Oral history interview with Charles W. Patterson III, 2010

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PRESERVING OUR ORAL HISTORY: ROTARY CLUB OF GREENSBORO ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Charles W. Patterson, III
INTERVIEWER: Kathelene Smith
DATE: January 25, 2010
KS: It’s January 25, 2010. My name is Kathelene Smith, and I’m at the home of Charlie Patterson for an oral history interview for Preserving our History: Rotary Club of Greensboro Oral History Project. Good morning, Mr. Patterson. How are you this morning?
CP: Fine, Kathelene.
KS: Great. Please tell me when and where you were born.
CP: I was born in High Point in 1939. So, that’s a lot of years ago. I grew up in High Point. My family – my mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad worked at The High Point Enterprise, the newspaper. He was the advertising director. No brothers and sisters. I got spoiled real quick. Went to high school at High Point Senior High and enjoyed history for the most part. Graduated in 1957. And I went from there to Davidson College with about four or five other guys from High Point. You’ve asked here if I served in the military. I did. At Davidson I was in ROTC and graduated with a commission; served in the Army from ’61 to ’63. The latter part of that was Special Forces training group at Fort Bragg during the Cuban Crisis – right at the height of the Cuban Crisis.
KS: Let’s go back to High Point for a few minutes. How was growing up in High Point? What was it like back then? It probably was not as much a part of the Triad, was it separate?
CP: You’re probably too young to remember, but it was the epitome of Happy Days. Happy Days was a TV program that was on some time in the ’70s.
KS: Sure.
CP: And growing up in the ’50s was unbelievable. I mean you just – you could walk the town. You could do whatever you wanted to do. It was just a very peaceful time after World War II and Korean War and prior to Vietnam. The happy days of the ’50s were very special and had a positive influence on a generation of Americans.
KS: Was there as much of a feeling of inclusiveness with other towns? Now there is the Triad – back then was it like that?2
CP: No. I mean, we would come to Greensboro to go to movies or that sort of thing. But rarely did we go to Winston. But there was not a – Triadism was not what it has become, nor what it should be. And I’ll get to that later on. But it was just a small little community.
KS: So, you said you had no brothers or sisters, you were the only child. What did your parents do?
CP: Well, my dad worked for the newspaper.
KS: That’s right. Your mom?
CP: And my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Again, the norm of the ’50s.
KS: So, what were your favorite subjects and activities in high school?
CP: History. I liked history, and I liked sports. I was on the basketball team and enjoyed all sports.
KS: Now, when you graduated you said you went right to Davidson? And so, how was Davidson?
CP: Outstanding to say the least. I don’t know what you know about Davidson College, but back then it was all male. Interestingly enough, I guess, this is an indication of my growing up. My best friend in kindergarten was in my same room for six years through grammar school. We went to junior high, high school together, went to Davidson together, and still today he is my best friend. We’ve known each other for more than sixty-five years. I talked to him last night – I am going to have dinner with him this week.
KS: That’s great!
CP: That’s the atmosphere I grew up in. At Davidson, I was really a – I had done pretty well in high school, well enough to get in Davidson, along with five or six other guys from High Point. And got to Davidson, and I thought this stuff is pretty easy. It’s not bad. Got my first grades, and I had something like four F’s and a C. And this was midterm grade. And I was assigned a carrel in the library. And I was on the honor system that I spent two hours a night in the library in that carrel studying. And ended up getting my grades up enough to finally graduate. But Davidson is very tough. And we had wonderful professors who literally took you on one-on-one, cared about you, go to their homes, that sort of thing. So, it’s a small community. I don’t know what you know about Davidson, but –
KS: I had no idea it was an all-male school at one point.
CP: Oh, yeah. Matter of fact, I think Davidson changed to co-ed about 1970.3
KS: Really?
CP: About the time that WC [Woman’s College] became UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. So, I’ve experienced both institutions making the co-ed change.
KS: That’s interesting. What was fun to do at Davidson back then? Were you involved in sports?
CP: The fun part was during my senior year we had a guy come to be the basketball coach at Davidson. His name was [Charles] “Lefty” Driesell. And Lefty Driesell recruited kids by going out in his station wagon where he would sleep at night and try to recruit kids to come to Davidson College to play basketball. And he put together a team that was ranked in the top ten in the country. And so, Davidson basketball became a big deal. Then Lefty was hired away from Davidson and went to the University of Maryland, and became a very well-known college basketball coach. So, basketball was a fun thing.
KS: So, Davidson is a wonderful school.
CP: And dance weekends where we would have our dates come in from the different colleges, from WC, as in the case of my wife, Mars Hill. Big deal for the guys to have the girls on campus for a weekend, for what we called Dance Weekend. We had about three of them a year.
KS: So, had you met your wife before, or did you meet her while you were in college?
CP: I met her while I was in college. We started dating my freshman year at Davidson and her junior year in high school. She’s also from High Point. Therefore we had many mutual friends.
KS: What was your major in college?
CP: Psychology.
KS: Psychology?
CP: Why would anybody major in psychology? I guess I just was enamored with it when I took the first course in psychology, and I enjoyed it. So I majored in psychology and finished and had no clue as to what I was going to do with a psychology major, especially after going into the Army and getting out of the Army, then I went to work for Duke Power Company in Charlotte. The reason I went to work for Duke Power Company in Charlotte is that I wanted to go to Charlotte to be close to Davidson College basketball and Lefty Driesell. And they were playing games in the Charlotte Coliseum at that point in time. And so, I worked with Duke Power for five years. I was actually in sales and marketing, and then became a branch manager. And it took me five years to realize that most Duke Power employees had electrical engineering degrees and were way ahead of 4
me. And that I probably needed to go back to school and get a Master’s or something and try to expand on that psychology degree that I just happened to pluck out of the air.
KS: Now, I’m going to take you back for just a minute. After you graduated from Davidson you did go into the Army for a while. Were you stationed in the States, or what happened during that time?
CP: I was at Fort Bragg.
KS: The whole time?
CP: No.
KS: OK.
CP: I got my initial assignment to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana. Then I was assigned to the recruiting main station in downtown Oklahoma City. A side note, the building I worked in was blown up by the Unabomber a few years ago. My psychology degree qualified me to be an Army personnel psychologist. Therefore, I was responsible for determining where recruits and enlistees who came into the military would be assigned. The Cuban Crisis came along, and I was transferred to Fort Bragg, back to North Carolina, back home. And that was to the Special Forces Training Group, Special Warfare Center, where upon my arrival at Fort Bragg we literally – literally had troops camped out on the tarmac at Pope Air Force Base ready to get on planes to invade Cuba. It was that close. That was the beginning of Special Forces, the Green Berets. And I was responsible for deciding where the Green Beret graduates – again, because of my psychology – and tests and stuff that they would take. I could make the determination as to whether they would go to Vietnam or wherever they might go. And that was what my role was at Fort Bragg.
KS: What a time to be in the Army.
CP: It was a different time. And, of course, a major change of lifestyles for our country in many ways because of Vietnam.
KS: Did you think that you were going to have to go?
CP: No, I didn’t think I would ever have to go to Vietnam. You probably don’t even remember the Green Berets.
KS: I remember the song.
CP: You remember the song?
KS: I’ve heard the song. That makes an impression. I’ve seen movies about them and read about them.5
CP: And as they would say in that song, “One hundred men will test today, but only three will wear the Green Beret.” So we’re talking about the elite soldiers of the United States going as teams to different places around the world. And it was very rewarding to be a small part of that.
KS: I’ve heard about that time during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s just different when you read about it than when you were really there.
CP: We were that close to invading Cuba. Thank goodness President Kennedy never made that call.
KS: That’s amazing. So, you finished out, and then you moved back to –
CP: I went to Duke Power then decided – that it was time to do something about my psychology degree.
KS: Although it had come in handy.
CP: Well, it had up until that point. Anyway, the minister who had married my wife and me called me one day and said, “They’re looking for somebody at Meredith College to come and work in the development office, and I know you are thinking about going back and getting a Master’s. So, you might be interested. I’m going to give them your name.” And they called me. So, I planned to work at Meredith and go across the street at N.C. State [North Carolina State University] and get my Master’s degree. Unfortunately, I did not know that college fundraising, development, advancement doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to go across the street because in the college fundraising field you travel a lot. You are seeing people when they can see you. It’s not your schedule. It’s whatever their schedule is. So, needless to say, I never got across the street.
KS: So, you were there for how long?
CP: I was at Meredith for three years during the first ever Meredith College capital campaign to raise funds for endowment and buildings. I was the director of what’s called today, “planned giving.” It was called estate planning back then. We sought gifts through wills, and trusts, and life insurance, that sort of thing. And it was a fundraising field that was just on the verge of coming into being. The president at Meredith, Dr. Bruce Heilman, was named the president at the University of Richmond. He promised the Board of Trustees at Meredith that he wouldn’t take any of his “good” staff people with him to Richmond, and then he asked me if I’d go. So, I went with him to Richmond. The Heilmans and the Pattersons moved to Richmond in the same moving van. As he assumed the presidency there – I was assistant to the president and put in place their planned giving program. So, we did that and arrived in Richmond. It was about a year after the University of Richmond had received in one day a gift for forty million dollars. Which at that time was the largest single gift ever made to higher education.6
KS: I can’t imagine what today’s equivalent would be for that.
CP: The equivalent would be humongous. One moment of turning over of stock valued at forty million dollars and pledging another ten million dollars. And so, we went with the intention of trying to use that unrestricted gift to positively impact the University of Richmond. E. Claiborne Robins was the gentleman who made the gift. Wonderful, wonderful, generous, gentleman.
KS: What did he do?
CP: He was the founder of A.H. Robins Pharmaceutical Company. And it was an interesting story. He grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and had very little. His dad had a corner drugstore, died, and his mother tried to keep the drugstore going. And he, as a kid, packaged pills in the little corner drugstore. He took that corner drugstore and built the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, which was the A.H. Robins Pharmaceutical Company, named for his father, who had the little corner drugstore. Anyway, thanks to Mr. Robins – we have a fifty million dollar campaign because we couldn’t have a campaign for less than what one donor had given. And so, we launched the “Our Time in History” $50 million capital campaign, which was a significant national campaign. And we were into the planned giving area. Because of all that, the University of Richmond was on the leading cutting edge of fundraising, and I had the privilege being called to testify before the House Ways & Means Committee about taxes and giving, and the advantages of giving tax-wise, and gifts of wills and trusts. Because of the Robins gift. We had all these things in place at a time when congressmen were studying tax reform and trying to make some major tax law changes. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 came into being, which created planned giving tools, charitable remainder trusts, pooled income funds today, exotic gift tools that all development officers in colleges and universities use today.
KS: What an exciting time! They must have been shocked to hear about that kind of gift. That puts the University of Richmond on a whole different level of giving.
CP: Oh, yes. [Laughs] I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a congressional hearing or not, but it is a little awesome to say the least.
KS: I mean, how do you have the campaign for next year after you’ve gotten fifty million plus?
CP: Well, these campaigns go for more than a year. I mean, you start putting in place campaigns that are three to five years.
KS: Really?
CP: And now some schools even have ten year campaigns.
KS: So, you set certain goals, and then you work toward them?7
CP: Yes. But I was at Richmond only three years, and then I got a call from Chancellor Jim Ferguson at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. And he wanted to know if I had any interest in coming back to North Carolina to head up the development office at UNCG, which was just getting started. At that point in time, public higher education didn’t do much fundraising. And because of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, and the things that were changing in philanthropy, state universities were beginning to put together fund raising programs. So I came to UNCG, and we had a staff of myself, a director of annual giving. I hired a planned giving person, and that was about it. Wilson Davis was the Director of University Relations at that point in time. And, anyway, we came in with the thought of, “Can we put together a campaign?” and “What kind of monies can UNCG raise?” UNCG is what I thought you wanted to talk about more than anything else. And, therefore, I got this Joe Bryan, Sr., cancelled check to show you. This is – let’s see. I came in ’74, and so, we were putting together the program and trying to get things in place. And in May of ’79 we were getting to a point where we were close to receiving one million in gift dollars in the fiscal year. The university had never done that. And I went to see a fellow Rotarian, Joe Bryan, Sr., who had been pretty good to us and was very generous at times. I went to his office, and I said “Mr. Bryan, we are $75,000 to $80,000 shy of receiving one million dollars in private gift support in a fiscal year for the first time in the history of UNCG. Would you consider making us a one million dollar university?” And I said, “Would you let me come the last day of June and tell you how short we are, whatever that might be, $49,250.27 or $4,900 or whatever it might be, and would you consider making a gift of that amount to make us a one million dollar university?” And he did. And later he gave me this canceled check for $51,000 that made UNCG a million dollar university for the first time in history.
KS: There we go. We’re looking at UNCG bulletin which is dated September 1979 with a canceled check for $51,000 from Mr. Bryan. [This check is now hanging in the Pecky Cypress room of the Alumni House.]
CP: This is prior to the Bryan School of Business.
KS: The Bryan School of Business at UNCG? Wow, that is wonderful.
CP: Yes. Later, Mr. Bryan made a seven-figure gift, and the business school was named for him. I was at UNCG for ten years, put the program in some kind of orderly fashion, and my office was in the Alumni House.
KS: Oh, I love the Alumni House. It’s beautiful.
CP: The Pecky Cyprus Room was my office. Have you been in the Pecky Cyprus room?
KS: Yes.
CP: That became my office. It was Chancellor Jim Ferguson’s office before the Mossman Building was built. The chancellor was moving into the Mossman Building. And I was in 8
Foust. And one day he was talking about moving, and this was my first year at UNCG, and I said to Jim, “Who’s going to be in here in the the Alumni House?” Alumni were part of my responsibility, as was college relations, and that sort of thing, not just the fundraising. And he said, “Well, nobody is coming in here.” And I said, “Why don’t you let us come in here? That way the development staff can all be together in the Alumni House instead of being spread out in different places around campus.” He agreed, and when Mossman was completed, we moved in. We were the only administrative office not in Mossman.
KS: You must have had the prettiest office in the campus.
CP: In the state, in the whole state.
KS: Yes.
CP: We had some great meetings in that room with alumni, prospective donors, and even with Governor Hunt. We’d bring prospective donors to the Pecky Cyprus Room, make a fire in the fireplace, and talk about the future of UNCG. That was a place where we met with lots of major donors. Ben Cone gave me his check for Weatherspoon in that room.
KS: Really! You’ve seen it since they’ve redone it recently, the whole Alumni House, and they did a beautiful job.
CP: They did a great renovation job. We had all of our fundraising activities in the Virginia Dare Room. Everything we needed for cultivation and soliciting donors was right there. We were able to have alumni back, meetings with major donors, and special dinners, and all kinds of different things. A lot of fun. Didn’t you want to talk to me about Rotary?
KS: Well, I wanted to talk about – did you continue to stay in touch with UNCG? And I also wanted – did you raise a family, or did you have children?
CP: Yes, we have three – our two sons graduated from Grimsley High [High School]. Our daughter was finishing up at Kiser [Middle School] when we left here. The ten years we were here were our kids’ growing up years. When we left Greensboro, the boys were heading off to college. And our daughter was heading into high school. They were very formative years of our family here in Greensboro. And I was in the Rotary Club at that time, along with Mr. Bryan and Ben Cone, Roger Soles of Jefferson Standard, and I think Louis Stephens was also a Rotarian. Louis was chairman of the board of trustees at UNCG during most of that period of time. In my role at UNCG, I was very much involved in the Greensboro community, including Rotary.
KS: What brought you into Rotary initially? Did you know Mr. Bryan or other people, and they brought you in?
CP: Actually, no. In college development work you need to be in the community, and you need to be where the community leadership is and where your prospective major donors 9
are, and usually that’s Kiwanis or Rotary. I was in Kiwanis in Richmond and got into Rotary when I came here. We met at the old YMCA, which is now owned by Greensboro College.
KS: So, what kind of activities have you been involved with through the Rotary?
CP: I was on the board while I was here. I worked with the Salvation Army in the Christmas bell ringing. I tried to be involved with the Greensboro community even though my job required a lot of travel. We even had a UNCG golf outing [Swing into the 80’s] to get community leaders involved with UNCG. Here’s a great story. I don’t know whether Mike Weaver was in Rotary at the time, but do you know that name?
KS: Yes, I have heard of Mike Weaver, of course.
CP: I think Mike was in Rotary. Pretty sure he was. But anyway, we had at UNCG a Pro-Am golf tournament. Carol Mann was a professional golfer, LGPA Tour, and a WC alum. And we got her to come back and put on the tournament for UNCG at Bryan Park. And so, a lot of the Rotarians and Kiwanians were participating in that. Our purpose was to try to get them closer to UNCG, to bring them a little closer to us and get them involved in what we were doing, because most of them had Carolina and Duke and Wake and State connections. That’s another story, too. I’ll have to come back to that. Too many UNCG stories.
KS: Good.
CP: I’m sorry, Kathelene.
KS: No, we love those!
CP: But anyway, we had the Carol Mann UNCG Pro-Am. The UNCG director of annual giving, Dave McDonald, and I visited Mike Weaver to see if Mike wanted to play. We knew he played golf, and he played in the GGO Pro-Am [Greater Greensboro Open]. So, we were going to get him come play in the Carol Mann UNCG Pro-Am. And he just laughed. He said, “I don’t have any connections whatsoever with UNCG. No reason for me to be involved.” And we showed him the brochure. Raymond Floyd, who was on the PGA Tour, played. Chi Chi Rodriguez, who was on the PGA tour, played in this thing. Ray Floyd’s baby sister, LPGA player Marlene Floyd, was going to play. We had a glamour shot of Marlene in the brochure, as well as pictures of each one of the pros who were going to play. And Mike said, “Well, I might consider it if you’ll let me play in the foursome with Marlene Floyd.” And I told him, “No, there’s no way. We can’t honor requests like that.” I said, “We’re going to have to draw and everybody is in the draw, and pull names out of that hat, and you play with whoever you might play with. You might play with Chi Chi Rodriguez, which would be fun.” So anyway, he said, “Well, I’ll go on and buy a couple of foursomes so that we can play.” We get in the car and head back, and Dave McDonald said to me, “What in the world are you doing? Why didn’t you tell him ‘OK’? We need to get Mike Weaver involved with UNCG.” And I said, 10
“Dave, you and I are the ones who draw the names. Mike Weaver will get to play with Marlene Floyd.”
KS: And he did.
CP: And he did. And later Mike Weaver became chairman of the Board of Trustees at UNCG. He became a very generous multi-million dollar donor to UNCG and is still today very involved with the University. It’s why my job was called development.
KS: Building relationships.
CP: Building relationships. Developing. But that was the first time that Mike Weaver had done anything with UNCG. And then, as I say, later on Mike became a key leader, and chairman of a multi-million dollar fund raising campaign for the University. We had a similar situation with a guy at Guilford Mills, the very personable – Chuck Hayes. Every heard of that name? Chuck Hayes was an energetic, volatile guy who was huge in the Greensboro community. Chuck was involved in lots of things as the chairman of the board, and president of Guilford Mills, but he was extremely volatile. A group of businessmen came to the university, through me, and said, “We would like to give $10,000 a year for four years.” And I think there were maybe ten of them, including some who would give $10,000 for four years to provide basketball scholarships for the men’s basketball program. There was no scholarship program for athletics at UNCG at the time. Chuck Hayes was one of them. Chuck called me over to his office and said, “Look, I just want to go ahead and give you the whole $40,000. Here’s the check.” And so, we had this commitment from ten Greensboro community leaders. A $400,000 commitment for scholarships for men’s basketball. The faculty turned it down. Anyway, I had to return Chuck’s check. Now, that’s not something a development officer ever wants to do.
KS: Why?
CP: Because we were not accepting what he was giving it for. He was giving it for scholarships for men’s basketball, and the faculty had decided that was not the way we would go. So, I go back out to give Chuck Hayes his check. And that’s the first gift that Chuck Hayes ever made to UNCG. You can just imagine what that was like. I mean, he was so volatile. I heard words I’ve never heard before, nor since. He just absolutely lowered the boom. The University was turning down his gift of $40,000. Chuck Hayes later became Chairman of the Board of Trustees at UNCG and a major multi-million dollar donor to UNCG.
KS: OK!
CP: My apologies. This is supposed to be about Rotary not UNCG, but as you can tell the two are very intertwined to me.
KS: Well, we’d love more stories about UNCG, because, ultimately, the transcript is going to be kept at the archives at UNCG.11
CP: Is that right?
KS: So any other kind – you said a minute ago you had another story.
CP: Well, this was when I first came to Greensboro, and I was coming from Richmond from UNCG, and I was put on a committee to study the future of intercollegiate athletics. This was the fall of 1974, and I went to the committee meeting. And the reason I was put on the committee was that my predecessor, George Hamer, who had been the director of college relations before my arrival, and they named him vice chancellor just before I came. But they were, at that point, moving into fundraising and making it greater. So they needed a vice chancellor for development, which is what I became. George, he was on this committee. Little did I know that the committee had been meeting for two years from 1972 to ’74. They were looking at the future of intercollegiate athletics at UNCG. I don’t remember when WC became UNCG, but it wasn’t but a few years prior to that. So, there were no athletic scholarships. There was no league to play in or anything like that. So, I go to my first meeting. A biology professor was the chairman of the committee. And they get in there, and they start talking about how they have finally come to the conclusion that the best thing to do about the athletic program was nothing. And that athletics under UNCG should continue to be what we had been since our WC days. Do you know Tom Martin? Tom Martin worked for the city. He was assistant city manager. I don’t know whether he’s in Rotary or not. But, anyway, Tom Martin was a recent graduate on that committee and a basketball player while a student. I’ve been at UNCG only two months, and here I was, and here they were ready to submit their report to the Board of Trustees to do nothing about improving the University athletic program. And I raised my hand, and I said, “I don’t agree with that.” I said, “If we’re going to be a full-fledged university, we need to be a full-fledged university. We shouldn’t just be competing totally on the academic level. You know, we’re limited in the number of males that are here now anyway. We’re still transitioning. So, why not enhance the athletic program and upgrade it, and offer scholarships, and advance the men’s basketball program?” And I said, “We got a big coliseum only six blocks away. You could play some games in there and give us some publicity, give us some visibility and step it up.” Well, of course, they all thought I just came from Richmond, what did I know?
So anyway, that was that. I went to my first trustee meeting in January, and the biology professor presented the results of the study, “Continue the program as is. Do not upgrade at this time.” And then said, “And we have a minority report from Vice Chancellor Patterson.” And I sat there and I thought, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know they were going to do this.” And he said, “I have attached his comments to the report and his comments are, blah, blah, blah.” And I thought, “Holy cow. What have I done? I’m on my way back to Richmond.” And about that time a lady raises her hand, and she says, “I want to speak to Vice Chancellor Patterson’s minority report.” And I knew I was in trouble. She was clearly a WC alum who did not like her school going co-ed, did not like going university. Most alumnae at that time wanted it just like it was as the Women’s College, and that did not include scholarship athletes. So anyway, she said, “I agree with Vice Chancellor Patterson.” I fell in love with her right then. Her name was Betty Anne 12
Stanback of the Stanback Headache Powder Company from Salisbury. And Betty Anne and I became close friends at that moment. And she was just a great, great trustee. Of course, it was many, many years later before any of these athletic changes happened. As a matter of fact, this is the first year they’re playing games in the coliseum.
KS: How many years ago was that?
CP: That was 1974. Anyway, a lot of Rotarians were involved in eventually helping UNCG ultimately move to an NCAA Division I athletic program.
KS: We are interested in all aspects of your life.
CP: All right. You asked about our kids. Eleanor and I have been married forty-nine years.
KS: Oh, that’s wonderful! Congratulations.
CP: We are products of the ’50s, I guess.
KS: Now, you said you worked at UNCG for ten years. Then y’all just stayed here, or did you go someplace else in between?
CP: No, we lived here for ten years. I’m a strong believer in being in the community where you work.
KS: Right.
CP: Anyway, I got a phone call from Wake Forest. We had just wrapped – as a matter of fact, can’t remember now who made the gift. But in January of ’84, we got a gift that put the first-ever UNCG capital campaign – which was named Prospectus III – we got a check that put us over the top of our goal even though the campaign was to end in June. We were in a twelve million dollar campaign, which was unheard of in those days. Today it’s peanuts. But, anyhow, that day I get a phone call from Wake Forest, and they wanted to know if I had any interest in coming over and working at Wake Forest in the athletic department as an associate athletic director. One of the things you learn real quick in our business is that we’re very goal-oriented. Development officers like challenges, and so we had met our goal, and in some sense, I guess, without knowing it, I’m thinking, “Well, what’s the next thing that’s going to get my adrenaline flowing?” It happened to be that phone call. And so, I decided to go to Wake Forest as the associate director for development, which was the first time WFU had ever had such a position. The whole purpose was to put together the plans and the funding to build a new basketball arena in Winston-Salem. And thus became the Lawrence Joel Coliseum.
KS: What year was that?
CP: 1984.13
KS: The coliseum that’s there now, the Lawrence Joel Coliseum, was that where the old coliseum was too?
CP: The old coliseum was in the parking lot that is in front of the current Joel Coliseum, near where Goodwill Center is today. But the old coliseum was kind of in that parking lot. So, I went to Wake Forest and we started trying to figure out how to put this project together. Gene Hooks was the Athletic Director at the time, and we went around the country with city officials, looked at coliseums and arenas all over the place. Basically, the Joel Coliseum is patterned after the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, which was the one that we thought was closest to what we might want to do. And the long and short of it was that we had a city bond referendum that passed, and the university, under the leadership of President Tom Hearn, made a commitment to give the city of Winston-Salem five million dollars to help build a twenty million dollar coliseum that is totally, completely owned by the city. But the university has areas in the building that belong to the university and are solely and exclusively for the use of the Wake Forest basketball and athletic program. In turn, the university agreed to pay rent to the city when Wake Forest played games there. It’s a very unique thing: A public-owned facility that received a gift from a private university. The private university, in turn, paying rent to the public institution to play games in that building. So anyway, the city built the coliseum, and it opened in 1989 with Wake Forest playing a basketball game against a team from Russia. The Joel became the home court for Wake Forest basketball, and the university space includes its own locker room. There are – or there were, there may be more now – there were three locker rooms in the building. And, then, if somebody else is playing, a home and visitor’s locker room. But nobody else uses Wake Forest’s locker room. Also, we wanted private viewing suites. Have you been in the building? OK. The private viewing suites are U-shaped in that building. and we wanted exclusive rights to the suites. So we paid an additional amount to build those private viewing suites in the building, and Wake Forest leases those private viewing suites and receives the income from that.
KS: That’s amazing. That’s a wonderful facility.
CP: We had generous donors who gave us about twelve million dollars toward our five million goal. With the excess monies Wake Forest was able to build a soccer stadium on campus, tennis courts that are on campus, locker rooms that are on campus, the original Hooks baseball stadium, and the Haddock golf practice complex. We built all kinds of athletic facilities with the overage. It turned out to be a really great campaign for Wake Forest, thanks to a lot of very generous donors.
KS: Quite an achievement! So, how long were you in Winston?
CP: Fourteen years. We had other athletic campaigns, as well as university campaigns that athletics was a party to. I quickly add that many Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point Rotarians were involved as donors and volunteers in all of this.
And I got to be sixty years old, and assumed I was going to end my career at Wake Forest. Then I got a phone call from a Greensboro Rotarian and long-time friend, 14
Stanley Frank, who was a generous donor to UNCG during my time there, and who had become a generous donor to Wake Forest when we were building the coliseum And he said that they were interested in having someone to assume the vice presidency at Guilford College to head up the development program there. They were in a campaign, and it had bogged down, and they needed a fresh start and blah, blah, blah. And I said, “Well, let me think of someone who might be good for that job.” And he said, “You don’t understand. I’m calling to ask you to come.” And I said, “No, no, no. There just is no way. I’m sixty. I’m through. I don’t need any more headaches. That’s it.” And he said, “There are three trustees on the search committee, and we want you to come.” And I said, “I didn’t even know you were associated with Guilford College.” And he said, “Yes, and two other trustees and I are on the committee to find somebody, and we want you to come over here and meet the president next week.” And I said, “Who else is on the committee that you’re talking about?” And he said, “Well, Vic Flow,” and Vic Flow was a trustee at Wake Forest and we were in Rotary together in Winston. And I had gotten cars from Flow Motors. I knew Vic very well. And he said, “And the third one is Joe Bryan, Jr.” And, of course, I also knew Joe very well. His dad had passed away at that point, and I had gotten to know Joe, Jr., through the years. Anyhow, I went home and told Eleanor, “They want me to come to Guilford College. I have no reason whatsoever to go to Guilford College. There is just no rhyme nor reason except for three people.” I knew those three would not let the Guilford Campaign fail, and they didn’t. For example, the Frank Family Science Center at Guilford College was a part of that campaign. The first meeting I came to, I saw Vic Flow over in the corner writing something down. And he comes over to me and hands me a check. Stanley also gave me a check. Both were significant gifts to Guilford College. And then, Joe, Jr., I knew would make everything happen as well. All three did. And that re-started a fifty million dollar campaign. As I knew they would, the “BIG THREE” made it happen, and we ended up with $56.4 million. So, that one worked as well. And then I retired in 2004.
KS: But you had moved back to Greensboro by that time.
CP: Yes, we moved back to Greensboro, again, because of my strong belief that development officers should be involved in community activities. I rejoined Greensboro Rotary.
KS: Let’s talk about Rotary right now. So, you joined while you were here?
CP: Yes, both times.
KS: And you stayed in Rotary when you went to Winston. Were you in Rotary also when you lived in Richmond?
CP: No. In Richmond I was in Kiwanis.
KS: OK.
CP: I’ve been in two Rotary Clubs for about thirty-five years.15
KS: So, let’s talk more about your involvement in Rotary. What has been your favorite thing you’ve done in Rotary?
CP: Well, I haven’t been as active as many others have been. I have rung the Salvation Army bell for a number of years. Rotary helps with – I’m going to show my age – the GGO, now the Wyndham Championship. So, I have worked the starters tent at the golf tournament for many, many years. I was on the board the first time I was here. I’ve been on the program committee several times and have enlisted many different speakers for our club meetings. But it’s amazing to be in Rotary and enjoy the many connections I have that are, believe it or not – Guilford College, Wake Forest, UNCG, University of Richmond, and Meredith College who I’ve been associated with, as well as my own alma mater, Davidson – it has been great to have had the chance to continue those friendships that have been there, some of them, for a long, long time. Do you know the name Seth Macon? Have you interviewed Seth?
KS: No, I have not.
CP: You need to. He is in his 90’s, a retired Jefferson Standard VP and has been in the Greensboro Rotary Club for years.
KS: Well, a lot of times it’s who contacts us. We –
CP: Oh, is that right?
KS: And Sandy Neerman is actually the chairman of the Rotary history project.
CP: OK.
KS: Because she feeds us names a lot of times. And, then, for example, when I went to speak I had a lot of people approach me.
CP: You remember when you spoke and there was a table over to the right of the podium? You probably didn’t pay any attention. But that is a table of members of the Greensboro Rotary Club who have been in the Rotary fifty plus years. It’s a group of older men. Every once in a while, one of the women in the club will break into the group. And every so often, I’ll sit at that table. It is a group of guys who have been key Greensboro leaders and who have been in Rotary for a long, long time. And they all sit there because they can’t hear.
KS: So, who else usually sits at that table?
CP: Tom Cochran, Bill Lambert, Led Austin, Charlie Phillips, [Walter] “Sticky” Burch, Bill Frank, Tom Glascock.16
KS: So, you lived in Greensboro while you worked at UNCG for about ten years. And, then, you moved back. How has Greensboro changed during those years since you’ve lived there? Changed for the better or the worse?
CP: Well – both.
KS: So, give me your impressions of Greensboro, the times you’ve lived here. What do you think?
CP: Well, first of all you’ve got to remember I grew up in High Point. So I came to Greensboro a lot. The old S&W Cafeteria downtown, to the fairgrounds, and the Coliseum, and McClure’s out on High Point Road. All of those things, of course, have changed. The O’Henry is a different O’Henry Hotel today than it was years ago. And UNCG has changed dramatically over that period of time. Remember, Eleanor and I are natives of High Point and have lived in Greensboro over twenty-two years, and fourteen years in Winston-Salem – we are Triaders. We think absolutely nothing of having breakfast in Greensboro, lunch in High Point, and dinner in Winston-Salem. We go back and forth between the three cities constantly, and I would have to say that I think that’s probably been the one major change that has occurred that isn’t solely Greensboro. But the three cities have grown together physically but not emotionally. I was involved with trying to get a baseball stadium built at the I-40 split. You probably don’t even remember anything about that. That was maybe ten or fifteen years ago.
KS: Somebody else has mentioned that, too.
CP: There was a bond referendum in the three cities to build a baseball stadium. It got a little bent out of shape because it was to attract major league baseball to North Carolina, but the real point of the stadium was to try to bring us together. We’re still emotionally apart. We’ve got friends who live in High Point, who we’re going to have dinner with tomorrow night. They say, “We can’t come way over there. Why don’t you meet us over here at such and such restaurant.” Well, what’s the difference? I mean they can’t come “way over” here to Greensboro, but we can come over to High Point. So, the distance mentality, we can’t seem to overcome. I felt like if we built a baseball stadium, we would all come together, and we would all be a part of something and cheering for the same thing. At that point in time I drove from – I think I’ve got these numbers right – I drove from our house in Winston to the I-40 split. I drove from where I grew up in High Point to the I-40 split. And I drove from where we lived in Greensboro to the I-40 split, and there was two miles difference between the three places, and there was something like four minutes difference in driving time between the three places. I’m convinced to this day that if Greensboro, Winston, and High Point are going to grow and emerge, and become what we can be, we’ve got to come together out there at that I-40 split with something that’s going to emotionally and mentally bring us together.
KS: I wish they would pass some kind of transportation system.17
CP: Well, PART [Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation] is certainly a good thing between the three cities. And it’s located out there on Highway 68 near I-40. By the way, did you know that Interstate 40 goes from Tennessee to Wilmington, across the state, from the mountains to the coast? You know where the midpoint is? It’s a 420 mile interstate across North Carolina from east to west. The midpoint is mile marker 210, where Highway 68 crosses I-40. And that is only two minutes east of the I-40 split.
KS: I had no idea.
CP: And Interstate 85 in North Carolina goes from Virginia to South Carolina. And the midpoint is out there at the Grandover Hotel on I-85.
KS: The new Grandover?
CP: Yes. Grandover. That’s the midpoint. So, we’re sitting in the middle of the state from east to west, north to south. The three cities. If we could just come together we would be dynamite.
One great thing we did together was the Tour DuPont bicycle race. World class cyclists like Lance Armstrong were a part of the race. It started in Delaware and over the course of three years, the finish line was in Winston-Salem, High Point, and Greensboro. That race was on National [world] TV, and it gave the Triad great exposure. Many Rotarians from the three cities as well as our smaller communities were involved. It was fun, exciting, and even a small economic boom to North Carolina and specifically the Triad. But bicycle races are bigger in Europe like the Tour de France, than in the U.S., so it didn’t last.
KS: But don’t you think there’s a mystique to the Carolina League, the small teams that people don’t want to give up?
CP: Sure, but I think that same mystique would transfer to “our team” on a higher level of competition.
KS: Because I know growing up, my son loved the Warthogs.
CP: I think he would equally love the Triad Tigers. But now you’ve got a stadium there under construction, a stadium here under construction. But we don’t ever go over there. You don’t ever come over here, and we just need something to get us together and to break down some of the barriers. Several years ago there was a Triad Development group that was put together by Tom Osborne who was the head of the Greensboro chamber. There was a Triad Chamber of Commerce. We did all these things to try to make some stuff happen, and it just didn’t happen. There’s the park out there in Kernersville. We badly need the Rotary Clubs and Chambers to somehow come together and make something happen. The three cities can’t continue on our current path. We’ve lost Jefferson Standard. We’ve lost Pilot. We’ve lost Burlington Industries, furniture and textiles here have gone to China, and RJR [R.J. Reynolds Tobacco] is just a shadow of its past.18
KS: Wachovia.
CP: We’ve lost Wachovia. I mean, we’ve got to do something to rejuvenate our total area rather than our individual areas. And if we did the total area, I think we’re sitting on dynamite. We could do so much together.
KS: Sure.
CP: There will be a lot of people in High Point and Winston who are going to come to the ACC tournament in the Greensboro Coliseum.
KS: Right.
CP: And I guess when the swim facility comes about there will be people coming. You know, we’ve got a wonderful coliseum here, and we just need to market it and promote it even more. Matt Brown and Rotarian Scott Johnson really do a great job at our coliseum.
KS: The Greensboro area, you were mentioning the colleges and universities.
CP: And you look at Greensboro alone, and what? We’ve got two major state universities who are working together to start to put together some of the research things that are going to be in place. And then, in addition to that, you’ve got the private institutions, Greensboro College, Bennett College, and Guilford College. You’ve got a Piedmont Triad Community College [Guilford Technical Community College] in Jamestown, High Point University. You’ve got Wake Forest [University] and Salem [College] and Winston-Salem State [University]. Higher education in the Triad is big, big time. And yet we have let some of our business and industry and other things go to other places. Now, where will our graduates be going? We’ve got to keep them here. We’ve got to find things to attract and challenge them so they stay here. Higher education is a tremendous strength that we’ve got here in the area. And here in Greensboro we’ve got five Rotary Clubs, maybe more. And it’s easy to go to High Point to make up a Rotary, or go to Winston to make up a Rotary. We’ve got so many Triad Rotary Clubs that could intermingle, for the good of the region as a whole.
KS: Do you do that within the city? Does the Rotary Club –
CP: I can make up meetings in High Point and Winston.
KS: Do y’all ever do group events for all of the Rotaries in the Greensboro –
CP: Not that I am aware of. They do it as a district which goes beyond the three cities. I’m not sure how expansive our district is. But it’s far beyond just those three cities. But you’ve got these three cities with probably twelve or more Rotary Clubs. And maybe one in Kernersville, I guess, that’s what we’re going to call the area when we grow together. We will call it Kernersville.19
KS: Kernersville. Any other issues that you’d like to talk about facing Greensboro – population growth, economic growth, leadership, race relations?
CP: Well, having grown up in the area, I would say that in my perspective, I think race relations have improved dramatically through the years. And we probably need some more minorities in our Rotary Club. But we’re taking them in regularly now. We’re not just an old men’s club anymore, even though we appear to be. When you are at the podium, and you’re looking at our membership and you see some of them sleeping, you might think we’re just a bunch of old men. But we’ve got a chance to really make some things happen. Ed Kitchen is the president of our club now. And he is really good at trying to bring in a lot of younger and diverse backgrounds of people into the Rotary Club. Rotary is a wonderful organization that does wonderful things all over the world. I just hope we don’t forget to do some of those things right here. Because there’s plenty to be done in Greensboro, excuse me, in the Triad.
KS: Now, y’all have that great exchange program, too.
CP: Oh, yes!
KS: Because I have a friend whose daughter participated in that through Rotary.
CP: But, you know, Rotary is strong everywhere. It’s not just this club. Our club is a strong one, but other Rotary Clubs are equally strong. Anyway, it’s not just Rotary. I think that we’ve got so many strengths in Greensboro and the Triad. We just need to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative and get on with what we can accomplish together.
KS: Now, the downtown rejuvenation has been spectacular.
CP: Renovation downtown, that’s exactly right, rejuvenation of downtown. At the same time, we’re seeing Four Seasons not doing as well perhaps as it once was. I don’t know what’s going on out there, but it doesn’t seem to be quite the attraction it once was.
KS: The Four Seasons?
CP: Isn’t it Four Seasons? What’s out there at the Sheraton? Isn’t that Four Seasons?
KS: Oh, the shopping center. Where Koury is?
CP: Yes.
KS: And Friendly Shopping Center.
CP: Where do you shop in Winston?
KS: Well, either Thruway, the shops at Thruway, or the mall.20
CP: Or the mall.
KS: Or Friendly when I’m here.
CP: At Friendly.
KS: Because I love it here.
CP: OK. But Eleanor will go shopping in Winston and High Point just as much as she does here. Again, that’s because we are just so acclimated, and we still have so many friends in all three cities that we’re constantly going back and forth. But I think that Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem have to accept the fact that they can’t do it by themselves. We’ve got to do it together. We’ve got to find some things to do together.
KS: So you see a pretty positive future with that?
CP: Absolutely, if we get our act together and do those things together. Here again, I know you like going to the ballgames in Winston. I just think it would be fun to come together to cheer the same team – OUR team.
KS: It would be. Well, my son would go to a sports game anywhere. “If you build it, he will come,” you know? Now, you had told me a little bit earlier that you had some kind of political involvement in the area. Have you been involved in politics at all?
CP: Only trying to get that baseball stadium. That was basically what I was involved in.
KS: OK. That was what you were saying. OK. Now, we’ve talked about your philanthropy in volunteerism. Is there anything else that we haven’t hit upon? You had mentioned during our break that you were involved in United Way. What else?
CP: I was involved with United Way in both Winston and Greensboro. And I have been on both Chamber Boards in the past. And I was in the Triad Leadership Group. Have you ever heard of that?
KS: Yes.
CP: I was in that very first class, which now seems like it was one hundred years ago.
KS: Was not!
CP: But I’m now on the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame Board.
KS: Oh, where’s that going to be? Do they have a building?
CP: That’s a good question. It has been in existence for a long, long time. And sports in North Carolina are a big deal.21
KS: Right.
CP: But the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame is located in the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, and it’s on the top floor of that building. And most people have no clue as to where it is, and even when they go to the historical museum, they rarely get to the top floor. But, once again, here we are; Greensboro. Why not have a freestanding North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame somewhere here in Greensboro? There was a point in time where there was a study done about the ACC Hall of Fame going in the Canada Dry Building at the Coliseum. That did not pan out for lots of reasons, including the building itself. It just wasn’t conducive to having that. But I would love for us to somehow bring the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame to the Triad. And it probably needs to be close to the Greensboro Coliseum, since the ACC tournament and all the other sporting events are there, rather than the Lawrence Joel in Winston-Salem.
KS: That would be a great idea. Of course, it is so central, basketball.
CP: Sports is, Kathelene – a part of daily life of North Carolinians. I mean it really is.
KS: I know it is in my house.
CP: And you won’t find many houses that it isn’t. And, of course – a lot of that has to do with the Big Four: Duke, State, Carolina, and Wake. And do you know they all used to be real close? Wake Forest used to be in the Town of Wake Forest, which was in Wake County. So, they were all very close. But, anyway, I just guess if I had a wish, that it would be that somehow the Triad, we could come together. We’re sitting here with a major – major metropolitan area that could attract, I think, lots of businesses. We just haven’t pushed together enough to make that happen.
KS: Now, you have been involved in the nonprofit sector of Greensboro and other cities. How do you see that has changed through the years?
CP: Philanthropy has become much more of a business. I don’t know how many people Patty Stewart has on her staff at UNCG right now, but my guess is it’s ten times or more what I had when I came to UNCG in 1974. The search for the gift dollar is a very competitive business. Non-profits today can’t just be good. They have to act good. They have to look good in order for support to occur. And the United States – us Americans have been very generous for a long, long, long time. And here we are in an economic situation where, perhaps, that generosity is falling off a little bit. But the nonprofit sector is a big thing in our community, from the United Way, to the colleges and universities, to the hospitals, to the churches, to the private schools. Everybody is in fundraising. Everybody is in fundraising. I do some consulting now to stay out of Eleanor’s way, and I’ve got three or four clients I’m working with right now. And I’ve told all of them that 2010 is probably going to be the most competitive year we have ever seen in the philanthropy world, simply because of what happened in 2009 when the economy turned downward. And every non-profit that you know of, every non-profit, is getting ready to do a capital 22
campaign, everybody. And I don’t know what impact that is ultimately going to have on some. My guess is that we’re going to see some non-profits fall by the wayside. And they’re non-profits that do good things. And now we have the devastating hurricane in Haiti. And Haiti hits your heart. As it should be, gifts to Haiti relief will pour in, but that will impact other charitable needs.
KS: Right. You were saying you were doing some consulting work. Since you’ve been officially retired, you’re still involved in it in some capacity?
CP: I established my own consulting firm. I do some consulting on a per job type of basis.
KS: Philanthropy consulting?
CP: Yes. CP3 Philanthropy Consulting. Most of my clients have been in North Carolina, but also some that have been out of state. But I don’t do it big time. I just pick and choose what I want to do.
KS: That’s the best of both possible worlds where you can pick and choose.
CP: Oh, yes.
KS: Now, do you have any hobbies that keep you busy?
CP: Well, athletics and sports, and when I retired, I had full intention of playing with our seven grandchildren.
KS: Seven grandchildren, bless your heart.
CP: But I forgot that they have to go to school, and Eleanor and I can’t do things with them as much as we would like.
KS: Hate that.
CP: And it’s just kind of ruined things. But yeah, we’ve taken all of them to Disney. Last year we took them to Boston to see the Red Sox, and you can tell we’re big Red Sox fans. And we take them to ballgames and stuff, and go down and see their ballgames, and their cheerleading, and their whatevers. So, playing with grandkids is my primary mission, and my secondary one is trying to do some consulting to stay out of Eleanor’s way.
KS: Good for you! Well, is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?
CP: I don’t think I’ve done what you wanted me to do.
KS: No, it’s been wonderful. It’s been a wonderful interview. I can’t thank you enough for letting me come to your home.23
CP: I’m sorry that we didn’t get into Rotary as much.
KS: Well, is there anything else you’d like to talk about with the Rotary?
CP: No.
KS: We’ve covered everything?
CP: You know, Rotary and what it’s done in Greensboro is just phenomenal.
KS: It’s a very impressive –
CP: Triad leadership has been dominated through the years by Rotarians.
KS: Well, thank you so much for the interview. Thank you again.
[End of interview]