Oral history interview with Beverly Bell Armfield, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Beverly Bell Armfield
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: September 6, 1990
[Begin Side A]
MF: So first if you could start, I guess, by just telling me a little bit of general information, like
when you were at Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina].
BA: All right. I was at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro], it was WCUNC
then, from 1944 through 1948. I graduated with a degree in English, which I subsequently
did not use until I was forty-five, when I decided I wanted to teach, so I went back to school
for a bit. Let's see what can I tell you about it? The college then was—of course, this was
during wartime.
MF: Right.
BA: There was a shortage of cafeteria help, and so all of the students were required to put in a
certain number of hours in the cafeterias. And you could sign up for breakfast, lunch, or
dinner, and if you had to sign up for dinner you got to carry enormous trays because we ate
family-style and more or less dressed up in evening. Not dress up dress, but you were
required—
MF: But dressed nice, right. What do you mean, family style?
BA: On the table.
MF: Right. Were—
BA: And each table had a hostess. In all four dining halls, there were tables. North—which was
the newest then, had oblong tables I remember, and South had round tables. Wait a minute,
there's North and South and Spencer and [Phillips]. Is that it?
MF: I think there were four.
BA: I think there were too. I can't remember the name of it.
MF: But, yes. I think there weren’t North, South, East, and West. There's North, South and
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BA: There were large tables in all of them. And some oblong, some round, and one student was
asked to serve as hostess at night. The rest of the day, we ate cafeteria style, but if you were
the hostess you sat at the head of the table and saw to it that everyone had things, and the
waitress or whoever was waiting the table brought a big tray, and there would be bowls of
the vegetables and the platter of meat, and it was done truly family style.
MF: Yes.
BA: And it was nice. I think maybe something was lost when the college got bigger, but this was
a good way to get to know each other too. And you were assigned certain tables. We also
had compulsory chapel. We were assigned seats there, too, and checked. Let's see—the
dining hall. Anyhow, that freshman year each of us, I think, gave two weeks each semester
to help out in the dining hall, and it was an interesting experience. I was a very scrawny
person. I remember learning a long time to balance one of those trays. That's frightening.
And also [unclear] to serve people coffee.
MF: Oh yes.
BA: But we survived. And most of the cutlery and chinaware survived too. And then I think after
that, yes, that we did not—we could do it if we wanted to. But it still was voluntary, and you
didn't get paid for it, I don't believe. Many—we felt that we were doing something for the
war effort.
MF: Right.
BA: But this is what we hear. And all four years I can say we had our meals under that plan. We'd
go get in line for breakfast, and you did at lunchtime, except on Tuesdays when we had
chapel, and then everybody ate lunch at the same time at your table. And the only thing I
remember about Tuesday lunch, everybody [unclear] bear me out, is white mountain rolls.
They were just large round rolls that were dusted with flour before every meal. Anyhow, the
meals were planned, of course. It was very different that way. We had no choice of what was
coming to us at dinner.
MF: Right.
BA: And was usually pretty good, except when we were treated to mutton. I do remember not
wanting to stay for mutton.
MF: I've heard so many people say that. [laughs]
BA: [laughs] We used to go to the Home Economics cafeteria Friday nights because that was fish
night. It was a nice little arrangement. Then there—that was back in the days when Walker
Avenue kept going all the way to campus. [coughs] Excuse me, I’ve lost it. Anyhow a
quieter world, all girls, and on weekends the place turned pretty coed.
MF: Oh, lots of men came on campus?
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BA: Well, yes, because there were relatively few girls that stayed. Guilford [College, Greensboro,
North Carolina] was coed. Let's see, [University of North] Carolina [at Chapel Hill] was a
big number more men than women, and I think—as I recall, you did not go to Carolina until
your junior year.
MF: If you were female.
BA: Well, yes. I remember I wanted to go, and then my father finally gave in and about that time
I decided I'd rather stay [unclear]
MF: [laughs]
BA: But he had gone to Carolina in history and did not [unclear]. My daughters graduated from
UNCG [Laura Armfield Tucker, Class of 1975, and Ellen Armfield Bolick, Class of 1973],
but my mother [Frances Bell, Class of 1923] graduated from NCCW.
MF: Right. North Carolina College for Women.
BA: For Women. And it had had a couple of other names, I think—
MF: State Normal and Industrial—
BA: Industrial—
MF: —I think was the first name, and then NCCW, and then WCUNC—
BA: —and when it was WC, we had a student body of about two thousand, which could be
accommodating to us on campus. There were very few town students. They were usually
Greensboro people.
MF: Right.
BA: It was not the commuting thing that has gone on since then, and, of course, no one was
allowed to have a car, so we had no parking problems. And the gates went across the street.
The streets that went through the residential section.
MF: Gates that closed?
BA: They closed at night.
MF: Oh. I didn't realize that.
BA: Oh, yes. And if you had a date, he had to park out on Walker Avenue and walk in. I lived in
Winfield [Dormitory], which is about as far into the campus as you can go.
MF: That was a brand new dorm then?
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BA: They were brand new. And if I had a date, he had to walk all the way back there to get me
because we were not allowed to go running around and meet a date. Not if anybody who
knew about it, and then you—we did have curfew times. I think it was eleven [pm] on—it
may be eleven [pm] on weeknights, and I think we were as upperclassmen allowed to stay
out until midnight.
MF: Oh, wow.
BA: Yes. And you were in because if you weren't— [laughs]
MF: That's more than some parents would let.
BA: Well, I think it was, yes, because I do remember going home and [unclear].
MF: Yes.
BA: I'm trying to think what other big changes have happened. Oh, we were talking about this, a
group of us; we were very close to each other. And I'm sure it was required we were isolated.
We moved about—of course, four classes of girls, and you knew more people because you
had more time to know people and because we ate together and because there were various,
through the week, activities that were pretty much a closed corporation, when you think
about it. And I remember the first year we were there, there were really not too many people
to go out with. Most of the young men our age were in the [United States] Army, Marines,
something—
MF: Right.
BA: —and there was an Army camp here. And some girls would go out there for dances. And
one or two locals left, but every Saturday night they ran the movies. And they were usually
first-run movies at Aycock [Auditorium].
MF: Oh, wow.
BA: I had a couple of sweaters I made sitting in a movie because if you made them a certain way,
you could do it without looking.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: And so we would go down to Aycock to the movies on Saturday night very often. But life
was simpler then.
MF: And I guess at that time you still had to wear hat and gloves when you went downtown?
BA: No, but we certainly didn't go anywhere in dungarees.
MF: Right.
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BA: That being probably our most daring outfit. Everybody had them. You went to college with
your father's cast-off shirt, particularly if it were big enough, or your brother's dungarees,
which you wore rolled up just below the knees. And, of course you never—you've seen
pictures—we wore bobbie socks, stockings to your knee. And Miss Harriet Elliott [history
and political science faculty] was still the dean of students my first year and perhaps next
year, I'm not sure. She was sort of part-time because she was serving in an advisory capacity
to President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt [32nd president of the United States], but she had some
very strong notions about young women walking about with their hair in curlers and in
dungarees. And so if you found it necessary to go to the library and you didn't want to
change clothes and you weren't comfortable, you pulled on your raincoat over your
dungarees and wore a big kerchief over your rolled up hair and hoped nobody put their hand
on your shoulder suddenly.
MF: [laughs]
BA: And so we were all—any time there's a rule there's a way around it—
MF: Right.
BA: —but they were very prim about those things, and if we choose to sunbathe in the spring—
this was very big then. Everybody needed a suntan, but I paid a high price for mine now.
MF: Yes.
BA: You had screened in two of the tennis courts, which were down below the Bailey [unclear]
dormitories, and we had to wear our bathing suits down there, but we had to cover ourselves
with a raincoat while walking down there, so nobody would see us. And so most of the girls,
or lots of them, would go down in the afternoons if they had the time and bake in the sun for
an hour or so, and this too was very carefully done. And, of course, I know in later years it
became a local sport to ride through the campus and see people in the bikinis sunbathing
where they chose.
MF: Well, I think they still have places designated—
BA: Do they?
MF: —by the dorms, what they call places that are designated is like the North Spencer "beach."
BA: That's a good idea.
MF: Yes, and that's the designated place.
BA: Well, I think for a while, as in all things the pendulum goes all the way across, and it's
swinging back now. But in the sixties, children had to have their day.
MF: I've only interviewed a couple of people from classes in the sixties yet, but I'm getting there.
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BA: Those when I graduated were—
MF: Well, actually at UNCG in the early seventies—at UNCG, the impression I get so far is that
a lot of things that were happening at other places it was sort of a delayed—
BA: I think so, yes.
MF: —when they occurred.
BA: A little more conservative than that.
MF: Yes, it took a few more years for things to get there.
BA: I think so. Kent State [shooting of unarmed college students at Kent State University, Kent,
Ohio, by Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970] was quite a shocker, but I can't remember
whether that happened in high school—
MF: I think it was '70.
BA: —I think it was '70.
MF: I think it was 1970.
BA: I do remember saying to Emma when she went off to college that if you see a big crowd,
walk wide around it and then find out later what goes.
MF: I think it was October of '70.
BA: I don't know what she did, but it was correct advice in those days. But it was a rather
fearsome thing. Things got rapidly out of hand, and yet I feel like it has swung back in the
other direction, and some of the more conservative people are students now.
MF: Yes, I guess you get caught between the liberals and conservatives.
BA: I think so. How long can you be a flower child? [laughs]
MF: Well, I don't know.
BA: Some are still working on it.
MF: Yes. Tom Hayden [American social and political activist, author, politician] sort of stayed
that way.
BA: Yes.
MF: With the student life and some of those rules and regulations they had, if you had a date
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come to pick you up, didn't you have to sign out?
BA: Oh, mercy yes. Yes.
MF: Okay.
BA: When we were freshmen, we were not allowed to date during the week without your house
counselor, your residence hall counselor's permission, and I was in Cotten [Dormitory] then,
under the tutelage of Mrs. Annie [Fulton] Carter [Class of 1921]—she was a lady of the old
school.
MF: Oh yes.
BA: And we went to her office and knocked on her door and had to have signed permission from
her to go off campus during the week. And we also had to have—I don't recall exactly; I
don't believe we had to have signed permission on weekends, but you filled out a permission
slip which was left in her box with the hostess, and it had your name, who you were leaving
with, where you were going, and when you expected to get back. Because everyone knew
you had to be back at a certain time.
MF: Right.
BA: And I also can remember Mrs. Carter turning young men away from our dormitory because
they did not have on neckties.
MF: Oh, really.
BA: We were to be proper. This didn't happen too often, and, of course, the inevitable flap
occurred when the people, the boys, in the [United States] Navy came calling. They didn't
wear jackets, and while they had a kerchief, it was not a proper necktie. So the rules had to
be changed a little bit, and as upperclassmen, I don't think we had to have—we had to have
permission to go out of town, signed permission.
MF: From your parents?
BA: I can't remember. I'm sure we did the freshman year. I think after that you had to just get
your counselor's signature.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: So just a regular weekend date, you signed yourself in and out. But before the dormitory was
closed at night—Barbara Parrish [Class of 1948] can tell you because she was our house
president—they checked who was out and who had not come back and then started looking
through the dormitory because sometimes people came in and forgot to sign in, and if they
didn't find you, you probably were in a little bit of trouble when they did. [laughs]
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MF: Yes. I've heard how people would sneak in and out of the windows.
BA: Yes, I think that bottom floor of Winfield was considered the prime place to live because you
could go out any time you wanted to. [laughs] Unfortunately, I lived on third floor, but I was
a deadhead at night anyhow. When it was bedtime I went to bed.
MF: Somebody was telling me about some of the classes that they had, and I didn't realize this,
but they had a class called Body Mechanics for freshmen.
BA: Oh I had to take that thing, and I hated it. I tell you, looking back at it it's probably the best
thing any of us ever had. I—even worse than that was the reason for getting into it. Now this
to me was utter humiliation, but as freshmen we were lined up in the gym by a group of
phys[ical] ed[ucation] majors, and I—they proceeded to make us leave our clothes off at a
distance, and I think we were given a towel or something to drape around our hips. Well, I
was a one hundred pound woman in those days anyhow and somewhat less than pretty and
not particularly anxious to go parading around—
MF: Yes.
BA: —and they took some kind of metal stick, I guess, that came like this and then folded just
slightly out at an angle. And that was taped to you on your breastbone and went up and down
your vertebrae in the back, and then they lined you up and took pictures. And, of course it
was a good way, I suppose, of looking for curvatures of the spine and things like that. And it
was decided that I did not stand quite straight enough. I do have a slight curvature anyhow,
and because of this I was assigned to Body Mechanics.
MF: Oh my.
BA: Which was nothing in the world but an awfully good workout, and I enjoyed it in spite of
myself. And it was very good for me, and I seriously considered signing up for it a second
time simply because it was good, but what it was was the same type of workout you get now,
not aerobic, but some exercise classes that you take it a while, it will stop. Very much the
same type thing.
MF: Yes.
BA: And we used bars on the ceiling that we walked with our hands across and various things.
And I do remember the instructor was a very attractive woman whose name was [Jeannette]
Potter, and she was quite strict with us, but she made you do things right.
MF: Yes.
BA: And I was not particularly coordinated in those days or very interested in becoming so, and
she somehow made it seem like a real good thing. And when I finished that class, I felt much
better for having done it. I think, interestingly enough, I have from time to time the rest of
my life signed up for something like it, just tortured myself, but it does make you feel better.
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MF: Oh yes.
BA: It was just exercises, though, floor type exercises and stretching and bending and
strengthening your shoulders and your legs, the kind of thing everybody knows about now
and sometimes people get paid to do. [laughs]
MF: Yes. What about student government?
BA: Let's see. We had a legislature, president, vice-president, of course [unclear].
MF: Let me just stop this just for a second.
[recording paused]
BA: It's just going to sing.
MF: It's no problem.
BA: I don't know what they have now. We had then officers chosen by the entire student body, of
course, and then various people were from other offices that made up the legislature. Each
dorm had a representative, I think. I was on the legislature my senior year because I was the
campus social chairman, a job I'm sure you no longer have. But it involved coordinating a
certain amount of recreational activity, and also I was in charge of giving the student-faculty
teas and things like that. It was fun. I enjoyed doing it. We have a—let's see, I believe we
had swing dance one time. I know we had a barn dance in the gym. It was entertainment that
was separate from the more formal, more scheduled things on the campus—
MF: Yes.
BA: —and designed to be open to all students, and we did strange things, strange then. But back
to the student government. There would be elections in the spring at which they would be
choosing president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, social chairman. I believe the
chief marshal was an elective position then. There would be a school cheerleader, I do
believe, but I'm not really sure of the function.
MF: The school?
BA: Cheerleader. Each class had cheerleaders.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: It was kind of a person who would be the pep person, if you were having a class meeting, or
these things we’d go back to, these alumni meetings. The vice cheerleaders were supposed to
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be sure we all know the class song. Some of us never quite learned it the first time. Anyhow,
these were the student government elections, and we would have speeches and one chapel
program and right much campaigning around the campus. They'd do signs and slogans and
things like that. And then what I was planning out to say—the representatives came from all
over the campus. Each dormitory was represented. There was a representative from the
campus judicial board on the legislature. I can check this better for you right here.
[recording paused]
BA: Let's see what we have here. We had Rat Day too.
MF: Oh yes, I've heard about Rat Day. But I've only heard about it. What was Rat Day?
BA: Look. Here's a dining hall scene at lunch, obviously on a rainy day. Everybody wore their
boots like this, and you covered your head, and then you would eat at tables and chairs from
the dining halls, and here's the line. It looks pretty crowded.
MF: Rat Day—now what was Rat Day?
BA: Rat Day was super. They still had this leftover thing, actually they had them when my
mother was there—literary societies. I think they started out to be the Adelphians and
Aletheians and the Dikeans and Cornelians. It—I don't know, they kind of degenerated.
When we were there, it was just something that went under your name in the annual when
you graduated, just something that you had participated in. But Rat Day was the day—this
was the day when each freshman received an invitation to one of the four societies, and they
were given instructions to dress in that society's colors, usually with no makeup but
something that would make it clear that this is a rat. And here the presidents of the different
societies wore the sashes with the colors that day, and if the rat saw the president, they were
forced to their knees and so on. This was just our usual procedure. And they had to do
anything that day that the upperclassmen wearing the same colors they were told them to do.
You wound up doing some interesting things and got very creative sometimes. It was not
unusual to find a freshman going up and down the hall polishing everyone's shoes. And I
know one year my mother came over to borrow something to wear—she and I wore the
same clothes a lot. And someone had a rat working in the—. And they brought her down,
and she had to go through all of this, "How do you do, Mrs. Bell?" And, "What can I do for
you, Mrs. Bell?" [laughs] Mother enjoyed it too. But they also turned out to be an interesting
thing that rats were given loads of men's addresses. Men being college men and servicemen
and so on, and they had to write letters to them. And sometimes good friendships came out
of those.
MF: Oh, wow.
BA: And I remember writing letters as a rat and getting answers and carrying on a
correspondence with some person I'd never seen. Let me get it here, and see about
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student government. Well, we also had May Day still. This is a person who's in town
you might be interested in. She was maid of honor for May Court. May Queen is no
longer here, but Jannie [Mary Jeannette Fair Frazier, Class of 1948] is just as pretty
now as she was then.
MF: Do you know what her last name is now?
BA: Frazier. Mrs. Clifford Frazier. Mrs. C. Clifford Frazier. Let's see—Golden Chain—Who's
Who they had, and Golden Chain. And eight outstanding seniors were picked every year.
Here are the society things—it was the marshals that came from there. And you wore a color
designated each year. You served as junior marshals and senior marshals, you see. A
gentleman told me one time that that number we wore was supposed to be the year we
wanted to get married. [laughs] But the chief marshal was elected; the social chairman was
elected. Let me be sure of what I'm saying. There were various clubs and organizations
connected with the different schools at the college, departmental clubs. Of course, the
Playmakers—what were they, Masqueraders?
MF: There's still a society now called the Masqueraders.
BA: Yes, well, they were there then, and of course, the Coraddi [student literary magazine],
whose been there or do they still have it?
MF: They still have the Coraddi.
BA: Okay, Coraddi was there and Living Well. I worked on that one year, and I worked on
Carolinian [student newspaper] two years. I'm working my way back. And I worked on
Companions the last year, which had been there. Well—where is student government? [still
looking through annual] We're about to be getting through. That's chapel, and you had your
assigned seat and you better be in it. I haven't found student government. I never had it. Here
you go. This would be a convention of the legislature—representatives from dormitories,
faculty advisors, and let's see—I remember her. And, of course, these were the student
government officers, and this was a meeting every second week—house presidents [unclear].
I think that's Barbara Parrish.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: She's changed a little.
MF: Not a whole lot.
BA: Not a whole lot. You could still pick her out. This was Betsy [Bulluck Strandberg, Class of
1948], who presided. I'm sitting next to her. I don't know her. I didn't do anything like
presiding or anything. Sue Womack [Reece, Class of 1948] from Reidsville was the vice
president, and she now lives in Boston [Massachusetts]. We have—we lost a lot of faculty
members that year.
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MF: So was student government—was that a real important institution on campus?
BA: I guess in many ways it was. It was pretty much a package deal. You—the rules were there,
and you went by them. It was a force for good. The judicial board took care of infractions of
the rules and things like that. There was an honor board. I was on student faculty reviewing
committee, and this had several members of the faculty and several students. I'm trying to
think what we did other than have a marvelous time because it was such an interesting group
of people. I think when there were complaints or concerns on the campus from either faculty
or students, we met to mediate.
MF: Right.
BA: Anyhow, so, yes, I think the organizations like that were important and had a certain amount
of clout. I don't know how that is today. I do understand that—you could not run for
president or as vice president until you were a rising senior. And I think it was traditionally a
rising junior who would be secretary, and the treasurer, perhaps, could be a sophomore,
probably. In my freshman year we had one all-sophomore dorm.
MF: Oh really
BA: Yes, we were mostly—some by choice, some because they were trying to get into Weil,
Winfield or Spencer or Kirkland. some of the dorms got filled up, and you didn't get in. But
Miss Lillian Cunningham, whom if you've not met, please see that you do. She's at Friends
Home—was the counselor at Jamison for a hundred years. [laughs] Don't tell her I said that.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: But she is now out at Friends [retirement home], and—
MF: That's down by—
BA: Guilford College.
MF: —Guilford College, isn't it, yes.
BA: Right next to Guilford. And if you'll call her, I am sure she will tell you tales. Now she
knows more about that place than anybody.
MF: Oh, I bet.
BA: And she hasn't forgotten very much. She simply amazes me. She walks into these meetings,
and she's very—gotten gray, and here all us little old gray-headed ladies, and she knows
everybody's name.
MF: Oh my.
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BA: Can spot them just like that. Anyhow, we wound up in Jamison, and it turned out to be a
really good dorm. Everybody there was a sophomore, and everybody there was just out of
freshmen restrictions. You know we had closed study as freshmen.
MF: Right, right.
BA: We were not allowed out of our rooms from seven-thirty until nine-thirty at night. And then
when the bell rang, you could take a bath, move around for about an hour and a half before
the bell rang and you went to bed.
MF: Oh, my.
BA: Oh, yes. And our house president came around and checked then. Sometimes she wasn't too
good about checking. But, yes, we were very strictly watched as freshmen. It isn't all bad. It
sounds terribly restrictive, I imagine, to people now, but it certainly got you started on some
pretty good study habits because after all that is what you go there for.
MF: Right.
BA: And after that year, you realized you were going to do a certain amount of work, and you
paced yourself, and while you might not do it from seven to nine-thirty at night, you—
MF: That might become your least favorite time.
BA: That was the time to play. You—everyone got pretty quiet in the early evening, and we were
not allowed radios or record players that would disturb other people, although up until—
usually in the evening upper-class dorms from about seven-thirty [pm] until ten [pm] it was
pretty quiet. And up until then and immediately after that the record players would go on
loudly, the doors would open, people would be dancing in the hallway [laughs] just for the
fun of it, but we were much more restricted than students are now, and have a young man in
your room—for heaven's sake. Perish the thought. They were allowed to go upstairs and
carry heavy boxes in and out at the beginning and ending of school.
MF: Otherwise they were only allowed in the parlor, weren’t they?
BA: Oh yes, yes, or on invitation and careful permission, in the kitchen.
MF: Oh, okay, that's right.
BA: But you didn't just take them there.
MF: Right. You mentioned a little bit about how the war [World War II, 1939-45 global war]
affected life on campus with—
BA: Well, necessarily yes.
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MF: —yes, like with the cafeteria. And how else did it seem to?
BA: Well, of course we spent more time with each other because there weren't too many people
to date.
MF: Right.
BA: But there were these servicemen wandering through, and so anybody who was dating
someone who was in the service, if he were home on leave, came through, and a lot of us
dated fellows at [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill and V-12 [college] programs
[supplemental program to train more commissioned officers for the U.S. Navy]
.
MF: And what?
BA: They called it V-12. It was a special naval program. [whispers—unclear] Anyhow, they were
people who were chosen as outstanding scholars and particularly, probably officer
material—
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: —and they were given special training through the navy, but it also came as college.
MF: Oh, okay, I see.
BA: And quite a few of the fellows were there. But they were more restrained than we were.
[laughs]
MF: Oh.
BA: So we saw them some on weekends, so some exchanged there. But during the week it was a
girls' school, and during the week if you didn't want to go around with makeup on or
particularly dressed up, you went as you chose. On weekends everyone looked pretty good.
MF: Yes, just in case.
BA: Just in case. And it really was not too difficult, if you were interested in dating, there were
people there to date. And if you were interested in meeting new people, there was usually
someone new to meet because everyone who had a date frequently that date had a friend.
MF: Right.
BA: Yes. It's amazing how many of my class are here in town because they married local people.
MF: Oh, I know. That's what I found with a lot of people that I've interviewed is they
BA: I expect so.
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MF: —married somebody around here.
BA: Oh, yes. And it used to be that the boys hung out over there quite a bit. I don't know what
they do now, but—
MF: Well, they go to class.
BA: You are a more portable generation. Everyone has their own car, and you can go where the
boys are.
MF: Yes.
BA: We took the bus when we went to Chapel Hill on the weekend.
MF: Oh, right. There was a bus that went every week, every weekend, right?
BA: Well, the Greyhound [Bus Company]. You had to wrestle a suitcase down to the Greyhound
station on the city bus and catch the bus down. And then—I can never forget one time my
husband I was dating by then, and I went down to Raleigh to a football game in a pouring
rain and had managed to wrestle that suitcase to the bus station. And we got off the bus—
another girl was with me—and were met by our dates with a hamburger in hand and said,
"Hurry, we're going to miss the kickoff." And so we went straight to the ballgame, sat in the
rain all afternoon, and I hope we beat Wake Forest [University, Winston-Salem, North
Carolina], I really do.
MF: When WC [Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina] changed to a coed
institution, do you think that something was lost?
BA: Yes, but I expect it was inevitable because the times changed and because I think any time
you change the whole format, something is lost. I was later on a student at Davidson
[College, Davidson, North Carolina], a special student one year, the year they let girls in.
MF: Oh, okay.
BA: And the faculty members down there were resisting it like you would not believe [unclear],
plus the girls were succeeding years, editing the papers, were valedictorians, and it looked
like they just wiped out the fellows for a while. But there is consternation. There were a lot
of changes, and that big a change is going to be felt, be noticed, and I think it made certain
differences in the campus, plus it came in pretty gradually. There was no big stampede of
male students trying to get in there.
MF: Right.
BA: And there were not too many departments that were of great appeal to just men.
MF: Right.
16
BA: I don't guess there are any kind any more, but I guess what I'm saying is—and then of course
now I know Dr. [William E.] Moran [chancellor] is trying very hard to get more emphasis on
sports and things that will perhaps attract more male students, and I can—I see why he's
doing it. I think that perhaps when you have limited funds, you have to decide which is more
important, academic or this, where is your money going. I'm glad I don't have to make these
decisions.
MF: Right.
BA: But things were simple. We went there for an education. We had X number of teachers. We
had a pretty good physical education department. But as far as fielding teams to play against
other teams, I don't think so. I'm sure there was a girls' basketball team, and they must have
played someone, but I don't remember.
MF: Yes.
BA: Maybe the girls came in from Greensboro College [Greensboro, North Carolina], and the
girls came to Guilford College [Greensboro, North Carolina]. But you remember too these
early war years, you couldn't get in a car and go somewhere freely because there was gas
rationing. And then right after the war because there was not gas rationing, but I remember
that as being very busy years. The men came back, and they were all making up time. My
husband came back from the Navy and went right straight back into [North Carolina] State
[University, Raleigh, North Carolina] and had to make up work that he had just dropped in
mid-air to go join the Navy, and things like that, and it was pretty serious. We had awful lot
of fun. [laughs] Nobody had much money and got along very well without it. Anyhow, it's
bound to have made a difference, and we went from being a small school because two
thousand is not a big school.
MF: Right.
BA: My daughters graduated from high schools in Greensboro that were larger than the college
student body had been while I was there.
MF: Right.
BA: And it—in a smaller group it was easier for us to be governed from above. It was easier for
the faculty rules to be in vogue. They couldn't do it now just by the sheer volume of the
students.
MF: Yes, because it's gone from college to university status.
BA: Even us sending an advocate to the [unclear].
MF: Right.
BA: But we came from homes where we were pretty strictly observed. I can well remember my
father finding me out in front of the house talking to some friends who were in the car, and I
17
had on a pair of short shorts and one of his shirts. And I was decent, but he did not think so,
and as soon as that car left, I was brought in and told I was never to appear in public like that.
The point was that he did not want people want to see me like that. So I tried to be very
careful that he didn't see me. [laughs] But this was—I was twenty years old.
MF: Oh wow. I may just go ahead and turn this over now before—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
MF: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is—I know we've talked a little bit about it. I know
you said you really didn't know a whole lot about it, except just what you heard from other
people is with the Alumni Association and the problem between Chancellor Moran and the
Alumni Association.
BA: Yes, yes. I've told you the truth. I have heard it discussed. I've heard some pretty frank
discussions at alumni meetings. I don't think anyone understands it.
MF: That seems to be what I've been—
BA: I imagine you're hearing this. I know I don't. I cannot see why it was necessary, except the
building was there, and they wanted to use it. And I suppose as the whole thing grows I have
to remember this—when I was there Kathleen Petty, what was her name [Kathleen Petit
Hawkins, Commercial Class of 1923; worked on campus for forty years, mainly in financial
aid]? Anyhow, Bobbie's predecessor, Hawkins, had been in my mother's place before—you
see we tended to repeat ourselves.
MF: Yes.
BA: Actually, I ran into a daughter of mother's college roommate. Anyhow, it had not gotten
large enough in that first—what would it have been? Seventy years prior to '75—fifteen
years, something. I think I remember the fiftieth anniversary. We were here in Greensboro
then. There would not have been that large a student alumni group out there, and therefore
people stayed kind of in touch. You can't do that now. And I think it's simply in the nature of
the times too. We were thrown more closely together and as a result were more interested in
each other. And we go back now, and it's kind of like, as I was saying, and you just keep
right on talking. And my daughters don't come back; they have no interest in it at all. And
they did not have the close friends on campus that I had, simply because the whole nature of
the college had, I think, had changed. It's kind of like the nature of neighborhoods has
changed. People are not as close and not maybe—I think they are as caring, but they don't
know another person's concerns unless you're thrown into a group where somebody cares.
MF: Yes.
BA: I have lived on this street for eight years now, and I know some of the people who live here.
I've met—some of the people moved, and new people have moved in. I think the beginning
18
of the back porch was a very bad mistake. Nobody sits in the front of the house and sees
anybody else anymore. I know this is picky, but it's the nature of the way we live now, and
the college has grown so very large, and I bet you get much more of an impression of that.
MF: Yes.
BA: And I doubt the student-faculty relationship is as close a one as we had. We had, as
freshmen, what—appointed to take care of us a junior advisor, who the first of the school
took us about and saw to it that we were where we should be when we should be.
MF: Right.
BA: And she—this person worked with our faculty advisor, and I know I later was—Mr. [James
W.] Painter [English professor] was my faculty advisor when I was a junior. A student
liaison thing. And I thoroughly enjoyed it because in the first place, he was one of the rare
characters that they ever had on the faculty, and he was fun to work with, and he and Mrs.
[Kathleen] Painter was on the faculty, too. They were very gracious to the students. They
went into their—students, undergraduates were invited into their homes and come for the
evening, come for a party, that kind of thing, and I don't think this is widely done any more
in undergraduate periods. I know my son-in-law has graduate students. He's on the faculty at
the University of Illinois.
MF: Right.
BA: And they do entertain their graduate students in their home.
MF: Yes, well, it's a smaller number.
BA: A much smaller crew. And they're invited to bring their dates or their mates or whatever, and
[daughter] Laurie [Laura Armfield Tucker, Class of 1975] says it really is fun to do because
the first time they come in they are all very shy, and by the end of the year they come out in
between times and all over the place. And she enjoys it a great deal.
MF: Yes.
BA: But she entertains on the spur of the moment, anywhere from eight to eighty and thinks very
little of it. And I think they did then. I remember being in the homes of several of the faculty
members. I don't think my daughters ever were.
MF: Yes.
BA: And there was just a—oh, we were all closer. And you will have heard of the senior
musicals?
MF: Yes, I've heard a little bit about them.
19
BA: We had a lot of fun with those. You have to know people pretty well to make fun of them.
MF: Right.
BA: And they have to know you pretty well to let you, and yet everything went [unclear] just as
fun. You've got the take-off on the faculty and so on, and it was all done in very good sport,
and I never heard of anyone getting angry at an impersonation.
MF: I don't think they would have said anything. I think they knew it was all in fun.
BA: They had to know that the ones who really took it were the ones that somebody really liked.
MF: Yes.
BA: Anyhow, but I don't think this back then would happen now.
MF: Yes, I'm not sure. It's such a large school.
BA: I know. I go over there, and it just seems rather larger to me, and yet I came back one
summer to take some education courses, and it seemed to me that working in the education
department—I can't remember the name of the woman I had classes with. I thought she was
outstanding. She was a specialized in adolescent psychology, and they hadn't even invented
that when I was a student, an undergraduate, and it was the best course I think I've ever had
and the most helpful in teaching. But there were a number of graduate students in there, and
obviously she knew them and knew them well. But then again you've got the graduate level,
then your ratio has shrunk. And there was a great deal of rapport between those people, and
they were very nice about us outsiders, and it was a very good experience. Dr. Mary Lou—
[unclear] seemed she knew you. She and her husband had lived in a Jewish kibbutz in Israel.
He was there—faculty too—I wonder if she's still there.
MF: I'm trying to think. [unclear] I can't recall her name.
BA: She was older than I was, so there's a good chance that she's retired. I would have guessed
that she would have. She's probably retired by now. You know, it's hard to remember that
when you don't see people, that don't they don't get younger.
MF: Yes.
BA: I was quite shocked to come back to Greensboro to find that so many of two-year-old
children who were so sweet when you left had gotten married—
MF: Yes.
BA: —had grown up.
MF: You remember them.
20
BA: Yes, they stopped right there because I wasn't here.
MF: That's right. I've started to notice that now.
BA: I'm beginning to notice that in my grandchildren. I nearly flipped this spring. We went to
England. We hadn't seen the two older grandchildren for nearly two years, and when they
were here last the oldest one was eleven and about here on me. [gestures] Walked in over
there, she's thirteen, just barely thirteen, five feet nine inches tall and gorgeous.
MF: I know.
BA: I was not ready for that.
MF: I know.
BA: She's got a British accent. [laughs]
MF: I know when I was teaching high school the kids were taller than me.
BA: I'm sure they were. When I was teaching high school, they all patted me on the head as they
went by, but they liked that. That seemed [unclear].
MF: Are there any other things that you want to make sure you add that I might have forgotten to
ask you about?
BA: I hadn't really—I didn't have an agenda—I was here for you.
MF: Yes, but I just want to make sure if there's anything that I didn't ask you about that you might
think is important.
BA: I'm sure there were a lot of things that were important, but I think you and I covered it when
I said that I think it was due to the smallness and the fact that we were restricted and kept
herded in together.
MF: Almost cloistered.
BA: Yes, I think you could agree. And, of course, you don't know any other way to live; it's a
pretty good way. It may be that a student nowadays couldn't cope with that kind of thing, but
we had been more restricted at home perhaps, and it was a different world. When I went
back to teaching high school after the children went to college, I was in a strange town with
nothing else to do and I needed something; it was a different ball game. And now students
aren't quite like they used to be. And I had to do a great deal of adapting.
MF: Oh, I'm sure.
BA: But the college has had to grow too. It would have changed no matter what. It would not—
there's no way it would have been what it was when I was there. And I'm not sure I would
21
want it to be.
MF: Oh, yes.
BA: There was an awful lot of restriction. We were poverty stricken. Everybody was. Money was
not going into education; it was going into war.
MF: Oh sure.
BA: And then into building Europe again and all kinds of things, but I think I got an awful good
education. In fact, I think the WC ranked nationally very, very high, but it was ranked as a
girls' school.
MF: Right.
BA: And scholastically we were all satisfied. We were getting the finest education possible, short
of Smith College [Wellesley, Massachusetts] perhaps, or maybe Radcliffe [College,
Cambridge, Massachusetts], but they were about the only ones in the country that—you felt
we might have gotten a little bit more at Radcliffe.
MF: Yes.
BA: So we—I think we did very well for a college that was still learning to be.
MF: Yes. Well, I want to thank you.
BA: I've enjoyed it. It's been nice to see you.
MF: Okay.
BA: I'd love to hear the final result of all this thing.
MF: Okay, sure.
BA: What will you do?
[End of Interview]