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1
UNCG ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Clara Booth Byrd
INTERVIEWER: Charles Adams
DATE: November 19, 1976
[Begin Side A]
CA: I have a series of questions here that we’ve prepared, Miss Byrd. The first one: You assumed the duties of alumni [alumnae] secretary in 1922; the same year the Alumni Association began construction of the alumni [Alumnae] Tea House on the site of the old Teague House, now where Curry [Building] stands. What do you recall of those earliest days of the association?
CBB: Well, Mr. Adams, to go back—It was very difficult in those years for faculty members coming in and faculty families to find a place to live and to eat, really. And so, President [Julius I.] Foust conceived the idea of what he called an alumni [alumnae] building on the campus. And in some way the word “home” for the alumnae, as it was then—and I should have said alumni a moment ago, alumnae a moment ago—the idea of a home for the alumnae on the campus became intertwined. I think nobody ever really quite thought it through from beginning to end, so to speak. But at any rate, they decided to use the blueprints of one of the dormitories on the quadrangle—it may have been Anna Howard Shaw [Residence Hall]—for this alumni [alumnae] building.
Well, the idea didn’t catch on very well. But they did build—the alumnae did build one room, which they decided to call the Tea Room—I suppose it may have been the living room in the dormitory plans which they used—and set it up as a tea room with a kitchen. And we did operate it for a year or two. But the whole thing eventually bogged down, and I was brought in to work the problem out if I could, you know.
And so the first thing I realized in putting my mind on it and studying about it was that the building—the type of building itself—did not appeal. And the second thing was that its location was not attractive. Teague Field at that time was a barren piece of ground, and you had to walk up steps to get up on top of the ground, and it was muddy half the time. It was very difficult to find anybody who could manage the Tea Room well. Besides that, the Home Economics Department wanted it as a part of their program. And I certainly agreed with them; I thought a tea room should be in the Home Economics division. And so eventually that, of course, is how it landed. Now, is that about all I need?
CA: Now you really were the—really the first secretary, weren’t you?
2
CBB: No I wasn’t. There was a secretary who served for about three years before I came in. And she spent most of her time organizing the local counties—that is, the counties were the units of organization—and did a very nice job. Now, will you repeat that question so I can see—?
CA: Well, the whole question, yeah. You assumed the duties of the alumni secretary in 1922, the same year the Alumni Association began construction of the alumni Tea Room on the site of the old Teague House, now Curry. What do you recall of the earliest days of the association? Now who was that first person—the first three years—do you remember?
CBB: Miss Ethel Bollinger, B-O-L-L-I-N-G-E-R.
CA: Now here, the secretary—
CBB: Now I would like to say something of the earliest years. I had—when I came in as alumnae secretary, I had a table and a chair. That was all the office I had in the office of Miss Laura Coit who was the college secretary. You know the college was organized—
CA: Over in the old Administration Building [Foust Building].
CBB: Yes, the Administration Building. And the college was organized in the president, secretary, and treasurer, and she was the next person in—
CA: Miss Coit was the next person.
CBB: She was the next person in authority. And that was what I had. No records. Now if you had to—well, Miss Coit had—she admitted the students, and she had at that time an alphabetical record of all the students who had ever been here and where they came from and so forth. And so if I wanted to get a list of the Guilford College—I mean of the Guilford County alumnae, for instance, I had to go through that entire list of students who had been here from the beginning. When I found one who was from Guilford County, I wrote her name down. And when I had gone through from A to Z, I had the list from Guilford County.
CA: That’s really the second question—what were the responsibilities of the alumnae secretary in those early days? And records, I guess, was really one of your first—
CBB: Yeah, records—it took several years, really, to realize what was needed. I soon found that we needed married names records. For instance, someone would asked, “Who was Mrs. John Jones?” Well now, unless you had a married name you couldn’t say that she was Stella Phillips or whatever her name was. And then I had to eventually build up the locality records. That was—
CA: Would that be called chapter organizing? Was it chapters or—?
CBB: We did not call them chapters, we called them associations. 3
CA: Associations. By county?
CBB: By county. Of course, eventually, we had organizations in New York, Atlanta—and they were—as a rule I think we called those clubs. Sometimes the alumnae, in organizing, they would say, “We’ve organized a club.” There was no set rule about that. But most of them were associations, the local organizations were. But to go back to the records, we continued until we had alphabetical, locality, geographical, married name—all the records we needed and finally biographical records. For those we used big envelopes—the long envelopes and all the clippings and letters with the name information, the clippings [unclear]. They were invaluable to us in editing the magazine. You know, you went there for information.
CA: Now when did the magazine start? You mentioned the magazine; that was a very important step. It started as just a news sheet, right?
CBB: It was a news sheet, and I changed it to a magazine the very first issue.
CA: It was 1922?
CBB: It was either October or November of 1922. Everybody was so excited over having this magazine.
CA: Okay, I’m sure. And the magazine put the emphasis on the alumni. I think the news sheet was just news about the college.
CBB: Well, [unclear] news about the college as well as the alumnae, both.
CA: And then you had to have a mailing list. Now that gets into your records, did it not?
CBB: Yes, that was—it was a long time before we had—I was very proud of organizing the office. And at the end of the year, they gave me an office. At the end of the first year, the college gave me an office.
CA: In the Administration Building?
CBB: Yes, right next to President Foust.
CA: Foust, yes. And who was secretary? Was Laura [unclear] secretary then, Miss Coit?
CBB: I don’t know who his secretary was, because Miss Coit continued as secretary of the college until her death.
CA: Would that be secretary—oh, it’s not registrar, the secretary?
CBB: No, she admitted students. [unclear]
4
CA: Yes. You got the magazine started. And how large a circulation did it start with?
CBB: I wouldn’t [unclear].
CA: Sometimes they judge magazines by how large their circulation. Well, it certainly is large now, I should imagine. It mentions public speaker here—you know, your responsibilities. Did you go out to the counties and talk to alumni groups and—or to New York?
CBB: Yes, I did. That was part of my duties. I had everything to do, you know, that first year or two. No one, I think, had ever really thought through what alumnae work was or should be. I’m surprised that the college didn’t send me to some of the—well the long-established organizations such as Smith and Mount Holyoke and Wellesley [colleges] had for years. But I had to more or less work it out. Conditions arose, you know.
CA: I was reading the note here, and it says that Smith more or less looked to you rather than you looking to Smith for the alumni association organization.
CBB: Well, that goes farther down the years [unclear]. We did work out the alumnae blueprint here. And one day I received a letter from the college secretary asking me to tell them as much as I could about [unclear]. And so I had small blueprints made of our big blueprints, you know, and sent to them. And they wrote back that there was great excitement when those blueprints arrived. And we built our house a year or two before they did theirs. So after our house was built, they sent their alumnae secretary [unclear] and a New York architect all down here.
CA: Now this, you’re talking about this house where we’re—
CBB: I’m talking about this alumnae house. And we’re going ahead of ourselves considerably. And later when we had furnished the house, they sent the same group back and used a good bit of our materials [unclear]. When they dedicated their house, they invited me to be their guest, and I went.
CA: When was the first alumni meeting they had [unclear] organization like that [unclear] alumni meetings? When did that begin?
CBB: That began from the beginning. [unclear]
CA: [unclear]
CBB: [unclear] I think we ought to talk a little bit more [unclear]
CA: The early records [unclear].
CBB: [unclear]
5
CA: [unclear] call alumni meetings. That was the responsibility of the alumni secretary [in] those early years, and alumni meetings was one of them. Did you organize alumni meetings?
CBB: Well, I—yes, I did that, and I also visited them and spoke to them.
CA: The groups—the big group?
CBB: Yes.
CA: Now what about, you know, the legislature. Did you have, you know, in those early years it’s got legislature. I don’t know if that’s legislature of the—that gets involved with the state legislature.
CBB: Well, the alumnae [unclear]. I remember before—I think it was [unclear], I’m not sure [unclear] President Foust asked me to represent the alumnae before the—make a little speech of the presenting the cause of the college, you know, at the hearing before the joint committees of the house and senate. You know how the appropriations committee would ask the delegates to speak [unclear] in statute form they were asking for money. They would spend a day and a half and have what they called a hearing. [unclear] to get the [unclear] for the college [unclear] hearing.
CA: Yes, your [unclear] was facing a deadlock before the joint session of the appropriations committee. And this is what we’re talking about.
CBB: I, well, I will—you want me to talk about that?
CA: Yes, yes, it’s right here.
CBB: Well, I was, that was pretty widely circulated.
[End of Interview due to tape being inaudible]

Page/Item Description

Title	Oral history interview with Clara Booth Byrd, 1976 [text/print transcript]
Date	1976-11-19
Creator	Byrd, Clara Booth
Contributors	Adams, Charles
Subject headings	University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Topics	Teachers UNCG
Place	Greensboro (N.C.)
Description	Clara Booth Byrd (1887-1985) was a member of the Class of 1913 of the State Normal and Industrial College, which became Woman's College of the University of North Carolina and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She was alumnae secretary at the institution from 1922-1947. Byrd describes her duties and experience as Alumnae Association secretary, the early days of the Alumni Association, and how it was organized. She discusses the planning of an alumnae building as well as the Tea Room located inside. Byrd also talks about the development of the Alumnae Magazine in 1922 and the building the Alumnae House, which opened in 1937.
Type	Text
Original format	Interviews
Original publisher	Greensboro, N.C. : The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. University Libraries
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	OH007 UNCG Alumni Association Oral History Program Collection, 1972-1979
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Additional rights information	NO COPYRIGHT - UNITED STATES. This item has been determined to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The user is responsible for determining actual copyright status for any reuse of the material.
Object ID	OH007.002
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304
Full Text	1 UNCG ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM COLLECTION INTERVIEWEE: Clara Booth Byrd INTERVIEWER: Charles Adams DATE: November 19, 1976 [Begin Side A] CA: I have a series of questions here that we’ve prepared, Miss Byrd. The first one: You assumed the duties of alumni [alumnae] secretary in 1922; the same year the Alumni Association began construction of the alumni [Alumnae] Tea House on the site of the old Teague House, now where Curry [Building] stands. What do you recall of those earliest days of the association? CBB: Well, Mr. Adams, to go back—It was very difficult in those years for faculty members coming in and faculty families to find a place to live and to eat, really. And so, President [Julius I.] Foust conceived the idea of what he called an alumni [alumnae] building on the campus. And in some way the word “home” for the alumnae, as it was then—and I should have said alumni a moment ago, alumnae a moment ago—the idea of a home for the alumnae on the campus became intertwined. I think nobody ever really quite thought it through from beginning to end, so to speak. But at any rate, they decided to use the blueprints of one of the dormitories on the quadrangle—it may have been Anna Howard Shaw [Residence Hall]—for this alumni [alumnae] building. Well, the idea didn’t catch on very well. But they did build—the alumnae did build one room, which they decided to call the Tea Room—I suppose it may have been the living room in the dormitory plans which they used—and set it up as a tea room with a kitchen. And we did operate it for a year or two. But the whole thing eventually bogged down, and I was brought in to work the problem out if I could, you know. And so the first thing I realized in putting my mind on it and studying about it was that the building—the type of building itself—did not appeal. And the second thing was that its location was not attractive. Teague Field at that time was a barren piece of ground, and you had to walk up steps to get up on top of the ground, and it was muddy half the time. It was very difficult to find anybody who could manage the Tea Room well. Besides that, the Home Economics Department wanted it as a part of their program. And I certainly agreed with them; I thought a tea room should be in the Home Economics division. And so eventually that, of course, is how it landed. Now, is that about all I need? CA: Now you really were the—really the first secretary, weren’t you? 2 CBB: No I wasn’t. There was a secretary who served for about three years before I came in. And she spent most of her time organizing the local counties—that is, the counties were the units of organization—and did a very nice job. Now, will you repeat that question so I can see—? CA: Well, the whole question, yeah. You assumed the duties of the alumni secretary in 1922, the same year the Alumni Association began construction of the alumni Tea Room on the site of the old Teague House, now Curry. What do you recall of the earliest days of the association? Now who was that first person—the first three years—do you remember? CBB: Miss Ethel Bollinger, B-O-L-L-I-N-G-E-R. CA: Now here, the secretary— CBB: Now I would like to say something of the earliest years. I had—when I came in as alumnae secretary, I had a table and a chair. That was all the office I had in the office of Miss Laura Coit who was the college secretary. You know the college was organized— CA: Over in the old Administration Building [Foust Building]. CBB: Yes, the Administration Building. And the college was organized in the president, secretary, and treasurer, and she was the next person in— CA: Miss Coit was the next person. CBB: She was the next person in authority. And that was what I had. No records. Now if you had to—well, Miss Coit had—she admitted the students, and she had at that time an alphabetical record of all the students who had ever been here and where they came from and so forth. And so if I wanted to get a list of the Guilford College—I mean of the Guilford County alumnae, for instance, I had to go through that entire list of students who had been here from the beginning. When I found one who was from Guilford County, I wrote her name down. And when I had gone through from A to Z, I had the list from Guilford County. CA: That’s really the second question—what were the responsibilities of the alumnae secretary in those early days? And records, I guess, was really one of your first— CBB: Yeah, records—it took several years, really, to realize what was needed. I soon found that we needed married names records. For instance, someone would asked, “Who was Mrs. John Jones?” Well now, unless you had a married name you couldn’t say that she was Stella Phillips or whatever her name was. And then I had to eventually build up the locality records. That was— CA: Would that be called chapter organizing? Was it chapters or—? CBB: We did not call them chapters, we called them associations. 3 CA: Associations. By county? CBB: By county. Of course, eventually, we had organizations in New York, Atlanta—and they were—as a rule I think we called those clubs. Sometimes the alumnae, in organizing, they would say, “We’ve organized a club.” There was no set rule about that. But most of them were associations, the local organizations were. But to go back to the records, we continued until we had alphabetical, locality, geographical, married name—all the records we needed and finally biographical records. For those we used big envelopes—the long envelopes and all the clippings and letters with the name information, the clippings [unclear]. They were invaluable to us in editing the magazine. You know, you went there for information. CA: Now when did the magazine start? You mentioned the magazine; that was a very important step. It started as just a news sheet, right? CBB: It was a news sheet, and I changed it to a magazine the very first issue. CA: It was 1922? CBB: It was either October or November of 1922. Everybody was so excited over having this magazine. CA: Okay, I’m sure. And the magazine put the emphasis on the alumni. I think the news sheet was just news about the college. CBB: Well, [unclear] news about the college as well as the alumnae, both. CA: And then you had to have a mailing list. Now that gets into your records, did it not? CBB: Yes, that was—it was a long time before we had—I was very proud of organizing the office. And at the end of the year, they gave me an office. At the end of the first year, the college gave me an office. CA: In the Administration Building? CBB: Yes, right next to President Foust. CA: Foust, yes. And who was secretary? Was Laura [unclear] secretary then, Miss Coit? CBB: I don’t know who his secretary was, because Miss Coit continued as secretary of the college until her death. CA: Would that be secretary—oh, it’s not registrar, the secretary? CBB: No, she admitted students. [unclear] 4 CA: Yes. You got the magazine started. And how large a circulation did it start with? CBB: I wouldn’t [unclear]. CA: Sometimes they judge magazines by how large their circulation. Well, it certainly is large now, I should imagine. It mentions public speaker here—you know, your responsibilities. Did you go out to the counties and talk to alumni groups and—or to New York? CBB: Yes, I did. That was part of my duties. I had everything to do, you know, that first year or two. No one, I think, had ever really thought through what alumnae work was or should be. I’m surprised that the college didn’t send me to some of the—well the long-established organizations such as Smith and Mount Holyoke and Wellesley [colleges] had for years. But I had to more or less work it out. Conditions arose, you know. CA: I was reading the note here, and it says that Smith more or less looked to you rather than you looking to Smith for the alumni association organization. CBB: Well, that goes farther down the years [unclear]. We did work out the alumnae blueprint here. And one day I received a letter from the college secretary asking me to tell them as much as I could about [unclear]. And so I had small blueprints made of our big blueprints, you know, and sent to them. And they wrote back that there was great excitement when those blueprints arrived. And we built our house a year or two before they did theirs. So after our house was built, they sent their alumnae secretary [unclear] and a New York architect all down here. CA: Now this, you’re talking about this house where we’re— CBB: I’m talking about this alumnae house. And we’re going ahead of ourselves considerably. And later when we had furnished the house, they sent the same group back and used a good bit of our materials [unclear]. When they dedicated their house, they invited me to be their guest, and I went. CA: When was the first alumni meeting they had [unclear] organization like that [unclear] alumni meetings? When did that begin? CBB: That began from the beginning. [unclear] CA: [unclear] CBB: [unclear] I think we ought to talk a little bit more [unclear] CA: The early records [unclear]. CBB: [unclear] 5 CA: [unclear] call alumni meetings. That was the responsibility of the alumni secretary [in] those early years, and alumni meetings was one of them. Did you organize alumni meetings? CBB: Well, I—yes, I did that, and I also visited them and spoke to them. CA: The groups—the big group? CBB: Yes. CA: Now what about, you know, the legislature. Did you have, you know, in those early years it’s got legislature. I don’t know if that’s legislature of the—that gets involved with the state legislature. CBB: Well, the alumnae [unclear]. I remember before—I think it was [unclear], I’m not sure [unclear] President Foust asked me to represent the alumnae before the—make a little speech of the presenting the cause of the college, you know, at the hearing before the joint committees of the house and senate. You know how the appropriations committee would ask the delegates to speak [unclear] in statute form they were asking for money. They would spend a day and a half and have what they called a hearing. [unclear] to get the [unclear] for the college [unclear] hearing. CA: Yes, your [unclear] was facing a deadlock before the joint session of the appropriations committee. And this is what we’re talking about. CBB: I, well, I will—you want me to talk about that? CA: Yes, yes, it’s right here. CBB: Well, I was, that was pretty widely circulated. [End of Interview due to tape being inaudible]
OCLC number	905021433

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