Oral history interview with Vira Kivett, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Vira Kivett
INTERVIEWER: Anne Phillips
DATE: February 21, 1990
[Begin Side A]
AP: Dr. Kivett, I'll let you introduce yourself on Wednesday morning.
VK: Yes, I'm Vira Kivett. I'm a professor in the Department of Child Development and
Family Relations in the School of Human Environmental Sciences. I'm also a three-time
graduate of the university.
AP: Oh, that's great. [interruption] Tell me about your coming to Woman's College [of the
University of North Carolina] and your background, how you got here in the first place.
VK: I came to Woman's College because of its wonderful reputation. When I was a teenager
in the 1950s, Woman's College was well known, and I had a special interest in nutrition
and in dietetics and so therefore, I came here to acquire that major.
AP: Good, good. And you liked it. When you got here, what was the campus like? How did
you feel about getting here?
VK: Let me say first that I transferred into Woman's College, and so therefore I had a little bit
of a different experience than the average person coming into it the freshman year. At
that time, most of the important groups or friendships were formed during that freshman
year—the freshman experience. And so when I transferred in, it was a little bit different
in that I had to establish myself with the group. That was part of the tradition, however—
coming in with the freshman class—and I think that has always been an experience that
will go down in the memories of a lot of people; it’s that first-year experience. So all this
is to say is that I didn't have the initial experience perhaps that others had by not coming
in with my cohort group. But I adjusted very quickly and enjoyed it and felt that it was
offering me what I hoped that it would offer. When I first came to campus, I lived in one
of the older dormitories. I lived in Mary Foust [Residence Hall], and I also had friends
around me who had transferred in and so, again, our experience was a little bit different.
The campus was—I wouldn't say it was dichotomized or polarized, but there was a
definite opinion about the campus in that some of the dormitories had a little bit more
status than others, and it kind of formed the culture of the campus. And it was interesting
to see that happen with the classes—what your campus address was held a little bit of
status, which is interesting to see.
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I remember that and also the wonderful sense of community that the students had.
This sense of community was much stronger within your major, within your school or
within the college. There seemed to be sort of a subculture there within the campus
community. But there was a very definite sense of pride of coming to Woman's College.
And, of course, then we had a lot of symbols that represented that pride. We had our
jackets that had been historically famous—in fact, I suspect that a lot of us had an interest
in the college because of the symbols of it—the reputation that it had, the jackets. There
was just something about being from Woman's College—and so those sorts of things
were exciting, and I think they are high in my memory.
In terms of dormitory life and just the life on campus, it was quite different, of
course, from what it is now. We had very stringent rules about our social activities. I can
remember that no men were allowed on campus on Monday evenings; it was closed
study. We also had very careful monitoring on the part of the housemothers and also our
peers who had been elected to be house presidents, and so we had biweekly checks on the
rooms to make sure that we were keeping them in order, that we weren't accumulating
Coke bottles, that we were having our beds made up. I can recall being one of those
examiners myself, and we had point systems. You would go in unannounced, and you
would inspect rooms. And, of course, that's almost unheard of today with the kinds of
freedoms that we have. The halls were off limits to men, and if fathers came in, you
always announced them, "Man on the hall," which would always get a little bit of flurry.
AP: A little stir. [laughs]
VK: Right, right. One of the fond memories that my classmates have when we have our
reunions is the memory of the dress code that we had on campus. You could not go out
on campus in pants, in shorts, certainly not bathing suits. Although we did have what we
called a Coney Island, which was over here where the tennis courts are now and you
could go over there and sun. We had very rigid rules about no hair curlers in the dining
halls, no hair pins, and a lot of the more risqué or braver of our group would go across
campus in garb such as raincoats to disguise their pajamas that they might have under
them. So there are a lot of jokes now that circulate around when we get together about the
kinds of thing that we did. There is a contrast, however, in Woman's College in our sister
school, Greensboro College, at that time—there was quite a distinction, I understand,
town wise between the two groups. The Greensboro College ladies were known, as such,
were considered to be much more ladylike, much more socialized to fine things, fine
behaviors of womanhood, and they at that time were required to wear gloves, in some
cases, downtown. They just had more rigid rules than we had. So a lot of the townspeople
would laughingly say that they could always distinguish between a Woman's College
student and a Greensboro College student. So there was a little bit of rivalry there in
terms of the image that we projected out on the town.
AP: What did you wear to town? Not necessarily the white gloves or gloves, period.
VK: Well, we would wear what we wanted to wear. Of course, then girls just didn't wear pants
or didn't wear jeans out too much, so as long as you could get past the boundaries of the
school here, you could wear just about anything you wanted to wear. But it wasn't as
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much as a thing with Woman's College students in general. We weren't as aware—we
were, I think, well clothed and that sort of thing. We did have our own standards, but
they were a little bit more relaxed than some of those of Greensboro College.
AP: Were you allowed to walk to town most anytime you wanted?
VK: Yes, there was no problem with that. We were free to come and go, but we had to sign
out when we were going off campus, and certainly when we were going away for the
weekend. There were pretty rigid rules about that, and you were really in quite a bit of
trouble if you showed up ten, fifteen minutes late—you'd get into all sorts of probations
and that sort thing. So there was a good bit of control.
AP: What about faculty when you came here? Tell me, for instance, the head of your school
and also other faculty members or other people on campus in faculty positions?
VK: Well, as on any campus, the professors' reputations preceded them, as is the usual case.
You had professors that you knew were going to expect more of you than others. And
sometimes there was a little bit of fear perhaps or hesitation about going into some
classes because that sort of climate is widespread, and it was certainly here when I came.
I transferred in, as I mentioned. I had been to a small church-related school. I had made
very good grades and had been able to maintain those with relatively little competition.
And I think that was one of the biggest things that struck me when I came here, coming
from a school of maybe five hundred or six hundred to a school of three thousand. And
one of my friends from the other school transferred in with me and was my roommate,
and she actually left after about six weeks because of the stress—she just couldn't hold up
to the competition. We had larger classes, particularly—not in our majors, but in classes
like biology and chemistry—and we sensed there was more competition and perhaps,
wrongfully so, we thought perhaps we didn't have that contact with the teachers as much.
Later I found out this was really not true; it was just threatening because of the large
classes. And so I found that that was a rude awakening; I had a lot more competition in
terms of trying to do well because the standards were quite high. And it was just a little
bit of stress there, but I did adjust to that, but my grades probably would reflect that first
semester or two until I really got into it, but then I came up to what I really wanted to be.
AP: Yes, yes. When you mentioned competition maybe from other students, were there many
students from out of state here at the time when you came in the fifties?
VK: I don't remember the proportion, but I was very aware of that because, of course, this was
my first encounter with students particularly from the North and the rivalry, the joking,
the kinds of things that went on with the different accents and that sort of thing. In fact,
one of my memories of that particular experience was that there was a saying on campus
that you could always tell one of the Yankee students from one of the Southern students
because most of them wore their socks turned up.
AP: Turned up?
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VK: Right. It's interesting to see that we, in a few years, came into that; we followed it later.
And there was also feeling that you could more or less identify people as they walked
across campus as to their major based upon the way they dressed or the way they walked.
So we felt we could distinguish very clearly between physical education majors and
between home economics majors and that sort of thing. So that was also part of the
culture here, so we were very aware of differences and tolerant of them but aware of
them, and it made for the sense of community, a different experience than most of us had
had from smaller towns and smaller schools.
AP: When you came here, Dr. [Edward Kidder] Graham [Jr.] was head of the school. How
was that? How did you find the campus under him?
VK: Now that I am a professor here at the university, I'm much more aware of the
administrative structure than I was at that time. As long as the system was going well and
I was happy, I really wasn't too aware of that. Although he certainly did come into our
lives from time to time at various kinds of meetings that we would have of the total
student body—and his name certainly was well known around campus. My memories of
him just go back to a warm feeling of being well-liked and of being a very fine
academician, administrator. Probably the names that would be most prominent or the
positions would be the dean of students and some of those persons who were more
directly over us. We had very well-structured judicial systems that we would go through
in case there were problems. And this, of course, I think probably at that time held more
importance or more anxiety for the students than now because back in the fifties, you
really were pretty much rule oriented. You wanted to follow the rules, and if anyone
didn't, that was more or less a stigma, and so we were very aware of the judicial system
that was in place. We always wanted to perform well in order not to have to face that
judicial system.
AP: Tell me about the dean of students. That was Dean Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean
of women, dean of students, dean of student services, director of Elliott Hall]?
VK: Katherine Taylor, right. I think she was already an institution when I came here.
AP: What was she like?
VK: Well, she was a very nice-looking woman. She enjoyed a very fine reputation in terms of
her integrity, in terms of her sense of values, in terms of her leadership. And she had a
rather—I won't say matriarchal because it doesn't fit her personal appearance and her
style, but she did have a lot of power, we felt. And so we were very conscious of her
situation, her position, and people really respected that. And there was a little bit of an
awe towards her because of that.
AP: Did she work closely with Dr. Graham or with other faculty?
VK: I really can't address that. I always had the feeling that the ones who were in the upper
administration really did have close working relationships. Their names were often
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mentioned together in conversations, and it seems as though they probably did have a lot
of communication. They did work together quite closely.
AP: What about Dr. [Mereb] Mossman [sociology and anthropology faculty, dean of
instruction, dean of the college, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs]?
What was she like? And how was her time here on campus?
VK: Well, I wasn't a social work major, but she was dean of students—I think I'm correct in
that—for a while. She was a woman of integrity; she still is. She's a wonderful person.
She was beyond reproach when it comes to just about anything that you'd want to
mention—a scholar in her own right. Her students, they'd follow her even now; they
adore her. And it's been interesting to see over the years how this has not changed, that it
has not diminished the respect that people have for her—particularly students in her
department of social work. So I guess one thing that characterizes the period was that all
of those people who were in administration seemed to have so much integrity. And they
seemed to be so well respected by students, just very fine qualities.
AP: That's good to know. And certainly when we hear their names, we hear very positive
things about them. Well then, Dr. Graham was here until what time in the fifties? After
him, tell me about his—I know that he tried to—wanted to make some changes in
curriculum. Do you feel he was effective in doing that, or do you know how that really
worked?
VK: I really was not in a position to have an overall bird's-eye view of it. One thing that
characterized the period, I think, was that you were very much into your own school and
very much even into your own major within the school at that time. And since that—
when I was in the School of Home Economics at that time—now, of course, it's the
School of Human Environmental Sciences—there did not seem to be too much transition
going on. I was not aware of any major happenings there; I could be wrong. The core
requirements for the university were pretty stable while I was here. You knew exactly
what you had to do. And in the case of the home economics major, that meant that you
had a fairly good taste of about everything on campus. If you got into the College of Arts
and Sciences, many areas there, and so therefore it's, I feel, a very fine degree in liberal
arts. My degree was from a professional school.
AP: So you had a broad base.
VK: Yes. At the time I had no sense that a lot of changes were going on. Of course, many
have happened since, and there could have been subtle changes, the beginning of changes
then. This university has always been open to changing with the times to meet the needs
of students. Given the reputation and the ability of the leaders at that time, I'm sure those
things were in the works, and probably the beginning of changes were happening then.
AP: Yes, yes. Well, after Dr. Graham, Dr. [William Whatley] Pierson [interim chancellor]
came in for a year, and then after that as interim, and Dr. [Gordon] Blackwell for two or
three years and then Dr. Pierson came back for just a short time.
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Well now, after you finished up your bachelor's work, tell me about the next steps
in your own life.
VK: I finished my bachelor's degree in 1955 and was a teacher in the Southern Pines [North
Carolina] school system there the following year, a couple years. And then I married and
moved back to Greensboro, and I became a dietician here at the university—my initial
interest had been in dietetics, and, as I mentioned earlier, that's why I came to Woman's
College. But after coming here and getting involved in some of the coursework and also
doing an internship out in town, I discovered that that really wasn't what I wanted. So
therefore I did change my major to teacher education. And so I came with that history,
but I did have more than just an interest in foods. There were persons on campus who
knew I was coming back, and they needed a dietician at the time, and so I came back and
was a dietician here between, roughly, 1957 and 1960.
AP: For the university?
VK: Yes.
AP: What were your duties?
VK: I was in charge mainly of—we had what we called dining hall girls; the dining halls were
quite different then. We had four large dining halls, and we staffed them with students, in
the main and also students from A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State
College, Greensboro, North Carolina]. And that was quite a scheduling job. And so I did
that. I also oversaw different shifts of the dining hall process. And then—oh, towards the
end of my tenure here, the director of the dining halls resigned, and I was appointed head
of the dining halls for a couple months. And that was a real experience—having to buy
food for three thousand and be able to estimate how much food it would take. While I
was working in the dining halls, I was attracted to graduate school here. I was
encouraged by Dr. Irwin Sperry [director of the institute of child and family
development], who was one of my major mentors. He's now deceased, but he was a
wonderful person in the area of family relationships—nationally and internationally
known. We were very fortunate to have him here. I began taking courses, and as that
happened, you begin to accrue a lot of courses, and before I knew it I had almost finished
my master's degree. Of course, I had goals too. I was really wanting to get back into that
area, in particular research. So in 1960 I finished the degree, and at that time was
employed by the School of Home Economics as a research instructor. And then my
appointment with North Carolina Agricultural Research Service, which—and the fact
that School of Home Economics was a part of the land grant institution—they had
research positions, and I was asked to take one of those.
AP: About when was that?
VK: Around 1960. And then I worked with them as an instructor, one hundred percent
research with Dr. Sperry up until and past his death until the mid-60s, and then we had
children. I stayed out one short period when our daughter was born. Our children are
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adopted, but I did take some time out there, and then later with a son about 1967, I was
out again. So I had more or less intermittent appointments during those times. They
would need someone in foods. I even taught foods. I came back and was a substitute and
part-time person.
AP: But you had a foot firmly in this camp anyway.
VK: Right. My heart's been here, and it's always been very easy to return here in terms of that.
After the birth of our son and when he was approximately two years old, I came back to
the campus, which was about 1969, as a research instructor again. At that time, I began to
work on my PhD, and so I worked on my PhD and also in the research position again.
And then in 1976, received my PhD degree and have moved through the ranks since then
at about five-year intervals, up through full professor now.
AP: Well, that's great. What changes do you see from the sixties to the seventies and eighties?
I know that's a broad question, but what changes—?
VK: Well, of course, one of the main things that happened was the entry of men into the
university. I'm not real sure on my dates, but I think some of that in graduate program
began in the fifties, the last part of the fifties. But as we proceeded into the sixties then,
the school did become coeducational, and the atmosphere of the campus changed a little
bit, of course. We tried to adapt to the interests of men, and it was still pretty much the
flavor of a women's school. I'm sure it has vestiges of that now, even. We're told that by
some of the men students, but it has progressed over that and changed. My own School of
Human Environmental Sciences, of course, changed quite a bit. New departments were
added, the enrollment went up, we put into place—or actually, I think, the graduate
program was put into place the latter part of the forties. I might have my dates wrong
there. It had an earlier history, but it grew very much under the direction of Dr. Naomi
Albanese [dean of the School of Home Economics] to the point now that some of our
programs are nationally recognized programs—particularly our own program of child
development and family relations.
So the graduate school programs grew a lot. We brought new faculty in, and a lot
of the older faculty who established and maintained wonderful reputations nationally
began to retire. That's been a rather sad thing to see. We had some very outstanding
faculty here in the areas of history, in your department of history, in English, in physical
education, in music, in home economics, and a lot of those. Little by little, they would
take their retirement, and they would be replaced. And so with those replacements, you
would see new emphasis in research; you would see different courses cropping up—and
so a more diverse mix, perhaps. And, of course, one of the main changes I have seen has
been the emphasis on research, and that has come about as the graduate program in the
College and also in the schools—those have run. So it's changed in a lot of ways, perhaps
the most dynamic or one that has the most obvious affect, was the coeducational change.
AP: Were you in favor of it? Were most faculty members in favor of it or not?
VK: I came here because it was a women's school, and it had that wonderful whatever it is that
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you feel when you go to school with other women. You enjoy the same kinds of
prospectus in a sense, and you come from the same kinds of, really, beginnings in terms
of physiological endowment and things that go along with that. But I've always been a
person who was realistic, and I feel that I'm not necessarily for change. I've always had to
work on that. But I am realistic and pragmatic. I began, I think, because I was a faculty
member, I think had I just remained an alumni, I probably would have maintained those
really romantic notions of the university here, and I probably wouldn't have been as
subject to change. But being a faculty member, I saw the need that there was in this area
to become coeducational, to open the doors to become more diversified and that it was
necessary for the growth of the university, necessary to meet the needs of certainly
people in the region. And so I have always been a little bit more open to that kind of
change, plus the change of names of schools—we've had several changes there. And
these are the things that typically the alumni don't like to see. They enjoyed a wonderful
memory, a wonderful heritage here. And somehow when they come back, they want to
find some of the familiar here. When those things change, it's very hard because that was
the spirit of the place, and there are those wonderful memories that people want to
recapture when they come back. And so there's been a real problem, I think, in some
cases. But I had a little different perspective being a faculty member. I have moved with
changes perhaps better and supported changes too.
AP: Well, you're right. Many people do like the familiar and want to hang onto that.
VK: Oh yes. Even today—this morning when I was coming over, it was, as you said, a
beautiful sunny day, and I opened the wonderful, beautiful door, it was just something
that all of a sudden swelled up in me—something about the memories, something about a
time when you were young, when there were friendships, a time that will never be again,
but it still swells up in you. And I think that a lot of alumni feel this, and this is perhaps
one of the few remaining familiar places on campus where they can swell up in that way,
and they can reminisce and enjoy the memories of the place.
AP: So Alumni House is special?
A. Yes, it is.
AP: This library is special. It's a comforting and pleasant, pretty place. So that makes a
difference—a home to come home—. You can go home again, sometimes.
VK: In part, for a short period of time.
AP: Well, tell me a little bit more about Dr. Naomi Albanese and her work here and how she
was perceived here or nationally—what her vision was.
VK: Well, Dr. Naomi Albanese, as you know, who died this past December the sixth, was
outstanding in many ways. She was an administrator of her time. Certainly maybe her
administrative style would not be one that should be here now and is not here now, but
we move on to newer ways of looking at things. But certainly in the fifties when she
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came, which was around 1957, I think, '56 or '57. She was fresh out of graduate school.
She was very into wanting to make a change in people's lives and wanting to do that
through home economics. And so she was a very dynamic person. She had a very special
way of getting things done—working with people. And she had visions of the school [of
Home Economics], places that she wanted the school to go, and she immediately started
working on those. She helped to, as I indicated, restructure in some ways the graduate
programs—certainly to enlarge it, enhance it. She was able to work with industry and
also with resources from the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service to strengthen
the graduate program. She had a large hand in the Home Economics Foundation at that
time. I'm not sure she instigated it. I'm sorry to say I'm not sure about that, but certainly I
can say that, if she didn't, she vitalized it, and she really put it into motion for making
things happen in the school. She also was an excellent recruiter. She brought a lot of
people in from other places and got the programs really moving and also branched out. I
think one or two departments might have been formed under her leadership while she
was here. And so she was a mover and a shaker, but yet she did it in very quiet ways.
And one of her outstanding traits was her ability to be recognized by industry and by
important people in the community and nationally, who would in turn share, in the long
run, her view of home economics and its potential for improving the quality of life of a
lot of people.
AP: When you say industry, could you give me some instances.
VK: As people began to know her in the community and to see how her ability to perceive the
need and go after it and to fulfill the need, began to want her representation on their
boards. And at her death, she was or had been on five or six very important boards—
everything from the federal banking system to Jefferson Pilot [Insurance Company,
Greensboro, North Carolina] to Armstrong [World Industries, Lancaster, Pennsylvania]
Cork—they sought her out. In many cases, she is the pioneer in terms of female board
members.
AP: I was going to ask: Was she the only woman?
VK: In many cases she was the only woman. And she, more or less, opened doors for other
women to follow. I think the important thing here is that these people, these men who
mainly were heading up the boards, of course, were able to see that there were women
out there who knew and could help them to either promote their products in a better way
or would help to make changes in the quality of life of people. So they saw home
economics and people with that background as being not necessarily generalists, but
people who could come in and add important insights into the development of new
products, into investments, into ways to become more philanthropic in the communities.
And so these are ways I think she really enhanced a number of large businesses.
AP: I see. So it wasn't only product development—that's sort of a crass term—but maybe a
new way of working in the workplace, but a new way of seeing family relationships?
VK: I think she brought to this thing a new realism of the importance of families and how
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businesses were going to have to address their needs. These kind of considerations,
generally by corporate America, had never been considered. It had always been just very
closed-door board decisions, without giving a lot of thought to the average person.
AP: Or to women in society, period.
VK: Well yes, and even broader than that term would be families. She saw families as the
basic unit and one that corporations needed to address with policy and with products in
different ways. And so I think she enhanced the image of American families through that
and also what women can bring to the corporate place, how they can contribute.
AP: That would be an important thing. Some of that would have been certainly in the sixties
and the seventies, and that was a time when more women were entering the work force—
perhaps here in North Carolina, I don't know, faster than other states, where women
entered the workplace. But certainly more and more women were going into full-time
work. Is that true? So she was a pioneer.
VK: Yes, she was a pioneer in many ways. I think she was, in a sense, a pioneer in
administration, in terms of the new academic structure that was occurring in her time.
She was a pioneer in going into industry and helping to create an image there for women
as responsible consultants, people who could be very important advisors. She also was a
very important—I wouldn't say she was pioneer in this area—but she was a very
important mentor to young women. We have had many women in North Carolina who
can really attribute their success to early mentoring from Dean Albanese. She often,
knowing the workings of corporate America, would talk to young women, and when she
would see them, ones who seemed to have potential, she would work with them, and she
would advise them how to move through the corporation or what to do that would help to
make more of a contribution. And she took a lot of pride in this. She's often pointed to—
not taking credit for, but pointing to various people—we really knew she had had a big
hand in what they'd done. She did this with faculty members too. I can say that about my
own career.
AP: Yes, I was going ask influences on you.
VK: Right. I think that I can certainly say that I think she would often see opportunities for
me, and she would maybe suggest—not put them on me, but suggest and certainly make
it available for me to take advantage of them, in terms of presenting my research in
various places, in terms of some kind of involvement at the local level with some
particular group. And so those things are important. I think, that when you're a neophyte
and you're young into this, to have that kind of ability to be socialized to the community,
to businesses, to policy kinds of groups—and she always seemed to be in the community,
have a handle on what was going on, and could then in many ways then communicate
this and foster younger faculty members to get involved.
AP: So she was a help to you and other faculty members?
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VK: Yes.
AP: Had vision for herself but also for her associates and a willingness to share, it seems.
VK: Yes, she was a woman—that's not to say that she wasn't strong-willed and that folks
didn't have difficulty with her at times. I think that's characteristic of a strong personality
who becomes a leader such as she was. But if she were to see some potential there and
she were to see that you wanted to reach a goal, she would, in all the ways that she could,
make that possible.
AP: Was she single or married?
VK: She was single.
AP: Were many early—I'm saying "early" teachers, teachers of the twenties, thirties, forties,
fifties here—single women? Do we know a percentage?
VK: Well, I don't know about that. I think that it would be easy to say that a lot of them were,
but I can't empirically put that. But I think that if you look at it and try to determine what
was going on, it more or less explains itself. A lot of these women were the first ones of
their class. You hear a lot of, for example, physicians, older physicians now in their
seventies and eighties—they might have been the only female in their medical school
class. So well-educated women were somewhat of a rarity—especially those born at the
early part of the century. And therefore, in terms of meeting a match, they were quite to a
disadvantage, and that's true today of your women who have PhDs. It's very difficult—
your field of selection is much reduced. And of course back then, too, a lot of the men,
their peers, they weren't really able to really accept the kind of changes that were going
on there—that women who were so economically free or independent.
AP: Or emotionally free or intellectually free; there was a feeling about that.
VK: And then I think, too, a lot of those women—they saw the need for their leadership, and
they made choices, they made hard choices. They would forgo a family of their own,
whereas they might—in order to put their energies somewhere else. I'm thinking about
Dean Albanese—now, when you were asking me if she was single or married. I think
she's a very fine example. I think a very lot of families would have been very
disadvantaged had she been married and had a family of her own and had been tied up
with energies in those roles. Because she served almost like a godmother to our children
every birthday, every holiday—not just my—in my case, there were others—she took a
lot of pride in our families. She attended baptisms; she attended special occasions. I can
recall our son receiving his Eagle Scout Award—she was right there on the front row
with the family. And so she had pseudo families, kind of fictive families, and children
looked at her, and they saw her in this role and she enriched their lives very much. She
was always able—because of her travels, because of her rich background—was able to
impart some of that to them either through little material gifts, or notes or cards—there
were so many little niceties that she passed on. I think there are a lot of women, who do
12
that, and this was very much aside from her major task in life, but yet it affected lives and
no doubt influenced the lives of a lot of children and adults too. So I think that she had
purpose, and she sensed that, and she didn't want to tie up her energy in babies, I'm sure. I
don't know what the opportunity was there, but she made a hard choice, and I think a lot
of women do that.
AP: It does seem that she had a special quality of being able to give, to be a strong
administrator and a mentor and a visionary.
VK: It's an unusual quality. In fact, if she had any weaknesses, perhaps it was that she was so
empathetic, and she could identify with people so much that she had to really work with
her emotions not to become too emotionally involved in situations. And I'm sure that was
not an easy balance for her to keep in her life because she had to work to keep her school
going, she had to be competitive, she had to be assertive—and she could be. But at the
same time, she had this other dimension of her that was very—and a lot of people didn't
know this dimension unless they were close to her, and she never really popularized that
dimension. She always played it down, so in her passing, in the comments made about
her, people often said she was into helping with her material gifts to various foundations,
various groups, and this was something that she never wanted to make known. She
played that down and used a lot of discretion.
AP: Yes, it's remarkable. Where was she from?
VK: I believe she was from Pennsylvania originally. And she made a home, sort of a pseudo-home
again with her sister in New Jersey, and that's, of course, where she died with her
family around her. Her family was very important to her—her nieces and her nephews
and her sister—very important to her, and that was all the family that she really needed.
AP: I wonder what brought her to North Carolina, to Woman's College—just the reputation?
VK: Well, as I said, the school did enjoy a good reputation at that time. I think three of the
professional schools were outstanding—the School of Physical Education was nationally
known and the School of Home Economics was nationally known and the School of
Music. And I'm sure the College of Arts and Sciences had its persons within it, professors
within it, who were known at that time too. And she was, as I said, fresh out of graduate
school, and she wanted a challenge. And I think the administrator before her had just
retired. The school had a fairly new building at that time, or maybe they were not quite
finished with it, and so it was a wonderful opportunity for her and she saw that. I think
she wanted to come into the leadership at that point and to help to mold the direction of
the School, so she saw that as a challenge.
AP: That was a good thing for us here, a good thing for North Carolina. Speaking of Woman's
College and North Carolina and the influence of this institution, how do you feel
graduates have spread out? How has this influence of this institution been spread
throughout the state or throughout the nation or world? We don't need to make it that
global, but we will.
13
VK: Well, I think that we have made a difference with our graduates. I constantly run into
graduates as I travel, and I do travel a good bit presenting papers and that sort of thing.
We have had outstanding graduates, and we are always aware of that. They come back
with many accolades from other places, and so we like to take a lot of delight in that. I
think that this is growing even more and more now because some of our graduate
programs here have the charge of being nationally recognized. And, of course, if you live
up to that charge and you recruit the kind of students that you have to in order to launch
them back out, they, in many cases, have many wonderful reflections back on schools
here. And so within our own department of child development and family relations, in
particular our doctoral program, that's one of our charges—that we do continue to reflect
national recognition. So it's kind of built in at this point—that it doesn't happen
automatically; it still takes a lot of wonderful recruiting and wonderful mentoring and
training to launch those people back out. But we take a lot of pride in some of our
graduates. We've had other people who haven't gotten to the graduate level who also have
done very fine things in the area of services and administration of some very important
agencies nationally. And we're always aware of that when we start to give out our
recognitions—our outstanding home economist, it used to be, and other alumni—and
we're always faced with the awe of seeing these people and what they have done. And so
I think our graduates have touched many lives. We'll never know about that, but some of
them are given more notoriety than others, and we hear about them.
AP: But it seems there has been a spirit here that they could go out from and a spirit that
sustains you as faculty and students, which is a wonderful thing.
VK: They go out with a reputation of where they're from. In fact, I can recall when I was
being launched myself at being competitive with some of the jobs at the baccalaureate
level. Administrators would say if they had graduates from WC [Woman’s College] and
those from another place, they were most apt to take the graduates from Woman's
College because of the fine reputation that it enjoyed.
AP: That's important. I wanted to ask you some about your own research and how you got
into your particular kind of research. You said you worked closely with the [North
Carolina] State College [Raleigh, North Carolina] and with state research programs. Tell
me about the genesis of that, the beginnings of your work, how that took place, your
particular interests now.
VK: Well, my appointment, from the very beginning of my association with the university
was with the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service, which is a part of the College
of Life Sciences at the university at Raleigh—
AP: State?
VK: Right, North Carolina State and the home economics in the school later were part of the
land grant endowments—so therefore we have a component of NC State here, and I'm
part of that component. Therefore the job has been mainly research. I do some teaching,
but the position has been mostly for a person to come in and conduct research that would
14
enhance the quality of rural life. So therefore, as I came back into more full-time research
after the children's coming, then I looked around to see what area would seem to make
the best contribution to enhance the lives of older rural people.
And at that time—in the late 1960s—the passage of the Older Americans Act had
just gone through, and there was a lot of interest locally in statistics on older people,
particularly older rural people because they knew there was a need out there, and they
needed some kind of statistical verification of this need. So therefore I worked with local
people, and I designed a study that would get at the needs and characteristics of older
rural people in the area. So therefore I combined a need for finding information, plus a
very important area of interest to me. I've always been very interested in older people—
had much respect for their wisdom and what they bring to society. And so therefore it
was a very compatible match with what the Agricultural Research Service was looking
for. My initial interest in research started with just more or less demographic surveys and
needs surveys, and I became involved with a lot of policy-making groups in the state—in
particular the Triad Council of Governments, which is located in Greensboro, with the
aging agency out there—and was able to see my research and therefore able to justify
various monies to put into the region into programs. So that was a very satisfying kind of
experience and one that many researchers in academia do not enjoy—not in terms of
wanting to do it, but in terms of having the opportunity. Oftentimes we publish, and it
goes out there, but we don't see any returns home, close by. So also my early work began
to generate a database with the rural elderly—as I moved into some more rural counties. I
became interested in finding out what was going on with older people in the aging
process in rural places—particularly those people who live in medically-undeserved
areas, where the resources are very slim.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
AP: [unclear] the elderly and the very practical aspect of your research.
VK: Well, probably the second most important area of my research did go into the area of the
rural elderly. And therefore I have been researching over the past ten years a particular
group in Caswell County [North Carolina], which has become known as the Caswell
Study. And it's been very exciting to work with this group because Caswell County was a
very poor county, was a high-impact county in terms of the division of aging in the state.
We knew a lot of things need to be done there. And so in 1976, I went to Caswell County
and did an interview with about four hundred and eighteen older adults and tried to find
out what their needs, their characteristics were, their general life situation. And then in
1986, I revisited Caswell County, and really it really developed a longitudinal study of
that group. They had been so interesting to begin with and seemed to be so independent,
and yet they didn't seem to be realistically facing up to what we thought perhaps they
should in terms of their future growing older in a medically-underserved area. We wanted
to go back and see what had happened. So the American Association of Retired Persons'
Andris Foundation funded me to go back, and so they have done this twice now—we
have over the last thirteen years been going back to that group and just seeing what their
15
needs are. And now this is a very old group of people, and they are generating a very
important body of information now on how the very old age in medically-underserved
areas. So all this is to say that my research, I feel like, has gotten into needs and
assessments, has generated some policy-making, has helped in those areas. The data has
fit into the 1981 Conference on Aging at the national level and also the state level; they
were used as background information on rural peoples.
AP: The 1981—?
VK: The 1981 White House Conference on Aging at the state and national levels. I was a
governor's representative to that conference in 1981. And so it's been really exciting to
see the school be able to have such good input into changes that affect people at that
level. And then perhaps what the university would enjoy most, as academia does, is the
empirical pieces that have been generated from that database. The Caswell Study, in
particular, was one of the first longitudinal studies of older adults in the United States.
AP: I would think, yes.
VK: And so therefore, when people think about us at UNCG [The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro], they think about rural aging and about families in rural areas.
We now have been moving in on theoretical formulations in aging. The field of aging is
relatively new, and therefore it's very theoretical, and so I feel, and others of my peers do,
that contributions that we make from here on out need to be in the area of theory. And so
the last tier of my research really has dealt with family relationships and theories of
intergenerational relations, and so I have been trying to validate theories of some of my
colleagues. We've had a lot of interesting interplay between my students and some of my
colleagues' students on the West Coast—people who have been more into theory
development, in testing and validation of theories. That is more or less where we are right
now with research.
AP: That's so fascinating and neat to know. It seems, if we think about theory, especially for
the rural aging, that we also have a particular—a special place to do this research in
because of the rural nature of our state, of this area. And it seems that not exactly
determines theory, but we may see or develop some theories that we didn't think were
possible, simply because of the nature of this state, the nature of the rural aging.
VK: Right. North Carolina has typically been more rural than urban. When we came into this
area of research, it had a much higher percentage of rural people than urban. I think it's
balancing out a little bit more now—I think it's forty something versus fifty something.
But still basically it's still rural. Of course, a lot of theory is generated with urban and
rural people, but then there are some differences too, and that's what we've been trying to
do—trying to see that when you look at rural people. Do they differ? And we found that
they do. There's kind of a euphoria among older rural people, despite the fact that they're
usually poorer. We find they're in worse health; they have fewer resources around them.
They don't perceive themselves as being worse off. And we've done some studies into
this to try to find out the elusiveness of a sense of well-being. Where does it come from?
16
Where do they get it? There's something special about rural people, and, of course, with
North Carolina being so rural that says there's really something special about North
Carolina, and we need to find out what that is. We've been trying to unlock those things
to find out.
AP: Do you think the physical labor of being on a farm is a significant variable?
VK: Well, we tried to find out about this a couple years ago. One of my graduate students and
I went out, and we interviewed older women and men, and we tried to listen to themes in
their conversations to see what is it about a rural place that makes it so special—the
reason they would not want to move. And we concluded that it seemed to be a sense of
well-being, the clean air, the sense that you can reach down and touch the earth, a sense
that you can generate something from the good earth. And it might be a sense of control,
in a sense, that they can make things happen. We also found that they had a very strong
informal network system, that they didn't feel as insecure perhaps as an urban counterpart
might feel. They had friends and neighbors upon whom they could call. They had a long
shared history with these people.
AP: Yes, the history there is important.
VK: Therefore it tended to strengthen bonds, and they didn't want to move out of that. Also
one thing that came up that I think is probably true—rural people seem to have less of a
feeling of relative deprivation than people in urban places. They don't have as many
people against whom to compare themselves who are very different. There's more
homogeneity perhaps in terms of lifestyles—although there are differences there—but
still, their emphases might be on relationships and on more natural sorts of things such as
the earth, such as things around them, than on items of conspicuous consumption. And
therefore they don't tend to work themselves and feel that they're deprived; they feel very
fortunate in many cases.
AP: That's very interesting and good to know. And it's remarkable, it seems, that you've been
able to do the research and direct that and have your own vision in the place, in this
place, at UNCG, and in the state and in the nation.
VK: I feel very privileged also to have had the administrators to support me. I should mention
that perhaps—that it's been my observation that the administration is very anxious to put
into place things that will make things happen for researchers and to help them. Although
we have had a bit of a loss for resources and we still are, but still I have found at least in
my working situation that at each level, the administrators have taken much pride in what
I have done, and they are willing to foster that continuation to the extent that they can.
AP: That's important. Well, that's good to know.
[End of Interview]