Oral history interview with Gaye H. Fripp, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Gayle H. Fripp
INTERVIEWER: William Link
DATE: November 29, 1990
[Begin Side A]
WL: I'd like to start by asking you to tell me the first time that you had a significant experience at
Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina]—the first time that you came into
contact with it as an institution, and if you could recall any of the first impressions that you
had of the place.
GF: Well, my experiences go back to being the daughter of a graduate. My mother [Grace Boyd
Hicks] had been to the North Carolina College for Women in 1919 and '20, and she took the
commercial course and then left and came to a small town and raised three daughters. My
father was a [University of North] Carolina [at Chapel Hill] graduate, and he didn't require of
us, but strongly suggested, that we all spend our first two years at the Woman's College and
then could go anywhere we'd like to go. But if it was good for our mother, it was good
enough for us as a starter. So I had a sister [Grace Hicks Ellis] graduate in '55. My second
sister [Jean Hicks DeMajewski] went in '54 and transferred to Carolina two years later, and
so she did finish at Carolina. But I went up all during the '50s when my sisters were students
there from '51 to about '55 and remember eating in the dining hall and thinking the food was
wonderful and thinking the dorm rooms were huge and that it was a wonderful place. And so
I wanted to go there in '59 when I graduated from high school—was excited about it.
WL: Where'd you grow up?
GF: In Henderson, North Carolina. And it was funny because I can remember the trip from
Henderson to Greensboro to take them back and forth to school, and, of course, we didn't get
to go home very often. There were blocks of time you could not be away. But it was an
ordeal. It was a half a day trip to go those ninety-seven miles. You went through Burlington
and you went through Graham and you went through every little crossroad because it was
before the interstate. So it was literally a half a day trip to drive my sisters up and then a half
a day trip to get back home. So it seemed a lot further away and a lot more removed, I think,
than school would, certainly when my daughter went to Carolina. She thought she was just
going around the corner. But I do remember—one of the things that I remember was how
much pride my sisters took in their dorms, and I think that's completely vanished. But where
you were placed your freshman year in your dorm was all important, and I wound up in
Bailey. So we were called the Bailey Bunnies. That was sort of our nickname. But you had
great allegiance to your dormitory your freshman year, and it sort of really, in a way, shaped
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your friends for the first two years until then you got into your major. And I think that's when
you made a whole new group of friends that you began to see in the same classes over and
over again. But the dorm was so all important. And it's interesting to me now, with two
children in college, neither one has ever lived in a dorm.
WL: That’s something of a statement of a difference—
GF: It is. It is. But that was important. The other thing I remember was the great fear that we had
as freshman of Rat Day.
WL: I've heard about Rat Day.
GF: When we heard that we would be waked up early in the morning and then horrible things
would be done to us all day long. And, of course, every night you went to bed dreading if
tomorrow would be Rat Day. Well, of course, when it came, it wasn't so bad. I think now
they slipped papers under our doors, and they had rat ears and you had to cut them out and
wear them all day long. And maybe you had to do favors for every upperclassman that asked
you to do a favor because you were marked with these silly paper ears. But I don't remember
anything much worse than some slight embarrassment, so it was the dread of the day, rather
than the day when it happened. I think the other thing that was interesting is how we adored
our house president and her assistant. And I think now, they were only two years older than
we were as freshmen. There was a great gap between the classes then. But you knew that the
junior class would be the ones who would help you through and see you through and that
allegiance then to your dorm and then to your sister class was all important. And it is a point
of great pride to me that when I went in as a freshman, I was going to be a red coat because
that was my class color, so our blazers would be red. And it turned out my older sister's
blazer had been red, and my middle sister was a blue coat, which meant she was a sister
class. And that kind of thing being important. So the red and blue were teamed, and then the
gray and green were teamed. And, of course, we thought red and blue were far superior to
the other two years.
WL: How often did one—on what occasions did one wear class jackets?
GF: Well, you didn't get your blazer until your junior year, and then I think, honestly, we must
have worn them when it was 85 degrees. You know, they were wool blazers, but you wore
your blazer everywhere. And it sort of marked you.
WL: You weren't required to wear it necessarily, but you would wear it. But you didn't get it until
your junior year.
GF: Junior year. Is that right, or did we get them our sophomore year? We must have gotten it
our sophomore year because—isn't that funny? Because we were wearing it when our sister
class graduated in blue, and then you got your ring your junior year. How could I forget
something—? I think you must have gotten it your sophomore year.
WL: So you'd be able to match up with your sister class. Would you do other things with sister
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classes? Did you have a certain—?
GF: We did, and, of course, the sophomore year when we moved into dorms, you tended to
have—and I've forgotten what we called them now—Cinderella secret sisters where you
exchange names, almost drew names, and did surprises for your secret sister, and that would
tend to be a class thing. Then, of course, their junior play was all important. And it seems to
me we supported them when they did their junior play, but the big thing was graduation
when we got to be their Daisy Chain down in the park in front of Foust [Building]. So
actually form this human daisy chain—and we wore white dresses and held the chains and
they'd walk through as part of their graduation weekend. I think that must have been on
Saturday before the Sunday—maybe when seniors made speeches.
WL: I see. Kind of a senior day?
GF: Yes.
WL: Were graduations usually held right in front of Foust? Was that the—?
GF: That part of graduation was, and I don't know that I remember where the formal ceremony
was. I don't remember attending one until my own which was at the [Greensboro] Coliseum,
so I guess we had grown that large by that time. We had way outgrown Aycock
[Auditorium] because even though we had required mass meetings my freshman year, I don't
know that all of us—maybe we fitted in Aycock my freshman year, but by the time we were
seniors and the freshman class had gotten bigger every year, we no longer could fit into
Aycock.
WL: What did they do about mass meetings then?
GF: I think they discontinued them about that time.
WL: For that reason?
GF: Either that reason or in the early sixties they were beginning to be unpopular. We were kind
of a transition in a lot of ways because I think we came there very traditional. Oh, the other
thing, of course, were room inspections were just a day that you dreaded because you felt
like—I don't know what we thought they would do to us, but we really did consider the
people who came in to do room inspections real ogres. And they did wear white cotton
gloves, and they did check all your furniture for dust, and any kind of coke bottle in your
room was a major offense. So we were very traditional and still very law abiding. And yet by
the time we graduated, of course, we were having the Sit-ins at Woolworth's [non-violent
protests at Woolworth’s Department Store in Greensboro, North Carolina that led to
reversing the chain’s policy of racial segregation]. And those boys were freshmen when I
was a freshman. So that was the same class.
WL: Right. The inspections were done by fellow students? This is a system in which—?
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GF: No. They were adults. It was like out of the housing office.
WL: They were residential advisors, perhaps?
GF: Yes. But I'm trying to remember the lady's name, and I met her later as an adult in
Greensboro and she was the nicest, meekest lady, but we considered her an ogre. I think her
name was Mrs. Adams [?]. And we really were afraid of the day room inspections came.
Now I don't remember room inspection after my freshman year, so that might have been
another freshman problem. Might have happened my sophomore year, but then they
vanished.
WL: One of the things you always hear about women's colleges and Woman's College in North
Carolina and also women's colleges generally is the amazing number of rules that existed
regulating not only things like the condition of your room, but dress.
GF: Oh, yes.
WL: Was that enforced by the time—it certainly was there when—
GF: We did not wear any pants on campus. Now I think that was a written rule rather than just an
understood rule. No, we had to wear dresses. You could wear your gym uniform, but you
had to wear a raincoat over it. So, yes. We did not walk on a blade of grass. Sidewalks—you
would not have walked on a grass surface. I guess we thought lightning would strike us.
Maybe that was a rule. It certainly was understood. But that's why I say we were still very
law abiding, and there were a lot of rules, and you were always afraid as a freshman that
you'd slip up and break a rule even without knowing it was a rule. And I have looked for my
freshman handbook and had not been able to find it, but even my senior handbook was still a
fat little book of rules. So there were a lot. No smoking. You could smoke, it seems to me, in
one room of the dorm. It must have been a lounge. I didn't go there. Oh, and that's where the
TV was, I believe. So, yes, no smoking. Lights out, I think, at 11:00 [pm] our freshman year.
So, no lights. Very strict locking up of the halls. I'm trying to remember what else.
WL: Smoking was generally looked down upon?
GF: Oh, yes.
WL: Was it something that—in terms of the college and also peers?
GF: Well, Southern ladies didn't smoke, remember? And so, when I think back, of course, a lot of
them did, but they did it secretly in high school, and so when they came to college they were
so used to sneaking, it was not a problem to go to this room to smoke. But one of my other
first impressions was living by two girls from "the North." It seems to me one was from
Connecticut and one might even have been from Baltimore [Maryland]. And how free
spirited I thought they were. They told dirty jokes and they used curse words and they
smoked and they talked about sex. And it was just that whole experiencing new people from
new places, I think, was another very interesting thing to me.
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But we did have a lot of rules, and we had house meetings where these house
presidents went over the rules. Night after night we sat down there in the parlors and sort of
had our indoctrination. Signing in and out was a major thing. You had to sign out to go
downtown and sign back in any time you left campus. I actually wound up, it seems to me,
forgetting to sign out one time when I went home with my parents. So it was just a
reprimand, but the whole thing about someone should know where you were every minute of
the day. And you were expected to be in your dorm at certain times, or at least they'd know if
you were off campus.
WL: And if you broke the rules, there was a graduated system of penalties that would apply?
GF: There certainly was for major rules. There was a judicial court and a social court, and, come
to think of it, not signing out would have been social court because that was a social offense.
Judicial was more for, I guess, cheating and lying and more the honor code. But one of the
things you did not want to go do is have to go in front of one of those courts. It met in the
basement of the Alumni House. I guess we thought it was a dungeon, and we would never
get out again to be free people. But I do remember my freshman year forgetting to sign out
and having to go in front of the social court.
WL: And this was all run by students?
GF: Yes.
WL: Both the honor, the judicial court, and the social court?
GF: Both. Maybe they called it honor court and social.
WL: And the dormitory system of governance was also student run?
GF: Yes. We did have a housemother, who was there sort of as the mother.
WL: Who lived there?
GF: Yes. She lived in the room right off the parlor. And some of them were wonderful, and I still
enjoy seeing them today, and then some, just like people are different, were very
authoritarian and they're really more of the rule enforcer. And some of the others were there
as a nurturing, mother figure. But they helped the house president. When I think about it, that
house president must have been very isolated—living with freshmen, trying to be this role
model. She only had her roommate and the housemother.
WL: Did she get much support? I mean, was this a self-enforced system? For example, if you
broke the rules would your fellow students turn you in?
GF: Oh, yes.
WL: They would. And that was—there was nothing wrong with that?
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GF: Not according to us. No.
WL: In terms of the way peers looked at it. You mentioned smoking. What about drinking? Was
there much drinking?
GF: None. My senior year, they allowed seniors, it seems to me, to drink beer within the
Greensboro city limits. But it was my senior year, which would have been '63. That would
have gotten you, I imagine, expelled from school.
WL: A very serious offense.
GF: Very serious.
WL: And you couldn't drink within a certain radius of campus?
GF: You couldn't drink in Greensboro. I mean, I think that was it. Now how could they have
enforced beyond the campus? We didn't question. But, come to think of it, the drinking age
was twenty-one, so you were breaking a law until your senior year.
WL: Were the rules broken that much? Or you suggested that people go—went along with it
pretty much.
GF: They did, the ones I knew. And, of course, freshman year we had a lot of people who didn't
stay, and I guess that has never changed. But I think they probably did pretty quickly weed
out people who weren't willing to keep the rules. And maybe they were stricter on the
freshmen as far as indoctrination of rules and all of this, hoping to get them off to a good
start. And then it might have lightened up. I don't remember if we had fewer rules as I got
older or we just had learned to live with the rules. But, of course, most of us came out of high
schools where there had been an enormous number of rules, and the principal's word was all
powerful. So it really was not that different for us.
WL: Not any great surprise or no great change?
GF: I guess the biggest change was students were then enforcing the rules rather than parents,
and you did have these wonderful role models who were two years older than you were. And
I still regret that when I was in school every leader was a female, which meant women could
do every kind of job there was to be done, whether it was edit the newspaper, be president of
the student government or whatever. Athletic association. So every job to be done was done
by female. And it was a very friendly campus. I still think it's a friendly campus. Students
speak to you more than I've noticed taking my children to other campuses. So it was very
friendly, and the upperclassmen were very kind to the freshmen, so you really did look up
and admire and try to be like these upperclassmen. At least the people I knew.
WL: Did—to what extent was there a sort of an unofficial dress code? Was there much peer
pressure in terms of dress? I'm thinking when you came to school in the late 1950s, there
must have been a presence. I know there was a presence of—actually interesting diversity of
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people, different sorts of people that might not go along with—
GF: Well, that's interesting, and my thought was that coming to Greensboro and seeing more
people or was there a real change in the way people thought. When I was in high school, we
were not yet into any kind of labels. A few people had heard of [Bass] Weejun loafers, but
that was about the extent of it.
WL: Your high school wasn't label conscious?
GF: No, not at all. I wore a lot of my sister's hand-me-downs. We wore our band uniforms with
great pride, and I think now about girls running around like we did in those horrible fitting
pants and neckties, and we wore them with great, great pride. A little bit beginning of
Bermuda shorts when I was in high school, which was kind of a, "let's all do this new thing."
But when I came to the Woman's College, not only did I live beside these girls from the
North, who were, I thought, so wild, I lived across the hall from girls who had graduated
from Myer's Park [High School] in Charlotte [North Carolina]. And they were into all the
fads. They had the madras skirts and the madras Bermuda shorts, and only wore Villager
blouses and all wore their hair the same way and certain kinds of jewelry. And I think
probably a lot of people then did think, "Oh, that's the way college girls dress if they're going
to be successful." I can remember a whole lot of us had come to school with just slip- over
sweaters, crew neck sweaters, and we found out the girls from Myer's Park didn't wear crew
necks. And we found this one person down on Tate Street who would split all those sweaters
and put ribbon and buttons on, so everybody went to get ribbons and buttons— their
sweaters cut apart. So I think there was that beginning. And then you had the girls who
would come to WC [Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina] for all the
athletic programs. And they—I wonder what in the world they wore when they didn't wear
pants? Because I'm sure they had their own kind of special thing they wore. You could
quickly divide them out. See who was majoring in—
WL: Just by seeing them?
GF: Right. But wonder what in the world they would have worn. I don't know. But we did begin
to see that were certain ways to dress and that kind of indicated which group you were a part
of.
WL: This was a very closely knit, relatively, compared to nowadays I think, relatively
homogenous single sex institution. It's that kind of environment you might see more peer
pressure. At the same time, there was a great diversity, and you're suggesting—
GF: There was. And there were a lot of students. I can remember a lot of white blouses, but I
don't know if they were certain kinds of white blouses and the sweaters. But I'm sure there
were all kinds of groups. I'm just—I don't even remember what I wore. You know, I'd have
to look back, I guess, at pictures.
WL: Did—I gather when dating would take place, there was another set of rules that covered that.
Could you describe what those were?
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GF: Well, of course, you had to sign out to go on a date, and I think—I don't remember that you
had to put your destination, although you might have. You certainly probably had to put who
you were going with. I'm sure you did. And then you had to be back in the dorm it seems to
me by eleven [pm] on Friday night and Saturday night. I might be wrong on that. So you'd
have all of these cars lining up in front of the dorms, and they would blink the lights at a
certain time, and then there'd be this mad rush for the door to get there in that last five
minutes. One of the problems that I can remember about dating in Greensboro was not many
places to go. When you had a date, you went to one of the movies downtown or the movie at
the corner. So you could go to a movie. Some of the more adventurous people went out to
Green's Supper Club or the Plantation to dance, but that was a really expensive date.
I think we were at the beginning of being—and maybe it had been a long time before
that—a campus where everybody left on Friday afternoon to go date out of town because we
did date at [North Carolina] State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina; Wake [Forest
University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina]; Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina];
Carolina. It was wonderful for that because boys would come in and sort of through girls
they had known in high school meet you, and you began to have contacts on all the other
campuses. I had forgotten that as freshmen, they did a certain amount of putting us on buses
and taking us down to Carolina for these big mixer parties. And what a horrible feeling that
was getting off that bus. And, of course, I'm sure the boys felt just as bad as we did. Wonder
how in the world they made any boys at Chapel Hill come? Maybe they were as desperate to
meet girls because, see, there were no girls at Carolina.
WL: No girls at all?
GF: Pharmacy and nursing. That's what a lot of people decided they'd be—a nurse or a
pharmacist. It was the only way to go to Carolina as a freshman.
WL: Was—you mentioned earlier your father wanted you—your parents wanted you to go to
Woman's College with the possibility to transfer. Well, if you were going to transfer, where
would you transfer?
GF: I would have transferred to Carolina. That was my only plan. I was only going to serve this
two-year sentence in Greensboro and transfer. And I—it sounds really hokey. I loved that
school so much, so fast, it was almost a conversion experience. I can remember walking up
to the library one night and seeing it shine, the lights going in every direction, and knowing
that's where I wanted to be and stay. Faculty had a lot to do with it. And my sisters certainly
had been good students, so that when I went—and Vera Largent [history professor] was my
freshman advisor. She had been my sister's advisor. So she welcomed me with open arms,
and she made me feel like I was very special and I was going to be a success. She had us to
tea at her house. There was a lot of interaction between the faculty advisor and the students.
And I had an excellent freshman history teacher who went on to Carolina after she married.
But it was so exciting—the way she taught. And then—I guess the other thing about my
freshman year that's an all-time memory was having Randall Jarrell [English professor, poet,
literary critic, author, essayist, novelist, poet laureate to the United States Library of
Congress] teach me Introduction to the Narrative. And I thought there could never be
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teachers better than this anywhere else. Why would you ever want to transfer? And, of
course, by that time I had become involved in a certain amount of student government and
student life and had made my friends. And I went to Carolina to summer school between my
freshman and sophomore year and realized that I didn't do too well dating for breakfast and
lunch and night and getting the work done. And the work was important. So I decided I'd do
better to stay where I could work Monday through Friday and then go off and play than
trying to mix it all up every day.
WL: Do you think the atmosphere of a women's college was beneficial?
GF: Very important for me. I just need a little extra help in creating order in my life and
discipline. I love Carolina. It's all I had ever wanted to do was go to Carolina. But when I
went, I realized it wasn't right for me. At Carolina, even though I had two excellent
teachers—I had Bernard Boyd [religious studies professor] teach me the history of the old
and new testament, and he was a real monument in this state. And he did know students’
names and he did recognize you on campus, even in summer school. But, it was just not the
same feeling as you had at the Woman's College.
WL: You mentioned Vera Largent. I wonder if you could tell me a little more about her. She was
in the history department?
GF: She was in the history department. She looked like someone's grandmother, but she was a
very demanding teacher. She made history exciting. But she had such high standards for you,
and she never came in and sort of slid through a class. It was always—she was giving it her
very best for you that day and that she was excited about what she was doing. And I don't
know—your experiences are yours, and you don't know if it's unusual or not, but she was the
kind of person—. She called me up one day, and she said, "I want you to come by my office
before 3:00 [pm]." And I said, of course, "Yes ma'am. I'll be right there." But when I went,
she knew that that's the day I would find out about Phi Beta Kappa [academic honor
society], and she wanted me to wear her key. Now see, I don't know how many—is that very
common for a faculty member to do? I don't know. But it was very much Mrs. Largent and
the way she interacted with her students. And I really got at sort of the tail end of her career.
The other one was Jo Hege [Class of 1927, 1979 honorary degree, history professor],
who was another. It was so exciting to see women teaching, women leading. And then, of
course, Mr. Jarrell, as I said, was very special.
But there was another female who taught me later, not my freshman or sophomore
year, and that was Margaret Hunt in political science. Now did you know any of these?
Were they all before your time?
WL: Well, Margaret Hunt I knew. The others certainly were. Jo Hege, I've heard of, but never
met.
GF: Right. Well, it's interesting. She's just helped the museum [Greensboro Historical Museum]
buy a collection of historical glaze ware. Even in a rest home she's still involved. Margaret
Hunt was interesting teaching political science because I remember—. Now this is
interesting. I was embarrassed to go back to campus with my engagement ring. I was
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embarrassed for these professors, who had invested so much in me, see me, in their opinion,
cop out and get married. They expected very much from the students that they thought were
above average, and I can remember almost turning my ring around so that they wouldn't
know. But when I went back, Dr. Hunt called me in one day, and she said, "I want us to talk
about this constitutional law course." And when I went in, she said, "You're getting married
this summer?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "I have something very important to tell
you." And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "My mother taught it to me. Always wash the
tops of your cans before you open them and clean up as you go." So here was this professor
stopping to give me this little bit of domestic advice, which I think is that hard thing about
being a female and dealing with other females. You can't ever quite divide after domestic
life.
WL: But there was a whole group that—when you were at Woman's College, there was a whole
group of unmarried women who had dedicated their life to the college. I guess had been
there, in the case of Vera Largent, had been there at least since the twenties.
GF: They were. Those two I especially remember in history, but then there certainly was—I
remember another one taught me biology and another one health. Oh, I remember her. And
then I did have—I didn't have many men my freshman year, which is interesting right there.
I hadn't thought about that. But I had a female for biology and English and history. Certainly
for physical education it was a female. I don't think there were any males in that department
at all. That would have probably been way too risky. [laughs] Girls running around
undressed. But I did have Randall Jarrell my freshman year.
WL: Did you have Randall Jarrell for a basic writing course?
GF: It was called An Introduction to the Narrative, and I think we spent six weeks on The Great
Gatsby [written by F. Scott Fitzgerald]. He loved that book so much that I think we did a
page a week, and he was very interesting. He did all the things that you hear and read about.
We would go into class, and if it was warm, he'd say, "Can we get out on the roof?" And
we'd all climb out of the window and sit on the roof so that we could hear the birds or feel
the breeze or all of that. His wife—and, of course, we thought they had been married forever.
I didn't know until years later that they had not been married very long, he and Mary. And
she would come to class with him, and we were jealous because he would start to say
something that she knew was going to be funny. She had probably heard it fifty times before
that, so they would laugh in anticipation of each other. And we felt very left out when she
was in class because much of his attention and energy seemed to be directed to her. But one
of my favorite memories of him was going in for exams, and exams were—that week, that
was truly a hellacious week. We were scared to death as freshmen, and we walked in to his
exam, and he began writing up on the board. And he wrote one question, and then he wrote a
second one and then he wrote a third one. And he got halfway through the third one, and this
girl in the back of the room just gasped. And he turned around, and he said, "You have a
problem with this question?" And she said, "Yes, sir." And he erased it. So he didn't like to
give exams anyway, and he certainly was not going to give one that caused anybody any
pain.
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WL: Why was he such a popular teacher do you think? Was it his reputation?
GF: No, I don't think we knew about reputation then. I don't think that had anything to do with it.
And there again, my second sister was an English major. And she had been fortunate enough
to work with him and even to win a short story prize, so I really had had these older sisters
come along in history and English and people remembered. So I knew he was kind of
special, but I didn't know why. No. His eyes twinkled. He was reading books he loved. There
was nothing boring, nothing sort of humdrum about it. Your ideas were always important.
There was a lot of discussion, and I can remember I wrote a paper on a [William] Faulkner
[American writer; won Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949] short story—and when I think
now as an adult how many papers he must have read on Faulkner short stories. But he wrote
a comment. He said, "This was a very good paper. I had never thought of this angle." For
someone like that to say that they're still learning and it's still new to them. I don't think it
was reputation. He just had a warmth and—of course, he was different from anybody we had
ever seen. He had the beard and he drove a sports car, and so he was different. And I think he
certainly had a charm because of that. He brought Robert Frost [American poet; won four
Pulitzer Prizes for poetry] to campus. Now we had heard of Robert Frost. So we knew he
had power beyond our campus.
And that's another thing about student life that I had almost forgotten—what
outstanding people we had come and speak to us as students. And don't ask me who another
one was right now, but I certainly remember Frost. I remember my senior year, working with
the Harriet Elliott Social Science Forum. And going out to the airport to pick up and take
back Christian Herter, who had just resigned as [United States] Secretary of State. And
again, that was a faculty member, and a student member who were his escort. So—History
Club, you were very much—you danced with the faculty. I don't know that they do anything
like that anymore. It would probably cause all kinds of rumors. But we danced at our History
Club meetings.
WL: That was part of the activities?
GF: Well, it was just—yes. You knew them as friends. You went and had tea in their offices.
There was a lot of friendship with faculty members.
WL: And you had a lot of opportunity for this sort of thing? Out of classroom context?
GF: Yes, right.
WL: Tell me about the facilities. Did you, were you, was the new McIver—?
GF: Brand new.
WL: Brand new?
GF: Brand new. It seems to me, maybe one year old, because the first year, you know, they had
those colored lights behind as you walk in and the panels overhead. They had red and green
lights behind it, it seems to me, the first year, and they were so bad that they had—I don't
12
think they use those anymore. But it was like the second year, so it was a new facility. And
we thought that was excellent. The classrooms were nice. We thought our dorm rooms were
nice, because we were in those old dorms. The dining halls seemed perfectly nice. The
Soda Shop which was tiny; it's now the Faculty Center. That was our Soda Shop. We
thought it was beautiful with the paneling, and the library was fairly new when I was there,
and we thought it was an excellent library. The gym was kind of old. The gym was not
anybody's favorite place to go unless they majored in some kind of recreation.
WL: Did you have to do—was there a sports requirement?
GF: I think four semesters. I believe it was four semesters. I know that I suffered through golf; I
suffered through recreational sports, which I remember a lot of ping pong and bowling.
Seems to me maybe I even took tennis. I think it must have been four semesters.
WL: And that was run by the phys[ical] ed[ucation] department?
GF: Yes, had to take health. Maybe the health was part of the phys ed. Maybe that was the fourth
semester, so I don't remember but three.
WL: What about the dining halls? Did—to what extent did this reinforce and confirm what
you've been talking about all along—the sense of community here? Was it a—had the
college gotten big enough so that it was more of a cafeteria free for all?
GF: No. As I remember it, you went through a cafeteria line, and pretty quickly you realized that
if you had 8:00 [am] classes and you went at 7:30 [am] and you went in this one of the
dining halls, you'd sit with the same people in the morning. And it would be different people.
Sometime—the freshman year was basically your people in your dorm. But then it was your
big sisters and then people who had classes with you or lived beside you. So you began to
have little tables that formed. I ate almost all my meals in the dining hall. When I think back,
it was a real excursion to go down to The Corner and order a sandwich. Sometimes at the
Soda Shop you would buy—but that was expensive, and your meals were already paid for.
WL: The Soda Shop was out of pocket?
GF: Yes, and your meals were paid for. And I don't remember what kind of budget I had from my
parents, but money was something we were very careful about. So most of my meals I ate in
the dining hall. I don't remember the food being good or bad or indifferent. I don't remember
a lot of choices. They would have maybe two meats and three vegetables.
WL: But there was a social quality to it as well?
GF: Oh, yes—who you ate with. And that's where you might catch up with your roommate at the
end of the day. "I'll meet you in the dining hall." So, yes, there certainly was that.
WL: Did faculty ever eat there?
GF: I don't remember any faculty in the dining halls.
13
WL: Were there special occasions in the dining halls?
GF: I don't remember any of that.
WL: There were at some point, but maybe earlier. It was maybe ten or fifteen years before.
GF: Now I will tell you a tremendous event was the Christmas Tea at Elliott Hall. You dressed
up. You put on your best clothes. A committee had worked very hard on that. It was a very
elegant tea, and I remember that being a big event. We still had dances at Elliott Hall, and
they were nice events with cocktail dresses. And nobody was ashamed to go to them. You
were glad you had a date.
WL: Who would sponsor those dances?
GF: It must have been the Harr—, I mean the Elliott Hall whatever. But I think of that—I
remember that there was a president of Elliott Hall, so she must have had a committee, and
they must have planned X number of functions during the year.
WL: So the equivalent of student government?
GF: Yes.
WL: Were there literary societies when you were there? Were they active at all?
GF: No.
WL: So social life was pretty much organized along the lines you've described already—
dormitories and sister classes. There weren't sororities?
GF: No.
WL: No impetus or no interest in creating them then, I suppose?
GF: None.
WL: Let me ask you about the administration. Did you have much contact with anyone in the
administration as a student? For example, the chancellor—I guess when you were there
was—two chancellors.
GF: Right. I started with Gordon Blackwell, and I wound up with Otis Singletary. And I graded
papers for Dr. Singletary. I thought he was probably the best looking man I had ever—he
was big. He was from Texas, you know. He had this wonderful accent. He taught me Civil
War and Reconstruction. He would come in and pace across the floor. He loved the Civil
War. And everybody else’d say, "Lee did and Grant did," but every time it was, "Pierre
Gustave Toutant Beauregard [Confederate Army general] did this." I mean, the whole name
would come out. So I really did, I guess—then I graded some papers for him. And I actually
14
taught for him once when I was in graduate school, and he had to be away from a class. He
let me teach a freshman class. So I did have some contact with him. They sent me a wedding
present, which I guess was unusual. I don't know. But a class bowl and it was, I guess, one of
the few things that's disappointed me later in life, was he came back about ten years ago to
something, and, of course, I was one of so many students. He had no memory at all. So this
man who had been very big in my college memory—
WL: Didn't click with him?
GF: Didn't click at all. But he had had surgery at some point during my senior year, so I actually
had to go over to the chancellor's house and talk to him in his bedroom (He had on blue
pajamas.) about these grades. See, that was just different. I mean, I guess I had never seen a
man but my father in pajamas. No brothers at my house. So he had been a very big figure in
my college memory.
WL: He was popular among students, wasn't he?
GF: He was popular. And you wonder—well, no, you don't wonder why. But he was very
popular. He was very outgoing, and he liked—I think he basically must have liked females. I
had forgotten though—I think he talked to me a lot about reading. I remember his office was
in the basement of the Alumni House at some point. And I can remember going—no, maybe
that was my graduate school, where I had to go in and discuss my reading list. So it was
more that—just outgoing fellow. He was very interested in what you were learning. And
then, of course, he brought Dr. Ferguson [Chancellor James S. Ferguson], whom I knew then
until his death. And I had Dr. Ferguson in graduate school. And—
WL: Did he teach you in graduate school?
GF: Yes.
WL: So he was teaching graduate students?
GF: Yes, he was. I wish I could take a course under him now. Because back then you knew what
he was saying was important, but he was so dry. You had to really want to know what it was.
And so he was not a very popular teacher and especially compared to these others, who were
so outgoing. But he was just a very subdued person. And when I read later about what a
brave person he was, that didn't come through.
WL: Quite a contrast from Singletary?
GF: Very much so. And when we used to hear they were friends, everybody wondered how they
could be friends when they were so different. But Dr. Ferguson cared about students too.
And, of course, he had young children, younger than we were—very much a part of the
family life.
WL: What about the Dean of Students Office?
15
GF: Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of student services,
director of Elliott Hall], yes. What can I say about Katherine Taylor? I did not really know
her very well. I think she probably knew me by name, and we certainly all revered her. She
had teas at her house, which was on that back street. I'm trying to think what it's near. The
Home Ec[onomics] Building.
WL: Was it McIver? McIver Street?
GF: Right. And it was a nice brick house there.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
WL: I'm wondering also about other leisure activities. You mentioned going downtown on dates
at least was unusual. Would you go—? You could sign out and go off on your own, couldn't
you? With a friend of yours?
GF: Well, we could after a certain amount of time. It seems to me our freshman year we couldn't
leave campus at all for a certain number of days. But then we could, and the only instructions
that I remember were to go down to Tate Street and a bus would stop. And the bus would
say, "Square." And you'd get on the bus that said, "Square," and you would wind up
downtown. And then all you had to do was go back to that same place, and the bus would
say, "Tate Street." And that was all I knew about Greensboro. But coming downtown
shopping was very much a part of even my freshman year. And everything was done on that
bus. But it was a great act of faith to step on it because I had no idea really where I was
going or how I would get back.
One of my best friends from high school was at Greensboro College. And she called
me up one day, and said, "I haven't seen you in a long time, and I've got a doctor's
appointment, and why don't you walk with me to the doctor's office?" Well, we had walked
everywhere in our hometown—didn't think anything about walking. None of us had cars. So
we left Greensboro College and walked to Cone Hospital Professional Village, never
realizing that, of course, it was miles and miles. And we were exhausted, and I think had to
call a taxi to get home because we had no idea where we were.
But we really stayed out on campus except to for coming in to shop. We actually,
though—and I'm trying to remember this not for today, but for other times—we had to come
downtown to a very small little hardware store to order our gym uniform. So we had to come
down at some point and do that.
WL: There was only one place that carried it?
GF: It was. And it seems to me it sold paint and hardware. I mean, I'm trying. I need to ask
somebody about that because it seems to me a very strange arrangement with all these
freshmen. Why they didn't have somebody come out there and fit us, I don't know. We did a
lot of buying at Woolworth's [department store]. A lot of furnishing dorm rooms was done
16
from Woolworth's. I shopped a lot at Prago-Guyes and Meyers and Ellis-Stone, which later
became Thalheimer's, and Belk's. And, of course, all of those were in the like—the first two
blocks of South Elm Street. So—
WL: Did you—was there any expectation that you would dress in a certain way?
GF: Oh, yes. I—we didn't have to wear gloves and hats like I think they still might have had to
wear gloves from Greensboro College. But we were expected to look like ladies. Now how
we knew what "look like ladies" was—. But it would have been a dress or a skirt. So
certainly, that. We still came downtown to eat lunch at the King Cotton [Hotel] on Sundays.
So to come to the downtown hotel was a big occasion. I can remember doing that even with
dates and certainly with parents. The S&W Cafeteria was right behind Belk's, so that was a
place college students found. I have almost no memory of Friendly Shopping Center, which
was pretty new when I was here. But I remember being taken out there to a restaurant once
or twice.
WL: It was in existence by then, wasn't it?
GF: Yes. But most everything was downtown or on Tate Street.
WL: What was on Tate Street?
GF: The Corner—the same little drugstore convenience thing. A knitting shop, which is where,
now that I think about it, is where they did all of that cutting our sweaters apart, but sort of
knitting and handicraft was right across from the Music Building. A grocery store, a real
grocery store, and, of course, there's still one there. I'm trying to remember what was on the
corner opposite The Corner. I don't have a memory of that. We didn't need any kind of
laundromat. All of our clothes went to the laundry. So your laundry mark was something you
almost never forgot. I still know mine. So no idea of having to go get clothes washed. I don't
remember restaurants at the corner, I mean, on Tate Street, other than The Corner.
WL: Was there—you mentioned that in your first year at Woman's College the Sit-ins began. Is
that right?
GF: Yes.
WL: And your last year there—?
GF: Jesse Jackson [then a student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University,
Greensboro, North Carolina] was doing the—
WL: Street demonstrations were going on. Was there—do you have much memory of that?
GF: Almost none. And it's so interesting. I had really thought about this because we were
encouraged to read the Greensboro Daily News. That was the liberal newspaper. So as
certainly juniors and seniors and history majors, we were encouraged to read the newspapers
during our freshman year. Of course we were freshmen, so we were still sort of saddled with
17
all these rules and regulations. We did know about the demonstrations at Woolworth's, but
we were told we would make a bad situation worse. I've read back about it recently. It says
maybe for safety we were kept on campus. That's not what we were told— that it would be
dangerous, but we were really told that to support the students would just make it worse for
them. That's what I remember. But I remember we were much more upset and rioting about
coke bottles and having to keep our coke bottles at a certain place in the dorm than we were
about civil rights downtown. And my senior year—what I do remember is that it sort of
threatened our springtime and our graduation because they were beginning to have curfews
and that that was going to be a problem for us. And I thought this wasn't fair because my
high school graduation was ruined by a curfew in my hometown because of a mill strike
[Harriet-Henderson Cotton Mills, Henderson, North Carolina, 1959].
WL: Oh, yes, that's right. The famous—
GF: Yes. And so I thought, "This isn't fair." You know, again, as young people do, "Why are they
doing this on my two graduations?" I don't remember any involvement of faculty. And I
think back, Dr. [Richard] Bardolph [history professor]; I had him for every course he took. I
know his heart was in it. I don't remember any discussion.
WL: Well, it's part of what you describe, which is a very independent world. And at that age,
you—
GF: And they were very protective of us. And we were girls, and they were—they replaced our
parents. They were our guardians.
WL: They were responsible for you.
GF: Yes.
WL: You went—when you graduated in 1963, is the last graduating class of Woman's College?
And then you came immediately to graduate school?
GF: Yes, because I couldn't get a job. And Dr. Bardolph got me some money. And so I became a
graduate assistant. I might have—there might have been more than one; I don't remember.
They had no idea what to do with us. They had never had a graduate school. They had never
had any graduate assistants.
WL: Was this the first crop of graduate students?
GF: Yes. And I can remember Dr. Bardolph having me go look up—I remember them being on
the bottom row in the library—advertisements in women's magazines. It was the very
beginning of sort of look at women's history through the magazines of the day. And I can
remember trying to be steered into doing my thesis on women's history and resenting that
very much because why, just because I was female, did they think I wanted to do women's
history? As I look back now—gosh, I should have done it. I would have been the forefront of
the movement. [laughs] I might have gone on and gotten my PhD. But I really was not
18
interested in doing something abstract. If I was going to do my thesis—and I knew I wanted
to do that—I wanted it to wind up something people could use.
And that's another place Dr. Ferguson helped me out because I decided I wanted to
do my thesis on the introduction of Methodism into North Carolina. I was very interested in
religious history, and they didn't like that at all. They didn't think religious history—see this
was long before [Robert M.] Bob Calhoon [history professor]. They didn't think that was
appropriate at all. Well, there Dr. Ferguson is—circuit-riding father, grew up in a parsonage.
And so he kind of went to bat for me. He said, "Yes, I think this is appropriate." And, of
course, it was introduced during the period of the revolution. And so, the way they justified it
is why was this British institution accepted when so much else British was being discarded
and thrown away. But that's another interesting story because even though I was eight and
half months pregnant, my thesis really offended Blackwell Robinson [history professor],
who is such a strong Episcopalian. And, of course, you can't write about the Methodists
being a positive force on the American society without talking about what a dismal failure
the Anglicans had been. So he really—he gave me a hard time, but we laugh about it to this
day. He was one of my advisors. Connie [Converse] Close [history professor] and Dr.
[Robert] Stephens was from the English department. And, of course, Connie and Dr.
Stephens were wonderful, and Blackwell gave me a hard time.
WL: But this was before Bob [Calhoon] got there?
GF: Yes. Yes. Would he had been there when I needed him.
WL: This was—did you notice much about the impact of coeducation at this point? How did the
official—?
GF: It was very interesting because when I went back in this graduate class—and I don't even
remember, but it seems to me there were more men than women. In fact, the two that I
remember best—I should say also I got married in August and started graduate school in
September, so I was very much involved with being a bride and then doing my work,
meeting these standards that I thought everybody expected of me. So I didn't have much time
for interaction, and the others didn't either. We weren't interested in knowing each other's
friends, but one of the men was retired from the [United States] Army, and one was a recent
graduate of Guilford College [Greensboro, North Carolina]. And he lasted about six months
and has gone on to be the most successful stockbroker in Greensboro. But I think there were
only about six of us. And I remember the person who gave us the hardest time, and this is
really telling tales—Dr. [Walter] Luczynski [history professor] gave us a terrible time. I
think he probably, looking back on it, didn't believe UNCG [The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro] was ready for a master's program. I don't know. But we certainly
didn't meet his standards. And he had one course that he made so difficult for us that every
one of us dropped it. Every student he had dropped the course.
WL: He had a reputation of being very hard on undergraduates too. Fiercesome.
GF: Right. And he's not a fierce man. I mean, he comes to the museum, and he smiles. But seeing
them through adult eyes is very different from seeing them through student eyes. I bet people
19
think you're fierce.
WL: Probably. [laughs] Did you notice much change among the undergraduate student body as a
graduate student?
GF: I really was so removed from campus by that time. We were sad, of course, that men had
been let in. We knew that it had "ruined Greensboro College,” which was sort of a sister
institution across town in the '50s. And so we knew that it would change the nature of the
school. But I think that we were real proud that we made it through before it happened.
WL: The last class.
GF: Yes.
[End of Interview]