older, so they actually remember part of it, the hard times—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so education was important and my, my parents then went to West Virginia and started operating at first a small hotel that I don't know. They lost—the owners and the bank had taken it over and so they were looking for somebody to run it and so they came and operated it initially and finally bought it. So I grew up in a hotel—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —we lived in a hotel, you know. We had private quarters but, you know, you were used to; accustomed to people around all the time. And so my brothers, by the time we went to West Virginia were—I started school there, so I went when I was about four or five and they were already one ten, one eight years old so they were already up in school and Mother used to talk about when my children go to college. And she said her family, behind her back, laughed because, you know, times were so hard, how were they ever going to have enough money to send them to school. My older brother went to; they were politically active in the Democratic Party, FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt]—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and so he got an appointment to [the United States Naval Academy in] Annapolis and he went to Annapolis and then the other brother went to the Marine Academy and then got out and went to VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University] to finish his studies. And then by the time I came along, you know, the war was a wonderful thing, the 3
Second World War for everybody.
PFA: Yes
JTM: It brought people out of the Depression and all of a sudden it was—Nobody laughed when you, they were going to send me to a girls' school back in Virginia—
[laughter]
JTM: —it was just near impossible. So I went Mary Baldwin in Staunton, Virginia—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and a lot of the girls there did the same thing that Woman's College did here. That is the state universities would not take them as freshmen and so they came to a finishing schools is that they called them—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —for two years and then they would make a transfer to the university where they would meet their husband and lead a wonderful life supposedly—
PFA: [chuckles]
JTM: —but any way, I loved Mary Baldwin and coming from a small town in West Virginia, I did not, and Mother never thought, she came from Virginia and she never thought West Virginia University was anything great.
[laughter]
JTM: I didn't—I never considered going to West Virginia University, that was not a dream and I liked the smallness of Mary Baldwin and well, I just made a niche for myself there and stayed all four years—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —and so I liked—I wouldn't have minded if my granddaughter had gone there but she was not interested in that, that sort of experience—
PFA: Yes.
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JTM: —and I wouldn't have cared if she'd had gone here in fact I had her come to that John Young Summer Camp for Children—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —a couple of years thinking that she might get to like the place but she had other
aspirations, so that didn't happen. I would have liked that—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so that is where I did my undergraduate work. And then I had a friend from West Virginia and she'd gone to Randolph Macon in Virginia and we wanted to go to graduate school together. So she's in math and I was in French so we looked around and we decided we'd go to McGill [University] for a year in Canada and so we did that—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and that was quite a jump for me and was for her too somewhat. But she met her husband there. That's a whole other story that I won't go into and I only stayed one year. I didn't get my, the major professor told me that if I wanted to get my master's, that I would have to go to France that summer—I needed the extra fluency that being in the country would give me. So that didn't seem feasible and I had met my husband that winter—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —so my husband-to-be wasn't and so I didn't want to go to France. And so I came back to George Washington [University] and did it in a year—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —without going to France—
PFA: Wow! Yes.
[laughter]
JTM: —and so then I taught in Roanoke to be near my husband then who was at VPI—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: So the next experience was going home, back to West Virginia, and teaching in Greenbrier College for Women. It was two years high school, two years college—
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PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I stayed there what, just two years and then was looking, was looking. I didn't know what I was after but I actually joined an agency, you know, to find me a teaching job—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —I guess they still do that. I know they do it for deans a lot—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —contact an agency for—But anyway, and this demonstration school, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, oh, actually it was Woman's College then came up. And I came down for an interview and was hired. So I really thought, well, I had only stayed year [at] my first place and two years [at] my second. I really ought to stay at least three years, you know, just to prove I have a little—
[laughter]
JTM: —you know, staying power. And—
PFA: Do you remember the year?
JTM: Yeah, '58.
PFA: '58.
JTM: Yeah. The rest of my life—
PFA: I'll be darned.
JTM: —was here. I don't, it seemed like home. Everybody in the Curry School and the School of Education see that was a wonderful experience. I talk to people now who didn't have it.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: The education professors [would say], "Oh, that would be wonderful." Because right within the building, you know, you've got all these classes where your students could observe. We used to think—We renovated the building, the Curry School, once—the Curry Building once while the Curry School was still there and came back and you made a lot of these two-way mirror situations— 6
PFA: Ah!
JTM: —so that the education classes could be in here and we could watch the whole class without being in there physically and disturbing. All though the students were so accustomed to, you know, coming and going. They had student teachers almost every semester in every class on a high school level—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and they had so many teachers who came to teach art or music or business or, you know, from the university—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —there were shared professorships and part of their job was to come and do classes in the Curry School.
PFA: Oh, okay.
JTM: So the students would—especially the student teachers, they'd give them a really hard time because they, they knew all the tricks they played on them.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: So—But what I remember about Woman's College in those days, [clears throat] was a different, certainly a huge difference between then and then when I retired. They would come to teach two classes a day. See, your student teaching experience was, was were two classes—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so they would come and I can see them now: They would wear socks and you know, flats to classes and then they would run over to teach their two classes at Curry. And see, they would have a little bag and they would go in the ladies' room and take off their socks and shoes and put on hose and heels—
PFA: [chuckles]
JTM: —you know, to give them some status, some height—
PFA: [laughs]
JTM: —and so they were—I've often said and, you know, this probably isn't fair but the very beginning, back in '58, '59, '60, compared to more recently— 7
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —they were better prepared—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and there's just no denying it. For example, one of the last years I taught and I retired in '96. One of the last years I taught, I remember being in methods class and there was one girl, and these were seniors. There was one girl in there who I think was a straight A student and I was trying to do some sort to give an example of how to teach reading in a foreign language class—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I said, "Well, let's take a book maybe you all have read and I started with, you know, I went down a whole list, ten things that I thought maybe everybody would have read and she finally held up her hand, she says, "You know, I don' t think I've ever read a whole book, whole book." And I said, "Well, that should be rectified immediately." [chuckles] You know, go out and read a whole book. Nothing as ambitious as even Gone with the Wind, but get, get, something and read the whole thing, so I—just as an example. It's hard to think that they have any, any real points of reference, even in their major field, even say in Spanish, they hadn't read the whole anything.
PFA: Wow!
JTM: Which is sad.
PFA: Yeah, yeah.
JTM: Just academically, that sort of example. And later years, I can remember some of the fellows saying, "Well, you know, we've done all the work out there in this classroom. We ought to be paid not the cooperating teachers." Because we did pay them—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —I guess we still do. Don't we?
PFA: I don't know, I don't know, I'm not sure.
JTM: Anyway. So that was my experience. I came to teach in '58 in the Curry School. I taught two classes of French, two classes of Spanish and the methods for student teachers. And they did a lot of their observing in the Curry School. Almost none unless they wanted to. It was not a requirement in the public schools.
PFA: Yes, yes. 8
JTM: And—and then as many as we could, we placed in the Curry School for their student teaching.
PFA: Yes, okay.
JTM: So through the years, you know, as we got more and more, that just was not possible—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: Sharon [Dr. Mitchell's dog] is leaving us. So we started, well, Curry School closed in '69.
PFA: Oh, right, yeah.
JTM: —and I had already talked to Dean [Robert] O'Kane. I had a Fulbright [fellowship] in '64/'65 and when I came back, I decided that I would continue my study of French.
PFA: Did you go to France for your Fulbright?
JTM: Yes.
PFA: Okay.
JTM: And I had a summer one in '61 and that was for all French teachers.
PFA: Okay.
JTM: And then I had another one for a research project in '64/'65—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: So I came back and I thought, "Well, I'll continue my French studies." And so I went to Chapel Hill for the summer in '66. You know, it's—They didn't encourage your coming to take classes. You had to, you could come maybe one summer but then you had to declare a degree.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: So before I knew it I—there I was. I guess I was signed up for a PhD. So after a couple of summers down there I remember talking to Dean O'Kane—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I said, you know, "What are the chances of my getting—?" Because when we came here to Curry School, we were instructors—
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PFA: Okay.
JTM: —at the university—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: Although I think some of the elementary teachers, some of the—mainly the elementary. I think they were—Because Curry School received some of, because of the number of students they took some allotment from the state, some were paid by the state, some were paid by the university. Anyway, where was I, instructor?
PFA: Came back from—
JTM: —came back and talked to O'Kane. And I said, "What are the chances of my getting a leave of absence?" And he said, "Well, I don't think there's going to be anything for you when you come back." Because Curry School was not going to be there.
PFA: Oh, that’s right.
JTM: He said, "Except the methods." He said we'd love to have you part-time. He says, "Why don't you contact George McSpadden over at Romance languages to see if he can use you part-time?" Well, that had never occurred to me. So the year that I was at Chapel Hill, which must have been '68/’69 that is what I did. I just wrote George McSpadden, whom I knew of course, and he— [laughs] I didn't have to come for an interview or go through any of that arduous process and the next year I had a contract for two classes in Romance languages and two in education. And the two in education would be the methods and supervising student teachers—
PFA: I'll be darned.
JTM: —and I kept that the rest of the time—
PFA: Really?
JTM: Yes.
PFA: Interesting.
JTM: In fact, I believe Dave Olson told me once, in Arts and Sciences, when I came up for promotion, he said, "Did you know that you're the only person holding two lines?" You
know, joint appointment. And I had a half of line in Romance languages and half a line in education so that was my claim to fame.
PFA: [laughs]
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JTM: But you know, I told one of my doctoral students, Marian Redmon(?) [clears throat]
started with the same position at Wake Forest, French and education. And she commutes also from Greensboro to Winston so she just, she just kept it up for a few years and she just said, "I just can't, I'm going to have to drop French, I just can't, it's too much."
PFA: Yes.
JTM: So I've told others this and I do think it's somewhat true: you really are giving three-fourths and three-fourths—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and, and I did not try to go to all of the meetings that would be involved because that would be, the little meetings in the Department for Romance Language and the little meetings in the department of which was pedagogy studies for so long—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —curriculum instruction. And the School of Education faculty and the College of Arts and Sciences faculty and the, you know, the University Faculty Council. I couldn't do it all so I ended up doing all of the little, the little, because you have to—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —the running of your classes and—
PFA: Oh, yeah.
JTM: —and the minutiae that you have to deal in each of those. You had to do that—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so but I would go to School of Education faculty meetings because that had really been home base and I identified more with them. That's where my main office was—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —although when Herb Gochberg came on as chair of Romance language, he said, "You know, you really need an office over here too." So I shared an office over at Romance and I had two offices now, all the rest of the time. You really have, you begin to feel split and people don't, I guess mainly my home office was education but, even if they
couldn't find me there, I'd be in Romance language, so you didn't—Anyway—
PFA: Yes. 11
JTM: —I'm not sure I'd do it again and yet, even though my degree had been in Romance languages, I think most of my research had to do with pedagogy.
PFA: Interesting.
JTM: I had applied to this doctorate in the teaching of languages at Ohio State and I think it was Allen, was the name of the man who was running that program at that time and he said, "You're just the kind of candidate that we're looking for." But I had a son—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —and I was a single mother at that point. And I didn't—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —I didn't want to go that far off. As it was in Chapel Hill, I could come home every weekend.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: I remember sometimes in the week coming home if he had a band concert or something like that. My mother moved from West Virginia here.
PFA: So that you could go to school?
JTM: Yeah.
PFA: That's amazing. That's wonderful.
JTM: —so, as I said, education was important in the family. It was stressed and, you know, these students who would drop out and sort of find out what they wanted. I never considered that an option, you know. It was a privilege to be able to go to college and even though some of the science and math classes, I wasn't, you know, didn't excel in or was not fond of, it never occurred to me that I would not, you know, finish in four years.
PFA: Yes.
[laughter]
JTM: It was just a given, wasn't it?
PFA: Absolutely! Yeah!
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JTM: No, but back to Woman's College: What were the pluses about Woman's College? I said
academically. I remember why did he come here. Governor [James] Hunt came for, it could have been the installation of a new chancellor. But any way he came to speak in Aycock [Auditorium] and he said he learned what a wonderful institution Woman's College was at his mother's knee because she had come here.
[laughter]
PFA: Oh!
JTM: And I heard once that in the early years of Woman's College, that the, without sounding elitist, but the best families in North Carolina and somewhat throughout the South, sent their daughters to Woman's College.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I know my own cousin, who grew up in Tabor City, North Carolina, came here for two years before going to Chapel Hill. I think social work was her field. We didn't have social work then.
PFA: Yes, yes.
JTM: I said early on that I thought that some of the friendships that formed and some of the early really strong women influences here were in HPERD [School of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance]. I remember feeling their, their strength, their—their leadership on campus. Well, Ethel Martus who was the dean or head of that department used to, if there were things pending in Raleigh before the legislature that affected Woman's College and especially physical education, she got in her car and drove down and lobbied.
PFA: Oh my!
[laughter]
JTM: So—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —and I remember having a really strong freshman French student. I think she placed out at the beginning and she was in the intermediate [class] and I asked her something about herself, her program, how she learned to study so well, you know? 13
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —her background. And she says, you know, before we enter as freshmen, and she knew she was going to be in HPERD, she said you know they meet with us. See, they had this continuum thing going. They started with them almost as soon as they made application and would start meeting with them and advising them carefully and they kept up with them after graduation. So they do—they had this line, string of, of, of association, of excellence!
PFA: Yes.
JTM: Celeste Ulrich [Class of 1946, physical education professor] is a perfect example—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —I mean, she was on the faculty then—
PFA: Rosemary [McGee]?
JTM: Rosemary knew early on here. In fact, she and June, did she speak at all of June Galloway, I wonder. June—I knew Rosemary maybe through June, but June was what was she working on a degree over in HPERD? And she came over to be the physical education instructor in the Curry School. In fact, she's the one who really was so instrumental in designing the Park Gym that they just tore down.
PFA: Oh wow!
JTM: I mean I remember when that thing was first done. She wouldn't let you walk on that gym floor—
PFA: [laughs]
JTM: —she used to make you take off your shoes to walk on it. But I, June and Rosemary were friends. In fact, I believe they shared an apartment near me over here on College—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —one of those apartments on Walker [Avenue], College Park or College Park—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —anyway, they lived up the hill from me—
PFA: Oh, wow!
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JTM: —so we had dinners and go to Broadway shows over at the [Greensboro] Coliseum.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: That's why I still keep up with Rosemary because even though through the years, you know, she was doing work over [unclear]. She used to do administrative work over [at] HPERD. And I was running between McIver [Building] and School of Education.
PFA: And Curry.
[laughter]
JTM: Every now and then we would get together. We were always glad to be together. I guess I've seen her a little bit more since we've retired and, you know, we email.
PFA: Do you go to the—did you go to the cafeteria that's over at—?
JTM: Over in [the] Home Economics [Building]?
PFA: Yes.
JTM: Of course! And they a meeting room over there so if you had a committee meeting you could get your lunch and meet over lunch—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and then if you went over there and you just were by yourself you'd just sit with someone and, you know. Oh, it was a wonderful meeting place and of course, there was the Dogwood Room in the Elliott Center that people used to go to.
PFA: I remember that.
JTM: I don't remember that, you know, I ate more in the Home Economics Cafeteria. I used to eat with Dot Darnell.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and always called Dot if you were, any problems in [Academic] Advising and little naughty issues that I had to work at, which she always knew—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —always. 15
PFA: Yes.
JTM: But we, we did that, you know, before computers, BC. [laughs]
PFA: Yeah, that's true.
JTM: We would just call and I'd say, well, and I can always remember when I was dealing with somebody else about—in Academic Advising or somewhere and they said, "Well, would you put that in writing?" You never had to do that with Dot. And we understood that, she had told me this and I said to Dot I was going to write that in the student's folder. [unclear] and she said she would.
[laughter]
JTM: So solved things, you know, like that over the phone.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: It was smaller. I was talking with a graduate the other day who keeps in touch. And she had her, her undergraduate degree from Woman's College and then, I guess her master's would have been from the university—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and she said, "Did you read in the paper that the freshman class is 2,231?" She says, "I don't know that the student body was a whole lot bigger than that."
PFA: Yes.
JTM: When I came, I think it was considered one of the largest woman's colleges in the South or in the Southeast. There were around 2,000 students—
PFA: Wow!
JTM: —that was it.
PFA: Wow!
JTM: So you can be intimate, yeah. You didn't have to have everything in writing—
PFA: Yeah, yeah, that's more—
JTM: —we have created a lot of paperwork in the later years. 16
PFA: Yes, absolutely.
JTM: But I loved being able to, I can remember—you're not going believe this, but some of the happiest days would be on those long days of, of advising and you would see a student like every fifteen or twenty minutes or half an hour. [clears throat] And I would call Dot, I loved to be able to work out all these little problems with each— each student, you know, comes with different set of problems.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I think we took our advising a little more seriously then too. Now the faculty will opt out of it or well, what we've come to now is we have these advising centers—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —College of Arts and Sciences—
PFA: Yes—
JTM: —and—
PFA: —business, the Bryan School.
JTM: Yeah, yeah. And even in education, I know Toni does a lot of the advising for the teaching fellows and we would do a lot of group-advising—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —you know—It was just, it was so satisfying. I remember once toward the, well, about ten years before I retired and I had one of those days and Toni Knight [director of Student Advising and Recruitment Center] came in my office on her way home and said, you know, I'm valuable but this university may not be aware of that. I said, "You know, I know a lot and I know how to get through these, you know—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —these issues, these thorny issues."
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: And not that I was, that I was back passing anything that needed to be done and when my successor came on board, I helped her with—She, she just didn't seem to be able to grasp, you know, all these folders for licensure that came in because they're all different.
PFA: Yes. 17
JTM: They're all lacking in certain things and they need certain other things and have to meet the state requirement. And so I would go over and help her and she kept calling and finally I went over and said, "Listen, you are the final say on who needs what for admission to a foreign language licensure product so get that in your head. If they have, they have to meet these state requirements but you can say what counts."
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and I don't think, I'm not sure she ever got that. She didn't apply for tenure—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so I'm not sure she ever, you know, totally—There was a little fear there that she would do something wrong or something.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: I said, "You are the final say on what, what this student must have to get licensure." So well, there were lots of changes. But I was trying to think—
PFA: What I'm asking when the males came in, did the men—?
JTM: —well, you know that Clarence Shipton taught science in the Curry School. I think he was there when I came. But he—a lot of teachers in the Curry School had master's. They all had master's. A lot of them back then got doctorates. Well, you know—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —while I was. And I think Clarence was—I don't know if he finished it, but I know he
did doctoral studies and they tapped him and we called him dean of man—
[laughter]
JTM: —that first year. You know, the first year, he didn’t have any men. And remember, that this, this had been a woman's college or teachers' college for so long that, you know, men didn't want to come here. It had that sort of aura. But it seemed to pass pretty quickly.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: Where I might have had one or two males in the class, you know, it began to seem okay to have five. Even half and half toward the end.
PFA: Wow! 18
JTM: Yes.
PFA: Did it feel, did it seem different, the environment once with the student body that was there, once males starting to come on campus?
JTM: See, I wasn't as involved with the campus life type things. I think there probably it was more oblivious.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and have we had a female president of the Student Government since they came on? I don't know. For a long time, we didn't—
PFA: Right.
JTM: —and see, that was one of the pluses for Woman's College, I think, that is women learned leadership roles and they—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: You can talk to Adelaide Holderness [Class of 1934, member of the Board of Trustees, president of the Alumnae Association] about that. I'm sure she'll remember.
PFA: I will.
JTM: I hope you will talk to them. I think it's Emily Herring Wilson [Class of 1961, writer, member of the Alumni Association Board of Trustees] now that I think about it.
PFA: Okay, I'll look it up
JTM: But they were strong women!
PFA: Yes, yeah.
JTM: And I, I—within the classes, yes. If you asked a question, I think the males did speak out first, were less, less intimating, less reticent. Although that would be true in education—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —not so true in language.
PFA: Interesting.
JTM: Yeah. If you have a good male student in foreign language, he'd either be really good, otherwise, they just sort of suffer through it. 19
PFA: Yes.
JTM: They're not, many, many are not drawn to languages. There again, see, when I was at Mary Baldwin, I think, well, I knew I would major in language when I went. I had Latin and French in high school and I did well in languages, French is the one that I started with—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —in college. And I remember Mother saying to me, "Well, you know, young ladies major in music and languages."
[laughter]
JTM: Now this from a mother who was running and operating a hotel and doing a lot of the work. You know, if the people, if the people didn't show up, made up beds and the chef couldn't come, she finally learned and would to pitch in. You know, so—
PFA: Yeah!
JTM: —she would, and if the furnace needed stoking, she'd stoke it and she was a doer—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —a real and yet her daughter, a lady, was—you know, and so I wondered sometimes how
she got so smart. This was later, of course—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —because she had gone—finished high school in Lynchburg, Virginia, Carter Glass High School in which she had geometry, trigonometry, and even some calculus.
PFA: Oh, my goodness!
JTM: She even had four years of Latin and that was a wonderful and then one year at Farmville [State] Teachers College—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —which was Longwood, Longwood [College, formerly Farmville State Teachers College].
PFA: Longwood, I think it is, yeah. 20
JTM: Anyway, that's what she had and so, some, at the end of freshman year when I was sort of planning what I was going to do, sophomore year in college. She said, "Well, you know, she's going to major in languages, don't you think you should start a second one now like Spanish." Well, I just don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had Spanish and I have needed it my whole life. It has meant, I can't tell you what it's meant to me. So I started Spanish in summer school and took it all three years. When I was doing my master's at George Washington [University]. I remember sitting on the park bench with Merle Proxman(?), he was my advisor and he was also Jackie Kennedy's, Jackie, what was her name again? Jackie?
PFA: Bou—Boul—
JTM: Bouvier.
PFA: Bouvier.
JTM: Jackie Bouvier. He was her, for her, she did French too.
PFA: I'll be darned.
JTM: So anyway, we're sitting on the bench on the grounds of George Washington and he said it was towards the end—I'd accepted a teaching job in Roanoke [Virginia] the following year so I was getting out of Washington. And he said, "Well, you've done this and you've done this and you've done this and you've done reading knowledge in Spanish." And I said, "What?" I hadn't—
PFA: Oh, my goodness!
JTM: —so I, before I left Washington, I had to sign up and had to do the reading. But see, I had enough background in Spanish that that didn't floor me so—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: And then when I came down here, it was two classes of French and two of Spanish.
Actually, at Greenbrier College for Women, I didn't teach any French at first. I taught English and Spanish.
PFA: Spanish.
JTM: And see, that was difficult because there were a lot of students from Latin American countries who came to Greenbrier College for Women and for Greenbrier Military School in same town.
PFA: I see.
21
JTM: And I thought, "Oh my gosh, native speakers, that is new experience."
[laughter]
JTM: I was thinking, "They can rattle it off better than I can."
PFA: And this was the '60s, '50s?
JTM: Early '60s, no, that was '50s! Before I came here.
PFA: Right, wow! That's amazing.
JTM: Middle '50s, yes, yes.
PFA: That's amazing.
JTM: And so I thought well, it didn't take me long to see that they might rattle it off but they didn't know any grammar. So boy, did I hit the grammar hard!
PFA: Good for you, yeah.
JTM: And it's amazing that my mother knew so much, isn't it? She knew, she knew that I
needed, you know I need a second language.
PFA: Wise.
JTM: I actually started with German before I left Mary Baldwin and that was nice because I had Miss Fanning(?) who had gone to Mary Baldwin and stayed on the faculty and taught German for years.
PFA: I'll be darned.
JTM: They did that everywhere.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: And before I left there, I never followed this advice, but before I left there, they, oh, Dr. Taylor, who was, she was faculty marshal or something, had talked to all the seniors about how important it was for us to belong to the American Association of University Women. There were organizations wherever we went.
PFA: Yes.
22
JTM: I think I was active in that in West Virginia. When I went back, but never anywhere else.
PFA: Yeah. Who was chancellor when you came?
JTM: Oh, [Gordon W.] Blackwell.
PFA: Okay.
JTM: Who left here and went to Furman [University].
PFA: Okay.
JTM: I think stayed there and then are you going to ask me to remember all the chancellors?
PFA: Some of them—
JTM: Well, actually I remember—I don't remember the name, but he just died not too long ago. Scott, his son and my son were friends and since there was no, you know, where the chancellor's home was.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: You see there were no children for Scott to play with so Gloria would always have one of the boys from class stay after school for a while to play with Scott—
PFA: Oh!
JTM: —so I used to pick him up down there at 5:00, 5:30 and then [laughs] I still can't remember his last name.
PFA: Was it [Otis] Singletary?
JTM: Yes, it was.
PFA: It was Singletary. Yes, many people remember him—
JTM: [James] Ferguson followed. Actually, Ferguson worked with him and then he took over and [Mereb] Mossman.
PFA: Right, yeah.
JTM: Well, Mossman was never chancellor or did she act as chancellor one year maybe but anyway she was—
PFA: She was quite a force. 23
JTM: She was. What was her title when I came? I can remember where her office was—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —there in Foust [Building] as you came in the front door, just to the right.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: It was dean. We referred to her as Dean Mossman. And when I came for an interview—
I had an interview with her. And she said an interesting thing to me because this was August and see, classes were just starting. We didn’t start as early then.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: And there we would be starting in a couple of weeks so I had two weeks, two or three, to move, let my college know there that I wasn't coming. And I said the only thing that concerns me is that short notice to the institution that I was with and she says, "I have learned that institutions can give a lot easier than individuals."
PFA: Yes, wow!
JTM: Not that the was—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —not that that was decisive in my making the move but I'm glad I made the move. I'm glad I came here. I'm less glad that I did the joint appointment. I'm not sure if it were, if it were to be done over, if I would do that.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: And yet, my, since all my degrees were in Romance language and not in education and since what I seem to like to do by way of research was in the pedagogy. I got that from coming to the Curry School demonstration school—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so [sighs] I realized what I, you know, how that formed me—
PFA: Oh, yeah.
JTM: —being in the demonstration school. So had I been over totally in Romance language, I probably would have had a less, a less broad view—
PFA: Yes. 24
JTM: —at least in education—
PFA: Yeah, yeah.
JTM: So, I guess I'm grateful for that.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I wish every teacher, at some point, could have the experience in a demonstration school.
PFA: What does, what was, what was special about that?
JTM: It was small.
PFA: Okay.
JTM: Well, it was small. I guess the high school maybe had a 100—
PFA: Oh, wow!
JTM: —and yeah, they kept the elementary classes between twenty and twenty-five. They had all these special people coming in. Birdie Holloway would come in to teach voice, music. Barbara Bear later came in to do that—special arts, special, you know. And they could have speakers come and talk on anything that they needed from science anywhere.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: And teachers had to keep on their toes because they had observers all the time.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: But in the high school level, we knew the students. We all went for lunch to the Boar & Castle. I mean, I learned that from [Elizabeth Ann] Lib Boyles [Class of 1950, professor, and author of Good Beginning: The First Four Decades of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] who did this book. She said, she says, "We're going to the Boar & Castle. Don't you want to come?" Sometimes students would come with us.
PFA: So there's a connection between the faculty and students?
JTM: Oh, yes. Well, now Lib and I, Lib started this. She, she thought we ought to have our student teachers to make them feel more part of the faculty, you know—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —or to make them feel more faculty— 25
PFA: Yes, yes.
JTM: —not student. We'd take them out to dinner and get to know them on a social level. So we would either have them for dinner in our homes, one of us. I would have hers and we'd have all four student teachers in or we'd take them out. We might do that a couple of times during a semester.
PFA: Yes, that's nice.
JTM: And so you got to know the student teachers.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I remember seeing one, one student teacher, some years later. She, she had left teaching and was in the travel line and I saw her out in one of the restaurants. She's from Eden, [North Carolina] and she said, I said, "Oh, I'm so glad to see you. It's been a while, etc." She said, "You know, I deserved an A!"
[laughter]
JTM: I said, "Well, Connie, as I look back, you're probably right."
[laughter]
JTM: "You're probably right." You know, it was hard to give grades on teaching. Because you had to grade how they did with discipline, how well they knew the subject matter, how well they prepared of course. See, that's another thing: In those early years, when this Connie was one of them, they knew how to prepare. I mean, they knew that you didn't come in and try to ad-lib through a class with somebody observing you all the time.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: And in later years, this when we were placing student teachers out in the public schools and I went to observe on girl. I let her know I was coming and she said, "I can't do this today." No, I think she did the class. And I said, "Well, can I see your lesson plan?" She said, "Well, I don't have one." She said, "I don't know how." I said, "That is the poorest excuse I've ever heard!" I said, "Not only did we go over that in the methods class and you did a lesson plan." I said, "You're with a cooperating teacher who would advise you or work with you and that's what she's supposed to be doing. "And I said "You know, you're either going to have to start planning—
26
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —or drop." And I've had student teachers drop. One at Grimsley [Senior High School], dropped. She was, this was, I wonder if this was [unclear] way back or just shortly after. But anyway, she had on one of these dresses that was sort of split up somewhat and high on the side. And I could see the top of her hose—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and after class and she'd walk up and I noticed some of the fellows were looking and I pulled her out in the hall and said, "You know, what you're wearing is not appropriate." And she said, "Oh, I don't like this, I quit!"
[laughter]
PFA: Oh, my goodness!
JTM: So several I had to advise not to teach that it wasn't for them. Others made the choice for themselves.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: And that's another reason that we changed so that we had all of these pre-student teaching experiences so that they would have enough experience ahead of time so that they could decide, "Do I really want to do this?" Student teaching got to be twelve hours credit—
PFA: Yes
JTM: —so that meant if they dropped, they couldn't graduate.
PFA: Oh, yeah!
JTM: So we had, they didn't—We had the accusation made that in the Curry School that we
really didn't have a taste of the "real world." And I guess it is—It was somewhat sheltered now that when I look back on it, especially as you go into the public schools today.
PFA: So that one of the reasons, you think—
JTM: Yes.
PFA: —that they closed—
JTM: Oh, I think the whole reason it closed was money. 27
[laughter]
JTM: That's, that's, that's, I think that's it for the Home Economics Cafeteria and I think that's the reason that Curry closed.
PFA: Okay.
JTM: Oh, a real demonstration school or lab school, those are expensive propositions—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and, you know, there were other priorities coming into the university.
PFA: Yes, yeah.
JTM: So, I think, well, you know, even after the high school closed, they brought in a man to be principal and kind of work with the K-8 Program but I think it only lasted a year or so.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I think it only lasted a year or so.
PFA: That's interesting.
JTM: Anyway, I've forgotten how many years Cathy was here [clears throat] but when she came for an interview she said—I would say twenty-five, twenty-six years ago—more now and she says when we drove into campus. She says, "Well, where is the entrance?" There wasn't any—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —because there was not one to speak of. Because you would drive up Spring Garden [Street], which had a few buildings but then you go in College Avenue and that was about as much entrance as you had. There was really no, there was really no proper entrance—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so now we do have, you know, at both ends—now that we have these proper entrances welcoming that you know you are on the campus. That it's really, it looks like a university now, yes.
JTM: In most of the years that I was there, it didn't—
28
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —really and truly. When I was there, it didn't. Really and truly—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —it was sort of like, we said it was like topsy and—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —and being close, in the inner-city, sort of pejorative.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —within a city, I hate the word inner-city—
PFA: Landlocked, yeah.
JTM: Somewhat landlocked.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I remember when, all, all along that Aycock [Street]—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —where the baseball stadium is—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and well, that University Apartments building and all that, there were homes there.
PFA: Right.
JTM: The university bought all of those homes.
PFA: Wow!
JTM: They bought all those going up—Well, there were homes on Forest [Street].
PFA: Yes.
JTM: There were homes on Highland [Avenue]—
PFA: Yes. 29
JTM: —the next street over—
PFA: Yes, yeah.
JTM: —where you said you're going to build that art thing—All of them, they were homes around with people living in them—
PFA: [laughs]
JTM: —who complained about students parking in front of their homes. [chuckles]
PFA: That's right.
JTM: Yeah, but, you know, one street that seems somewhat unaltered when I know it has been is, is Tate Street—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —because, they—they think they've kept that old historic district there—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —even though there are students—There are students who live in some of those homes now. You know, they rent them out. They still kept—There were students who came to Curry School who lived right there on Tate Street.
PFA: Wow!
JTM: Of course, during the '60s, that corner, where The Corner is?
PFA: Yes.
JTM: The Corner.
PFA: The drugstore?
JTM: The drugstore and the lunch counter—had a little lunch counter, which we all missed.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: But over there at the Brown Building, the Music Building, that's where the hippies were.
PFA: Oh, jeez!
30
JTM: Yeah, I'm sure the police cruised that corner, that area all the time, when anything was happening, it was there.
PFA: Right there?
JTM: Yeah.
PFA: Were you there, do you have any memories of the civil rights time?
JTM: I do, I do. I remember a number of the students being involved in that. I can't tell you their names—
PFA: No.
JTM: —even though they would have appeared in some of the campus publications at the time—
PFA: Yes, so.
JTM: —but I remember even the Greensboro paper would, you know, would talk about the college being involved.
PFA: Oh, really!
JTM: I mean, it was all of our colleges, namely [North Carolina] A&T [State University] but, you know, Bennett [College] students were involved—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and Woman's College.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I wish I could remember this in more detail. And I don't think this has anything to do with the civil rights thing but there was some big publicity about a girl, wonder if this had to do with an art project or something, swimming in, in, I don't know how I remember this, this is so farfetched. I'm not even sure it's accurate at all. [Editor's note: In January 1971, two art students designed a pop-up art display in the UNCG Art Gallery. The display consisted of a child's plastic swimming pool full of eighty pounds of cooked spaghetti and meatballs covered with eight gallons of ketchup. Later, a female student jumped nude into the spaghetti and was arrested for indecent exposure.]
PFA: Yes.
31
JTM: But she was nude anyway in whatever she was swimming in. Whether it was spaghetti or—
PFA: [laughs]
JTM: I do remember some of it. You know, that's why I miss Lib Boyles—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —because I could call her and say, "Lib, do you remember telling me or do you remember when or what was this person's name?"
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: And if she didn't know, she might know somebody to ask or she would know
or look in her book or—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —between us, we would remember a lot.
PFA: That's great.
JTM: One interesting thing and I don't know whether this is something you would want me to talk about or not. You mentioned the Curry's closing. [clears throat] The dean in the School of Education at that time was Dean [Kenneth] Howe and he did not make that decision by himself. It wasn't his lone decision to close Curry School but the students seemed to blame him. So that—I've forgotten the year but it would have been about the year they announced they were going to close it—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —'68 or '69. '68, I would say. When they came out of the Curry graduation and somebody had alerted the news people so they were there, and he was hanged in effigy—
PFA: Oh, no!
JTM: —as people came out of graduation and oh, he was furious. He blamed Lib Boyles, thought she knew something about it. Or at least he sort of accused her—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and so that was not, and a lot of parents were angry. They'd been very loyal and they sent all of their children to, to Curry.
32
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I think that's why I was telling you about the reunion. The fact that a parent would come to the reunion, several parents were there. But they, they knew the children so well. One of the parents who was there had—she volunteered. When I came with Tucker was in kindergarten, my son. And [clears throat] she said, "I understand you need somebody to keep Tucker after school." She says, "I keep one of the [unclear]. Do you mind me keeping him?" And I paid her, of course—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —but I even took a class that year, which Mary Hunter offered over there in
Mills Road Elementary—
PFA: [unclear]
JTM: —ride over with Mary and take that course and Mrs. Master would give Tucker his supper and I would pick him up at 8:00. You know, and that was fine—
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —but that was, that was Curry family.
PFA: Yes, yes. Wow, that's wonderful!
JTM: And as I said, so many of the faculty members and so many of the staff members had
children in Curry. It used to be somewhat of an enticement for faculty. There were a couple of things that were enticements. One was that we had the lab school and even the—There was a test required for admission to go to the Curry School, they were pretty well assured, you know, that their child could get in the Curry School in whatever class they needed. And there were also some apartments that if he came in, you know, several maybe last-minute. They were—They were next to the Curry Building—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —back up in there. What building is there now? It's not Graham [Building]; it's not Ferguson [Building]—
PFA: It's the Learning Resources [Center] building, where they, the technology building—
JTM: —no, on the other side?
PFA: Oh, there's Graham, there's Ferguson—
JTM: It's Ferguson. 33
PFA: It's Ferguson.
JTM: It must be where Ferguson was. But back, back from the street a good distance and, you know, it may have had four, six apartments. So, they, they couldn't live there long—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —maybe a year, I don't know.
PFA: Yes, I understand some of the faculty also lived in the dorms with the students?
JTM: That may have been earlier on. I was not aware of that when I came.
PFA: Oh, yeah.
JTM: Of course, I wouldn't have been interested because I had a son.
PFA: That's right.
JTM: But I do remember there was Kathleen Hawkins [ Class of 1920, financial aid officer] and she had an office in Foust [Building]. I don't know what else she did, but she helped faculty with housing and she told me, she said, "You know, if you can get one of the apartments over here off Walker [Avenue], College Park Apartments." She says, "There's a street right behind it, a dirt street, where, where a number of black families lived." And she says, "I bet you can find someone to stay with your son after school." And I did for a while—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —until Mrs. Master's—
PFA: I'll be darned.
JTM: —so there was all kinds of help—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —once, you know, once you were taken into the family, you know, there were all kinds
of—
PFA: That's great.
JTM: —and there were, you know, there's something, I don't know whether other people whom you have interviewed, have talked about, but there was a Faculty Wives Club. Has anybody mentioned that? 34
PFA: No.
JTM: Well, I thought of it because it was later changed. But I didn't think about it at the time, but these faculty wives had little bridge clubs and they had little supper clubs and they had little other book clubs and the faculty women were not involved in that. And looking back, you know, I think a lot of friendships were made through the wives. You know, the wives would get to know each other in these clubs and then they'd bring in the husbands and a lot of little contacts were made that way for some of the men—
PFA: Right.
JTM: —that the women faculty members didn't have the advantage of—So, many years later, I
guess somebody thought of this and [clears throat] they made a—What do you call it,
Faculty Women, no, not just faculty? Yeah, Faculty Women included the wives, it was supposed to be all of them. It didn't last any time.
PFA: [laughs] Was there competition, was there a sense of that or just—?
JTM: Well, I don't know but I think finally there was maybe a realization that, I don't know.
PFA: Yes, yeah.
JTM: I don't want to surmise or guess—
PFA: Sure.
JTM: —but I do think that there was a little unfair advantage for men whose wives got to know each other and involved them with other people whom it was good to know on campus.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: But you know and I know that politics on a campus plays big.
PFA: Yes, yes.
JTM: You'd like to think that it's all because of what you've done and how well you teach and
you know, your research and all of this. Certainly, you have to have that, but it does help, as my mother used to say to know someone. [laughs]
PFA: Yeah, that's for sure.
JTM: So I think there was maybe a feeling, a realization that, that it would be fairer to include the faculty of women as well.
PFA: Yes, yeah. 35
JTM: But as I think back on that, the couple of meetings that I did attend, it was mainly woman faculty who was leading that.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: See, being in two departments, at least I didn't take time to belong to a lot of those things. I used to go to, you know, professional meetings—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and a few family things and that was it.
PFA: Yes, yeah.
JTM: That's been wonderful about retirement. You've got time to do all these things culturally, you know, that you didn't have time to do when you were there.
PFA: It's true.
JTM: It's wonderful. Retirement, I am talking about retirement. I have enjoyed tremendously being involved with Shepherd's Center. I told them not long ago, I have now taught, see, I started that FLES Program in Curry School: Foreign Language in Elementary School, I started it in the third grade, way back—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and so now I have taught third through senior, yeah.
PFA: Yeah.
JTM: —because the Shepherd's Center, they don't stick to it, but it is fifty-five and over—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —the classes that I teach there. I've taught French and Spanish. They—We've got
somebody else who will do some of the French but I teach mainly Spanish now. See there, how Spanish has been useful to me. [laughs]
PFA: So you've been teaching probably, wow!
JTM: Well, I taught at UNCG for thirty-six years—
PFA: Wow, that's amazing, that is wonderful!
36
•
JTM: —and see, I was always employed by the university, I was never one of those that was a state employee, you know.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: But retirement, you can do—I do the plays. I've been an angel for a number of years down at the theater and I used to do the university series, you know, the Concert Lecture [Series].
PFA: Yes.
JTM: I don't do that regularly now. I do Shepherd's Center and about nine of us formed a mystery book club and it's several of us who were in education and one who was in arts and sciences and a couple of the wives, faculty wives—yeah, and we did get together and it's been fun. We enjoy that. We take trips together we do Elderhostel. [American not-for-profit organization that provides educational travel tours primarily geared to older adults.]
PFA: Oh!
JTM: So there is a [unclear]. This was a student who went through the Curry School. I assume she was there before I came. K through twelve—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —but anyway, I had her in high school, these were the early '60s. And I would, they, they, they only offered two years of Spanish, ninth and tenth grade and two years of French, eleventh and twelfth. I don't know who decided that, but I said, "Well, I'll never be able to build a program that way, let me start French, both of them in the ninth grade. They can choose, you know, to really do a good four-year program of each." And so the principal was reluctant because he said, "You'll have juniors and freshmen in the same class." And I said, "So?"
[laughter]
JTM: But anyway, his daughter as it turned out was coming up to be a freshman and he was concerned about those junior boys, I guess. But anyway, I had this student from ninth grade. I had her, I think both in French and Spanish. And I remember one day leaving—she and her sister, had their mother—I don't know how she died, but they lived over the Yum Yum [Better Ice Cream] and the Yum Yum at that time was on the corner of Forest and Spring Garden on opposite—
PFA: Oh!
37
JTM: —cater corner of the Park Gym—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —that's where they lived. Anyway, and her father was a truck driver. We knew all of this,
we knew a lot of that of the Curry students. Anyway, I leaned over her in one of the classes, she was about a junior, and I said, "You know, Joyce, you're good in language. You've done well in French and Spanish." And I said, "You know what? You're going across the street over here to get your degree in French and Spanish and you're going to come back over here and do your student teaching with me." Well, she did!
PFA: Wow!
JTM: And she told me when I retired in 1996. She said, "It never occurred to her to go to college. "In a demonstration school and it had never occurred to her to go across the street and major in anything. She said, "I was good friends with Billie, Billie Jean somebody." She said, "We were going to secretarial school together and that's what I was going do until that day." So you see you never know what influences somebody—
PFA: I know.
JTM: —but I didn't know it and I worked with her those years. You see, isn't that astounding?
PFA: Yes, it is, it really is.
JTM: But we always had to deal with incoming students from GTCC.
PFA: Yes.
JTM: It used to be something else, Guilford [Technical] Community College or something. But anyway, and I can remember serving on committees where we would look at the course outline and decide whether or not we would count that as a credit if they transferred to UNCG—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —so there's always been a certain—among the faculty, a certain outlook for the prestige of the university academically—
PFA: Yes.
JTM: —and you didn't want to accept credits from just anywhere. And they spent a lot of time on committees looking at courses that were offered other places to be sure that they were comparable to courses that we offered here and that it would give them the necessary background to build whatever major they were having. 38
PFA: Yes.
JTM: So and I can remember in Romance language their saying, "Well, you know, academically, you know, we've got to offer this. We can't, we can't water it down that much—
PFA: Right.
JTM: —and still be a bona fide college course."
PFA: Right!
JTM: There was always a great deal of concern for that. What shall I call it, "Academic integrity."
PFA: Yes, yes, I agree completely.
[End of Interview]