Oral history interview with Marjorie Burns, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Marjorie Burns
INTERVIEWER: Cheryl Junk
DATE: January 8, 1991
[Begin Side A]
CJ: Ms. Burns, let's start by your telling a little bit about your background and yourself, and then
move into when you went to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro],
Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina] at the time, and what your major
was.
MB: As I think I told you, I've lived in Greensboro basically all my life from age five and never
really wanted to do anything except go to WC [Woman’s College] and major in physical
education. And at an early age I became interested in golf from my father and won my first
tournament when I was fourteen. So I was kind of hooked on the game; and golf and
physical education became the two things that kind of made up my life. And this many years
later, why they're probably still there. I'm a member of the LPGA [Ladies Professional Golf
Association]. I played tournament golf as an amateur for about thirty years and taught for
over twenty as a professional and played as a professional. I taught physical education for a
number of years in both public schools, college level, and the YMCA [Young Men’s
Christian Association] level.
Been in business with my father. We were the first—one of the original distributors
of Tupperware when it was first invented. And we were in on the ground floor of that, so I
learned an awful lot about business working with him for some eighteen years. So I've had
really a diversified life, but I feel like that my education at WC—when Dean [of Women
Harriet] Elliott said, you know, "When you educate a woman, you educate a family." Well,
I'm not a family, but that type of education that came out of Woman's College in those years
certainly was an excellent background for many, many things. And I'm grateful for the
privilege, even though in the war years it was different.
CJ: Why don't you move into that subject a little bit, and tell me what it was like being in
college during the war years—some of the outstanding things that you remember.
MB: Oh, gee. First of all, no money, no cars, no gasoline. Cigarettes were rationed. We were
pretty much campus bound. ORD, the Overseas Replacement Depot, which I don't know
whether you've heard about or not—
CJ: Yes, I have.
MB: —was out off of Bessemer Avenue. And it was a big thing in Greensboro, and, of course,
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on weekends there were more soldiers and men on campus than there were students. I guess
there was what? Approximately three thousand students in those days, something like that.
CJ: That's right. About twenty-six hundred in 1941, as I remember.
MB: Well, it’s close because we graduated in '46. I think we graduated approximately three
hundred.
CJ: In your class?
MB: Uh, huh.
CJ: What was ORD? That was a ship-off place for the men?
MB: Right. That's where they brought the soldiers as a place to get them ready to go overseas—
kind of like they're taking the fellows to Fort Bragg and getting all their equipment and then
the final orders to ship out. And this was a huge area.
CJ: So while there were not men in general to date long term, there were a lot of men around the
campus then?
MB: Absolutely. On weekends. And Saturday night Rosenthal Gym was open for dates to go and
dance, and there happened to be at the time—and I don't know whether there still is or not—
there was a college band, a group of girls that played as a band.
CJ: Oh, I'm glad you mentioned that. I had not heard of that before.
MB: Well, one of the girls in my sister class, her name was Kitty Fritz [Walker, class of 1944],
played the trumpet in that thing, so I was sort of familiar with it. You talk about a lot of men.
It was, I think, pretty much of a standing joke that you'd date a fellow one weekend, and he'd
say, "Well, you know, we really got to get serious here because I'll be gone next weekend."
Well, he might still be there the next weekend, but he's strung you out for a long, long time.
And my college roommate and I dated two brothers for quite a lengthy period of time. So it
was really a joke. They told us that for something like eighteen weeks running. And they did
finally leave, and one of them was killed and the other one did come back, and neither one
of us married either one. But that's the way that game was played.
CJ: You say sister class. She was a sophomore, is that right? And you were a senior?
MB: Well, I was a sophomore and they were juniors. We had a thing where if you came in as a
freshman, the junior class was your sister class.
CJ: Did you attend the freshman-junior wedding your freshman year? There was a fiftieth
anniversary book called Educate a Woman that was printed in 1942, and it had a picture of
the junior-freshman wedding, where one of the women was dressed in a tux as the man, and
the other woman was dressed in a white wedding dress as the woman. And there were two
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sides—the bride's side, the groom's side. Her father gave her away. Did you know about
that?
MB: Oh, if I do, I don't remember it.
CJ: Okay. So it wasn't open to the—all the class members if there was one?
MB: Might have been.
CJ: Might have been. Okay.
MB: Physical education majors quickly got into doing their own thing. We were very strong as a
unit. We were very strong as just our class, and a lot of times we were so busy that we really
didn't have time for a lot of outside campus activities.
CJ: So what was your primary identification—the class or the major?
MB: I have to say the major with us. Although I think you have read we had mass meetings every
Tuesday where we all had to go to Aycock [Auditorium]. But along with that, for instance,
physical education majors, wherever we went, especially if wanted to go across campus, we
marched as a class. So if one of us was late, we were all late. It was very difficult for a
professor to get on twenty people.
CJ: Was that on purpose?
MB: Certainly. Absolutely. And with a stop off at the old post office, which was at the back
basement of the old Administration Building.
CJ: Right. We had one other physical education major whose interview I read. She mentioned
that the dress code prohibited wearing pants anywhere on campus, but sometimes she would
wear her gym garb. She had to wear her gym garb, and she had to wear her coat over it. Tell
me about the dress code.
MB: Well, if you look in the yearbooks, you're going to see what length the skirts were.
CJ: Right.
MB: I mean slacks were just something that at that time weren't there. And gym suits clean and
pressed were an absolute must. I mean, there was many a teacher who would have gotten on
you if that thing wasn't exactly right.
CJ: Did you do your own laundry?
MB: No. The college had a laundry with a beautiful, big old wooden laundry baskets with canvas
in them, which we also used to go sliding down the street when it snowed too.
CJ: You're the third person who's mentioned that. [they laugh] Yeah.
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MB: Well, I imagine there's a few laundry baskets that got busted up. But to talk about the
laundry service—it wasn't too stellar, but they did come back starched to where they'd
stand—the gym suits—where they would stand up by themselves. And they were clean. I
don't know how they managed to keep up with that much laundry and not lose it all. I really
don't.
CJ: The—back to the dress code. What was the dress code regarding pants, and did you ever
have to cover up your gym suit?
MB: Oh, yeah. You weren't supposed to go out of that gym to the rest of the campus in the gym
suit. And if you left your dorm—well, most of the majors would come to the gym to get
dressed. But if you left the dorm and headed for the gym, you had to have a coat on over it.
It just simply was not the attire that I've seen around campus lately. [they laugh]
CJ: No. I live in my blue jeans.
MB: Well, I'm thinking about a little bit more radical than that that I'm seeing over there right
now.
CJ: Uh, huh. Uh, huh.
MB: Which I think was nice. And you know, Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson [chancellor] would
come walking down the street dressed up absolutely resplendent in his suit and coat and tie
and his white hair and his walking cane. And he'd stop and speak to the girls and walk along
with them. He did that many days, which gave you a sense that here was a dignity that you
should have. And certainly Miss [Mary Channing] Coleman, who was head of the physical
education department and Ethel Martus [Lawther], who I think you know, passed away this
summer. She was our class advisor. So she had left, she left the gym to go to the
administration building. And those people on the faculty were pretty adamant about how
you should look and act, and nobody dared but believe what they say.
CJ: So they were role models, right there for you to see, and you respected them for more than
just their clothes. So you modeled their clothes.
MB: Mereb Mossman [dean of instruction, dean of the college, dean of faculty, vice chancellor
for academic affairs], Louise Alexander [class of 1914, history and political science
professor]—I can't think of the woman who taught me Spanish, and I was flunking the class.
But she had just come out of the WAVES [division of United States Navy-Women
Accepted for Volunteer Military Service] as a captain or something. And I tell you what, all
those people had to do was cut one eye at you, kind of like your parents, and you would
shape up. I think our era of growing up had a different philosophy or a different idea about
what we did and how we felt about other people and so on.
CJ: Tell me a little more about that. What was the philosophy? If you had to put it into words.
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MB: Oh, gee. If I had to put it into words. Yes ma'am, no ma'am. Yes sir, no sir. Thank you. A
good healthy respect for our superiors and what they were trying to teach us and what they
said [to] do. I'll give you a very good example: In our junior year, Miss Martus was
teaching us a softball methods course. And she had told us the week before to meet her on
the ball field the next time. We all came and we got dressed and went down on the ball field,
and no Miss Martus. And we waited and we waited and we waited, and we really couldn't
decide what to do. So we finally picked out one person and said, "You go look for her. The
rest of us are going to sit here." And she did, and finally Miss Martus came, and she says, "I
have come to you this time, but I will not do it again." Now in her mind, she had told us to
meet in the classroom. And she was furious that we didn't do what she thought should have
been done. And yet it was twenty against one, but we were all devastated that we had done
the wrong thing, even though we felt like we were correct. Miss [Mary Channing] Coleman
had a rule in her methods course, which met at eight o'clock on Monday morning.
CJ: Methods of?
MB: Physical education. She being the head of the department—she wore three-colored hats and
kind of looked down through the glasses and you didn't wait for her to tell you how high to
jump. You jumped, and then found out if that was high enough or if she wanted you to do
again. But when the bell rang at eight o'clock, you better be in that room seated. Not 8:10
[a.m.], as the second bell was. And she would close the door at eight o'clock, and you just
didn't go in after that. So yes, the role models were very strict, but they were fair.
And actually, in the physical education department faculty as I knew it, there is only
one still alive, and that's Marge Leonard [class of 1939]. Ethel Martus, Mary Coleman,
Dorothy Davis, Ellen Griffin [class of 1940]. You've probably, if you haven't heard about
Ellen on somebody's tape, why I can expound on that. I've known her since I was thirteen.
And those people were extremely fair, but they were—they had standards that they expected
us to live up to, and we jumped through hoops to do it. And I think it provided some
philosophy in our teaching and in our way of living that maybe we've carried to extremes,
but I was extremely grateful for that and have been many, many times in many, many
situations.
CJ: It carried over into the rest of your life and provided an underpinning and structure and a
sense of discipline that has lasted.
MB: Absolutely. Absolutely. A very strong philosophy, and I think this was true with Dr. [Walter
Clinton] Jackson [chancellor] and Harriet Elliott [dean of women] in the administration also.
It was extremely fair. There was a great deal of personal contact with everybody from the
very top right straight on down. And the class advisors in physical education—there was
never a time that if you wanted to talk to somebody that that door was not open to you, from
top to bottom.
CJ: So they were accessible.
MB: Absolutely.
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CJ: And it sounds like you're saying that instead of just issuing orders from the top, they were
involved with students too. When you saw their faces, you knew who they were.
MB: They knew who you were.
CJ: They knew who you were. They know where you live.
MB: Absolutely.
CJ: Okay.
MB: I don't think that exists today. I don't think that exists today, certainly not on that campus.
CJ: I don't see Dr. [William E.] Moran [chancellor] frequently. I've run into him twice on the
campus, and it's been nice. And he's been very friendly. And I have the feeling that if I
wanted to, I could go talk to him. But I don't see him as a presence on the campus.
MB: Well, he comes to the alumni physical education breakfast each year, and I've been to it
since I've been back in Greensboro and sometimes I've come back. And I sat at the table
with him last May, and his only conversation to me was, "Good morning."
CJ: I'd like to get back to a couple of the role models who've popped up in a lot of these tapes.
One of them is Miss Elliott. If I remember correctly, she had just been appointed in the
spring of 1940 to the President's [Franklin D. Roosevelt] National Advisory Commission [to
the Council of Defense], and she left the campus for a while. Was she physically there when
you were there?
MB: Yeah. She came back—I can't tell you exactly when she came back, but she came back. And
she was dean while I was in school, certainly at the end of the time. I don't really—I can
look at the books and tell you, but you know, she was there. She and another name I bet
pops up is Katherine Taylor [class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of
student services and director of Elliott Hall].
CJ: Yes. Tell me as much as you can about Katherine Taylor, Miss Elliott—Dr. Elliott—and
who was the person you just mentioned in the physical education department?
MB: Ethel Martus?
CJ: No.
MB: Mary Channing Coleman?
CJ: No. There was somebody—
MB: Ellen Griffin?
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CJ: Ellen Griffin was the one you said you've known. So if you could tell me about those three
women in your memory.
MB: Obviously, Miss Elliott I can't tell you a whole lot about because I didn't have that much—I
wasn't into the government of the campus. That wasn't my thing. You know, if you could
ever get hold of a girl in our class named Celeste Ulrich [class of 1946], who taught there
after she graduated and became quite well known in physical education throughout the
country and finally went to head up the physical education department at the University of
Oregon. And just retired. Celeste was our spokesperson, so to speak. Actually, if it hadn't
been for Celeste, I'd have never gotten out of school. [they laugh] Celeste was the smart one
in our class, and she kind of took the rest of us by the hand and pulled us along. And if we
got mired up, why she unmired us.
Katherine Taylor—when you said tell you about Katherine Taylor, I remember that
Celeste lived in Katherine Taylor's dorm because she was—it was either Weil or Winfield,
one or the other.
CJ: Weil or Winfield?
MB: She was the counselor during those war years. This woman, I think, probably had a
tremendous influence on the people that lived in the dorm and the students that she taught. I
didn't have that much communication with her because I didn't live in that dorm. I lived in
the one called Kirkland, which sat in front of the Dining Hall. Woman's and Kirkland were
torn down years ago.
CJ: Right.
MB: If I might deviate—we used to live to get from the basement to the top floor so that we
could sleep out on the porch, have our beds out on the porch all winter long. I don't know
how we ever stood it, but—
CJ: Were you one of those?
MB: Oh, I was one of those. Yeah. I lived out there on the porch. I woke up one morning and
found snow, you know, on my hair. I was white headed and everything like that. Yeah. I did.
I lived upstairs on the porch for two years.
CJ: Now, name your roommate, please, for me.
MB: My roommate my senior year was Amy Shaw McCall [class of 1946], who taught at Kiser
[Junior High School] for years. She and her husband have retired. She now still lives out in
Summerfield.
CJ: Okay. I was asking because someone interviewed an art major who did that very same
thing—slept on the porch and made a lithograph. She says it's probably the only extant
lithograph or picture of the beds out there on the porch.
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MB: I'll be darned. I don't recall we ever did any pictures.
CJ: Well, she did it herself with no—from her memory, but she was an art major, and that was
not her name. So—
MB: Then the girl I lived with my junior year, Pokey. What was Pokey's name? Pokey I think
she’s dead now. She had rheumatoid arthritis very badly. And in my sophomore year, I lived
with a girl named Dot Perry [class of 1946], who was a physical education major, and she's
dead now. So—but, our intent was to--you know, you had to start in the basement and work
your way up to be able to have the privilege of living on the porch. The privilege, I'm telling
you. [laughs] Made for an awfully big room inside, though, with no beds in it.
CJ: She said it left lots of room for desks and stuff.
MB: I'm sure. Let's see. I told you I couldn't tell you a whole lot about—I know that those two
women exerted a tremendous influence on sort of the way of life on campus, and they were
admired a great deal. But the same is true of Dr. Jackson. And, as I said, many, many faculty
members. Ellen Griffin—you haven't got enough tape.
CJ: Okay. Give me the—
MB: You really don't. This woman was so unique in her way of thinking. And it seemed to me
that as the years went on, she simply just kept increasing that—to that the people that she
influenced and even after she left the university after twenty six years and went and formed
the education division of the National Golf Foundation, which was something that had not
been done. And she did it singlehandedly, almost. And then when she finished that, she
came back and bought a piece of land out on [route] 62, between the two [routes] 220s
called "The Farm." And that The Farm had been owned by a college professor named Hall,
A.C. Hall. And Ellen took the old farmhouse—and there's distance about from here across
the street between the farmhouse and the barn—and that was her first teaching area of
teaching golf, complete with cows and ducks and guinea pigs and a peacock. And she
finally converted the farm into a private teaching facility, where she stayed until she died.
But, it's been about five years ago now.
Ellen Griffin became known as one of the finest teachers of golf in the entire
country. So she not only taught thousands of people, she influenced equally as many. As her
student at school—obviously she did not teach me golf because I was already a pretty fair
golfer. Now we didn't have golf scholarships; we didn't have golf teams; we didn't have—
CJ: There was no golf team?
MB: There was no golf team. There was no golf played during the war. I didn't play any golf
during the war for two reasons. One, I didn't have the money, and, two, there were no
tournaments.
CJ: Why were there no tournaments?
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MB: Because of the war. There were no golf tournaments anywhere.
CJ: What was the reason? Just no money to hold a tournament?
MB: Well, you couldn't get there, to begin with, with rationing of gasoline and that type thing.
And there just weren't—there was no amateur tournaments; there were no professional
tournaments. There just weren't any. So, as me wanting to be in golf—first of all, being in
physical education, you were expected to become a teacher. That was what you were there
for.
CJ: Did you know that ahead of time?
MB: Oh, yeah. Sure. In other words, you—I know there's many a father that thought his daughter
was going to major in physical education to play. Well, we played, but we played very hard.
CJ: With a purpose. With purpose.
MB: First you learned how to play the sport, then you learned how to teach the sport and that's
the way it went. Ellen, probably, was one of the fairest people, and yet, one of the folks that
I remember having a tremendous amount of knowledge, and knew a little bit about a lot of
things. And knew a great deal about how to get the best out of you without really telling you
what it was you should do.
CJ: That's a real art.
MB: Yes, it is. And it's not something that was taught, I'm sure. She was a graduate of WC.
CJ: Oh, she was?
MB: Yeah. She graduated with, in the same class as Marge Leonard, which was 1939. There is
another lady here in town. Her name is Dot Warren [class of 1939]. She graduated in that
same class. Her name was Tyson, Dot Tyson Warren. She lives on East Kemp Road. If you
want her telephone number before you leave, I've got it.
CJ: Okay. Fine. I'll get that from you after we—
MB: Doris Hutchinson is another physical education major that graduated about that same time,
'39. I don't whether Doris—at this point she's ill. I don't know if she's got enough memory
that she can tell you anything or not. She taught me physical education at Greensboro Senior
High School. That was her first teaching job. Doris Hutchinson, Marge Leonard, and Ellen
Griffin were very good friends. I got to know Ellen an awful lot better after I was out of
school for a number of years, and we both got into the golf. And especially when I got out of
playing and into teaching.
CJ: Were you both teaching in Greensboro?
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MB: No. Teaching golf? No. There was a reason for that. Let me say this about Ellen Griffin. I
was probably at least forty years old before I was able to quit calling her Miss Griffin and
started calling her Ellen. That's kind of the respect that we had for those people, even
though—well, I was getting ready to tell you a story which I can't tell. That's one of those
stories I cannot tell.
CJ: Okay. That's all right.
MB: Even in her grave—Ellen did something for us and our class after we had really gotten
ourselves in dutch, and she got us out.
CJ: Pulled your chestnuts out of the fire?
MB: Absolutely. And she didn't have to say to us, "I don't know anything about this." But she got
us out of that trouble, and it involved going over another faculty member's head and doing it
without them knowing who it was. And we were—all of us were forever grateful. But that
was the kind of person Ellen Griffin was.
CJ: Great integrity.
MB: Incidentally, I'll let you look at—she, some years later, took some of her sayings and
"Griffinisms," as you might say, and had them put into a book. And it's called—she called it
Truly Yours.
CJ: Oh, I would like to see that.
MB: And a friend of mine, who was in school for a short period of time, ran Fisher-Harrison
Printing Company here in town, and she did the paper for that thing. It's a beautiful book.
There's a limited number of editions. I think she only had about something like three
hundred of them printed.
CJ: Oh, I would like to see it.
MB: But this will give you some insight about Ellen Griffin.
CJ: Great.
MB: Dot Germain [1974 Master of Science in physical education], I imagine, who now lives at
The Farm, sort of inherited the farm, got quite ill with the fatigue syndrome thing and has
been for two years. But I imagine Dot Germain is the one person who would remember
more about Ellen Griffin than anybody. I can tell you a great deal about Ellen Griffin, but it's
more after the school years. But she was a great influence. Dorothy Davis—for instance,
Dorothy Davis was a faculty member, and she was the type person that—she kind of liked
to have a good time. And she taught us folkdance, tap dance, marching. Now has anybody
mentioned gym meets to you? Do you know anything about gym meets?
CJ: I have seen them referred to and I've seen them referred to in the school paper, but I don't
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know much about them.
MB: Well, gym meet was held once a year, and this was the big athletic event for us.
CJ: At the end of the year?
MB: No. It was sort of along in March—February or March—March, I think. Classes, individuals
competed, mostly on apparatus. Demonstrations of gymnastics, the type things that
cheerleaders do, you know—
CJ: Pyramids?
MB: Yeah. [they laugh] That doesn't come off too good on tape, does it?
CJ: Right. Now I have to say what your gesture was.
MB: And Miss Davis was the one that led us in marching. And it was almost a standing thing that
she'd get so involved in what she was doing, and she'd have us marching down the gym and
here we come right up against the wall, and she hadn't said, "To the rear, march." And we
were nose to nose with the wall, marching in place, waiting for Miss Davis to say, "To the
rear, march." And, of course, she would get in convulsions, and there we'd be. But you
didn't dare crack a smile. You stood right there marching in place until Miss Davis got on
the right foot, "To the rear, march."
CJ: That's a good story. [laughs]
MB: There are some people that can tell you about not passing the apparatus—practical part of
the course. And I remember very distinctly a girl that—the morning before graduation was
still trying to take herself down the flying rings. In other words, progress from one flying
ring to the next, of which there were six if I remember, and she was still trying to do that.
And she wasn't going to graduate until she did it, according to Miss Martus.
CJ: Did she make it?
MB: Yeah, she made it. [they laugh] I think what the point I'm trying to make is that the
standards were there, and there wasn't a whole lot of deviation from them, and they expected
it to be that way and we just simply did it. All of us worked in the dining room, just about,
because they didn't hire a whole lot of dining room help. So we would play field hockey
intramurals and dash to the dining room and wait on the tables and then wash the silverware.
Sometimes you dashed to the dining room in that gym suit with the overcoat on that you
were talking about too.
CJ: Right. That was volunteer. Were you paid for that?
MB: No. It was volunteer.
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CJ: About the war years—we've heard varying reports of what was rationed. Just for
information's sake, what was rationed on the campus during the war?
MB: I remember eating an awful lot of Welsh rarebit [dish made with a savory sauce of melted
cheese and various other ingredients and served hot over toast].
CJ: I heard that. I have heard that. [they laugh]
MB: A lot of lettuce with thousand island dressing on it.
CJ: Okay.
MB: A type of meat that strongly resembled horse meat. [laughs] Ground up—I don't know what
it was. We never did know what it was.
CJ: Mystery meat.
MB: Yeah.
CJ: Was sugar rationed? What was rationed on campus?
MB: I don't remember what was rationed.
CJ: Okay.
MB: I know that—It just won't come to me what was rationed. Sugar probably was.
CJ: I had heard that milk was also. That you got one carton of milk for the day, and you could
either drink it at breakfast or save it or whatever.
MB: I don't remember that being so either.
CJ: Okay.
MB: I do remember that—one thing that I remember was that, as I said, cigarettes were rationed.
You'd go down to The Corner [store on Tate Street] and get those, and they were rationed.
But people named Israel had a bakery down at the corner. It hasn't been gone too long that
the elder Israel died, but they made the best cream puff things that you ever saw, which cost
a quarter. Quarters were hard to come by. Incidentally, has anybody told you that Yum Yum
Ice Cream Shop, where it was during those days?
CJ: No.
MB: Okay. Directly across the street, the side street from the Chancellor's House or catty-cornered
across the street from Curry [Building]. [unclear] that curves and goes in behind
the student union building there and comes out at the stop light at Spring Garden [Street]. If
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there's that street and here's the Chancellor's House facing Spring Garden. Yum Yum Shop
sat over here on this corner, facing Spring Garden.
CJ: Where the gym, the—
MB: No. Where the current—what is the building that the Chancellor's office is in now?
CJ: Oh, Mossman?
MB: Yeah.
CJ: Mossman. The administration building. Oh, okay.
MB: The Yum Yum sat right directly on that corner close to the street, and it was owned by a
family named Aydelette. And there was [sic] three Aydelette boys, all of whom were fine
football players at Greensboro High School. I went to school with one of them. I think there
was three boys and two girls. I don't remember. But the mother and father were the ones that
originally started the Yum Yum Shop. And I remember that they didn't always have the
makings of everything that was needed, so maybe sugar and milk were rationed.
CJ: So you couldn't always—
MB: They owned—they made the ice cream. They made their homemade ice cream.
CJ: So you couldn't always get it?
MB: Couldn't always get it.
CJ: Okay. You were in school at the time that [President Franklin D.]Roosevelt died, and
another of the people that graduated in '46 recalls when the funeral train passed through
Greensboro. She didn't know that the students were allowed to go down and see it, and she
slept through it and was furious when she woke up the next morning. Do you have a
recollection of that and did you go?
MB: I remember that my mother and father were in New York for some reason on that time. And
I got a feeling that I was not on campus on that particular day. Because no, I did not. And I
don't think I was in Greensboro on that day. So I couldn't tell you.
CJ: The things you've said about role models strike me because that's the impression I got from
reading the newspapers and from reading the handbook. And it—is it true that the students
all held, or most of them held, the same general opinion? It was an unspoken general
opinion of Miss Elliott, Dr. Jackson, all these people. This was—all of you admired them
and you understood it, and you—it was just there. It was part of the atmosphere of the
place?
MB: I think so. I would like to think that the physical education majors—we always thought we
14
were different and above every other major, but—and may have been.
CJ: You might have been.
MB: We might have been. You know, I remember that we had to take classes in practically every
department. I had a history class. Old Dr. [Alexander] Arnett [history professor]. And
Louise Alexander—incidentally, that's another one that somebody should be talking about
to. She taught in history. She—Louise Alexander was one of the fine recognized teachers of
that era. Her classes, if you were able to get in her class—I bet she and Mereb Mossman
taught the largest classes in school.
CJ: And Mereb Mossman taught in sociology?
MB: Right. And when you walked into Louise Alexander's class, she said, "I don't want you to
interrupt. I'm going to lecture." And lecture she did. But her classes were fun. She was a
superb lecturer. You didn't go to sleep in her class, kind of like you did in [Dr. Franklin H.]
McNutt's [head of the School of Education and the dean of the Graduate School]
education classes.
CJ: Did she make history come alive?
MB: Oh, yeah, because she had been in it. I've forgotten now what part of the government she
had been into, but she had been into something. Anyway, what I was getting ready to say,
we were also required to take a—[feedback]
CJ: Excuse me, go ahead.
MB: —required to take a course in home economics. I mean—
CJ: Everyone was required to take [more feedback]—
MB: No, no, no. Physical education majors. We had—listen, when we got through we only
lacked one class in science in having a double major, and if you don't think we didn't have a
liberal arts education, you're mistaken. We went through the whole route—liberal arts the
first two years along with the physical education.
CJ: So you had a core of courses that you had to take?
MB: Oh, you better believe it.
CJ: Sounds very rigorous.
MB: It was. When I tell you I had a hard time getting out of college, I mean it. Anyway, we did
not like going to the home economics class. So there again, to get from the gym to the home
economics building, of which there was only one.
15
CJ: One gym?
MB: One home economics building.
CJ: Oh. Okay.
MB: And I can remember us marching down there. It was the first period after lunch, and our first
class—first two classes was learning how to wash clean dishes clean. We were taught how
to take those dishes off the shelf, wash them and put them back on the shelf. I'll never forget
that as long as I live. [laughs]
CJ: Are you aware of other majors that had to take home ec[onomics] courses, too?
MB: Oh, every major—class—took that home ec course.
CJ: Okay. That's what I was wondering. Everybody took it.
MB: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
CJ: Okay.
MB: It wasn't just, like, the class of '46. Every major class took that home ec class. We also were
required to take electives, and the majority of us took what we called a music appreciation
course.
CJ: What was that like?
MB: Well, it was pretty boring. [they laugh] And listening to music. I'm sure there were some
people that learned a good appreciation of music. I wasn't one of them, but—you also had to
learn to play a musical instrument.
And I'm the kid that—my mother tried desperately to make me take piano lessons
when I was little. And I did try. Once I got out of school, when I was teaching at Pfeiffer
College, I took piano for a little while from the head of the department. But when I put one
finger down, they all went down. Put one finger up, they all came up. That was enough of
that. Anyway, the only musical instrument I could decide to learn to play was the
harmonica. That was a bit of a disaster, too.
So, the point is that you were at least exposed to just about every department on
campus in the course of becoming a physical education major. We had a good, well-rounded
education. Yes, the role models were there. That was your question. Role models were there,
and you accepted them. And I'm not so sure that maybe a little bit of that might have been
due to the fact that we were campus bound, and we almost had to get to know each other
and get along and that was the way it was going in those days.
CJ: Tell me a little bit about that—about the rules for moving around on the campus and about
your dorm life. First, I guess, talk about the rules and people's attitudes toward them. Did
people accept them, did they break them, did they want to change them?
16
MB: Well, you know, everyone going to—rules are made to be broken, right?
CJ: Right.
MB: Yeah. You had a specific hour for coming in. You had to sign out and sign back in.
CJ: Wherever you went on campus?
MB: No. This was just going out at night. Freshman year you did. Yeah. You had to stay—
Freshman year you were expected to be in your room from seven to ten [p.m.], I think.
CJ: Right. That closed study business.
MB: Closed study, right. And there's only one telephone in the building. It was down in the
office. You said something about the honor board. What was the name of that board?
CJ: Honor code.
MB: Honor code. There was a board.
CJ: Judicial board.
MB: Judicial board, right. That was pretty much law.
CJ: Was that run by students?
MB: Yes, with a faculty advisor.
CJ: And people took it seriously?
MB: Absolutely.
CJ: Tell me what it was. What was the policy, if you remember?
MB: I don't know. I never went.
CJ: No. But, what was the honor code?
MB: Oh. Mainly cheating on exams or stealing. Being caught out, not coming back in. I don't
think they did anything with not signing out, signing back in. I think that was dealt with by
the house mother, counselor. They were pretty strict on the going home type thing—signing
out, coming back in—make sure you went where you said you were going.
CJ: How did they check?
17
MB: I don't know. [they laugh]
CJ: Did they check?
MB: Yeah, I believe they did. I believe they did. I remember one time when I lived in the
basement of Kirkland, there was—and the house president came and locked the doors at
10:30 [p.m.]—the bottom basement door. And then they locked the front door and the two
end doors. So if you were out and could not get back in, there was only one way—knock on
the door and have somebody find you there. And I remember there was a gal named
Woosley. Margaret Woosley [Sherrill, class of 1944] was house president. The reason I
know that is because her sister Becky [Rebecca Woosley, class of 1941] teaches—taught at
Mary Washington [College] in Fredericksburg, [Virginia],and I have some friends up there.
And one of my buddies was late coming in that bottom door.
Well, it so happened that Margaret was standing down at the base of the steps near
the door, and here this gal is outside the door and she's been throwing rocks at our window
to get us to come and let her in. And we know that that house president's out there. And my
roommate was a big old strong gal. And so she just went and started kidding around with
Margaret and finally literally picked her up and carried her up the steps making all this
racket while she went, and the other two of us went and unlocked the door and let that gal in
and shut the door and went on about our business. And nobody ever reported it because it
happened—you know, she locked the door, this one came to the door. It couldn't have been
one minute's difference. And we didn't see why she should be caught and punished for
hitting that door at that hour, and yet it was—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
CJ: This is a good story. So Margaret didn't know why you picked her up and carried her off?
MB: To my knowledge, I don't think we've ever told her. And she's since had a stroke. She's still
alive. She lives in Granite Falls [North Carolina]. I've often thought that I would love to tell
Becky, her sister, this story and tell her to go home and tell Margaret what we did to her.
CJ: So Margaret didn't know the girl was out there?
MB: No.
CJ: And she didn't know you had distracted her to get the girl in?
MB: That's right. And I don't think we ever told. You know, if you did something like that--we
were honor bound to each other. There was a definite camaraderie between us.
CJ: So it was a two-way thing. If you knew about the cheating—even if you didn't do it, you
were honor bound to tell?
MB: Supposed to be, yeah.
18
CJ: Do you know of people who did that?
MB: Yes. And it created some problems, but because the majority of people did—and an awful
lot of people turned themselves in.
CJ: I wondered about that.
MB: Yes, they did. They did. And you didn't have—of course, you didn't have the men on
campus to create some problems like I'm sure you have now. Being an all-women's
institution might have made a difference. And people didn't go as many places and do as
many things. We kind of had our own things to do on campus. That made a difference also.
So if you don't have those distractions and those things that tempt you to do, maybe you
don't tend to do as badly. I don't know.
CJ: You mentioned the Woman's College atmosphere and most of the role models you
mentioned, of course, were women. There were a lot of women on the faculty.
MB: I would really—you know, there were some men.
CJ: Right. But what I was wondering was—the women who we have interviewed so far and the
tone of the school newspaper and the tone of the student handbook all convey the idea that
the women at Woman's College, when they graduated they left there with the feeling that
they could do just about whatever they wanted. Now, did you experience a change in your
self confidence as a woman from when you were a freshman to when you were a senior?
And what about your classmates? Did they come feeling strong as women? And did they
come feeling low self-esteem and leave with high self-esteem? Or what was that like?
MB: I don't know that they came with low self-esteem. I think there were many—for instance,
my senior year college roommate was a—pardon the expression—a country girl. And she
left and went to Boston to teach in one of the big physical education schools. Now her skills
in many sports were certainly not as good as some of the rest of us, and she had to work
hard to learn—so confidence maybe as opposed to self-esteem. I think anybody that
graduated in physical education didn't have a low a self-esteem. You may have been poor in
some skills. I was extremely shy, extremely shy, but a very good athlete. And just having
athletic ability—
I had to have surgery on my knee at Christmas in my freshman year. Two of us fell
on it and tore up all the cartilage playing basketball. And I spent about two months of the
beginning of second semester climbing the third floor on crutches and going to class on
crutches and that type thing. I really got behind in my class work.
But I just think they just pure out and out expected you to grow and mature with the
rotation from sophomore to junior to senior. And you just did it. And the fact that we didn't
lose any people from freshman to senior year—
CJ: Your class?
19
MB: And we had one person to transfer out and one to transfer in from another school. Well,
that's got to prove something.
CJ: Was it fairly common to transfer out at the end of the sophomore year to, say, [University of
North] Carolina [at Chapel Hill] or someplace like that?
MB: No.
CJ: I mean the whole university, not just your major.
MB: No. You kind of—what kind of started, finished. And I think part of that was the fact that
you couldn't get there. You couldn't go over there for a weekend. Oh, they might have taken
a bus for a weekend or a party or a or something like that. But the kids didn't go back and
forth, kind of like going to the grocery store, like they do now.
CJ: What were the advantages, do you think, of an education at a Woman's College compared to
a coeducational place?
MB: Well, I'm not one to—that I particularly think one versus the other that strongly.
CJ: Okay.
MB: But I think—I definitely think there is a place for a women's college, just like I think there's
a place for a VMI [Virginia Military Institute], like they're talking about now—a male
school. And as long as you have the choice of which one you wanted to go to—well, well
and good.
CJ: What do you think the function is?
MB: That's a hard question. [they laugh] Maybe just what we're talking about—maybe the
discipline of the individual is a little bit more less distracting.
CJ: You mean your focus on your work. You concentrate on your—
MB: I mean, you're doing your thing. Yeah.
CJ: Were most of the people you knew serious students?
MB: Yeah. Well, as serious we could be. If we had —what do you call them? Quality points?
CJ: Oh, yeah.
MB: You had to make so many per year in order to get from freshman to sophomore to junior.
And by the time you got to be a junior, you had to have X number of quality points based on
grades, as well as X number semester hours.
20
CJ: How would that work out now, do you think? I know they call the grade point average
now—the quality point average. But you don't have to have certain number of quality points
to move up into classes. How would that translate out now into a grade point average? Do
you know?
MB: I don't know. I had—for instance, when I got to the end of my sophomore year, I had the
correct number of hours. I'd taken the right courses. But some of my grades were below C.
In other words, I had enough Ds, that I didn't have—A-B-C-D were X number of quality
points.
CJ: Oh, okay.
MB: Each one of them was X number of quality points.
CJ: Okay.
MB: And I didn't have the quality points to be a junior.
CJ: Okay.
MB: That meant that the first semester of my junior year, I was going to have to raise my grade
average enough to bring those quality points up.
CJ: That was a lot of pressure.
MB: Yes, it was. Or else—or else I wasn't going to be in school anymore.
CJ: Okay. If I'm not mistaken, now the only requirement is the number of hours. They
don't do that.
MB: Well, that was—I remember that was a real concern of mine at that point. And when I say
that Celeste Ulrich—if it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't have stayed in school because that
girl would take me in lunch lines, and we'd stand in the lunch line doing Spanish verb
conjugations, you know. And we were all having trouble—we took anatomy our junior year,
physiology our senior year, and we had a—we kind of had a kinesiology course—
CJ: Goodness.
MB: —our junior year that was—all of those were tough, along with some other things. And we
would stand—there'd be five, six, seven, eight of us in physical education standing in lunch
line just going over and over and over those things until Celeste pounded them into our
heads.
CJ: Kinesiology is the science of movement? The study of movement?
MB: Origin and exertion of muscles and movement.
21
CJ: Okay.
MB: Like the final exam was, "Do a muscle analysis of a man climbing a step ladder and painting
a ceiling."
CJ: Holy smokes.
MB: All in two hours.
CJ: Holy smokes.
MB: That's literally—that was the only question on our kinesiology exam. I'll never forget—
CJ: You remember that.
MB: Oh, yeah. How are you going to forget?
CJ: That's amazing.
MB: I think that woman's dead now too. [they laugh]
CJ: I wanted to be sure to ask about the smoking and drinking regulations. What were they?
MB: I don't think there were any restrictions on smoking in your room. Obviously, not anywhere
else on campus.
CJ: Still—when you were there, not anywhere else on campus?
MB: That's right.
CJ: Just the rooms?
MB: Just the rooms.
CJ: Okay.
MB: I know not in the parlors, and I know not out on campus.
CJ: Okay.
MB: Drinking—not on campus.
CJ: Did people break that rule?
MB: Probably. I don't know—I don't drink to this day. Didn't then and still don't. Doesn't mean I
22
don't approve of it. I just don't like it, so it was not something that I paid any attention to.
CJ: How did people get their cigarettes?
MB: You went down there and got them when the shipments came in down at The Corner.
CJ: They bought them?
MB: Yeah.
CJ: Uh, huh.
MB: And if I—for instance, my roommate didn't smoke.
CJ: Did not? I'm sorry.
MB: Did not. And I'd give her the money to go down there and buy cigarettes so I could have
double ration. Shame on me for smoking. I'm glad I finally quit, but—
CJ: Did a lot of people smoke?
MB: Yeah, I think they did.
CJ: Do you know of anybody—or whether there—among the non-smokers, do you know
whether there was pressure, you know, sort of a silent unspoken pressure to smoke on
campus?
MB: No. I don't think so. I don't think that was a—I remember working—I worked in camps in
the summertime starting in high school—girls' camps. And I remember that—our time off,
we'd run to the counselor's room and have a cigarette or a half of a cigarette or something
like that. And practically everybody smoked because nobody said anything about it was bad
for you at that point.
CJ: Sure. Yeah. There were a lot of references to it just in the language of the student newspaper
that I noticed. And it was pretty common.
MB: Well, my dad owned both juke boxes and cigarette machines after the Carolina Theatre and
before Tupperware, right in there. We were—he was in that business. And actually, I went
to school on juke box nickels. That's what put me through school. That's all it cost to run a
juke box in those days was a nickel. And he had cigarette machines here in Guilford County,
and, if you can believe it, he had enough cigarette machines that sold enough cigarettes that
made him more money than any job he'd ever had. And that was right before he went into
Tupperware.
CJ: I can believe that because of—even during the Depression—well, smoking increased during
the Depression because of the stress and during the war it increased too. So—
23
MB: Well, see, this was immediately after the war or during the war. Actually, at that time, when
he had cigarette machines, they were selling for sixteen cents a pack because we had this
little machine that had a blade that slid up the side of the paper and that the—it had a penny
coin slot. And you'd kick this little thing with your foot, and that thing would shoot those
two pennies on each side of the cigarette pack, so you had four pennies on each side of the
cigarette pack when you bought it out of the machine. And we had three girls that sat in
there. That's all they did all day long was put pennies in cigarette packs. And he sold enough
cigarettes that he was able to buy them direct from American Tobacco Company or R.J.
Reynolds [Tobacco Company] or that type thing. So I think smoking probably was more
done than— done more than drinking.
CJ: Yeah. Are you aware of any—were there any free cigarettes on campus given by the
tobacco companies?
MB: No.
CJ: No.
MB: No. They were rationed. They were going—all the free ones were going overseas.
CJ: Uh, huh. Well, that makes sense.
MB: Going to the [United States] Army.
CJ: That makes sense. This is a little different tack, but you get kids now at UNCG who come to
school kind of aimlessly because they really don't know what they want to do, and they go
to school because they know they can't get a decent job without a college degree. Back then,
which end of the spectrum did most of the people, you know, fit? Did most come with a
mission? Like you came with a mission to be a teacher to do physical education. Or did
most come kind of because they knew they needed the degree or where would they fit in to
that spectrum?
MB: Well, I think if you went to Woman's College, you expected to be a teacher, probably in any
major.
CJ: All right.
MB: I think that's the atmosphere that it perceived for you.
CJ: That was still true in your day?
MB: Yeah. Regardless of major. Teaching was an honorable profession.
CJ: It still is. [they laugh]
24
MB: I don't know about that. But I wouldn't want to be doing it. I teach, but I teach golf 101, and
they come to me because they're going to pay for it and they want it. I wouldn't teach in
public schools and colleges today.
CJ: Where did you teach?
MB: I taught at—first year out, I taught at George Washington High School in Danville, Virginia.
Part of the classrooms were Quonset huts. The gym was the dining room, and after—the
period after lunch was very dangerous.
CJ: Why was that?
MB: Well, there might be banana peels on the gym floor or egg salad sandwiches or anything.
[they laugh] That school has since been torn down. I left George Washington and went to
what was—it is now Pfeiffer College. It was Pfeiffer Junior College at that point.
Meisenheimer, down below Salisbury. First year I taught school, I made the sum total of
twelve hundred and fifty dollars.
CJ: That was at Pfeiffer?
MB: No. That was at Danville.
CJ: At Danville.
MB: I got a big raise to go to Pfeiffer. It went to seventeen hundred dollars first year. I came back
home—at that point, I'd saved enough money, and I went out and played amateur golf for a
year and a half, which is what I really wanted to do. And see, they didn't approve of that at
WC. They didn't want anybody to be a competitive athlete.
CJ: Oh, they did not?
MB: No. I was trained to be teacher, not an athlete.
CJ: So if the teachers wanted to compete, they frowned on it?
MB: That's right.
CJ: I see.
MB: So—in other words, Miss Coleman wanted you—she trained you to be a teacher.
Competitive athletics were not part of the college curriculum at all. So, you know, I kind of
broke from tradition when I started to become a competitive athlete.
CJ: When you came back here, where did you teach?
MB: Well, I went and played golf for two years and ran out of money, and then I went to work
25
for the YMCAs at Cone Mills.
CJ: Cone Mills.
MB: This is when Cone still had two YMCAs which they ran for the people who worked in Cone
Mills. They ran a complete athletic program for their employees. But those Ys have since
[been] torn down and Cone Mills doesn't operate them anymore, but I did that for about two
and a half years. That's when I went back and started on my master's just for the heck of it.
And then I went to work for my dad in Tupperware, and then the rest of the time that I was
playing competitive golf, I worked for him. When he retired, I turned pro and started
teaching. So—
CJ: One on one?
MB: Well, one on one, groups, running golf tournaments, doing clinics, working for the National
Golf Foundation, tournament director. I ran a driving range and [unclear] down at the beach.
Became a professional at a lot of the clubs at the beach like Pine Meadows, Roaring Gap.
Now I just teach part time when I want to. What was the original question?
CJ: Oh, it was asking about you. That's all right—that's what I wanted to know. I asked about
your career, and you told me. You've answered it.
MB: What people—your original question was what did they go to college for, with a purpose in
mind. Wasn't that the original question?
CJ: That's the original question stated better than I did. [unclear] You said it better than I did.
MB: I think more people didn't go to college than did. Maybe with the fellows because they knew
they were going to be drafted, or they all went direct from high school into the Army or they
sort of hung around—or maybe they went to college and knew they'd be going out of school
into the Army. But I think that an awful lot of girls just went on into college and—because
it was sort of the thing to do if you didn't get married. And not so many of them got married
straight out of high school.
CJ: That was going to be my next question. I know between say the 1880's and the 1930's there
was a big change, where if you went to college to be a teacher, it almost precluded family
life. It almost meant that you did not get married and have children. And that began to
change in the '30s. What was that like in the '40s? Did many of your classmates marry and
have families?
MB: I was just sitting there thinking about my class. I would say that there were none in the
physical education majors who got married while they were still in school. But—[unclear]
Judy’s dead, so take the first four off of there. Two of them got married, one got married and
has died, and another one got married and divorced. [unclear]
CJ: So you're mentioning the names of your classmates?
26
MB: I'll just go on down the names of my class. The next four got married, are all still married
and have families. I would say probably more than half—three quarters of my own class—
CJ: Your major?
MB: My major class got married after they taught for a short period of time. And some of them
taught, got married and continued teaching.
CJ: Okay. That was going to be my next question. Was the trend for most of them to stop
teaching after they had children? Or what was the trend for your classmates?
MB: The only thing I can do is think about the—. The majority of them, I think, once they got
married and had children stopped teaching.
CJ: Okay. So that was still—the woman was still in the home?
MB: In the home. In the home. Let me inject this as far as Tupperware is concerned. Tupperware
was invented right after the war from some polyethylene that [E.I.] DuPont [de Nemours
and Company] had. A guy named [Earl Silas] Tupper picked it up, and he made these
pieces. I can tell you that we became one of the top five distributors in the entire country
over a period of time, so I know a good deal about Tupperware. But the women who went
into the work force as Tupperware dealers, starting in 1950 and on up to approximately
1973, 4, or 5, went in there as part-time ways for the woman to make some extra money.
She put on parties in the evening or while maybe the husband kept the kids. It was a part-time
way for her to make money. And that was the majority. There were a few of those
women who did it full time. They're the ones that became the managers. They're the ones
that went on to become the distributors. As time progressed in Tupperware, the home party
plan—all of a sudden, Tupperware hit a brick wall, and their sales and their workforce
decreased because women quit doing part-time work and went into the full-time work.
CJ: Do you know when that was about? Approximately.
MB: It was after we got out of it, and we got out of it in 1970.
CJ: Okay. It was that late?
MB: Yes. Oh, yeah. We kept—we kept four, six hundred women in our territory all the time.
Never had any trouble keeping that many.
CJ: Mostly part time?
MB: Yeah. Practically all part time. They still were in the home taking care of their kids and their
families. They were not in the work force that forty-hour week.
CJ: That's a very valuable picture. I appreciate you telling me that. That's great.
27
MB: Well, there I can speak from more, you know, better experience because I was right in the
middle of it. But once we got out—and we sold our territory, and it got divided and
Tupperware has gone downhill greatly for that reason. And Tupperware in Europe and
Japan and Australia and Canada and all the other countries has now surpassed Tupperware
in the United States for that simple reason.
CJ: Well, thank you. I appreciate that perspective.
MB: I know that to be a fact.
CJ: Yeah. I appreciate that. I want to talk a little bit about another unspoken aspect of campus
life, which would have been the motto, "Service." How important was that motto in the
consciousness of the women, and how much was it preached by the administration, if at all?
MB: I don't think too much. They sang about it in the alma mater. [they laugh]
CJ: With your hand over your heart, right?
MB: Matter of fact, you'd be surprised at how many at class reunions they say, "Well, I can't
remember the words."
CJ: To the class song—to the alma mater?
MB: Yeah.
CJ: Right. Of your class?
MB: Well, the alma mater—I just—I haven't been to that many reunions over a period of time,
but it seems to me that, you know, the classes say, "Hey, we better bone up on the words."
CJ: So it wasn't like in the '20s, where you were tested on the handbook when you went to
school?
MB: And yet, if you—I'm just betting. I'm just betting. I'll bet if you took two, five thousand, ten
thousand people that graduated from WC and looked at their civic—what's the word I'm
trying to use? The things that they did in the community after they got out of WC. I bet you
would find a tremendous amount of people that are involved in the community.
CJ: I wouldn't be surprised.
MB: That's just my bet. Because they—if you read the—from year to year, the people that are
running for office, say, in the Alumni Association, or for honors to be given at school, just
sort of randomly, and you picked out—if you pick out the people that fall in that era, you're
almost astounded at the amount of civic work and things that they have done outside of their
original purpose in going to school.
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CJ: So you're saying that even though service was not preached a lot, people do serve and it was
part of their educational—
MB: Well, I think it just became part of the—sort of the philosophy. I think what you're trying to
get out of me, [they laugh] and I believe you're right. I think what you're trying to get at, and
what maybe I may be trying to say without saying it, is that that era that I grew up in—and I
know this to be a fact too. And I've got one living right over there that's twenty years
younger than I am that's in the education department—teaches in education department—
got one living right here that's ten years younger than I am that teaches—having taught
twenty years in the physical education, has just moved over to the education department. So
you've got one, two, three, ten-year eras apart sitting right here. And my philosophy and that
one's philosophy—
CJ: The twenty year—
MB: —are like night and day.
CJ: Diametrically opposed.
MB: Not opposed, but different.
CJ: Different. Okay.
MB: In other words, some of the things that are priorities for me and values for me are no more
there, and that's a nice person over there, you know.
CJ: It might be hard to do this, but would you say what your priorities are in words. I know
that's often hard, but it would be helpful if you could do that. [they laugh]
MB: Geez. Oh, man. Maybe you better turn off the machine just a minute, and let me think about
that one.
CJ: Well, we'll put her on pause here. How about that. Okay.
MB: When you said priorities in life in the era that I grew up in, having been born in the
Depression time—first of all, I remember that the first year I got out of school, I bought my
mother a dishwasher. She never had one. And that was nothing down, and the rest of your
life to pay. And I paid and paid and paid and paid and paid. And I made up my mind right
then and there, that if I couldn't pay for it, I wasn't going to have it.
CJ: From then on?
MB: That's right. And, of course, later on down the road comes credit cards, and I think this has
become a bad, bad thing. And maybe there is a product of the credit card. So I would say
that one priority has to do with finances. In other words, we grew up—I never knew I was
poor because my dad always had a job. Whereas a lot of people that I went to school with,
29
their dads didn't have a job. But I can also remember my mother gave me a dime, and I
could go out here to Starmount, which is where we'd play golf, and I could stay out there all
day long on that dime because it got a coke and a pack of crackers. And I remember one
day, she didn't have a dime. Well, that seemed—that was hard to take. Somebody didn't
have a dime, but she didn't [sic]. So, a priority with me has always been—and certainly as
I've gotten to the point now, where I have no family at all. Just me. And I'm going to have
enough to take care of me.
CJ: Security?
MB: Right. If I possibly can. So, yes. Not overusing credit is a priority. Understanding of—
having understood the value of money. That's a big priority. Being a competitive athlete, and
probably growing up in the time that I grew up—I'm going to make this statement. I was
well over forty years old before I knew there was anything beside black and white. I didn't
know about those gray areas. All right? And I find it many times very difficult to
understand that people get off in these gray areas where they don't quite know where they're
going or who they are, or what it is they're going to do or change my mind in the middle of a
direction. Not be where they're supposed to be at a given time. All those things to me fit in
that black and white area.
CJ: Very clear cut.
MB: Right. Those are—that's a priority with me. In other words, if you said to me you were
going to be here at ten o'clock, John Brown, I expected you to be here at ten o'clock. Now I
don't care if you're five minutes early.
CJ: Which I was.
MB: Well, that's all right. I've been many places ten minutes early, so I won't be ten minutes late.
Now if your car breaks down and you've got a reason, you're going to call and say so.
CJ: Sure.
MB: Don't show up two hours later and say, "I got distracted." Or two hours later and say—I've
had that happen. Telling it like it is to me is kind of a priority.
CJ: Honesty.
MB: Yeah.
CJ: No fooling around. No beating around the bush. No “BS” ing, so to speak.
MB: Well, I think there are many times—I'm not saying that you shouldn't tell a white lie if it's
going to keep from hurting somebody. I don't mean that. But, yeah, you'll find me telling it
exactly like it is. And you may notice that right off of [sic] the bat. Now I wouldn't
deliberately hurt you for anything. I'm an extremely honest person, and I was brought up
30
that way. And I've gotten whopped up the side of the head more than once for not doing it as
a child.
CJ: Not being honest and straight?
MB: Yeah. So that's kind of the way I was raised, and that's carried over. I think the era that we
grew up in of doing without, both in the Depression years and the war years, are very, very
different than the people that came along in the fifties and the sixties, if you will. And yet, I
find that ten years difference over here on the other side of me is more my era than it is the
next ten years over there.
CJ: A little closer.
MB: Yes. Very much so.
CJ: So you really do notice the changes and the values and the—
MB: Absolutely.
CJ: Okay. Well, I appreciate you putting that into words.
MB: I had a ninety-six-year old aunt that just died last year that I took care of for seven years
after my mother died. And she lived in Florida, so I made an awful lot of trips to Florida in
that seven years, back and forth looking after her. And until her memory kind of got bad, she
could tell things that happened fifty, seventy-five years ago, you know. And that was one of
the things that just kept coming across to me. And their values were so closely tuned to the
Depression years.
CJ: Yeah. Yeah.
MB: Very close. So, yes, I think things made an awful big change, probably starting in the fifties.
CJ: What would you say the major effects of the war were on the campus, whether they be
physical effects or effects in attitude or tone of the campus? How did the war affect the
campus?
MB: Well, if you had somebody in it, it would have made a difference. If you didn't have
somebody in it—
CJ: You mean a relative or a boyfriend or something?
MB: Right. Right. Because the war went on the whole time I was on campus. It just kind of
became a way of life. You accepted it and did the best you could.
CJ: Did you follow the events of the war closely?
31
MB: Oh, I imagine some people did.
CJ: I mean, did the campus as a whole follow—?
MB: Well, yeah, I guess so. It's kind of a little bit like the—did anybody ever tell you about the
newsreels that came on prior to every movie?
CJ: I've seen some of them myself. Yeah. Yeah.
MB: I think we were very aware of having the ORD out there—that you were very aware of the
newsreels. I don't know that this was a newspaper reading campus, that type thing. [phone
rings] And there certainly wasn't any television. So you were—not too many people had
radios then.
CJ: Let me just stop this while the phone rings.
MB: Obviously, you had to be very aware that there was a war on.
CJ: Was there a change in the tone? Excuse me.
MB: Go ahead.
CJ: Okay. Was the language of the student paper or the talk on the campus more about the war?
Was there—I noticed—I guess what I'm getting at is that in 1941, I noticed the theme of
democracy in the paper. Of course, that was the year of Pearl Harbor. [The attack on Pearl
Harbor by the Japanese and the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike
conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941.] Especially the issue right after
Pearl Harbor. The theme of women preparing themselves to be of use to the country. Did
that theme carry over when you were there?
MB: No. I don't think so.
CJ: Pardon?
MB: I don't think so. I think we—no—I just—you were contained or rationed or couldn't go
anywhere or had relatives or boyfriends or what have you. And I don't believe that many
people—that many girls had any dealings with it other than we did without—what you had
to do without.
CJ: So it wasn't a sense of the whole campus mobilized for the war effort?
MB: I don't think so. I don't remember it that way.
CJ: Like it was in World War I. In 1919, the first edition of The Carolinian is real interesting
because they had—it was almost as if the whole campus was mobilized. They had the
32
Farmerettes and the Carpenterettes, who pitched in and did the work on the campus. And
they went and worked in the summers as counselors at camps and things, and it was
expected that you would do that. But it was all under the umbrella of, "For the country, for
the war effort." And I didn't know if that carried over into World War II again. You know,
if it came up again in World War II.
MB: You may be asking the wrong person because I just don't remember it being a—
CJ: Well I'm sure you'd remember it if it was. But—because it was very strong back in 1919.
MB: I don't think so. I might be wrong, but I don't think so.
CJ: Okay. No sense of mission. Are there any incidents and special memories that stand out in
your mind that you want to be sure and get on the tape? [they laugh]
MB: I think I've done very well not to tell any secrets or tall tales or anything like that.
CJ: Is there anything you're going to kick yourself if you don't say or wish you'd said?
MB: No. I'm glad I went there when I did. I think I got a lot of things from being in that
institution and in that department at the time I was there. I keep relating right now to—for
instance, the fact that so many of these girls are going to school on golf scholarships and
being able to go out in the professional ranks already prepared to play tournament golf,
and—
CJ: Do they do that at UNCG?
MB: Well, they've got a golf team over there this year for the first time, and it's not any good at
all. And it will be a long time before they have a—considering what they've done in the
physical education department. Of course, I don't if you're aware of it, the physical
education major, as I knew it, no longer exists at UNCG.
CJ: I did not know that.
MB: It no longer exists. I mean, you're talking about sports medicine and recreation and dance
and research and, you know, all these other fields. There is not a physical education major as
I knew it at all.
CJ: So it's all specialized now?
MB: It's all specialized, and, of course, Moran's trying to push the intercollegiate athletics, and, if
I was going to college now I wouldn't go to UNCG.
CJ: Okay. I got you off track a little bit. You were saying it is now possible to get a scholarship
and go play professional golf.
33
MB: Well, it's possible to get a golf—a scholarship and play golf intercollegiately and get an
awful lot of competition under your belt so that you're prepared to go to a qualified school to
be a professional. And I would have loved to have been able to go to a school on a golf
scholarship. I think I'd of made a—I think—I was ranked twice in the top ten in the country
as an amateur in the late '50s, early '60s. So I'm a pretty darn good player. I am a member of
the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. I've been inducted in the Carolinas Golf Hall of
Fame. I've been National Teacher of the Year. I've had my share of honors. That whole case
that you see back there—from one end to the other is full of silver that's won over a thirty-year
period. I was a prime player.
CJ: Wow. Yeah.
MB: I think I've been a fine teacher. But I'm saying to you that because of the era that I grew up
in, I obtained some things in physical education, through physical education, and through
the people I associated with, that made me a better teacher of golf when I finally got to it—
that made me able to cope with the times as they were. I’m not so sure that these kids that
have had all of this given to them at the college level are any—are that great of a person.
CJ: Not only at the college level, but in the home, too, there's a lot of privilege that wasn't there
when you were growing up or when I was growing up.
MB: Right. So I'm saying to you that—gee whiz, I'm pretty proud that I came along at the time I
did, and I think I've done, pardon the expression, one hell of a lot in my lifetime.
CJ: I agree with that. That was wonderful. [they laugh] Well, let me just get a little—a couple of
little housekeeping details out of the way. I like to save these for the end, so that—these are
for the transcriptionist. Would you spell Ethel Martus' name—last name for me please.
MB: Okay. Ethel Martus Lawther. L-A-W-T-H-E-R.
CJ: And the Martus part?
MB: Martus was her maiden name.
CJ: She's been referred to on other tapes, and it sounds like Morris. It's not Morris.
MB: M-A-R-T-U-S. Martus.
CJ: M-A-R-T-U-S.
MB: No. That isn't right. M-A-U-R-CJ:
We'll stop it a second. Okay, it's M-A-R-T-U-S.
MB: And she married John Lawther after—some years after she'd been dean. He came in as part
of the faculty.
34
CJ: Okay. The other word I wanted to clarify was the name of that dorm we—I can look this up,
too, but if you know—is it Will and Winfield?
MB: Weil. Weil.
CJ: W-H-E-E-L?
MB: W-E-I-L.
CJ: W-E-I-L.
MB: Uh, huh.
CJ: Okay, thanks.
MB: There's a woman—she's living over at Abbotswood right now, and she was kin to [Jonathan
“Joe”] Rosenthal.
CJ: Oh, the gym. Uh, huh. The name of the gym.
MB: Do you know Betsy Umstead [class of 1949, physical education professor]?
CJ: I just read her interview. I don't know her, but I did just read her interview.
MB: Okay. Betsy's two years later than I am, and she's doing teaching over there. If somebody
had asked Betsy what that woman's name is, she was kin to a Weil. She married one or
something.
CJ: Oh, to the man the dorm was named after.
MB: Yeah.
CJ: Oh, I see. Okay. Well, maybe we could follow up on that.
MB: Weil and Winfield were built just prior to the war, I guess.
CJ: Right before the war.
MB: Right. So they were the two newest ones when we went over there.
CJ: Did everybody want to live there?
MB: Absolutely. There was all the—you know, apples and oranges, [unclear] all the difference in
the world.
35
CJ: Well, is there anything else? We have a little bit of tape left. Anything else you want to be
sure to say?
MB: I don't know. You've pulled things out of me that I haven't remembered in forty-five years.
[they laugh]
CJ: Well, this has been a real pleasure for me, and I appreciate it very much.
MB: Well, you're certainly welcome. I feel like we've kind of rambled around and about, and I
don't know whether you've got too many pertinent points or not.
CJ: Well, we've gotten a—it's been great. It's been just what we wanted, so thank you very
much.
[End of Interview]