Oral history interview with Anna Bell Dickieson, 2008 (October 9) [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Anna Bell Dickieson
INTERVIEWER: Hermann J. Trojanowski
DATE: October 9, 2008
HT: Today is Thursday, October 9, 2008, and my name is Hermann Trojanowski. I am at the home of Anna Bell Dickieson.
AD: Dickieson.
HT: Dickieson. Okay—to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection of the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Well, thank you so much for talking with me this afternoon. If you would give me your full name, we‟ll see how we both sound on this tape recorder.
AD: Anna Bell Dickieson. Nobody believes Dickieson. They think it‟s Dickerson, Dickenson, Dixon, almost anything else, but it‟s—
[recording paused]
HT: Please tell me when and where you were born.
AD: I was born in Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina, September 23, 1922.
HT: Okay. And what did your parents do?
AD: My father was employed from the very beginning with the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company. He spent his entire career there. He was employed by Julian Price at about the same time that the Jefferson Building was built at the corner of Market and Elm. He retired as assistant secretary of the company, at a time when there was a president, one vice-president, a secretary-treasurer; and he was assistant secretary.
HT: How about your mother?
AD: My mother was Thelma Winston. She was born in Youngsville, North Carolina. Spent most of her time in Raleigh, North Carolina. An old eastern, North Carolina family. The Winstons were here before the Revolution. And so, as most women did in her time, she—2
after she married my father, she simply ran a home, played Bridge, did volunteer work; just like most everybody else did.
HT: Right. Did you have any brothers or sisters?
AD: Yes, two brothers, younger than I. Both of whom are already deceased.
HT: And where did you go to high school?
AD: I went all the way from first grade through high school at the Curry School, which was then operated by the Department of Education in the Woman‟s College.
HT: And do you recall what your favorite subjects were at Curry?
AD: Probably English and I liked drama. I liked art. I enjoyed languages. I must say that I wondered when we were taking Latin whether it was really worth it, and of course, being a voice major later in college, I discovered that all the Romance languages were really based on Latin anyway and I was very happy to have had it. We had a good teacher. [I always enjoyed singing, in class, in assembly and in high school chorus.]
HT: And when did you graduate from Curry?
AD: Thirty-nine [1939].
HT: Thirty-nine. Okay. All right. And you, of course, attended Woman‟s College. What made you decide to attend Woman‟s College?
AD: I had never thought I‟d go anywhere else. I was born on McIver Street.
HT: Oh, okay.
AD: My grandfather Bell brought his family from Virginia to Greensboro when it was still all on the other side of the railroad on Asheboro Street and a little street. It was called South Greensboro after people started moving north and west. That was when they determined the center of the county was in Fisher Park, but it was too low to put the courthouse there, so it went on the corner, which was then replaced by the Jefferson Standard Building. [The courthouse, not the corner.]
HT: Right. Does the house where you were born still exist on McIver Street, or has it been torn down?
AD: It is still there. I rather wish they would tear it down because it doesn‟t look anything like it did when my grandfather moved from South Greensboro. He moved west, I think maybe partly because of the Methodist Church connection with my grandmother and Greensboro College. And he bought four lots on McIver Street and that was—Tate Street was the last paved street. I never knew it when it was not paved, but that was about where 3
the city limit was at that time and going north, it was just past Fisher Park at Bessemer Avenue. It was about 8,000 people at the time my husband first came to live in Greensboro. So—
HT: You probably walked to Curry.
AD: I walked to school and I was a day student because after I decided to major in music, my house was actually closer to the Music Building than some of the dormitories down near the Physical Education Department.
HT: Right.
AD: I thought I had one right here [a picture of our house].
HT: Well, did you enjoy going to Woman‟s College?
AD: Yes, I did. I didn‟t know what I was going to major in because I was interested in so many things I might have majored in English. I loved English poetry, I liked writing, I liked art. I took my electives in art. But it happened that I was taking voice lessons when I was in high school from a senior voice major at Woman‟s College, she entered me in the high school music contest which Dr. Wade Brown, the first dean, had begun and I won first prize. So, when the voice teacher at Woman‟s College, invited my parents and me over to try to persuade me to major in voice and he was successful. I did. So, I majored in voice, but—Oh, then I taught at Granger High School in Kinston [North Carolina]. I‟ve got a picture of it somewhere. It‟s a fine old building. My superintendent was Major Graham, undoubtedly a member of the well-known and well respected Graham family, except for Edward Kidder [Graham], Jr.
HT: Right. Okay. What did you do for fun while you were at Woman‟s College from the late ‟30s until you graduated in 1943?
AD: I guess you‟d say everything was fun. I didn‟t have much time to do anything. I was taking two applied musics. I took piano and voice all the way—all four years, and so I had two things to practice for in addition to other things to do. But I was always tall and thin, and told [that I was] underweight when I entered college and that I wouldn‟t be able to play any team sports. Well I hadn‟t liked field hockey and soccer and things like that in high school anyway. I preferred swimming, dancing; the things that—I just took the things I liked. So, then, I tried out for the Modern Dance Group and was selected to be in that. I enjoyed—that, for me, was recreation. [I went to lunch in the dining hall with friends sometimes, or spent the night, and invited them to my house for recreation.]
[recording paused]
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HT: —what you did for fun earlier. Can you tell me something about the restrictions on campus in the late thirties and early forties?
AD: Well, there was no drinking. We had a judicial board that if you broke house rules. There was a house mother in every dormitory. We had hours that we had to be in the dormitory and if you came in after hours and the house mother had to let you in, then, you had to go in front of the judicial board and they would mete out the punishment. If you came in with alcohol on your breath, you had to, I don‟t know what you had to do, but I knew somebody who was accused of that one time and she had to accept what came. [shows a picture of her childhood home] That was—that was my house [My grandmother‟s house was torn down—a brick apartment replaced it. Ours was a Dutch colonial turned sideways because the lots were narrow and deep. It had a granite foundation and chimney. My grandmother Bell gave the lot to my father when I was born.]
HT: Okay.
AD: That was after—we originally, had a wooden porch and porch boxes with flowers all in them and then my father had a concrete porch put in instead and left off the awnings. [looks at a photograph] That was when I was a junior in college, I was a marshal for the Dikean Society. There‟s my mother and father. My mother was not very photogenic. She was better looking than her pictures. I don‟t know why some people are like that. This is a scrapbook of the Curry senior play. I was—I loved Girl Scouts. I loved going to the camp—there was absolutely no tension there. I did a lot of volunteer leader training for Scout leaders after that.
HT: You never stayed on campus at all then I guess. You always stayed at home; all four years at home.
AD: Yes sir, yes I did. I was a town student and they had a special room in the Foust Building, it‟s called now. It was called The Town Students‟ Room, but we could participate in anything else anybody else did, it was just that—now when my cousin, Mary, had been to North Carolina College for Women, I would go spend the night with her sometimes and I remember when the “lights out” came out she said, “Get under the sheets! Don‟t let anybody know that you‟re here. Be real still.” [laughter] So I did and the proctor went on and that was all there was to it. This was the high school—no, that was for one of their choral rehearsals we were practicing for, but that was the year that I won the award. This was, let‟s see, the counselor of the Girl Scout camp and there were the Fisher twins, they brought their horses. Their father was the one that started Fisher Park.
HT: Okay.
AD: See, this is old Fisher Park. And they brought their horses to go along with the other horses.
HT: Well, what kind of extracurricular activities were you involved in while you were on campus? 5
AD: You ought to look back at one of the old annuals, the senior one in particular, and junior for pictures. Well, I was in the modern dance group; I was in the college choir. The choir, then, was considered extra curricula because anybody—you didn‟t have to be a music major to be in the group. The Glee Club was different. In fact, it was composed only of people who took voice lessons. That [photograph] was my freshman year when I was chosen to sing the “Oh, Holy Night.” I found out later that some of the upper classmen were jealous because that was supposed to be saved for a senior, but I guess since I had won the contest, and came in the way I did, Mr. [George] Thompson decided to let me do it.
HT: Do you recall what kind of social activities that you were able to participate in since you were a day student?
AD: [I sometimes went with friends to the dining hall for lunch, or spent the night, and sometimes invited them to my house.] I went to a few of the dances. You see, the—I don‟t think that girls could have cars until at least their junior year anyway, but girls—We couldn‟t afford to have cars anyway, it was during the Depression and it was at a time when they already had to dismiss quite a few faculty people; not because they were not competent, but it was simply because the enrollment had fallen down so, it was also a time when they took men and the Salem College in Winston-Salem took men and my husband actually got his baccalaureate degree in music from Salem College. He and his sister were in college at the same time. So if you were a man and a day student, you could do that.
HT: Well, I know that what is now UNCG, men were allowed on campus as undergraduates in that one year, 1932, ‟33 for economic reasons.
AD: Burke Davis who just died a few years ago that lived out here went to Woman‟s College. Of course, later on after men were admitted, that was when the television—my goodness he lived around the corner from us. Blank. It starts with a “K.”
HT: Lee Kinard?
AD: Lee Kinard.
HT: Yes, okay. All right.
AD: They named a—named—we renamed a part of Spring Garden Street to Lee Kinard Boulevard. These are just—these are just pictures for different things. I was in Young Composers Group. I just realized I had a bunch of old compositions that I didn‟t even know I‟d ever composed. That was just a Bridge party for a bride. This was when we had the Arts Forum and they often had a composer of note here, and so this is some of us in the Young Composers Club. We were entertaining William Schuman. I made a scrapbook for him. And so, I suppose you‟d say swimming, dancing, that sort of thing is what I did.
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HT: Right.
AD: But there wasn‟t really very much extra time. I stayed in the Music Building until ten o‟clock at night when they came around and told us they had to lock up, until the time came later on when they had to lock all the doors but one and have ID cards because of the hippies that were lolling around on the campus. They put—they planted sticky bushes on the corner and would you believe that one of the music faculty whom Mereb Mossman had appointed made a great big scene about the fact that they had planted the sticky bushes. Well, they were using the Music School‟s sanitary facilities and you could hardly tell who belonged there and who didn‟t anymore. So, they had to do it. It too bad that became—it became a difficult time when they started selling drugs on the corner. You know, it spoiled the neighborhood.
HT: Right. Well, could you backtrack to the time when you were at WC [Woman‟s College]; do you recall anything specific about the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the college in 1942?
AD: Yes.
HT: That would have been your senior—
AD: There was a big production in the theater [Aycock Auditorium] called, “We the Women.” Katherine Taylor was very fond of that. She wanted to do it a second year, but sometimes it is a mistake to try to repeat something that‟s such a big success. But it was written by, I believe, one of the members of the drama faculty. It was an original play and one of my classmates had the starring role in it. I started out trying to participate in drama too, but it was just too much for me to do, practicing and then drama rehearsals too. I couldn‟t do it all, so—
HT: Well, what was Woman‟s College like during World War II, because World War II started in 1941, of course?
AD: It was very vibrant. Some of our campus leaders, actually, I would say, had actually become engaged and were planning to be married as soon as they finished college, which was not too unusual in those days. And they decided since their fiancés had already been called up, that they would get married the summer before and that was the first time that they had allowed married women, even without their husbands, to live in the dormitories. However, things kept going. They had—as I said before, there was no lack of social life. The societies, which had originally been literary societies, but they became mostly social later, each society hall had a place—had an auditorium with a stage in this old Student‟s Building, which was later torn down. But, there was an influx of boys from Chapel Hill and State and there was a lot of social life in the weekends. It was just that the college was in loco parentis when it came to your personal life and it‟s a good thing because I was sixteen when I started college. We had—we had eleven grades and no Kindergarten, that wasn‟t prevalent except a few private ones here and there, but Curry did not have it. 7
But the social life was vibrant; the athletic programs were always doing things and the dance organizations were always doing things and it was just enjoyable.
I‟ll tell you another thing they did too which was extracurricular; they played Bridge. [laughter] Even after hours in their dormitories. I didn‟t have time to play Bridge in college. I had to learn how, but that was—you had to know how when people started getting married and all those Bridge parties, you had to know how to play Bridge, but I really didn‟t have time to continue it after that. A lot of people out here now—and they really, the Bridge players really have a wonderful time out here [Well Spring Retirement Community]. But I don‟t know about the next generation, they became soccer moms, you know. [laughter]
HT: Well, tell me something about some of the administrators or professors on campus during your time such as Walter Clinton Jackson, who was the chancellor when you were there.
AD: Well, Dr. Jackson and I lived on the same street, practically on the same block because it was—actually it was like one block, McIver Street was, except if you counted Carr Street which didn‟t go all the way through. It might have been called two blocks. So, I had known him and his family for years. And George [Dickieson] had known him also, because George lived in Greensboro from the time he was four until the time he was fourteen, then he came back here when he came to teach in Woman‟s College. There‟s Miss Clara [Booth] Byrd who was the alumni secretary and her sister, Miss Flossie [Byrd]. Miss Flossie kept house; had a beautiful garden in the back and wouldn‟t let one single weed grow in the grass in the front. They were different, but they were compatible. Let‟s see, there were quite a few faculty people who lived there and on Tate Street and in that neighborhood. There were some who went out to Sunset Hills when that started to develop.
HT: Right. Did you ever know Harriet Elliott real well?
AD: Oh, indeed! Yes, Harriet Elliott was a very prominent person on campus and considered a leader in not only the College, but the Democratic Party nationwide, and she and Miss Alexander—
HT: That is Louise Alexander?
AD: Louise Alexander—were political science teachers.
HT: Did you ever have Miss Elliott or Miss Alexander?
AD: I never had either one of them for teachers, no, but they were very well respected and very much liked; both of them. I also knew Anna Gove.
HT: Oh, okay.
AD: She was still a physician and examined me when I was there. She also was a very good friend of Mrs. Robert D. Douglas, Sr. [Robert D. Douglas, Jr., called Dick, was her son.] 8
HT: That‟s Virginia Brown Douglas you‟re talking about I guess?
AD: Exactly. She continued to take classes there. All of the time; she was always taking a class there and then so was her daughter, Virginia, who married my uncle.
HT: Okay.
AD: Yes, Dr. Gove, she sent us a wedding present. [It was a cup and saucer in our wedding pattern] She was a lovely person; a very intelligent person who had become a physician at a time when [not many women studied medicine]—she went to Vienna [Austria] to get a degree.
HT: And she also served with the American Red Cross during World War I and we have her Army uniforms.
AD: I believe I saw that somewhere you had quite a bit of information about her during that time.
HT: Right. The School of Human and Environmental Sciences has most of her clothing, but we have her medical outfits.
AD: She was apparently very well known for being quite fashionable, but then she had been brought up that way.
HT: Right.
AD: And she expected other people—we were expected—we were expected to be ladies. We weren‟t expected to be hippies. There was no such thing that existed then. When we went downtown to shop, we usually walked. You could ride the trolley, but you had to wear your hat, your gloves and your stockings and your high heeled shoes when you went shopping downtown.
HT: Right. Did you have to get special permission to leave campus for something like that?
AD: You had to sign out.
HT: Sign out. Of course, you didn‟t have to because you were a day student.
AD: I didn‟t have to but you had to sign out and then sign in again if you left campus for anything.
HT: Right.
AD: So that was alright. They wanted to know that you‟re out and where you were. It was the same thing that your parents would have done if you had gone someplace.
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HT: Right, sure. Can you tell me something about Hugh, I think it‟s pronounced Altvater; the dean of music in your time?
AD: Yes. Yes. He was the one that succeeded Dr. Wade Brown. The first—he was—Dr. Brown—it had been a department of music over in the Students‟ Building. Dr. Wade Brown brought it to the status—to include examination—examiners being sent there—of a school of music. The American Society—American Society of Schools of Music, I think. When he retired—he was the one who started that big High School Music Contest, which really finally got too big for the College to handle. We were having to find places in peoples‟ homes around for children to stay in and bus loads of high school children coming from all over the state, and it was a good thing. But this had been up until that time, the School of Music had been primarily piano, voice, organ, and public school music, and he said it was time to start developing an instrumental program. So he brought Dean Altvater, Hugh Altvater, who was a violinist, and stayed for about a year to help him get started then retired to Clearwater, Florida. So they put out a search for a performing violinist who was good at organizing, to come and develop the string program. He wanted a concert master for an orchestra he wanted to start, and another violinist so he could have a faculty string quartet. He had a cellist, who taught theory, and he had a voice teacher, my voice teacher, who was quite a good violist, and so that was the first faculty string quartet, and my husband and Mr. Altvater.
HT: And when did your husband come to WC?
AD: He came in ‟38, ‟39. I was still a senior in high school and of course, I entered in ‟39, ‟40 as a freshman. I didn‟t have classes with him because he was instrumental and at that time and I was voice. Later on, after we were married, I took up the cello, but I had had all the theory courses and I had to learn cello technique and the thumb position and the tenor clef for going up into the high register. But, Dean Altvater was a strange person. I don‟t know if I should put this on tape because George was extremely loyal to him. He said, “I came there to work for him.” And some of the faculty didn‟t understand how you could get along with Altvater and get along with everybody else at the same time because several of the faculty members when George came, the first thing they did was to warn him not to let Altvater borrow any money from him. He would send his wife around and of course, he never paid it back so they warned George and George called his father in Winston-Salem. I said, “They won‟t borrow any from you, you don‟t make that much.” He had—they wanted him to come here for $2,000 less than he was making and during the Depression, that was quite a big amount. He said, “I can‟t do it for $2,000 less,” so they changed it to $1,000 and he said, “Well, I thought it would be a better opportunity than what I was doing so I came for $1,000 less.” But, he didn‟t lend him any money and it was—he was—well he thought he was Sigmund Freud, I think, when it came to the students. He was always trying to impress certain ones. Oh well, just the same. Anyway, we always felt that it was—George was just a lucky man to be in the right place at the right time because Altvater let him do anything he wanted to do to develop the School of Music. He never did much of anything for him, but he never kept him from doing anything either.
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HT: That‟s important too, as well. Yes.
AD: And so, it was just a perfect time for George to spread his wings.
HT: And how about George Thompson?
AD: He was—he had been there since some of the earliest ones along with Mary Lois Ferrell and Alleine Minor whom Wade Brown had brought from Meredith College in Raleigh. I don‟t know—he didn‟t get Thompson from there. He was an organist who also did the College choir and he was a fixture there and very personable with people out in town and that sort of thing.
HT: And the next dean of the School of Music was G. Welton Marquis. Is that how you pronounce that?
AD: He was a disaster.
HT: Oh really? Tell me about that.
AD: Well Marquis might as well as have been Ed Graham as far as that goes. That was when [Marc] Freidlaender started entering the picture—Friedlaender—you know academia is a rather small world. George used call it “academania” sometimes. So, everybody knows somebody who teaches somewhere else. Well, when Marc Friedlaender was brought here by, I hate to say this, Laura Weill Cone. She had been a student here named Laura Weill who composed the words to the College song, by the way, and she married a Cone, so she‟s not really a Cone, but we hesitated to say anything at anytime bad about her because we had other friends in the Cone family and you know how people tend to, what do they call it? If one in the family is bad, you sort of blame the whole family. I guess guilt by association kind of thing. So we never—even when we had the opportunity with the FBI, but she brought him here when he had been expelled from teaching at Tulane for being a Communist and that pretty soon got spread all around the campus. She paid his salary for the first few years; treated him like a refugee, sort of. And there had been a little thing in the paper. Just a little notice about how much money she had given to the Communist Party that year.
This was before the whole thing really broke loose. This is when the first hints of it—But there is a big connection between the Cold War and what went on during the Cold War and what went on during the Graham [years]—one sort of fed the other. So, anyway, she brought Freidlaender here and he did a lot of good. He was a very popular English teacher. He sort of got control of The Carolinian and the Coraddi, you know, the literary magazine and the College newspaper. At the time, all the College publications had faculty advisors. Later on, the students ran it all, after Graham maybe we should say. He started the Arts Forum which was a good thing. He was a good friend of ours because he apparently had changed his mind about this. He and his wife, of course, did not agree on that anyway. She was from a well-to-do New Orleans family. Very nice lady and her mother was just lovely, I remember. But Marc was considered a popular professor for a long time and he finally went to Dr. Jackson and said he thought it was about time they 11
started paying him a salary, which they did. But when the time came for all the known Communists in the whole University system, which then included State College, Chapel Hill, and Woman‟s College only, he was among the group that had to go because he had succumbed to it again. He and Clara Mae [Beer Friedlaender], I think.
HT: Now, who was Clara Mae, his wife?
AD: Clara Mae was his wife. Her mother was a Mrs. Beer [from New Orleans].
HT: How do you spell that?
AD: B-E-E-R, I think. Like De Beers would have been at that time, that kind of thing. She was a lovely lady. I remember her yet. And they were very forward looking in their thinking. They liked modern architecture and built a nice—could afford to, built a nice house in Hamilton Lakes that was one of the most modern ones in town. Wasn‟t Ed Lowenstein, it was some [other] architect. Their son grew up in Curry School. My husband taught him violin for a while because he was a faculty child.
HT: Yes. Right.
AD: I saw him not too long ago. He came to Greensboro and Nancy Shane said, “Be sure to come tonight, I have a surprise for you.” And there stood Sam LeBauer and another man and I said, “Oh that must be Stephen.” Well, by that time he told me that his mother had been living with him until she died, but he didn‟t mention his father at all. I understood that they separated too because she couldn‟t go along with that. It was—any time you start putting the “haves” against the “have nots,” or visa versa, you‟ve got trouble. And any time you start putting anything that already exists, like the Communist Party was doing here through their little small, but noisy, groups with these funny little names. Otherwise you take black against white, rich against poor, I mean poor against rich. I should put it that way. Men against women. Anything you could find that already a potential friction in it, they encouraged.
HT: You said that Marc Freidlaender was a member of the Communist Party before he came here?
AD: That‟s what people said from Tulane. It was pretty well known that he had been but then everybody thought he‟d settled down and changed his mind, but he didn‟t. He was a—he was one of the ones that—he was the one who introduced us to Warren Ashby, who was brought up here from Chapel Hill. He always, he and his wife both, had sort of leanings. The other way supposedly was in religious philosophy which I thought, “Well, that‟s strange, to bring Chapel Hill—somebody in religion up here. Maybe they just wanted to get rid of him, I don‟t know. Anyway, that‟s not the point. This was going to Marquis. When Marquis was appointed—I‟m not sure who‟s responsible for that, but apparently Marc was intent on domineering—dominating anybody they brought. At the first party he had for the faculty, Marc appeared at the door and said he had to come with him. There was a group that met on Sunday night. And he pulled him out of his party, just like—his 12
own party, just like the KGB [security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954-1991] coming to the door and saying, “You‟ve got to come with us.” He chose the house that he thought he should move into. And when the faculty had a pounding, you know kind of one of those house warming things. A very folksy thing to do; nevertheless, they did. And who was sitting there in the living room when they arrived but Marc Freidlaender. So he pretty well answered to everything Marc Freidlaender wanted him to do.
HT: Do you know why he did that? That sounds strange.
AD: I don‟t. Except that, I think that they had picked him [Marquis] knowing that he would. He had a—he bragged about having said he wrote a book on lying. I watched a TV program he gave one time and in the beginning—the early days of Public Television, we had a station on all three campuses.
HT: Right.
AD: He was lecturing on music and it was just full of errors and so I thought, “Well, he has written a book on lying maybe he is saying or doing this intentionally, but the audience doesn‟t know the difference. They‟re going to—coming from a university, they‟re going to accept it as being true. People wondered what his instrument was, and George said, “typewriter,” because he didn‟t use a secretary. He typed—he was always typing in his office. He was a very strange man and his wife—his wife was too. Marquis—when the FBI apparently gave Chapel Hill the list of people to go because of their affiliation with the Communist Party. There were several of them from the School of Music. I forget exactly how many, maybe four or five plus Dean Marquis. And they had a connection in Norway. They all went to Vancouver [British Columbia] and we happened to take one of those Tauck Tours up the West Coast and across Canada a couple of years after that and our guide took us out of the way to a place up in the mountains and he said, “This is the Berkeley of Canada.”
HT: I‟ve heard of that.
AD: So, you can see how intertwined the Graham administration was with the Communists Party. Now I‟m not saying Graham was a Communist. I don‟t know if he was or not. Graham had been brought up with I suppose having a hard childhood. He was the son of Edward Kidder Graham [Sr.] who had been—who was the president at Chapel Hill and a very liked—very well-liked man. But he died in the flu epidemic of 1918 and so it never had been done before, but Edward Kidder, Jr. became a ward of the state and he was brought up in Chapel Hill by an aunt of his and supported by the state of North Carolina. And people used to call him “the brat”. They said he was the most sadistic child—the ones who knew him. He would do things like take an insect live like a fly and pull the wings off of it while it was still living just to see it—see it struggle, you know. Anyway, when—when Graham got here, one of the first people to call on him in his office was Raymond Taylor because Raymond wanted to tell him how much he appreciated the fact that when he was a student at Chapel Hill that it was his father, Edward Kidder Graham, Sr., who had gotten him a fellowship to Harvard to do graduate work. And at that point, 13
Graham simply blew up. He said he didn‟t want to hear anything about his father and he ordered Raymond Taylor out of his office and the next week he dismissed him as head of Burnsville Theatre, which Taylor had started. So that plus the fact that he also made a speech to the Rotary Club in which he stated that he had inherited a bad faculty. That was before he ever met the faculty. It was during the summer. The faculty hadn‟t assembled for the fall yet. So, Marquis and Freidlaender and Graham—we sort of think of them as one group. Marquis left and let‟s see who came after him—was that Rigsby, Lee Rigsby. When Lee came here, George really thought he was the most intelligent dean we have had so far and George got along with him very well, for the first year Rigsby did pretty well. There were some rumors about him, because of Herbert Hazelman, the band director in town had called the band director in Florida, Florida State where he came from and they found out that he was a homosexual.
AD: Well, of course now it might not hurt him, it might have helped him, but in those days that was not a good thing.
HT: Was that in the 1950s.
AD: Yes. Yes. This was in the 1950s. And he actually—Herbert Hazelman was—
[End Tape 1, Side A—Begin Tape 1, Side B]
AD: Altvater—was trying to start an orchestra. It was still a Woman‟s College and about the only instruments women came prepared to play were either violin or flute. He didn‟t have any brasses or woodwinds to speak of. And so he employed Herbert Hazelman to start a band and bring some of his high school students, supposedly his better ones, and he had a band here for two years. He was still here the first year George came. Well, George started hearing—poor George never knew who he was. He started hearing bad things about him that Hazelman had said. And so he went to the dean and he said, “I want to be successful here but I keep hearing these things and I don‟t know—what should I do about it?” Altvater said, “Oh „blank‟, forget it Dickieson, he wanted the job you have.” Well, Hazelman didn‟t last but two years, because he had a marching band that used to lead the High School Music Contest bands marching demonstration out on the athletic field and they had formed one at Woman‟s College, but the Woman‟s College band was the worst of any of them and apparently somebody complained to the chancellor. I don‟t know who and so they discontinued having the College band. Well also, they also discontinued having Herbert Hazelman. And years later, English Department—not Wilson—Hurley, Leonard Hurley, came to George. He was the chairman of some committee that investigates salaries periodically and finances or something like that. He said, “George, what does Herbert Hazelman do to be drawing a salary here?” George said, “Nothing.” He had been still drawing a salary from Woman‟s College all that time and George had to go to his house to retrieve the French horn that was owned by the College; therefore, by the state of North Carolina. He never would have turned it in and the only reason we can figure is that Hazelman also had some blackmail on Altvater [before he came here] or 14
why was Altvater so afraid of him? That coupled with by sending his money to borrow— his wife to borrow money. It raised a few questions. And they came here without any furniture. They moved from house to house, fairly close to the College. They had two very well-trained boys who were musicians. Mark [Altvater] played the cello and the bassoon. Mark became an engineer though and eventually went to work for the College in the physical plant. But when Mark had to go off to war, apparently, his parents even sold his oboe and he came to George and he said, “George, do you happen to know where my oboe is?” And George did know the man who had bought it. So, he went back and bought it back from him.
But—and Hugh [Altvater] was a violinist. After George was no longer—after George became conductor and he had been concert master, he appointed Hugh, his son who played the violin, to be the concert master right at first. But then Hugh couldn‟t go to school here. It was still a woman‟s college so—he had other ones; he had Dave McAdams who was from Burlington. He had been a violin major in college and he was concert master for awhile, but his family had a business in Burlington they needed him to go into, so he left and that was when he invited Don Hansen, who was really the head of the Department of Music at Greensboro College, and he and his wife both played in it. He gradually was able to get better and better players but they were playing the—they were playing the real symphonic literature and when the push to get it out in the town came. Anyway, we left off at Marquis.
HT: We have been all over the place haven‟t we?
AD: Well, it goes off down the tangents and side roads, but you can‟t leave things out like that because there part of the story.
HT: That‟s right. Yes. Well what about Dean Katherine Taylor. Did you know her very well?
AD: Katherine Taylor was the—she taught French and she was a dormitory counselor. Very popular among students when she was a counselor and then she sort of became, let‟s see, she became Dean of Women after Harriet Elliott retired. Harriet Elliott had been Dean of Women officially. And then she and Mossman became sort of competitive with who was going to—you know, work into some such place as that. I would say that until she got involved with entertaining Elvira Prondecki in her house and that was when, unknown to his wife at first, he [Edward Kidder Graham]—that was his meeting place for Prondecki. We never knew quite for sure whether Katherine Taylor did it on purpose to get her in trouble or not. But she—she and Mereb became sort of—hoping they would become the next chancellor, I think, there was sort of clash there and they had both been friends of the same Laura Cone that had brought Friedlaender. It was a purely social thing though, and so had this Mrs. Pitcher. She had been married to a McIver first and she lived in the house right—on Tate Street, right across from the old Music Building.
HT: Well, I forgot to ask you earlier about Laura Cone. Do you think she might have been a Communist or did she just have—?
AD: Well why would she have contributed to the Communist Party if she hadn‟t— 15
HT: Oh, she did contribute, okay.
AD: Yes. You see, there‟s small thing that‟s puzzled me for a long time how quite a few Jewish people became attracted to Communism. It didn‟t last forever, but there were quite a few that I believe that maybe some of the social problems that they presumed were being fought in Russia would also apply to their—it wasn‟t true in Greensboro, really, because the Cone family had been leaders here and on the whole were very much liked. I know they lived along Summit Avenue when George was a child. He was a good friend of Bernard Cone‟s son and the man became a pianist. He had him back to play with the orchestra one time and when Laura Cone got mad at George, because [she thought] he hadn‟t invited her son. He claimed to be more of a composer than a pianist and he declined, but Mrs. McIver Pitcher came to George one day and she was a friend of Laura Cone‟s too and she said, “Laura Cone tells me that you had Harold [Cone] to play a concerto with the symphony, but you didn‟t have her son.” George said, “Yes, I did. I have a letter from him up in my office telling me that he was not accepting.” So she said, “Could I see it?” and he said, “Yes.” He took her up there and showed her the letter. But for some reason, maybe she [Laura] found out it‟s because they were fighting—George was on the other side of this thing. Maybe she just thought she had to try to kill George too, we never paid too much attention to it. In fact, when a FBI man came to our house one time to ask about—he said, “This Tartt Bell is one of our problems and he lives right around the corner from you.” His last name was Bell, but I never heard of him. He wasn‟t a member of our family.
HT: What was his first name again?
AD: Tartt. And he claimed to have been working for the Friends Service Committee, but the Friends Service Committee didn‟t claim him. But, he was being watched from a cupola on top of a house across the street from where he lived by the FBI and they were keeping tabs on everybody who came and went from his house and I‟m pretty sure it must have been Laura Cone who persuaded Jackson to give him an office on campus. Well, they found a place for him in the Students‟ Building. And there weren‟t even offices enough for all of the people in McIver building. English professors were doubling up, but yet that man did. And they had the nerve—the Communist Party actually rented a house on Spring Garden Street directly across from the Foust building which was then the administration building and we used to see certain people park up on the side of that house. Elliot Weisgarber from Music was one and the man in the Art Department was one. He was finally arrested for soliciting downtown, of all places, in the men‟s room of the City Hall. So, he would have gone whether he was a Communist or not, but—
HT: What was this man‟s name, do you recall?
AD: Sure. The one whose paintings they have been promoting a lot lately.
HT: Gregory Ivy?
AD: Gregory Ivy. 16
HT: Was it Mr. Ivy?
AD: Yes. Graham‟s wife was a lovely person. Later, we found out that Gregory Ivy‟s wife was—they were going to lunch, I imagine it was at Naomi‟s suggestion, at the Curry cafeteria. Curry didn‟t even have a cafeteria when I was going to school there, but they were all trying to get Graham‟s ear and along with him, I don‟t know. His wife was a McFadyen and her aunt was my first grade teacher in Curry. Her name was Miriam McFadyen and I loved her dearly. All my life I loved her. And she remembered me.
HT: How do you spell her last name? Do you recall?
AD: M—let‟s see, M-C-F-A-D-Y-E-N. McFadyen. The teacher, her aunt‟s name was Miriam. But she was a lovely person. She shouldn‟t have had to put up with all that and she didn‟t—and they were separated.
HT: This is Mrs. Graham?
AD: [William D.] Billy Carmichael came up here from Chapel Hill; I mean this was taken very seriously. As I told you, he had—he really had taken charge of most of the investigation. He came up here and watched the front of Katherine Taylor‟s house on innumerable times and would see that Graham had the car that belonged to the state parked there in front of it. At one point, there was a man from Greensboro, a lawyer, whom we knew quite well, he was a member of the Legislature and also a member of the Board of Governors at the time and he was very interested in the case and at one time he came to George and he said, “You know, if we could just use this sexual thing, it wouldn‟t take any time to get rid of him.” George said, “No. I don‟t want to use that because we have far more than enough academically that ought to get him, there‟s no use to drag that in too.” So that was not brought up as one of the issues although it was pretty well-known by people because he actually had a child by her and he was separated. He took the little boy who later on became a—let‟s see—
HT: And whose child was this?
AD: Graham‟s child.
HT: With whom?
AD: They had a boy and a girl. She took the girl—
HT: Oh, Mrs. Graham.
AD: Yes. And he took the boy and the boy became North Carolina head of the Committee to elect McGovern—I took some notes and if I could have a moment here, I can just maybe find it—Marquis—
17
[recording paused]
AD: He [William D. Carmichael] had been important before Bill Friday became president even as—what was his title? It was—he would have been next in line to be president but he told George, “I could never be president of the University of North Carolina because I‟m a Catholic.” That‟s what he was convinced of, and yet, he did a lot of the work—he was the one who was really responsible for getting the Public Television here. In fact, he asked George to bring something down to Chapel Hill and record it so they could give it to the—show it to the Legislature as one of the things that they might be able to accomplish by having these stations. So he took a trio—a faculty trio down there and they recorded the [Ludwig van] Beethoven or [Johannes] Brahms, I think it was. Maybe it helped. That was just one of the things, and they got the station. At first, they had it [on all three campuses]—ours here was in the Old Laundry up at the end of McIver Street between McIver and the old McIver building. It was— it was very small. You couldn‟t get a big orchestra in it. You had to have piano lessons or chamber orchestra which -- they didn‟t really know enough about, of course, they were always trying to keep an even keel so they erased all the dynamics. George—they gave George a lot of those tapes when they moved the station. When we retired, George said they—we kept them in the attic and decided they were probably no good by now so we just disposed of them.
HT: Now Billy—
AD: But [Billy] Carmichael—
HT: I‟m sorry.
AD: He was a very important figure in all of it. But Bill Friday was the one who became president.
HT: Right. Mr.—Dr. Carmichael, rather, he was on the committee that interviewed the faculty concerning the Graham controversy.
AD: Oh I‟m sure he was—I‟m sure he was. It was the Board of Governors which are selected from—a lot of them come from the Legislature and of course, the job of the president has a lot to do with being a good politician enough to get the money from the state to run the University, as you know. And it had been—that was not really so much the job of the presidents or chancellors of the three units which was all there was then. It was—they were more like the academic dean up unto the time that they began to grow larger and the presidents became more money raisers and politicians than they were academic people. So there was a need for an academic dean but it wasn‟t really why Mereb Mossman got that job. She simply made herself useful to him. And Nestus Gurley who was the superintendent of buildings and grounds at the time came to George and he said, “Be careful when you go in his office.” That was Graham‟s. “Because,” he said, “I just had to supervise putting a tape recorder in a drawer and all he has to do is punch a button and it also is connected to Mereb Mossman‟s office which is next door.” And when—let‟s see, 18
when Chancellor—I‟m sorry, I wish I were not brain dead. No, I‟m not brain dead—I just—I remember it said he [Otis Singletary] left—he left and—because he didn‟t want to do what he had to do.
HT: Is he the—Dr. [William Whatley] Pierson? Was it Otis Singletary?
AD: Singletary. Singletary. Now what was I going to say?
HT: You were talking about the tape recorder that had been installed in Chancellor Graham‟s office and Mereb Mossman‟s office.
AD: No, this one was not Singletary; this one was the one before him.
HT: [Gordon Williams] Blackwell?
AD: Blackwell. When Blackwell came here, I happened to be president of the faculty wives and I had made an appointment with him to tell him what it was that faculty wives did and it just so happened that I had instigated a new thing that never had been done before. Actually, it wasn‟t supposed to be a political organization of any kind; it was a social organization which—its main project was putting books in the Curry Library. About the time I was president, it was the beginning of the time when the wife and the faculty—of the faculty usually had a job too. And so we had to change a lot of the format so there could be night meetings as well as afternoon meetings. And I had instigated a thing that was called “Indoctrination” and the Indoctrination was simply to acquaint them with how to get around Greensboro; where the good stores were, where this, that and the other thing was, and what was going on culturally. You know, the various advantages with specifics and maps and things like that. I went for this appointment—it was when Mereb‟s office was already next door. Of course, this was all after Graham left. I was there a little ahead of time. I sat there for thirty minutes before the secretary told me I could go in. I never saw anybody come out. But after that, I found out that Mereb Mossman finally wanted to be in charge of that indoctrination and she wanted the “faculty wives” to become “faculty women,” so, that meant women teachers—I think anybody, wives of the people on the buildings and grounds staff; any of them could belong.
Well, okay. But, it was also about the time they‟re going take over the Alumni Association. The Alumni Association had run itself and collected its own money. It had even—it had even instigated this Teacher of the Year Award. They were one of the first ones to do that. Apparently, one of my husband‟s students knew that his name had been submitted because she was a part-time worker earning her way while working in the Alumni Office. But he never got it, even when he retired. That alumni secretary, she tried to make so much of herself. She didn‟t even present him with the gift that was supposed to have come from the Alumni Office; she said he could come by the office and get it. Can you imagine? So, anyway, she was on the Graham side and I think it‟s possibly because she thought it showed an opportunity that she could become a part of the administration instead of this separate person sitting over there.
19
HT: Is that Barbara Parrish?
AD: Barbara Parrish.
HT: Did you know Betty Brown Jester by any chance?
AD: Yes. She was a very good secretary.
HT: And she was dismissed or she and Graham had a falling out I understand.
AD: Well, she was there at that time, but she was doing alright. I liked her [Betty Brown Jester] better than I did [Barbara Parrish.] When I started writing my minutes for the—of the alumni officers‟ meetings, Barbara Parrish would—had edited them. I know some of them—she hadn‟t changed them too much except that she expressed things the way I wouldn‟t have expressed them. I took them to Jane Summerell who was also an officer and had—she had taught English for years there and I said, “Miss Summerell, this simply isn‟t the way I express myself and I resent her changing the minutes. Why? It didn‟t make any difference in the meaning of anything. Why did she do that?” Well, she was on Graham‟s side and so she was not on anybody‟s side who wasn‟t. [laughs] So, well, where do we go from here because this is sort of crossing over to the time past the fifties now?
HT: Right.
AD: Let‟s see, when we first—let‟s say the rumors were, somehow, that Graham had told somebody that he might as well make George the dean, because he was already doing everything the dean would have done. See, Altvater was sick by then and George didn‟t have—he was never officially a candidate. He didn‟t have any ambitions to be an administrator; he was a performer, a good organizer. But some of the faculty got so that they wanted to hold that against him because they all thought, “Well why you, why not me?” [laughs] Oh well, anyway, that wasn‟t it. The first—the first thing that really started George to fighting, I guess you‟d call it fighting, was when Marc Freidlaender came to him and said, “We have plans for Music.” Well the plans included—including the School of Music as a Department of Music in the School of Fine Arts. And, of course, he and the art man, Ivy—both thought they were going to be head of it. Well, the chances are, in a School of Fine Arts, it would have not been someone in Music who was the head of [School of] Music. Well, the Music School is one of the biggest and best schools, professional schools, in the College at the time and so George told him, “Well, I will fight to the end the destruction of the School of Music.” And that was how he got so involved in it.
Because, what they wanted to do were things—they called it “general education.” Well, at the outset it sounded wonderful. It sounded like liberal education, you know, liberal arts which George was very much in favor of music schools—music students still having a liberal education. In fact, it had come up a couple of times in curriculum meetings and the only way out after the Education Department started requiring so many hours of “Capital E,” we called it, education classes and psychology classes to qualify for 20
a certificate. But they decided, well, for those people the thing was to require five years because they couldn‟t cut—if they cut out their professional courses, what was—that was what preparing them. George said, “They‟re all full of wanting too much „how to‟ without enough „what to.‟” [laughs]
So, they wanted to eliminate labs, for instance, in the science courses; nothing hands-on, just use in-house television. Can you imagine that even in medical schools at that time, they were trying to cut out having classes where you used cadavers, you know, to operate? How would you like to have a surgeon who had never had that class? George said, “Doing this in science would be just about like giving someone a book on how to play the violin and then expecting to get up and play it.” It was impractical. You‟ve got to have hands-on experience. Well, of course, that set the science people all off.
In art, it was no rule. In English, as in creative writing, it was the era—no rule. It was the era when we went through—there were no decent Broadway plays to see. There were no books—they were both coming along without plots. You just make up your own mind. It was the same era in—Hollywood was having to say, “Oh, you shouldn‟t be just an actor; you ought to be a director and you ought to be this other kind of thing and they threw out the star system. What happened later on—look at all those stars that had to try to bring back on in their old age because there weren‟t any stars and that was a big blow to the movie industry. That was what [Ronald] Reagan was going through. He knew about it because he was president of the Screen Actor‟s Guild at the time all that was going on.
It was the same thing that was going on in UNC—Woman‟s College right here during the fifties. It was a very destructive time in just about everything. Now, progress comes from new things and if there hadn‟t been progress, it—well, progress in say, in composing came from not throwing away all the rules and regulations of the physics of harmony, but making sure you didn‟t pay attention to any of them. It was just like the bumper stickers that said, “Defy Authority.” Excuse me.
[recording paused]
In the composers that lived that—well we really did reach a peak. That was one of the excuses. Composers have gone as far as they can go. We‟ve got to do something different. That wasn‟t exactly true; the Impressionists had already come along, it just happened to be World War I that had stopped that movement in its infancy. Who knows who might have come along besides [Maurice] Ravel and [Claude] Debussy. But there‟s a reason why if you listen to music enough, you can say before you know, “That‟s [Frederic] Chopin, that‟s Beethoven, that‟s Brahms, that‟s [Pyotr] Tchaikovsky,” because they have individual things in their composing that are original with them and makes them new. But that comes naturally and slowly and it comes from people capable of doing it. They‟re not doing it to be different, they‟re doing it because that‟s what they want to say and they‟re still using it within the physics of sound—well, not all together. Both Beethoven and Brahms used dissonance, but it was used for emphasis when they wanted a discord; when they wanted an emotional effect from it. It wasn‟t something you got to do for the whole piece. 21
Weisgarber, for instance, George played a lot of his things. He [Weisgarber] didn‟t know what it sounded like until he heard it played. I remember one time when he came to a rehearsal, when George was doing one of his pieces and there was a place they said, “This just won‟t work.” His solution was, “Just leave it out that part. Don‟t rewrite it. Just leave it out.” Weisgarber went to the chancellor; he complained George didn‟t play enough of his things. So, George went to the chancellor with a list of the things of Weisgarber that he had played. [The chancellor said, “I don‟t see how you could have done any better.”] The students hated it. They called it the “Weisgarbage.” They didn‟t like to practice it. [laughs] But George believed in doing it. He not only played Elliot‟s, he played a lot of contemporary things and particularly from people still living like people from other universities and that sort of thing. He believed that was part of the mission of a good School of Music that an educational institution should be able to do this because they won‟t get hired or fired because the audience doesn‟t—I mean, they‟re not making—they‟re not counting on an audience‟s approval.
HT: If we could backtrack just a second. You were talking earlier about Marc Freidlaender and Gregory Ivy wanted to create a—what was that?
AD: School of Fine Arts. Is that—?
HT: School of Fine Arts. What ever happened to that idea?
AD: It just fell apart. You see, they brought a man down here from Harvard. The Communists had a way of starting at the top. They had a wonderful psychologist behind it all, apparently, whose —and it was to get people appointed to positions in authority and if the top did it, then they counted on the domino theory; everybody else just going along. But by the time the man came here to tell about the experiment at Harvard, he said Harvard had already abandoned it. [laughs] They found out it wasn‟t any good, but, I would judge that‟s what Graham thought he wanted or else what Ivy and Freidlaender were convincing him of.
HT: So were Gregory Ivy and Marc Freidlaender good friends?
AD: I don‟t think they were very good personal friends but because in a way, they were trying to outdo each other, but they were together on this. I never knew them, for instance, to be at any of the social functions that we attended that the Friedlaenders were invited to also. In fact, I don‟t think the Ivys did much of anything. He was an art education major, actually. I guess the Weatherspoon Art Gallery was started, though, when he first came here. I was a—I was a charter member of the Weatherspoon; it was called Gallery, then. Now it is called Art Museum. To let you know how long ago that was and how inflation has happened since, the dues were one dollar a year. We still bought the Alexander Calder mobile which someone told me has been stolen from the Museum. But the Museum of Modern Art has quite a few Calders in it. He was a well-known—he sort of was known for mobiles.
22
HT: You mentioned somewhat earlier, Warren Ashby. What was his connection to all of this? The Red Scare in the fifties?
AD: Well, we were introduced to him by Friedlaender who brought him to a small gathering of faculty people, a social gathering, one time. And that‟s the first we‟d heard of him. All he [Friedlaender] said was that he came up here from Chapel Hill and we wanted to get to know him. He said that meant that he already knew that Ashby was going to go along with these Communist plans. I just have to say Communists—now there was a time when nobody in this county wanted to utter the word Communist aloud, especially after the [Joseph] McCarthy thing.
HT: Right.
AD: It took Ronald Reagan to come out and call a Communist a Communist again and get people waving flags again. I was doing—I was doing some leadership training in Girl Scouts. They had—that was when Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, they had eliminated the patriotism. They didn‟t want you to have flag ceremonies; salute the flag. They didn‟t want you to mention God, much less God and country. They took the Scout Hymn out of the Scout—Girl Scout songbook simply because it had the God in it. It didn‟t have any one particular religion. I just said God, like “In God We Trust,” you know, like what‟s on all our coins; that kind of thing. God means, in a way, one thing to everybody and a different thing to everybody that it means anything to. But there is no harm in it because it wasn‟t discriminating against anybody in particular, but it was cutting down standards. They took out the Eagle Award in Girl Scouts. You used have to go through Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class, and if you earned enough badges you could get Golden Eaglet. I loved it. It‟s a way of getting acquainted with so many interesting—and such a wide variety of things that after my Eaglet, I kept on working for more badges. I just liked doing it. But—they were destroying all of that because some people were earning a better rank than somebody else had. It was the same leveling off of society. It‟s never going to work, I hope, simply because—it‟s where I think, in a way, that our forefathers—if there was one thing they were ever lax on it was the wording that “all men are created equal.” But you see, I never, even as a child, interpreted that to mean that everybody would come out equal, I always interpreted it that everybody in this country would have an equal opportunity and then it‟s up to the individual what you do with what you have. And for heaven‟s sakes, if everybody were alike, what a dull world this would be. [laughs] You know, we don‟t need everybody alike, we need people doing different things and doing them well. But you don‟t have people not learning anything and not getting an education. I guess I‟m getting tired, I don‟t know. What else do you want to ask me?
HT: Well, let me see.
AD: This peace symbol, by the way, that‟s an ancient symbol. There was an article in a magazine or something I read just recently, telling about how far back that really goes and how it had been used back to Medieval times or earlier, but it was picked up as a symbol, George knew this, he said it started—it was started by the Communists in a town in Southern England. He knew which town it was and it was a Communist organization 23
and so when they started putting out—tacking notes on bulletin boards and it had this peace symbol at the top, that meant you knew who were organizing it. It was one of these stir up the student groups. Like say the one in Duke. We saw it written down in a driveway in our neighborhood one time. But it was—became—you know, everybody‟s for peace. I mean, so, when you say, this is a peace symbol, people aren‟t going to all know what that stands for. They‟re just going to say, “Oh, I like peace.” And it became just like any old piece of jewelry. I mean, you know, it didn‟t really mean that much. Except, if you saw it on a notice in a college or a university, you knew that‟s what it meant. George used to pull them down and send them to [Dargan] Frierson. There was one here, they didn‟t stop them from marching, they just had a police escort in case they got unruly or something, but they didn‟t keep them from doing it. [There was one on the bulletin board in the Music Building with a date and time which George mailed to Dargan Frierson. He decided to call Frierson that evening and Frierson thought it was important enough to go to the Post Office and intercept it].
HT: Well, I do have a couple of more questions I want to ask you. I know you‟re getting tired, but to your knowledge, were any professors at Woman‟s College blacklisted?
AD: Were they what?
HT: Blacklisted. Put on a list—
AD: Not that I know of.
HT: Okay. Right.
AD: Not even the worst ones were ever blacklisted. Everybody was still free to express his own opinion. And when it came to the investigation, they listened to everybody. But Emily Preyer had called George the night before. I might start though by saying that Rich—his name was—
[End Tape 1, Side B—Begin Tape 2, Side A]
AD: —Richardson Preyer—
HT: Right.
AD: —became a congressman, had been a judge, a Superior Court judge. He could have it for a lifetime appointment if—I think Emily had ambitions for him to maybe try a little higher than that. Maybe even hopefully president one day. But, Rich made a speech, it might have been Founders Day, in Aycock [Auditorium] and we listened to it on TV instead of going. Well, everybody in the auditorium apparently didn‟t quite catch it, but we could see his face up close and we could hear every bit of it and Rich was really exposing this thing right in front of Graham. [The man] there to help with the lighting 24
and the curtain too and that kind of thing—well, he told George—he was smarter than you‟d think his job would indicate too; he was very observant. He said, “You should have seen Graham‟s face when he walked off the stage that night.” He knew that Preyer had really given him a blow. Well, I called Emily and congratulated her. I said, “Tell Rich what a wonderful and brave thing he did.” She said, “I was scared to death.”
Rich did go to Congress and of course, being a freshman, didn‟t know all this. I had never known much about politics. George didn‟t like politics either but he kept up with it. He said every time a freshman comes up there they‟ve got some senior senator whose sort of telling him what he better do to get along with the party; with his own party. He was a Democrat, as everybody in the South was at one time. The primary was—might have been—might have well been the election because there weren‟t enough Republicans down here then. Anyway, George knew the name of the senior senator—I just didn‟t pay that much attention to it, but he knew his name. He said, “He‟s the one that is teaching him how he‟d better get along in Washington, in politics, to get along in Washington.” So Rich really sort of shifted positions after he got to Congress. He was still friends with everybody who‟d been his friends, just on a personal basis, but they wouldn‟t agree with his politics. I forget what was going on at the time that was that important. But, he did -- this doesn‟t need to go on the tape—
[recording paused]
HT: To your knowledge, did any of the teachers have to resign and leave Woman‟s College because of the Red Scare or the Communist activities on campus?
AD: Well sure. There were quite a few from here and there were some from all—anybody that the FBI had determined positively was sympathetic with the Communist Party and was trying to further the objectives of destroying this country was dismissed from any of the three branches; and from here, there were quite a few. I don‟t know who they all were. I didn‟t see the list. I just know—
HT: There was a list, you think?
AD: Well, somebody, the chancellor or somebody had the list [from the FBI]. They were notified and anyway, they all had to leave at the same time; they went at the same time. I think that they kind of had an inkling that they were going to have to go but I‟m not sure they knew why. But to think that the FBI had to work so completely undercover and without—I don‟t know who in the world who could have got—it must have come through Congress or somebody giving word to the national headquarters that they could not—were not allowed investigating on a college campus because nobody ever heard that they couldn‟t until they said they could again.
HT: You mentioned Dargan Frierson.
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AD: Dargan Frierson. He‟s the same one that—that his son is making that film on the Klu Klux Klan thing.
HT: Yes.
AD: That‟s another thing that happened here that I don‟t think I—knowing how much we‟d been through, I didn‟t think our tax money should go to protect Communists, but it did. I sat beside the city manager at a dinner not long after that, I think it was a Kiwanis dinner, my husband belonged to it, and I told him I resented my tax money trying to support those people—protect those people and he said he did too. But the city did it anyway. [This refers to the march and shootings at the Morningside Homes]. Have a chocolate.
HT: A little later on, when we finish.
AD: Okay. Need some water or something?
HT: Oh, no, I‟m fine. Thank you. Well, I think we‟ve already covered the controversy about Edward Kidder Graham. Is there anything else you want to add about the controversy surrounding him those five or six years he was on campus?
AD: That‟s the main thing about the fifties. It consumed most of the fifties. He came in ‟52 and it lasted five years. And, of course, he had to go. And he held three different jobs after this. Each one, not as the good as the job he had had before in educational institutions. And the last we heard was that he had died in an insane asylum.
HT: Now do you know if his wife, Elvira Prondecki, is still alive?
AD: Never heard from Elvira Prondecki again except that I knew that they had had a child. His wife went to Chapel Hill to study to be a librarian, but whether she was ever employed by the library or not—
HT: That‟s the first Mrs. Graham.
AD: Yes. The one married—whose maiden name was McFadyen. I just can‟t believe that she would have done it, but then I never would believe that Bill Friday—let me find that letter and just read it to you.
HT: Okay.
[recording paused]
HT: I heard that Coraddi magazine, literary magazine published a—
AD: Which magazine? 26
HT: The Coraddi magazine. The Coraddi magazine
AD: Okay.
HT: —published a male nude and the students got in quite a bit of trouble.
AD: I remember that. [laughs]
HT: I was going to say—what are your thoughts about that?
AD [laughs] I thought it was a ridiculous argument at the time. After all, look at how much of art is based on the human figure, which is supposed to be considered beautiful and also the show of eroticism is one thing that makes some paintings great. So I mean, I thought it was a crazy thing to get upset about. But there was one Coraddi issue—gosh, I‟m beginning to wonder if the nude man—they certainly never saw him nude. There was one in which they drew a figure of a man and just put “George” under it and that was at the time that Freidlaender was sort of in charge of the Coraddi.
Oh, there was another thing that I meant to tell you about the tapes. When, I mean, excuse me, I‟m saying the wrong words now even about that—the investigation that maybe should have gone on the tape. Emily Preyer called George late one day and said, “George, there‟s going to be a committee from the Board of Governors in Greensboro tomorrow to listen to the testimony that people have to give. Do you think you could get some people together to come and testify?” He said, “I‟ll do the best I can.” He got on the telephone and started calling people to expect to be called by the Board of Governors the next day. Faculty people came all dressed in their best ready to go and be called. He got to McIver Building and it was practically everybody except Gregory Ivy and those art people, in the McIver Building that he wanted to contact. And at that time, everybody didn‟t have a telephone. There was a central switchboard, you know, like offices and things had. And there must have been a student worker who was working the switchboard and she must have been on George‟s side because she eventually—she said, “Mr. Dickieson, would you like me to just hold the line open for you?” And he said, “Well, I would appreciate it very much.” Well, he got Dick Bardolph to the phone and Dick Bardolph said, “George would you like me—to give me a list of people in this building you want to contact and tell them this?” Well, he had some other people across campus that he needed, so he said, “I certainly would appreciate it.” He said, “I just simply don‟t believe that Dick Bardolph would compromise when it comes to academic standards.” And he trusted him to do it and the girl held the telephone—the line open until he could get all that list done and then go contact those people because he was having to try to get each one of them to come to the telephone which was probably out in the hall. Anyway, apparently, Emily was thrilled and amazed with the number of people that showed up and although George didn‟t contact anybody on the other side, of course, they found out about it. They had it in the Church of the Covenant off campus.
HT: Right.
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AD: They posted one of theirs over there by the little fire station that was cattycorner across from it, checking on everybody who went in. There were a couple that George had expected to be on his side. They had led him to believe. One of them was Adams, Charles Adams, who was the librarian at the time, but when he got in the committee he got weak, I guess, because if he really believed what he said he did, he gave them another impression because they had somebody taking down everything. And I guess that‟s all. We worried a little about Inga Morgan. We knew what she believed all right. She didn‟t mind saying it around you, but Alleine Minor said, “I‟m going to take her by the arm and make sure she goes.” Now what she said when she got in there, I don‟t know.
HT: You‟ve mentioned Miss Minor a couple of times before, now who was she exactly.
AD: She was one of the older people on the faculty, she was a piano teacher; a very lovely person who had been brought here with him from Meredith College to teach piano when he [Wade Brown] came here from here from Meredith to be the head of the School—the Music Department. She and Alleine [Mary Lois] Ferrell were both teaching in Meredith and we had—we had quite a few women on the faculty who were not married as well as married people who had children. Most all the faculty children went to Curry School. They didn‟t come from any one part of town. You had to—your parents to apply and you were accepted or not because they had limited—it was supposed to have been an ideal teaching situation and our teachers were the professors in the School of Education and the student teachers came around with their folding chairs and sat across the back and observed. When we were children we thought they were really observing us, but they were there to observe the teachers. Nothing went on that was any different from any other time. I guess they had to go back and write something up after—for the class after they got through. Did I get off a side track when I was—?
HT: Well, then, all right. I think you‟re real tired. Maybe we should stop today.
AD: I am getting—
HT: I think you‟re very tired. And we‟ll continue sometimes. How does that sound?
AD: Okay. I‟ll be glad to.
HT: Okay, well great! Well thanks so much. I really appreciate that. And so, I hope you get some rest then.
AD: And I appreciate—
[End of Tape 2, Side A]
[End of Interview]