Oral history interview with Betty Brown Jester, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Betty Brown Jester
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: March 22, 1990
[Begin Tape 1, Side A]
MF: So if you could start by telling me when you were at Woman's College [of the University of
North Carolina] and just briefly from the time where you a student there until now, sort of
what have you been doing. I know that's kind of long time to cover there, but just briefly.
BJ: All right. I'll probably get stuck on something [unclear].
MF: That's okay.
BJ: Well, I went to Woman's College in 1927, and I had graduated from Greensboro High
School, which, of course, at that time I believe we had only two high schools, one for the
blacks and the white high school. The Greensboro High School was located down on
Spring Street, on South Spring Street. And can we cut it off right there and then just pick up
right in a minute?
MF: Oh, that's okay. We can just keep going.
BJ: I had been very active in the high school, served on student council and edited the High
Life, which was our newspaper.
MF: Right.
BJ: And so when I got to the Woman's College as a day student, for a year, year and a half, I
was just most unhappy because I didn't feel like I was a part of it.
MF: Right.
BJ: And although I had planned all my life to go to—at that time it was NCCW and—
MF: North Carolina College for Women?
BJ: North Carolina College for Women.
MF: Right.
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BJ: I remember when we had our fiftieth reunion of the Class of '31, we had aprons that said,
"For this I spent four years at NCCW." And we wore them, of course, on Alumni Day and
marched from the Alumni House down to the auditorium. And the present students would
come by and look, “NCCW—what was that?" And we said, "You need to know something
about the history of your college because we changed our names four, five, six times."
MF: Right.
BJ: Like many women today, if you don't like this one, we'll try another one. But we were—had
the dean of women, Miss Lillian Killingsworth, who was the dean of women at that time,
and she had been our dean at the high school.
MF: Oh.
BJ: So she really watched out for us like they were her little chickens, and she called me in her
office one day during my freshman year and said, "Betty, what's wrong with your grades?"
And I said, "Well, I'm just not happy. I don't like it out here. I'm used to the high school
where I knew everybody; I just haven’t adjusted properly." And she said, "Well, now you
worked on the High Life and have you asked the High Life, The Carolinian [student
newspaper] staff if they have any place for somebody who's interested in the newspaper?"
And I said, "Well, I haven't, but I will." And so I went over to The Carolinian office and
Mattie Moore Taylor [Diploma 1899], who was two years ahead of me, she was—this must
have been my sophomore year, I guess maybe because she was a senior and was editor of
The Carolinian. And I asked Mattie Moore if they had any place on The Carolinian staff
for somebody that liked to work on the newspaper. She said, "Well, we surely do." And she
gave me two or three topics that I was to research and find out what was going on and said
for me to write those up and bring them back and evidently they passed because I got a
place as reporter on the Carolinian. And that helped an awful lot because when you come
from a small high school in 1930—we had something like thirty-five, forty thousand people
in Greensboro only.
MF: Right.
BJ: And it was just like one big family. You'd go in the grocery store. and everybody you saw
you knew. You knew who was sick in the family, who'd gone to the high school and who
was getting married and it was just—you just had a lot of fun.
MF: Right.
BJ: Everything was fun in high school. And they—I managed to get along better after I got a
job in the newspaper office.
MF: Right. At The Carolinian.
BJ: And I remember my freshman year, I was taking Latin because I got a minor in Latin and
major in English when I graduated. And Miss Viola Boddie was the Latin teacher, and
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everybody was scared to death of her, but she taught you Latin and she used to say to me
after—instead of teaching Latin like I had planned to do and was going to do until Dr.
[Julius I.] Foust [second president of the institution] asked me if I would consider running
the bookstore there at the college—
MF: Right.
BJ: —instead of teaching school. And I said, "Well, I'll consider anything that you have to
offer, but are you sure that I could do that?" And he said yes. And Miss Viola Boddie was
standing by us when we were talking in his office. It was up in the Administration Building
on the side of the—by the [unclear] front door.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And Miss Boddie said, "Betty, if you take Latin and you have four years of it, you can do
anything that Dr. Foust would want you to do at the college."
MF: [laughs]
BJ: That was just the magic touch was taking Latin, but during those years I was a member of
the Alethian Society—Adelphian.
MF: Adelphian, okay, yes.
BJ: And the—we had the Alethian and the—what was it? The Corinthian?
MF: The Corinthian, yes [Editor’s note: The name of the literary society was Cornelian].
BJ: And the Dikean.
MF: Right.
BJ: Isn't that right?
MF: Yes.
BJ: And everybody at the college, all the students, belonged to one or the other. You didn't have
too much choice. If you had a real choice and could get to the person in charge of assigning
them, sometimes you could get your choice but you sort of took what you were offered and
everybody belonged because they—the theory of the college was that everybody stood on
their own feet, equal. You didn't get—you didn't have any choices in a lot of things, but you
stood on your own accomplishments.
MF: Right.
BJ: And I remember every now and then we'd have a senator's daughter or governor's daughter
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would be in school, and she didn't have any more privilege than the little girl that came—.
When I was running the bookstore, which offer I took from Dr. Foust, and the little girl
from up in the mountains that came down to school and was working in the bookstore for
me. We had student helpers and student cashiers in the bookstore, and, of course at that
time, this was in 1945. Maybe I ought to go back and pick up a little during the thirties.
MF: Okay.
BJ: Is this the way I'm going to have to do it.
MF: Sure. I've also got questions to ask you, but just keep going because you're giving a lot of
information so—
BJ: I ran the bookstore and about two years later, I believe that was in 1931, I believe it was in
1933, that the state legislature—now of course, I was paid by the state of North Carolina—
MF: Right.
BJ: —and they had—I don’t want to get confused on this. I think it was in 1932 that the State
of North Carolina cut salaries of everybody that was working for the State of North
Carolina all over the state. They cut out salaries. I was at that time making—I believe it was
a hundred dollars a month, and they cut my salary to fifty-seven dollars and twenty-five
cents a month.
MF: Oh my. That's a big cut.
BJ: That was a real cut. So that we had already—the state legislature had passed a regulation
that we had to stay within our budget of the State of North Carolina and just take equal cuts
and that was by the presidents of colleges and the governor and everybody. We all got that
same percentage of cut in salary, and it was a wonderful way to balance the budget.
MF: Right.
BJ: I don't know why—
MF: Now that was in reaction to the Depression [severe worldwide economic depression prior to
World War II] and all, right?
BJ: Oh Lord, yes.
MF: Yes.
BJ: You see the banks had closed and everything in 1929. And you had the money to pay your
salaries for the state then, and by '32 everything had just crashed, but we lived through it.
And I was a member of the faculty, and I know that it went to everybody. And so you felt
like you were in the same barrel with everybody else.
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MF: Right.
BJ: And why not do it? And I don't see why Terry Sanford [North Carolina governor] doesn't
do the same thing or help ask to do the same thing for the federal budget and we could take
a ten percent cut across the board for all federal employees and anybody else that has
money coming out of the [United States] Treasury and get the thing over with. We, North
Carolina, didn't just dry up and blow away because—still everybody felt that they were
treated the same as anybody else. It's when you start cutting the budget and leave out the
[United States] Defense Department or leave out some domestic something, and then you
feel like there's no fairness to it because my department deserves it as well as this other
department that's getting it.
MF: Right, right.
BJ: But now you want me to stop talking? Where did I stop?
MF: You were talking about the budget, right. Let me ask you a couple of questions about
student life when you were at Woman's College.
BJ: You see, I was a day student.
MF: Right. I know there were a lot of traditions on campus, and as a day student did you still
come in contact with a lot of the campus traditions like the class jackets and—?
BJ: Oh yes, the rings. Do they still have rings there?
MF: Yes, they still—you know, you can buy a ring when you're a junior I guess. I never bought
one. I was an undergraduate at UNC [The University of North Carolina at] Greensboro
also, and now I'm a graduate student. I'm not sure that the same emphasis is placed on them.
BJ: The junior class always used to—the only reason I happen to know about that is because
that's where I found my husband.
MF: [laughs]
BJ: I was running the bookstore, and he came in to sell his stationery and then he came back
again sooner than he should have. I remember one real pretty little girl, Lucille Jordan, from
down on the coast of South Carolina near Myrtle Beach, but she would say every time
Carlton [Jester] would come, she'd say, "Betty, I don't see how in the world you can sit in
that office and talk business to a man with eyes like Mr. Jester's." And I said, "Well, I hadn't
noticed, but I assure you I will next time he comes." And then he came back into the
bookstore. We were at that time located in the old Students' Building, and were down in the
basement on a little road that ran almost right through Elliott Hall—
MF: Yes.
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BJ: —and he had parked his car in that little driveway, and he came back in and said he lost his
price book. He didn’t know if he left it in my office or not. I took a look at his eyes, and I
decided Lucille was right. [laughs] But she was always so cute about it. But I didn't let
anybody know until I was ready to get married two or three years later that I had dated him
then. It was a lot of fun.
MF: What about—?
BJ: Now you ask me something else.
MF: What about class jackets?
BJ: Yes, well, my son and Carlton sold a lot of the class jackets to them too. We ordered the
jackets from a place in Teaneck, New Jersey. They had leather jackets in the colors of the
class colors. You know they had class colors then.
MF: I know what you're talking about, right.
BJ: Do you have any—do you have any class organizations?
MF: Oh, you mean like sort of—
BJ: When you graduate do you have —?
MF: —some sort of—tied with each class?
BJ: Yes.
MF: I don't think it's quite as separated now because we don't have all the time the traditional
four-year student. Some students go five or six years, and so I think that breaks it up.
BJ: Oh. Well, we had all those things, the class jackets and the marshals.
MF: Right. And the marshals were chosen from the societies?
BJ: Some of them were, and then some I think were elected.
MF: Oh, okay, that's right. I remember.
BJ: I don't know. I'm not sure on that point.
MF: Yes, some actually ran for election, right? Yes, okay. And then some were chosen in the
society? Okay. And what about student government?
BJ: Student government was very active. [Mary] Jane [Wharton] Sockwell [Class of 1931] was
the president of student government—
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MF: Right.
BJ: —in 1931. I don't know what it was. I think it was a one-year office just like most of them
were, and the—we had this one thing that was most interesting and if any of these things
that Jane has already told you about, just stop me because there's no use to have two of
them.
MF: Okay.
BJ: But up at camp we had a campus leaders' meeting for a week before school opened in the
fall, and all of the—did she tell you about that?
MF: I don't recall.
BJ: Because she went a year before I did.
MF: I don't recall if she did or not.
BJ: Well, we'd go up to this camp up at—I'm not sure whether it was Yonahlossee [resort in
Boone, North Carolina]. Anyway it was up in the west of North Carolina, and we went up
after a week just before school opened. And all of the elected officials that were holding
office, and I don't remember who else, but it was a big group of us around one hundred and
fifty, but we used to go just a week before school opened and have a campus leadership
training program. It was most interesting. It taught us a lot of things that we had occasion to
use, and so from that standpoint it was real good.
MF: Who sponsored that?
BJ: The student government program.
MF: Oh, okay.
BJ: And well, Dr.—I believe Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson. That was that at the time that Dr.
Jackson—he was either the president and he was—Dr. [Julius] Foust was president and he
was the vice president and the dean of women and they would—. I'm not sure when Miss
[Harriet] Elliott came in as dean of women and—I know she taught—I believe she taught
history and political science during our years of '27 to '31.
MF: Right.
BJ: And I'm just not sure [unclear]—I can't exactly remember.
MF: [laughs]
BJ: Whether she ran the camp—I think she did or whether that came in later because see I
stayed at the college. I ran the bookstore from 1931 until 1945, when Carlton came back
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from the [United States] Army.
MF: Right.
BJ: I didn’t especially like the man that was there, my boss.
MF: In '45.
BJ: Yes.
MF: Who was that? Do you recall?
BJ: Mr. Lockhart.
MF: Lockhart?
BJ: John C. Lockhart [business manager, assistant comptroller]. He was all right, but I had been
spoiled by Mr. Teague. Mr. Claude Teague [business manager, director of extension,
assistant comptroller], who came to the college my junior year and I worked in the
bookstore with him. And then when I left, when I graduated, and Dr. Foust asked me if I'd
run the bookstore and so I'd worked and then Mr. Teague from '31 until '43, I think it was,
or '44. And I just couldn't like the way Mr. Lockhart treated me.
MF: Yes, okay. And you started—
BJ: And so I retired and had another child, my youngest son, and I didn't go back. I had retired,
resigned.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And then with working with the Alumni Association, and the committee asked me to run
for president of the Alumni Association, and I remember distinctly saying I'm too young to
be president of the Alumni Association. Last somebody they picked was sixty years old.
And they insisted that I was not too young.
MF: And so you were with the Alumni Association—?
BJ: I was elected president of the Alumni Association, and Miss [Clara Booth] Byrd [Class of
1913, alumni secretary]—we had commencement around the twelfth or thirteenth of May, I
think it was, and Miss Byrd said, "Betty," after I was inaugurated for the president. Wait,
it's real important. The membership and membership on the board of the Alumni
Association were just real, real special things and that's the reason that the alumni feels so
close to the college and so much like it. And when they started all this foolishness about the
alumni secretary reporting to the development officer and not to the Alumni Board of
Trustees, which was elected by all the alumni.
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MF: Yes.
BJ: It just doesn't make any sense for anybody in that position to want to ostracize the alumni.
We are a first, last product—if you don't like the alumni, there’s something wrong with you
because they love the college better than they do anything else.
MF: Right.
BJ: And it's—it was just unbelievable to me that somebody didn't want—but you didn't come to
talk about that.
MF: Let me ask you, while we're on the topic of the Alumni Association, when were you
president? From when to when?
BJ: I really was president of the Alumni Association; I was elected in 1947 I think it was.
MF: Okay, well, that's close enough.
BJ: And are you're recording this?
MF: Yes.
BJ: Well, I don't mean for all this stuff to go because I haven't got—
MF: It's okay if you don't know the exact year. I'm just trying to get an idea.
BJ: Well, 19–
MF: Yes, about 1947.
BJ: About 1947. And the election was held. We had the meeting on May the twelfth, and it was
about the twentieth of May that Miss Byrd called and asked me to come up in her office.
And I thought at first she just wanted to sit and talk over the years because she'd been the
alumni secretary for all those years, and I thought she'd handled everything all that time and
she was going to keep on handling even when I was in the office. I wasn't going to make
any difference.
MF: [laughs]
BJ: Because she planned everything—knew what to do and all and two days before—let me
see, we had, I guess maybe I was inaugurated or confirmed as president of the Alumni
Association at commencement—
MF: Oh, okay.
BJ: That Saturday was Alumni Day. And Monday morning, two days later, Miss Byrd called
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and asked if I'd come to her office the next morning at nine o'clock and in the meantime Dr.
Jackson called me on Monday and said, "Betty, have you seen Miss Byrd?" And I said "No,
I'm to go in the morning at nine o'clock." "Come to my office as soon as you've completed
the meeting." And when I got there Tuesday morning at Miss Byrd's office and she said,
"Betty, I have resigned."
MF: Oh, my.
BJ: I said, "You have what?" And for some good reason tears just streamed down my face, and
Miss Byrd was so pleased because a lot of the alumni didn't like her and she thought I was
crying because she was leaving. And I'm not sure what I was crying for but I was crying
mainly because Miss Byrd wasn't going to be there to run the alumni, so here I was left as
president, with the presidency.
MF: And you didn't know what you were going to do. [laughs]
BJ: And so we got it worked out and the person who ran against me as president, as fall
president, gave me [unclear] lived in Atlanta and she wanted it so bad and I did all I could
to encourage people to vote for her because I never have wanted an office. I'd rather work
behind the curtains.
MF: Right.
BJ: [laughs] When I have a responsibility I don't mind the responsibility but getting people to
do the work is the hard part.
MF: Oh sure. Why did you—?
BJ: But I was just president for three months really, and I appointed a committee and Dr.
Jackson added two or three faculty members to it and we worked together on selecting an
Alumni Secretary. Worked all summer long, interviewed people from all over everywhere.
They were all alumni mainly.
MF: Right.
BJ: Mainly were alumni, and we wanted one of our girls to be there because she knew the
college and knew about it, and it was just that the best job that the alumni could offer
somebody and we certainly wanted her to be one of ours.
MF: Right.
BJ: Well, the committee worked real hard, and at the end of the time we had interviewed, they
had turned people down because they had been divorced; they would turn them down
because they didn't make top grades and Phi Beta Kappa [academic honor society for
liberal arts and sciences], and then again Phi Beta Kappa didn't make the top grades and for
the strangest reasons, but when somebody came up with the fact that if you’d been
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divorced, you were not eligible.
MF: Oh my.
BJ: Couldn't run your own life, how could you help run the lives of all these alumni and the
college. And I said, "Well, I thought that was a way of the past, even in 1947." I didn't think
it made any difference to that, so times have changed.
MF: Right. So what happened at the end of the three months then?
BJ: At the end of the three months—well, I almost hate to tell this because I had appointed the
committee as president of the Alumni Association. Dr. Jackson had added three faculty
members. We came up with Miss [Louise] Alexander [Greensboro’s first female lawyer,
government and political science faculty]. I guess Miss Alexander had retired by the time
he got around to it. I don't think you'd even been born. And Miss Alex said, "Well, Betty,
we've decided." And I said, "Well, that's wonderful and tell me which one you've decided
on because I'm real interested." Because I had taken the people who had come to interview
for the job and at the end of the interview, I would take them around and show them the
files and the books and the charts at the Alumni House and some of what we had been
doing as had the secretary of the Alumni Association. And this time I came back and they
said they'd decided. They said, "Well, after all our thoughts were combined, and we came
together on the decision that we wanted you to do it."
MF: Oh my.
BJ: I said, "Oh my Lord, you think I'm going to let—" Miss Helen Barton was one of the
members of the committee in the math department—she wasn't even an alumna, and she
had a big time selecting the alumni secretary. And I said, "Do you think I'm going to ever
let them go talk to Dr. Barton about my math?" They had been over at the registrar's office,
you see, and looked up all of these grades that people had and one of them was not
scholarly enough to be secretary of the Alumni Association. So I said, "If you think I'm
going to turn this group loose over there to see what I did as a student, then you're just
crazy. I'm not going to do it." And I said, "Oh no, you've had some wonderful people and
you need to bring in some fresh material." But they insisted.
MF: And so you took it?
BJ: I said, “Well, I'll have to talk to my husband and my family about it because I had three
young children.” And it worked out fine. I certainly did have a good five years when Dr.
Jackson was still alive.
MF: Right.
BJ: And then Mr. [Chancellor Edward Kidder] Graham [Jr.] came in.
MF: Right. That leads me into something else I was going to ask you about was—as far as Ed
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Graham. What do you remember about Ed Graham?
BJ: I feel like my little granddaughter whose mother made a mistake the first time she married,
and he was a naval officer and left them. And Carlton used to say to us, she came to live
with us later and Carlton used to say, "Now Barbara, try to think of something good that
your daddy did and said." And she said, "I can't think of anything good that he ever did to
us." She was about ten or eleven years old and lived with us for five years.
MF: So that's the same thing with Ed Graham?
BJ: The best thing Ed Graham ever did so far as I'm concerned was just making me so mad
about how ugly he talked about the older faculty members. And it just—it was so bad that
when I left there, I had no feeling for the Alumni House and the fact that Barbara Parrish
[Class of 1948, alumni secretary, president of Alumni Association] was sitting in there in
my beautiful office learning about me. I was so glad to get out of it.
MF: Yes, I don't know much about Ed Graham. That's why I'm asking you.
BJ: Well, you don't need to know really.
MF: Oh sure, I want to. Dr. [William] Link [head of the history department] seems real
interested in him so it's got me kind of intrigued too. I know he was sort of ousted by the
faculty, wasn't he?
BJ: Oh, yes.
MF: Weren't there some inquiries and—?
BJ: Well, I'll tell you I don't like to talk about it because it really just throws me in a fit.
MF: Right.
BJ: He treated the faculty—he called people that had been beloved by students and other
faculty members and everybody. Miss Jane Summerell [Class of 1910, English professor]
he talked to, talked about as Pious Jane
MF: Pious Jane?
BJ: Just scornful attitude.
MF: Very sarcastic?
BJ: Oh, Jo[sephine] Hege [Class of 1927, honorary degree in 1979, history professor], one of
the faculty members that is still out at Friends Home [Greensboro retirement community]—
MF: At Friends Home? Yes.
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BJ: And Jo used to say—she taught history, [unclear] and a very fine person, but she had a
sharp tongue. Jo used to say that anything or anybody that was there when Ed Graham
came really that it was wrong and they were wrong.
MF: Yes. He got a lot of—he brought in a lot of faculty that he picked himself, didn't he?
BJ: No, that's the fellow that’s there now that did that. [Chancellor William] Moran.
MF: Moran did. Okay.
BJ: But Ed Graham was self-sufficient, he thought. And he wasn't anything like his cousin,
Frank Porter Graham [president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United
States Senator]—
MF: Frank Porter Graham, right.
BJ: That was just the most wonderful president we ever had before [William] Friday [president
of the University of North Carolina System], whom he trained, came along in his footsteps,
was just wonderful.
MF: Yes. What was Ed Graham's personality like? I mean what kinds of things did he do?
All—I've never talked to anybody who liked him, so—
BJ: Well, that was the bad part of it. And he had the faculty so they were just like [gestures]—
old friends just broke apart because one of them—I just—I don't know how to explain it.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Because—except to say that he didn't have a fair chance when he came because he was
from a family—Dr. Frank Graham and Ed Graham, his father, was one of the finest men
and one of the best presidents that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ever had.
MF: Right.
BJ: And Ed was just—well, as Jo Hege—I started telling you a minute ago. Joe Hege said that
if you went there, anything that wasn't there when God came, meaning that Ed thought he
was God.
MF: Right, okay.
BJ: That it was wrong, and he wanted to throw it out.
MF: Yes, so he instituted lots of changes and stuff.
BJ: Well, he didn't get away with it.
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MF: Oh, so he tried.
BJ: He wanted to; he would have loved to.
MF: Like what kinds of things?
BJ: But we finally got—Emily [Harris] Preyer [Class of 1939, 1977 honorary degree] was the
president of the student body, and I remember she was—when I had—when the committee
had asked her to run for president, she said, "Betty, I just can't do it. I'm just as pregnant as I
can be."
MF: Oh, wow.
BJ: And she really was. Now the baby came about a month after commencement, but Emily
stuck by [unclear], and she was responsible for getting the Board of Trustees to come up to
Greensboro and have meetings at the Church of the Covenant. You know where it is?
MF: Right.
BJ: They had meetings at the Church of the Covenant when there was so much friction between
faculty members that you didn't want to have it on the campus and have people—
MF: Oh, okay.
BJ: To see people coming in like that, that likely would just be putting a hex on their name.
And they held the meetings at the Church of the Covenant and would ask the ranked faculty
members to come over. They even had some night meetings, and some of Mr. J. M. Sink's
men—he was the maintenance man for the whole campus at that time.
MF: Okay.
BJ: This was in maybe '56, '57.
MF: All right.
BJ: I left in '56 and this was back a year later that they had—they got the trustees to hold
meetings and the man that lived—he was on Mr. Sink's staff, so he knew Mr. Graham and
he knew Mrs. Graham.
MF: Elizabeth, right?
BJ: Elizabeth. Wonderful woman.
MF: Yes, that's what I've heard.
BJ: Just as sweet and how she ever stood him as long as she did, I don't know. But he—Ed
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Graham in the middle of the night came to this man's house, and he was stepping out on
Mrs. Graham. And he said, he asked for, he needed help because his car was broken down.
And the man went out to the car, and he said it wasn't Mrs. Graham.
MF: Oh my.
BJ: And he didn't know who it was. He wasn't sure who it was, but he knew it wasn't Mrs.
Graham. And so that was what they gave him an opportunity to resign.
MF: Right.
BJ: And in the meantime—
MF: Did they ever find out who that was?
BJ: Yes, he married her.
MF: Oh, who?
BJ: Yes, he left here and went to Boston—Boston University, Boston College, I guess. There's
a Boston College and Boston University.
MF: Yes.
BJ: I'm not sure which it was.
MF: Boston College.
BJ: But he didn't stay there long. I thought they couldn't stand him either. But in the meantime
he had married Miss [Elvira] Prondecki [director of Elliott Hall], who was a close friend of
Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of student
services, director of Elliott Hall], who was at that time dean of women.
MF: Right.
BJ: And people thought he was going in Miss Taylor’s, and some of the kids over at the high
school, I remember, wore a—ten or a group of students, John [son] said he didn't get close.
My John was at high school at that time, around '55, and they—he said, "I didn't get too
close to the group because I didn’t want them to think I was listening too carefully and
maybe was." Knew if I said anything they'd think it came from you because I was at the
Alumni House at that time.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And worked out very nicely, but everybody in Greensboro thought that it was Katherine
Taylor.
16
MF: Right, and didn't she resign?
BJ: What?
MF: Didn't Katherine Taylor resign because of it?
BJ: No.
MF: Oh, okay.
BJ: He left.
MF: He left, right.
BJ: But there were a lot of people that felt like she ought to go.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Because she was the one, and she wasn't at all. Miss Prondecki, her friend, would come to
her house to meet Ed Graham.
MF: Okay, I see.
BJ: Then Ed would take Prondecki home.
MF: Oh, I see.
BJ: And they wouldn’t go home.
MF: Yes, go somewhere else.
BJ: So it was a big scandal, and this was in '55. And so after he left the college, he married
Prondecki and left Elizabeth and the children just without anything, I understand. And did
from her aunt, Miss [Christiana] McFadyen [history department], who also taught at the
college and was Elizabeth's aunt and she had—. I remember when Ed and Elizabeth left.
You know you would think that a group of faculty members and all the day that they were
packing up and leaving would come over and say goodbye to them.
MF: Yes.
BJ: I didn't see and I wasn't just watching for that, but I didn't see anybody go over to
Elizabeth's house. And I went over there right after lunch to tell her goodbye, and she said
to me, "Betty, when I came five years ago my hair was listed as sprinkled with gray." And
she said, "When I went down, it had been four years to get my drivers' license, and they
listed it white."
17
MF: Oh, my.
BJ: She said, "Could five years do that to you?" And I said, "Elizabeth, I just don't know, but I
do know that you have had a hard road to hoe. And I want you to know that I will miss
you." And it was—she went down to Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] after Ed
left her in St. Louis [Missouri] I hear or somewheres. They came from St. Louis—it was
from some place in Missouri that they went to school. And he was vice chancellor or
something at this little school, and he left them. Elizabeth wasn't working at that time, and
she had three teenagers and they were left. She said she did not have (or Miss McFadyen
said) she didn't have money to buy groceries, pay the rent or anything.
MF: Oh my.
BJ: He just left her flat, and she had to go to her relatives to get money to make it at all, so she
came back to North Carolina and was—to go to work. She had done library science, so she
got a job at Duke University in the library and is still there at Chapel Hill so far as I know.
MF: Oh, is she? Does she still go by the last name Graham?
BJ: Yes.
MF: She does. Okay.
BJ: But it was such a sad story because she was just a wonderful person, and he was—well,
when he died, somebody at the—what was her name, Martha, Mabel? Anyway, the little
girl that was running the Alumni News [alumni magazine]—it was eleven years—said to
me, "Now, what do I say, Betty, in the Alumni News about Mr. Graham?" And I said, "Now
let me tell you something and not anything that I could say to you about Ed would be
printable. And I'm sorry for Prondecki that he's dead, but the only good thing he ever did
was to make me so unhappy that I'm so glad I left the college." And I said, "You call Miss
Jane Summerell,” who at that time was very active mentally, and she has since died. I said,
"You could call Miss Jane or go over to see Miss Jane at the Presbyterian Home [retirement
community in High Point, North Carolina], and she'll help you with it because Miss Jane
could say something nice things."
[Begin Tape 1, Side B]
MF: And—
BJ: And some what?
MF: Some hearings weren't there, about Ed Graham?
BJ: Yes.
18
MF: And did you—were you aware of anything about the hearings? Do you know anything
about those before he was asked to resign about the hearings that were held? I think they
were what like three different hearings, weren't there?
BJ: Yes, yes, I didn't—the only one that I know—some of the people that went to the hearings
and testified.
MF: Were they like faculty?
BJ: Yes, faculty and staff. And I don't know. I did not testify.
MF: Right.
BJ: Evon [Welch] Dean [Class of 1942]. Has somebody suggested that—?
MF: Evon Dean?
BJ: Evon Dean.
MF: How do you spell her last name?
BJ: D-E-A-N.
MF: Okay. Dean.
BJ: And she lived out at Colfax [North Carolina] and is listed in the Greensboro telephone
book—
MF: Okay.
BJ: —as Willard Dean. And she was—when I went to the alumni office and many years before
that, all during the thirties, I believe Evon graduated—took what they called the one-year
commercial course.
MF: Okay.
BJ: And graduated I think in 1942, and she went in to Miss Byrd's office at that time and stayed
until—she stayed until Mr. [George] Hamer [director of development] came and took over
as the development man, and then she left when [Bernard J.] Bernie Keele [vice chancellor
for advancement and university relations] came into the alumni office.
MF: Okay.
BJ: That was not long ago, and Bernie Keele had moved her from the main secretary in the
development office, which she had been for ten or fifteen years, and moved her into a little
19
room that was about a fourth the size of this room and not a window in it. It was just a—
MF: So about ten square feet.
BJ: Something like that and just a closet.
MF: Okay.
BJ: No windows. It was the main side room downstairs. You go downstairs into the Alumni
House, and it was just really—it really did to her what they wanted it to do.
MF: Right.
BJ: She took out early retirement.
MF: And how does she relate to the Ed Graham?
BJ: No. Well now, she testified.
MF: Okay, that's right.
BJ: At the hearing held at the church.
MF: Okay.
BJ: But now that hadn't got too much to do with [unclear].
MF: Right, okay.
BJ: I think probably the official record would be that he was retired. He passed on to retirement.
MF: Oh, okay. So they allowed him to, like. retire early?
BJ: Huh?
MF: So with the result of the hearings they let him retire?
BJ: Yes.
MF: Okay.
BJ: Yes, they gave him the privilege of resigning.
MF: Okay.
BJ: And that was very nice of them.
20
MF: Yes, okay. Do you know if there were records kept of the hearings?
BJ: Oh, I'm sure. The Board of Trustees might have had them, but—
MF: Board of Trustees?
BJ: You know, they wanted to make it as easy on him as they could. After all, he had a good
name. The Graham name had been awfully good.
MF: Yes.
BJ: His mother and father died during the epidemic in 1918, the flu epidemic, and Ed was—I
believe he was born in 1911, because think he was a year younger than I was and—
MF: I know somebody had told me about Ed Graham as far as—and I don't know if this is true
or not, but they said that the campus police would escort him home sometimes because he
would be drunk around the campus and they didn't want him walking through campus that
way.
BJ: Is that—who really started —?
MF: That the campus police would bring him home because he was intoxicated.
BJ: Now, I don't know anything about that. I do know that he drank a lot and took a drink.
MF: Yes, okay. So you don't know how much truth there is to that story?
BJ: No, I really don't. I know that the story that Mr. Sink told about his stopping in the middle
of the night like that.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Mr. Sink was a very fine man, and he had been here at the college since Dr. [Charles
Duncan] McIver [founding president of the institution] was there. And I don't believe that
he would have had reported it or let his man report it if he hadn't believed that it was—that
there was a lot of truth in it.
MF: Yes.
BJ: I remember he used to quote back to me the fact that we were sitting in what used to be the
library. I don't know what they call it now.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Because they've changed so much of it. We were all those [unclear] a good group of
alumni—Adelaide [Fortune] Holderness [Class of 1934, 1975 honorary degree], and Louise
21
[Dannenbaum] Falk [Class of 1929, 1975 honorary degree] and Miss Jane Summerell was
there, and, let me see, Jo Hege and Virginia [Terrell] Lathrop [Class of 1923, 1966
honorary degree] from Asheville [North Carolina]—most of those are dead—and we were
having a meeting in the library of the Alumni House—
MF: Yes.
BJ: —and were talking to Mr. Graham about what we wanted to give the college, and he said,
"Well, let me tell you what I want for the college—what I want you to give." We had
money that we never collected special fund that we were going to give to the college, and
he said, "What I would like to do is to do an evaluation of the faculty."
MF: Yes.
BJ: Well, I'll tell you, that didn't sit well with anybody in the room. [laughs] They didn't think
our faculty needed any evaluation, and they told him so. And he said, "Well, that's what I'm
going to do with it if you give it to me." And Miss Jane Summerell spoke up and said, "Mr.
Graham, the alumni of the Woman's College are very, very—" What was the word she
used? She said, "We have always been—" I can't remember them now.
MF: Okay.
BJ: It's right on the end of my tongue, and I can't say it. And he got so mad about it that he
practically jumped up out of the chair, and Miss Jane said, "I'm very, very sorry, Mr.
Graham, but the alumni are fiercely independent, and they know exactly what they want to
do with the money, and I think that's what they're going to do." And Mr. Graham went out
of the room just furious, and the next day was a day that we were going to present the check
to him. And I forget how much the check was—something like two or three thousand
dollars, which was a lot for the alumni to give.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Because at that time they—we were not asking them for big money. They were getting it
out of the grocery basket.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And were giving it—if their family gave big money, they gave it to their husband's alma
mater, not to us.
MF: Right, right.
BJ: And so it was with hard work that we collected that much, and we gave it to him at the
commencement, the alumni meeting, that next day. And I was sitting at the back of the
room, so if the telephone rang or anything I could get up and attend to it, go down the hall.
And this was at the time I was the alumni secretary, and he came stomping up after—he got
22
through first and excused himself after he made the speech and walked by and just threw
the envelope in my lap. Everybody sitting around me knew he was mad, just didn't want it,
take it back.
MF: Yes.
BJ: If they weren't going to do what he wanted to do with it, he wasn't going to have anything
to do with it.
MF: Then he didn't want it. Right.
BJ: Let's get on something more pleasant than Mr. Graham. I'll dream about it.
MF: Okay. Well, I'm not sure how much more pleasant, but I was also going to ask you about—
you'd started talking a little bit earlier about the situation with Chancellor Moran and the
alumni.
BJ: You don't want that on the tape.
MF: Oh, I want to find out about it.
BJ: Well, you switch your tape off and—
MF: Oh, okay, if you don't want to talk about it on the tape don't worry about it.
BJ: I don't mind talking about it, but—
MF: Oh, okay.
BJ: It—I think was in process and what the Richardson Committee does apparently is [unclear]
I understand—
MF: What's the Richardson Committee?
BJ: The committee that's supposed to mediate. [Editor’s note: The Center for Creative
Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina, founded by Richardson family.]
MF: Oh, right, right.
BJ: And they've got two whole meetings I understand so—
MF: Okay. Adelaide Holderness told me yesterday about two more meetings of that committee.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And they think—I haven't talked to Moran about the matter because I really don't know him
23
except by reputation.
MF: Right, yes.
BJ: But I don't approve of the fact that he doesn't want any reference made to the fact that we
used to be a women's college.
MF: Oh really?
BJ: And that I got from one of the former faculty members who also knows him because she
has a grant that is supported on the campus.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And I'm very proud that I went to the Woman's College.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And it had a wonderful—has always had a wonderful scholastic record—reputation.
MF: Right, right.
BJ: People thought Woman's College had never had any trouble getting into graduate degree
programs anywhere.
MF: Right.
BJ: And we lived—it was an outstanding college.
MF: Right. I think [Mary] Jane [Wharton] Sockwell [Class of 1931 got her PhD from Harvard
[University, Cambridge, Massachusetts], didn't she?
BJ: Yes. She went straight from the Woman's College to Harvard. She was a [Henry] Weil
Fellow.
MF: Yes, that's right.
BJ: And Katherine Taylor was too.
MF: Right.
BJ: And just—oh, it's just sickening to me to see what's happening to Katherine, the most
ladylike, really one of the finest brains that I ever came in contact with.
MF: Right. She's not in very good health right now, is she?
24
BJ: Oh, no, no. She has an inoperable tumor, bone tumor.
MF: Okay.
BJ: It's just so sad, but say, having her, is the machine on?
MF: Oh sure, yes.
BJ: Let's cut it off.
MF: Okay, well, let's finish this up.
BJ: Yes, all right.
MF: With the Alumni Association now, I know that Barbara Parrish resigned recently.
BJ: Yes, the twenty-eighth, thirtieth of December.
MF: Right. And I take it, I'm assuming, I'm not sure if I'm correct in this assumption that it was
in response to the problems between the Association and Chancellor Moran.
BJ: Yes.
MF: Right.
BJ: It was when Dr. Moran told her that she was not—she was to be responsible to the director,
the vice chancellor of development.
MF: Okay.
BJ: And—
MF: Instead of the alumni and trustees?
BJ: Instead of the alumni board. That they were neither to advise her nor was she to
communicate plans, and it was just shutting off the board.
MF: The board?
BJ: The Board of Trustees—
MF: Okay, yes.
BJ: —from everything. In other words, the Board of Trustees had always been kept cognizant
of what was going on.
25
MF: Yes.
BJ: And what the college wanted and felt that they needed.
MF: Yes.
BJ: We were always a part of any big celebration that they were having.
MF: Right.
BJ: Because it just was unbelievable that anybody who was in charge of a college wouldn't
want all the help financially and in support of ideas and things that they wanted done.
MF: Yes.
BJ: It's public relations. You're just cutting off your public relations.
MF: Right, and without that link they don't have any real link then.
BJ: Oh no. And it's—well the Alumni Association—in my opinion they would have—were
getting ready to break off from the—. He had told them that if they went independent and
tried to pay their own expenses (This was way back at the beginning of the thing.) that they
would not have an office on the campus.
MF: Oh, so then they'd have to move off campus.
BJ: Well, if they're given any of—as I understand it, the administration is and it's—well, you
just can't believe that anybody in their right mind would do it.
MF: How are some of the alumni reacting to all this?
BJ: With what?
MF: How are some of the alumni reacting to all this?
BJ: Well, they reacted by saying, "I've been giving large sums of money to the college." Some
of our wealthy alumni, which is a language they understand.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And they had said that until this rift in the Association and the—with the administration of
the college, where we've always had the finest relations. Sometimes the college
administration didn't like the person that was in the alumni office—
MF: Right.
26
BJ: But if the alumni liked them and chose them—
MF: Yes, than it was —
BJ: And the college has always paid their salary, paid the salary of the secretary in the Alumni
Association, the alumni office, because they have—they've done an awful lot of good. They
started it so that the Alumni Association would keep the records, and they were paying
them through the state and had been all right with the attorney general until such time as I
understand Dr. Moran went to the attorney general for a ruling. But it had been going on
since 1919, I think was when the Alumni Association was incorporated. And the State of
North Carolina knew that Woman's College was paying the salaries of the alumni secretary
and her secretary and the second secretary that they had over there when I was over there.
And they kept the records for the college and there were just gillions. They had the alumni
records of every student that had attended Woman's College.
MF: Oh my.
BJ: And that was from the—they started going back—at that time they could go back to the
registrar's office and get the registrations and set them up on college. They set them up by
married, maiden, name; they sat them up by class; they set them up by married name, if
they had gotten married, with the name of the girl, Mrs. so and so, and in parenthesis was
her maiden name.
MF: Yes.
BJ: Had all those files of records and college over there, so if the girl ever came to the Woman's
College—I take it that if she got off the train and came by and registered that they had a
record of what happened.
MF: So they would know exactly who she was.
BJ: Now that is Miss Byrd that set up those files. They were just simply wonderful. Now
they've got the files—they've moved the files from the alumni office to some sort of filing
office.
MF: Well, they're on computer now, I think.
BJ: Yes, and they've got that on computer by that present married name.
MF: Right, okay.
BJ: Now if you were Susie Jones, if you were Mrs. Jones, we'll say, and you got married to Bill
Smith—
MF: Yes.
27
BJ: —then they assume that Mrs. Missy Jones Smith is right for you.
MF: Okay.
BJ: Then they have now changed them so that you are in that file only as Missy Foy.
MF: Okay, so only under the maiden name.
BJ: With no reference to who you were or when you—I don't know about when you were at the
school. I don't know what else they've got on the computer.
MF: Right. Okay.
BJ: Because I hate those old things that you get from everybody over there that are addressed
by the computer.
MF: Yes.
BJ: There's nothing personal about it.
MF: Yes. A little more personal to have it handwritten, right?
BJ: Yes. Well, I think that would be an improvement. [laughs]
MF: Right. When we were talking on the phone you were telling me as far as that you felt that
the quality and the reputation of the institution had changed somehow when it went
coeducational.
BJ: Oh no. I never have objected to coeducational.
MF: Okay.
BJ: I object to the fact that the women over there vote the men into all the positions—
MF: Oh, I see what you’re saying.
BJ: —which they ought to be practicing so they can take a part in their community
organizations.
MF: Okay.
BJ: And working for the state now, back—of course, back in the—from '47 to '56 and before
'47, there were an infinite number of girls—. Of course, the boys had all gone to the Army.
MF: Right.
BJ: A lot of them had, but there were a lot of our alumni that were in key positions in state
28
government and in—well the—we still have a lot of girls that are working that took the
one- year commercial course that Mr. [Edward J.] Forney [bursar, head of the commercial
department] ran.
MF: Yes
BJ: He was treasurer of the college, and he did the Commercial Department. And it gave the
girls a good, basic understanding of Pitman shorthand and typing, and there are a lot of
them still working.
MF: Yes.
BJ: But they don’t have the one-year commercial course.
MF: No, they don't now.
BJ: That was a real service because typing and being secretaries came next to teaching in the
number of women in the work force.
MF: Right. I know one person that told me that they felt that one-year commercial course had
saved the college during the Depression.
BJ: Yes, it really did. And it saved a lot of businesses too that really used to send in requests for
graduates of the one-year commercial course.
MF: Oh, they actually sent in requests?
BJ: Oh, businesses all over everywhere would go to Mr. Parmelee's [?] girls, yes, because it
was a wonderful, wonderful business course in—short-term business course, but the
businessmen in Greensboro knew that when Mr. Parmelee got through teaching somebody
that they had been taught.
MF: Yes.
BJ: There was one—when they still had the one-year commercial course for a long time after
we had the four-year business administration [degree].
MF: Yes, I think it was into the forties that the one-year commercial went.
BJ: Yes, because Evon Dean that I was telling you about, and she would remember a lot about
campus life and all.
MF: Okay.
BJ: She was secretary of the Alumni Association for about twenty years.
29
MF: Right. One thing that just came to mind that I thought I might ask you because you seem to
have kept up a lot with the things going on in campus even after you had been secretary of
the Alumni Association, when you first—
BJ: Oh yes, I've stayed in touch.
MF: Yes, when the first black students started to come in, I guess that was about '56 or '57, what
do you remember as far as the alumni reaction to that?
BJ: I wasn't there at that time. I left in '56, '57.
MF: Right, but I mean do you remember anything about the alumni?
BJ: Well, I've always thought that they should have had black students long before we did.
MF: Oh.
BJ: But I don't remember—it may have been just because it didn't revolt me.
MF: Yes.
BJ: I've always known that if I had been of a minority group, I would have been one of their
biggest agitators.
MF: Oh really?
BJ: [laughs] Now, I don't like the busing of the students back and forth to school.
MF: Yes.
BJ: I think it's criminal to get a child on the bus at seven-thirty in the morning when he gets to
school around eight-thirty, quarter to nine, and it's just criminal to do it to him.
MF: Yes.
BJ: But, on the other hand, they apparently don't know how else to do it because they—a lot of
people want to live—want the neighborhoods integrated which is what they ought to do,
and you ought to be able to go to neighborhood schools.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And until you integrate the neighborhoods completely, you're not going to be able to do
that.
MF: Right, I see what you're saying.
30
BJ: Well, I just think that the people could have got—have segregated schools, even at the
private school level, they are very much integrated these days, and I think it's fair. I don't
think it's just—well, I just don't like for us to have to have marches like they had at Page
High School [Greensboro, North Carolina]—
MF: Yes.
BJ: —and all of that business.
MF: So you feel that that shouldn't have to be necessary.
BJ: I just don't see why we can't live together.
MF: Happily.
BJ: Everybody do what they want to do.
MF: Right.
BJ: Be what they want to be. Be what they want to be.
MF: Okay.
BJ: But—
MF: I want to make sure—are there any other things you want to add? I want to make sure I
haven't missed anything that you think is important.
BJ: Well, I know Jane Sockwell said she told you about the changing from the Junior Senior
Banquet to a dance.
MF: Right.
BJ: Well, that's so because Miss [Lillian] Killingsworth [dean of students] was standing on one
side of the place where you got in the door with your date, and Miss Killingsworth was on
one side and Mr. Sink, the maintenance man that we all loved so much, and he was
standing on the other side. He was sort of snooping the breath of the boy, your date. And
Miss Killingsworth was seeing if your dress was high enough, not exposing too much.
[talks to an aide] But you're leaving? All right, we'll see you Monday.
You still don't want anything but a glass of water?
MF: I'm fine. I'm fine.
BJ: [talks to an aide] And I thank you ever so much. Thank you ma'am.
31
And that was a fun time. So much better than having a Junior-Senior Banquet.
MF: Yes, which was just girls, right?
BJ: No, you had dates.
MF: Oh, you had dates, but you couldn't dance.
BJ: This was a dance. You went to the gym and danced.
MF: That's what it was. That's right. And danced.
BJ: Instead of having a banquet.
MF: Yes, so before that changed to the dance, they didn't allow you to dance with the boys on
campus, right?
BJ: I don't know about that.
MF: I think that's what Jane Sockwell had told me about.
BJ: Well, Jane knew more about that.
MF: Yes, that you weren't supposed to dance. Oh, I think one other thing that Jane Sockwell had
told me that would be interesting to see if you remember is she said that they—some of the
girls demanded to be allowed to smoke.
BJ: Oh yes. And I remember that she probably told—you tell me what she said.
MF: All I remember is that she said they demanded they be allowed to smoke. I don't remember
what happened.
BJ: Oh, well, the president of the Baptist Student Union on the campus—Lucille Knight—she
didn't smoke, she hasn't smoked to this day. She married a Baptist preacher and—but she
knew that there would be girls on the campus that were smoking and they were smoking
down in the basement of the dormitories.
MF: Oh yes.
BJ: And Mr. Sink, the same Mr. Sink that sniffed the boys' breath when they went down into
the dance on the dance floor at the gym, and—. They had—get off on the [unclear]. When
you get my age you remember, but it isn't real bad to get confused while you're talking. It
just leaves you.
MF: [laughs] All right. We were talking about as far as the girls demanding to be allowed to
smoke.
32
BJ: Yes, Mr. Sink was saying that he used to take truckloads of cigarette butts out of his
basement and that they were going to burn the place up. And they would smoke in the—
they broke the rules, but they had designated spots, small parlors or something in the
dormitories where they could smoke. Of course, I smoked, but then I had my car on the
campus and it didn't bother me because I could get in the car and go somewhere, [unclear]
but I remember Lucile Jordan [Class of 1932] led the parade, the parade down College
Avenue. Not College Avenue, but went around back of Aycock Auditorium.
MF: Right.
BJ: And they all gathered back there and marched in front of Dr. Foust's office. He was in the
left-hand side of the Administration Building, and they—then they got to the place where
[unclear] and Dr. Foust said that you would have to—do you smoke?
MF: No, that's fine, no.
BJ: They were going to have to get permission from home to smoke, and everybody got that
and I don't remember—I think that what Jane was talking about it was that we were going
to the auditorium, and everybody was supposed to light up in the auditorium.
MF: Oh my.
BJ: And Mr. Sink put a no on that because—see he was working with us because he was trying
to keep from burning the dormitories up. [laughs] But he said there was a law that said you
couldn't smoke in the auditorium, Aycock Auditorium.
MF: Yes.
BJ: So they—and Jane said that they squealed. I don't remember who squealed. I don't
remember squealing of anybody because I was enjoying it. But it's real funny to think this
was in 1931 and it was the next year, I think, that they made changes—
MF: Right.
BJ: —about the smoking.
MF: Yes.
BJ: But something else I thought of a minute ago. I know—did you hear a lot of tales about
how they used to have to—if they were going downtown, they couldn't hitch a ride with a
man or a male and they wore a hat and gloves. [pause] It was a different sort of life, but we
didn't have enough money to have to have go downtown to buy much. [laughs]
MF: Right, what with the Depression.
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BJ: Because that was the year, I—you won't believe this but I was a day student, and I had free
tuition because I was planning to teach school and—. Of course, when I took the job at the
college running the bookstore, that replaced my school teaching. It was working for the
state.
MF: Right.
BJ: And so I still didn't have to pay my tuition there, but I went to the Woman's College four
years and bought my books, everything I had to have, paid the special fees for students and
so forth and it cost me—and the reason I know how much it was because I borrowed the
money from my grandfather and he thought I was so smart to borrow it and be able to pay it
back because at that time we were working for the government and getting fifteen cents an
hour because the college would go right along with whatever other people were doing on
salary.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And fifteen cents was a good amount of money; you could almost buy a meal for fifteen
cents. And it was real good, but it cost me—for four years it cost me five hundred and
twenty-nine dollars.
MF: Wow.
BJ: And for a year, I mean four years. That's all it cost me to go to the Woman's College.
MF: That's good.
BJ: And I got a job out of that plus a husband.
MF: Yes.
BJ: So I did all right. And it's a wonderful, wonderful school.
MF: Yes, I think I have to agree with you on that.
BJ: It really is.
MF: It is. Yes, I agree, I agree.
BJ: It's well thought of. And I don't object to having it coeducational, except that I don't like for
the head of it to forget that it was once a women's college.
MF: Right. Rather than bury the fact that it was a women's college.
BJ: Because it started out as State Normal and Industrial College [Editor’s note: The original
name of the school was the State Normal and Industrial School.], and they used to call it
34
SNIC. And then it went from there to NCCW [North Carolina College for Women], I
believe, was the second name.
MF: Yes, and then Woman's College.
BJ: Then Woman's College of the University of North Carolina.
MF: Of North Carolina, yes.
BJ: And then to University of North Carolina at Greensboro, all written out. The University of
North Carolina at Greensboro using just the G.
MF: Yes. Well, then they had the big controversy about whether to put it UNC dash G or just
UNCG.
BJ: And it was UNC-G for a long time.
MF: Right and now it's just UNCG with no dash.
BJ: But that's a lot of changes. [laughs]
MF: That is, yes. Okay. So is there anything else you can think of now?
BJ: Well, now there's one other thing in incorporating the Alumni Association
MF: Right, alumni.
BJ: The reason that that was done. Has anybody given you information on that?
MF: No.
BJ: I believe it was in 1918 or '19, something like that, it was—I was born in 1910, and I was
old enough to be very much interested in the fact that Curry Building, which was down on
Walker Avenue. (And I don't know just where; I have to look at an old map.) But the Curry
Building was on the corner of McIver Street and where it ran into, I guess, Walker Avenue.
MF: Okay.
BJ: You know, it used to be a solid—
MF: Yes, Walker Avenue used to go all the way through.
BJ: But before then McIver Street ran all the way through to Walker Avenue.
MF: Okay.
BJ: And that building burned, Curry Building, and it burned to the ground. That was where we
35
did the training of teachers, which was a big part of what SNIC was for.
MF: Right.
BJ: And they—back when it burned and the state wouldn't or couldn't for some reason—this is
back in the teens—and the state wouldn't provide the funds to rebuild that Curry Building,
School of Education, even though that was the main part of the fact that it was running was
to train teachers and secretaries. And so the building burned, and Dr. Foust wanted to
rebuild to build Curry Building, which is—isn't it still on Spring Street?
MF: Spring Garden? Right.
BJ: Yes, right the end of College Avenue. And the College couldn't borrow the money, and so
Dr. Foust got the head of the people that had organized their Alumni Association (This was
about ten years later.) And got them to incorporate so that they could borrow the money to
rebuild Curry Building.
MF: Oh, I see.
BJ: Right about at the end of College Avenue. The president's house was—his home was up
there on one corner, a little clapboard house that was very interesting. But he got the
Alumni Association to incorporate so they could borrow from the bank the money to pay
for Curry Building, which they did. And then he maneuvered in some way to get the
legislature to put up the money so that it came back into the college fund, and the loan was
paid off.
MF: Oh I see.
BJ: It didn't cost the Alumni Association any money, but the alumni were willing to go along
with him and they didn't have too many alumni in that time. And it was real interesting that
that was one of the big jobs that the Alumni Association had done for them.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And there wasn't any doubt Dr. Foust had a long face, real, real elongated, and he really
was just—is that on the tape. I remember when I told him, when he called me in, I'd been
working for about three years at running the bookstore and—but a postmistress resigned,
and he called over and asked me to come over to his house and he said, "I want to know if
you will run the post office as well as the bookstore." And at that time I had gotten my
salary, gotten back up to seventy-five dollars a month for running the bookstore alone. He
said, "I'll pay you a hundred twenty-five dollars a month." That was 1933, right in the
middle of the Depression. "Oh," I said, "Dr. Foust, I'll tell you the truth. I would try your
job for one hundred twenty-five dollars if you wanted to know." He said, "And do a pretty
good job of it too." [laughs] But it had been a raise from seventy-five dollars a month to a
hundred twenty-five dollars a month.
36
MF: That's a big jump.
BJ: That was a big jump, wasn't it?
MF: Yes. Okay.
BJ: But I had fun with it, and we had—the post office was right here and the steps going up to
College Avenue and then a little street going out here, and the bookstore was about half of
this very beautiful hedge that went along the way and a grassed in plot. And right in front of
that was a bookstore and that bookstore went around and included a store in the bookstore
and then for the steps and you went on back in the upstairs, they had the Alethian and
Adelphian Society Hall that the college used for all sorts of occasions and the city too. They
would have it open. Adelphian Hall and Students' Building, Woman's College.
MF: Right.
BJ: NCCW.
MF: Okay.
BJ: But it was a good school. We had a lot of fun and very democratically organized. They say
it had a lot to do with the organization of student government.
MF: Yes.
BJ: And then they had some funny deans of women. It was always well to get somebody from
this area, I thought. It didn't make us too provincial, and at the same time they had some
feeling for the way we lived and loved.
MF: Yes.
BJ: That's one objection that I have to a lot of the foreigners. I don't think we ought to be
plebeian about it, but at the same time I like to have some people in charge that understand
the way things are done in the South because we are very different organization. [laughs]
MF: Okay. I thank you very, very much for your time. You've been so helpful.
BJ: Well, I hope I have. Now if I have—if there are other things you want to ask, just call and I
might be able to answer it on the telephone for you.
MF: Okay. All right.
BJ: But my association with the college has been lengthy and very worthwhile.
MF: Okay.
37
BJ: The faculty—you asked one time about the faculty. I said there were wonderful days when
they had teas and go around. Eight or ten of us would go over at a time, and you got a
chance to know because they used to have—I think it was Dr. Helen Barton, math
department—she'd invite Miss [Cornelia] Strong [professor of mathematics and astronomy]
and Miss [Emily] Watkins [assistant professor of mathematics] and members of her staff
and the—some members of the classes there.
[End of Interview]