Oral history interview with Joanne Brantley Craft, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Joanne Brantley Craft
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: September 5, 1990
[Begin Side A]
MF: And if you could start by giving a little bit of general information, like when you were at
Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina], and just some general information
like that.
JC: I was there—I graduated from Curry [elementary/secondary laboratory school on campus] in
'46, and went on that fall to Woman's College and finished in '50 and majored in business.
The degree was called Bachelor of Science in Secretarial Administration. And, of course, all
of these machines are now are obsolete and nothing left that I learned, probably including
shorthand that would apply to anyone's office skills today. And the first two years I was a
town student and lived at home and really didn't enjoy that too much. I mean there was a
fairly large number from Greensboro, but at that time even the school was very big for a day
student, and you didn't really have much of a base of operations. And then I moved to South
Spencer my junior year, and at that time they were building what we call the New Library,
and every morning at seven we were awakened by all the machines because I lived on the
front of the building. Before that time the library was then—I don't know what that building
is now. Is that a business building across the street?
MF: Across the street on which side?
JC: Well, in front of the Soda Shop when I was there, but now it’s the faculty lounge [Faculty
Center], behind the old Administration Building facing College Avenue.
MF: Foust? No.
JC: No. It's up there right now—the old—I don’t know its name, but now it's a library [Forney
Building].
MF: Right. I know which one you’re talking about.
JC: For the first two years, and they built the library in ’48. And the Soda Shop was built at that
time, which is now the faculty lounge. We didn't have Elliott [University] Center. We had—
we didn't have anything like that then—open field. And a lot of my business classes at that
time were in, what is now Curry [Building]. We had a lot of the business classes were over
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there—most of them.
And we had chapel every Tuesday, I don't know if they still have chapel or not, but
every Tuesday it rained, and we went to chapel and everyone always had to carry an
umbrella. And at that time everyone could be seated alphabetically in Aycock Auditorium,
there were that few students then. And, of course, we had the old dining halls. And the last
year I lived in North Spencer [Residence Hall]. My roommate was a music major, and I was
surrounded by music majors because that's the closest dorm to the music building. So I had a
lot of input about music majors because I heard a lot of their conversations about teachers
they liked and didn't like and voice teachers and piano teachers and one thing and another.
And The Corner [variety store at the corner of Walker Avenue and Tate Street], of course,
was very small, what we called the The Corner. And the Victory Theater was there, and I
think now it’s a bookstore or something.
MF: Addam's. They've gone through several.
JC: Well, it was a very nice movie then and very utilized by the students because we had
curfews, of course, and nobody had cars, and so that's the only place you could go to and
walk at night would be down to The Corner. The post office was built about the same time
down there, and we didn't—that was fairly small, just a grocery store, Franklin's Drug Store,
the movie, a little bakery my husband reminded me called Tex's Bakery—was there, just a
little hole in the wall—And the owner's daughter actually was in my husband's class at
Greensboro Senior High School. He reminded he’d been at high school with the owner's
daughter. Just up there in the building next to the Victory. And there was another drug store
and another grocery store up at the corner of Aycock [Street], on Spring Garden and Tate
[Streets]. And my roommate was a Methodist, and a lot of times she'd go to college night at
the Methodist Church. The College Place Methodist Church had dinner one night a week for
the college students, and I'd go over there with her sometimes.
MF: Is that the big church that rings the bells?
JC: I don't know if they do or not. It's the one on the corner of Tate and Spring Garden [Streets].
MF: Yeah, they're ringing bells at noon every day.
JC: And, of course, the trolley was our only means of transportation. We had what we called the
campus trolley. The electric trolley cars were the way you got downtown and back. You
caught them down at The Corner, and they looked like a bus. They had rubber tires, but they
were connected to overhead wires. And they could only go where the wires took them. And
you had tokens, three for a quarter, and you get your tokens and ride downtown from The
Corner down to the square. And that was how we got to town.
MF: Oh, I hadn't heard about these trolley cars.
JC: Yeah, really I think it was in the early or middle '50s when they ceased to be used. Of course,
the only way they could go was where they had trolley wire. You know you couldn't just
reroute a trolley if you had a road there.
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MF: They set up trolleys in Seattle, Washington—the electric ones—like that.
JC: Yeah. We had those, and that's how we got to town and back. You know, we'd take the
trolley downtown and take the trolley back, and, of course, that was the only shopping.
There was nothing else. Friendly Shopping Center was vast wasteland. I mean—it was built
probably the beginning of '55. And we always laughed because Thursday night in the dining
hall we always went to The Corner, Franklin's Drug Store, which was really the corner of
where everybody met and ate. That was a really big gathering place. Thursday night we'd
call the formal night in the dining hall because everything was black and white, and you'd
have liver and mashed potatoes and cauliflower. And so, no one ever ate there on Thursday
night. We always went down to The Corner to eat—to have a hot dog.
MF: Yeah, something a little more palatable than liver.
JC: Right. And I don't know if it's required now, but as freshmen we all had to take what they
called body mechanics, and they had some sort of machine that they put you in that
reminded me of the things that you used to put your feet in when you were buying new shoes
to see if your bones were straight. Well, they'd put you into a machine that took a picture of
your spine. And, depending on whether you were square backed or your spine was curved to
one side or whatnot, they'd give you exercises, and you'd have to take a whole semester of
these floor exercises and bends and reaches and one thing and another. And then at the end
of the semester, they'd take your picture to see if your posture or your spine was more in
alignment. And I think I was one of the few that had worst posture after than I did before.
But that was a freshman required course, that they called body mechanics.
MF: No, I hadn’t heard about that either.
JC: Really?
MF: Yeah, I heard somebody tell me one time that there was some reason that they were not
allowed to take physical education.
JC: Doctors?
MF: Yes, so they had to go each week, instead of going to physical education like everybody else,
they had to go and just relax in this classroom, with everybody else who couldn't take it. And
I thought that was kind of funny.
JC: Well, they had another course now—I think my favorite course in college—I probably
would have majored in home ec[onomics], but I didn't think I could pass chemistry. And I
never did like business all that much, but I knew that you could get a job when you got out.
And my favorite course, actually, was what they called the brides’ cooking course. And I
gave my daughter the textbook, and it was a plenty old textbook then ’cause the pictures
looked like they were from the '30s. And all we learned to make were very exotic things that
no one would ever cook in their normal day-to-day routine. We learned to make meringue
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shells. We learned to do roast duck and all of these exotic things that no one has ever cooked
since, probably. But that was really fun. We had a laugh one afternoon a week. And in the
lab we cooked a whole meal or something like duck or turkey or made elaborate desserts.
And that was really fun. It was an elective course, but a lot of people liked it and took it.
There was a lot of things, you know, about cooking. And it was fun if you were interested in
cooking at all. That was fun. And then, of course, they had the cafeteria. This was the old
home ec building, the one on the corner of McIver and Walker [Streets]. It would be right up
behind The Corner going toward the back of the science building.
MF: Isn’t that still there?
JC: I think it is. It was a square brown building on the [unclear].
MF: Yeah, it’s still the home ec building, except now it’s called the something science [Human
Environmental Sciences], but it’s still the home ec.
JC: We had a—there was a cafeteria of the department in the basement. Of course, we didn't
have the Elliott Center, and a lot of the faculty ate there. You could go over there and eat
meals, and the home economics majors were the cooks. They did a lot of the cooking, and it
was open for lunch and dinner. I don't think it was open on the weekends, but it was open
five days a week for lunch and dinner. And they had a regular cafeteria line in the basement;
all of the home ec major's did the cooking. And that was how they learned to be food majors
and do preparation for institutional-type meals and that sort of thing. They always served
good food. And [pause] we had curfews then, and we had hostesses in the dorm. I'm sure
you've heard about that. You had to have somebody on duty 7:00 [pm] to 11:00 [pm]. Of
course, we never had phones, except the phone in the corridor downstairs. And that was it.
MF: So, you didn't have the phones at the end of the halls at that time?
JC: No. And they had loudspeakers at the end of the hall, and they’d call you to the phone.
They'd say, "Third floor attention,” and give the name and say, “You have a long distance
call.”
MF: And you’d have to go all the way down?
JC: Oh, yeah.
MF: Okay, because before they put the phones in the rooms in the dorms, they had phones at the
end of the hall, and they would just page you and tell you you had a phone call on line three
or something.
JC: We had one line for the area. One phone, one line.
MF: I think some dorms had three lines.
JC: Or if not, you know, we'd have one phone, one line. And so, for a dorm as large as North
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Spencer, you know, it’s pretty hard to get—and we laughed because I lived—I don’t know if
there are two floors or three on that dorm—and I was on the top floor.
MF: Two at North Spencer.
JC: And oh, you know, if you got a call late at night and made a lot of noise going down the
hall— well see, we couldn't—we weren't out late. You couldn't go off campus, and nobody
had cars. And the only time that you had anyone come see you was on the weekend, really.
And there just wasn't anybody much coming on campus at night. Because, if they were in
school in another town, they'd generally, you know, they'd come up occasionally. But these
students take their schooling more seriously than they do now, and they figured they’d better
stay around and study and then raise Cain [cause trouble] on the weekends.
MF: What about the weekends? Some people have told me about class trips—going to [the
University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill and—especially during the football season.
JC: Yeah. Even if you didn't have a date or anything, you know, everybody would just pile on
the bus and go. Just mostly—dates seemed to have better ways to get down there than on the
bus with all of the girls. But usually the people going on the bus just went as a group and
came back on the bus. And actually then—I was reminded by my husband—the university
had a small bus—well, actually it was like a bus; it was a short bus, and the girls that did
student teaching got taken to the schools they did their teaching in by this little university
bus. It was a little—just a bus that did nothing but drive the kids, the girls, around who were
practice teaching to the schools they had to go to because, as I said, none of them had cars.
And they had to go to the Greensboro Senior High or what is now Grimsley or to Lindley
or—I don't remember what schools would be—it was Central, I suppose, Lindley, Aycock,
and there was no way to get there because the trolleys only went on main thoroughfares.
They didn't go off in any side streets ‘cause they weren't wired for them. So we really had,
you know, very—our social lives were pretty restricted, to go out on the weekends. Actually,
the boy I dated went to Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina], so I used to go to Duke
to the games over there.
MF: At the time, when you were still there, did you have to have written permission from your
parents to leave campus for the weekend or something?
JC: Yeah.
MF: And was it still a practice that I heard that some girls would be caught sneaking in or out at
nights?
JC: Oh, yeah. Well, now my—the girl that I roomed with’s boyfriend went to VPI [Virginia
Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, Virginia], but he was never around.
And she was a music major, and they had all of their built-in social life, and they did
everything together as a group. I just lived around them, but didn't really run around with
them because I didn't have any classes with them. But one of the girls in my dorm, in North
Spender, was Jessie Rae Scott [Class of 1951], Bob Scott's wife, the former [North Carolina]
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Governor, and he used to send her flowers a lot. We all got a big kick out of that. I mean,
you know, he was politicking even then. He'd send her roses, and she'd put them in the
parlor, you know. And she was dating him even when she was a college student. She was
our local celeb[rity]. And, of course, the campus ended at New Guilford and Mary Foust
[dormitories]. And then the woods were from there all the way over to West Market Street.
And the newest dorm was Weil Winfield, when I was there. That was the newest dorm.
MF: I've heard everybody say that since they were new dorms that those were the dorms that
everybody wanted to get into.
JC: They were. But, as I said, my problem was that I had gotten—I had to take a room where I
could get one when I was a junior—and they put me in South Spencer. And a lot of the girls
that had mostly classes in either home economics or music wanted to stay on that end of the
campus because they didn't want to walk so far. They wouldn't go to the other end of
campus. Weil Winfield was too far away to have to walk to Tate for class because they were
down there all day long. If they'd had lunch they had to go back to the dining hall, and that
was just too far to walk. So—but they were the new, exotic, plush dorms. That's where
everybody wanted to be, over there by the tennis courts.
MF: Yeah, that's what I've heard. You'd said that for your first two years you were a town student,
and the difference between that and living in the dorm, how was that different?
JC: Well, my parents were divorced when I was very young. And I lived over near the college,
and my mother worked for the Internal Revenue [Service], and I lived on Mendenhall
[Street], so I lived in that general—I grew up in that area—because, like I said, I went to
Curry so I really—and fortunately the trolley went right by Curry and went within a block of
where I lived so I could get to school in rainy weather. Of course we didn't have school
busses then. And I usually just walked to campus because I lived just three blocks away, but
it was not much fun. I was an only child and lived in an apartment, and my mother worked.
And I really would have preferred to stay there four years, but she just couldn't afford for me
to live on campus for four years. The Town Student Association was sort of active, but I
wasn't really into it too much. Now, really, was much happier living on campus. I mean, it
was a real treat for me to be on campus. And that's why most everybody says they don't
understand why kids today don't really appreciate the fact that they can go off to college and
halfway apply themselves. You just wished they would. I didn't do all that well because I just
probably was not best suited to be in business, although I gave it a fair shot. But it was
shorthand, and things like that were not all that easy for me.
One thing that was kind of interesting when I—right before I graduated, and I was—
back then you usually moved home after you got out of college because you didn't have a car
at first. [unclear] you had the money to buy one, and people didn't go off to another town to
work; they usually just went and stayed in the town they were in, or at least my friends
around here did. And so, we were having interviews for jobs and I got called for an interview
and had to go downtown to the Jefferson [Standard Life Insurance] Building, and, as it
turned out, my interview was with Dr. [Alonzo C.] “Lonnie” Hall, and he was an English
professor at the college. And public housing was just coming into Greensboro at that time,
and he was chairman of the board, the first board that started the first public housing project,
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which was Henry Lewis Smith homes, and they were looking for an executive secretary.
And I don't know how in the world they landed on me because I certainly did not graduate
with honors or anything. But he interviewed me, and he knew, I think, that I lived in that
neighborhood, and then my mother worked, and probably I needed a job. And so they hired
me. And it was sort of interesting, since he had been a professor of mine in college that, he
sort of was the one that gave me my first job.
He was an English professor and wrote a book which is kind of interesting. We had a
copy of it around here. He wrote a book on epitaphs. He collected epitaphs. And his book
was titled Grave Human. And it was really funny. I mean some of the things that he picked
up from tombstones. And he lived on Tate Street. And I always—as it turned out later, he
was a close friend of the father of the person that I married. But that was not—it had nothing
to do with it at the time because I wasn't dating that person.
MF: Just a coincidence?
JC: Yes. But, I have a picture of him with my father-in-law taken at Kiwanis Club. I really was
very indebted to him for giving me a job because that was a good job and a well-paying job,
but now I made $225 a month, if you can believe that, and that was a lot.
MF: That was a lot.
JC: It was a lot. It really was. So that was my first and only job. Subsequently, within the next
two years, I married. My husband was in service, and we moved away, and then we came
back here, and he's in the family business now. And we've been here for thirty-five years;
and we've been married for almost forty.
MF: Oh, my.
JC: We've been here—our oldest son was born in Elizabeth City [North Carolina] when he was
in the [United States] Coast Guard, and the other eight had been born at [Moses] Cone
[Memorial] Hospital [Greensboro]. So we have not ventured very far.
MF: No. You mentioned a couple of the faculty. Were there any other faculty that stand out that
you remember?
JC: Well, I remember a lot of my business faculty; a lot of them I can't recall by name. My
accounting teacher was Mr. [Virgil E.]Lindsey. I had Miss Laura Shell [unclear]. I'm sure
she's been mentioned a lot. She's was kind of an institution in Spanish. And I had Dr.
[Malcolm] Hooke in Spanish, and as it turns out, his daughter lives around the corner from
us. She's married to a guy—we've known him for probably forty years—and he was a
professor over there. And Dr. [Key] Barkley, who was in psychology over there. You've
probably—his son, who is an obstetrician here, and his oldest son, was my first boyfriend. I'll
always remember that. And, in fact, I saw Dr. Barkley at commencement. I went back and
we had a reunion this year, and he was at our—over in the Alumni House at the reception on
that Friday, and he’s in Raleigh and he went from UNCG, to [North Carolina] State
[University], and taught there the rest—until he retired. His son is an obstetrician here in
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Winston-Salem [North Carolina]. And I had Dr. Wilson [?] in English, and I had Miss Helen
Ingraham in biology, and she was the one who taught us how to dissect worms and frogs and
all of those things which I hated and could not stand. She was a kind of interesting teacher,
but I was never crazy about the class.
I had Dr. Bess Rosa, first on some classes on child development and all this sort of
thing. She was in the School of Home Economics, and I enjoyed her. She was close to
retirement then—a real treat to have her because she had been there a long time. And a lot of
my business professors I can't remember by name, but my economic professor's name
escapes. My husband would remember offhand; I can see his face right now, but I can’t
remember his name.
And Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson [chancellor] was there, I think, my freshman year.
And he—I'm just trying to think. You know, it’s just hard to remember.
One thing that I did which was kind of interesting—in high school somehow or
another I got a job over at the college bookstore in the summer working for Miss Ethel
Butler [Class of 1929]. And I worked for her some in college taking inventory and one thing
and another. She was the manager of the College Bookstore. And I bet she was over there for
thirty years. She was around a lot.
MF: I think I've heard her name.
JC: She was there for many years. And I started working for that College Bookstore. The first
year that I worked there, it was in the basement of the old Administration Building, you
know, the real old building. There was a bookstore in the basement of the building that was
about as big as this porch, and they had the textbooks for the whole school. [laughs] It was
tiny, tiny, tiny. And then, I don't know where they went from there, but they—you know,
until the Elliott [University] Center building was built. I know they had to go into bigger
quarters, but I don't remember where they were because I don't think that I worked for them
at that time. They moved somewhere else. And the soda shop was built when I was a
sophomore. That is the faculty lounge [Faculty Center] now. That's where we used to go.
MF: Wasn’t there a post office downstairs?
JC: Well, the post office, when I lived at North Spencer, was in the basement of North Spencer.
MF: Okay, because there used to be a post office in—
JC: In the basement of the old Administration Building.
MF: Oh, is that where it was?
JC: Well, it may be at either one of those. I didn't know there was a basement in the soda shop.
MF: I'm not sure. I just remember something about there being a post office in a soda shop or
something similar to that.
JC: Could have—well, they were probably were in the same building. But that was a real neat
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place when it was brand new, and, you know, they did a great business in there. But, of
course, when they built the Elliott Center, they didn't need it anymore. And I guess they
turned it into the faculty lounge then. But at the time that I lived on campus, the post office
was in the basement of North Spencer.
MF: They've got the UNCG Station or the US Post Office on campus in the cafeteria.
JC: Oh, really?
MF: Right now, yeah.
JC: Well, see, we didn't have the new—cafeterias weren't—they had—I don't know if they had
four dining halls or two. I can't remember now.
MF: I think it was four, all kind of split out like that. And they kept those—when I was an
undergraduate there, they still had exactly the same. And so it’s been just fairly recently that
they did the dining hall project.
JC: Well, of course, when everybody mentions Dr. [Richard] Bardolph [history department
chair], you know—what a joy having him as a teacher. He's a real institution. I can
remember my teachers’ faces better than I can remember their names in business because
most classes were so boring anyway, you know. [laughs]
MF: Did they still have the one-year commercial program at that time?
JC: Actually it phased out about that—I have a friend who’s a year younger than I am, and she
took that. So they must have had it at some point in time.
MF: It was right around that time it phased out. So you don't really remember much about it?
JC: I think it was there when I was into business, though in my junior—when I started going into
the technical programs and not just general college. I think it was still there, but I think it
went out right at that time, like '49 or '50, right around there. But I still have felt like those
girls were as well prepared as we were. We took a lot of stuff that was just kind of window
dressing, you know—a lot of economics and things that are fine if you wind up being in a
great position. But the basic skills, I think, were the same. And shorthand. Of course, we
learned mimeography—that was the only machine at the time that people had available to us
to learn to cut stencils and that sort of thing. But shorthand was the only way to go as far as
dictating or transcribing things. So we took most of our work in Curry [Building], and that
was sort of funny because that was where I was in high school and elementary school.
MF: So, while you were in high school and elementary school, did they at that time also have
classes like that?
JC: No. They moved them over there. I don't know where they were at before that time because
they might have had the first floor for the college, but we had the second floor—the high
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school classes, as you look at Curry, were on the top floor on the right, all those rooms. And
the elementary school was the whole left wing. You see, we even had a coach who had been
a faculty member and a six-man football team.
MF: Oh, really?
JC: Yeah. We had a six-man football in high school. And that went out too. So the county
schools had six-man teams then. The Curry team played all the little county schools that had
small enrollments. That's who they played. And we were lucky because we had great gym
programs because we got the PE [physical education] majors over there to teach us, you
know, volleyball, badminton, field hockey. I mean, we had everything, and none of the
public schools had the advantages we had. We had a football field and had our own field
goal there, right on campus. And they came over and taught us how to play a lot of things
that they wouldn't have had available in the public schools.
MF: Did the Curry School—was Park Gym there, the little gym there, at that time?
JC: Yeah. Our coach was Herb Park [Curry School football coach]. That's who it was named for.
And his kids went there to school. We had a lot of faculty kids at school over there in high
school.
MF: Oh, yeah. I'm sure.
JC: We had some real poor kids and some real smart kids. We had a lot of the "kick outs" from
prep school over this way. Their parents sent them over there. They'd drift in and out of
Curry, and when their time was up, when they could go back to prep school, they'd leave
again. But that's where they'd always landed. Their parents wouldn't send them to public
school. They'd send them over there where they thought that they'd have a little more strict
environment.
MF: One of the other things that I wanted to ask you about is the student government. I know that
that was always a real important part of the student life, and some people had told me that
being a women's school, student government was more important for them. It gave them a
chance to operate on a level that they felt they wouldn't have been able to in a coeducational
school.
JC: I think everybody was very interested, and we always had very active campaigns for class
officer or school officers and this sort of thing. There was always a lot of interest. And there
was a lot of interest in the newspaper staff. I was not on it, but I believe that it was called the
Coraddi?
MF: The Coraddi is the literary magazine.
JC: Maybe that’s it.
MF: The Carolinian.
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JC: That's the name of the—
MF: It is now, the newspaper. I'm not sure. I'm really honestly am not sure of what's the name at
the time.
JC: I’m not either. Well somehow that doesn't ring a bell on the name of the paper. I've forgotten,
but there was always a lot of interest in student government activities, elections, and dorm
elections, and class officers, and very spirited campaigns going on. And there were a lot of
very qualified girls. I was never in the student government, but there were a lot of girls who
were the take-charge type who were always running the thing. So there was just a lot of
interest because they knew that some female was going to win. They weren't intimidated by
the fact that they were running against a male. Whereas now, I assume that sometimes the
men win the election because maybe the girls just figure, “Why bother?” There probably are
going—a lot of girls would have voted for a man just because it was a man was running.
Whereas then we didn't have that feeling. Our—the girl in our class who was president of the
student government’s name was [Nancy] Porter [Class of 1950, master’s degree in 1958].
And she was a PE major, and I don't think her health is real good now; I didn't see her at the
last reunion. Somebody said she was not doing real well. But she was our everlasting class
president. And every time I've been to a reunion, she's been there until this time. But,
somehow or another, I don't think she's doing well. I'm not real sure what the deal is. But she
was student government president my senior year.
MF: She was class president also?
JC: Yeah. And I think she was everlasting. You know, the one they make the permanent class
president. She was that too. We had a real small class. And see, we were unique in that our
class got returning veterans. We had girls who had been in the service come back. We started
in '46, and they had just come out of service, several of them who would be ten years older
than we were in our class. Esther Samuelson [Class of 1950] and—I can't remember. There
were two or three others. Of course, they were really serious about it, did well and paid
attention and got good grades. They probably would be twenty-eight or may be ten years
older than we were. There were not any people coming back to school such as middle-aged
women coming back to get a degree or another degree, but we did have a returning veterans.
And Katherine Taylor [dean of women, dean of students, dean of student services and
director of Elliott Hall] was the dean at that time and lived in a big house on McIver Street
just next to the Home Economics Building.
MF: I was going to ask you about Katherine Taylor. What do you remember about Katherine
Taylor? What was she like?
JC: I just remember that she was a very impressive looking person. She was tall and very regal
looking and had short dark hair and just was the kind of person that you thought would be in
education at a women's university. I mean she was just very in command of herself and not
particularly loud spoken or anything. But she was very gracious, very business- like—the
type that you felt was the prototype of what you expected to be at a women's college or a
12
university. She just seemed to be what you would expect to be there. I think later her house
became the International House or something, didn't it?
MF: Let's see. That's—I think that's a little further down McIver Street. Where on McIver Street,
next to—
JC: She was right next to the home ec building, the old home ec building that I mentioned to
you.
MF: There's a building there, but I'm not so sure. I think that that's a newer building.
JC: Didn't they at one time have the early childhood development center there before they moved
it over to Curry, over on Tate [Street], on Spring Garden Street?
MF: I'm not sure.
JC: I think they did at one time. There was a nursery school there. There was a vacant lot
between those two houses somehow, and I think the nursery school was there, and then they
moved it over when they added those wings to Curry on the map and moved it over.
MF: There's a little red brick house. It's right next to where the nursing school is now. And I think
the music department has something in there.
JC: Well, this was a two-story square brick house that wasn't particularly large, but at that time it
was pretty new.
MF: I'm not sure. I'll have to check.
JC: They have a lot of faculty on that street; a lot of my teachers from Curry lived on that street.
And I remember the guy who was the business manager of the university lived on that street.
His daughter worked with me in the bookstore one summer. And I remember the Highsmiths
lived over there, and he was in administration. Mr. Joyce, who was the business manager.
And the Bardolphs lived on that street. And Houston Teague's father was in the
administration, they lived on that street. Several of my teachers from Curry, who were
education professors, lived on that street. And most of them were not married. And they had
apartments in those two buildings down there on Carr Street.
MF: Yeah, I know. Those little apartments are still there.
JC: Yeah, but the rest of the street was pretty much private residences. I mean, they hadn't been
broken up into apartments at all. And a lot of those old houses have been broken up into
apartments. And they were all private homes and mostly occupied by faculty.
MF: And it's a lot of students now. And plus there are a lot of university offices in some of those
buildings now.
13
JC: Well, the campus really ended down at New Guilford and Mary Foust [Residence Halls].
And certain dorms had the reputation of being good ones to be in or not so good. I, coming
in as a junior, had to take pot luck to get in with the crowd. Although, I made some nice
friends. Some of the people that I made friends with my first year, I kept up with through
college. And they lived over in the dorms on the street facing the tennis courts. Those were
the freshman dorms then. Hinshaw [Residence Hall]—
MF: Jamison [Residence Hall]?
JC: Right, Gray [Residence Hall].
MF: Yeah.
JC: The ones facing the tennis courts and the fields now.
MF: Yes, Jamison—
JC: —is a real old one. Three along in there. Well, those were all of the freshman dorms were
those three and then the three behind them. And that's where the freshmen started out.
MF: Yeah. I think, well, they still have certain dorms as freshman dorms, but I'm not sure if they
do that now. And Jamison was one of the ones they were going to [unclear].
JC: Well, they are the oldest ones probably. Shaw [Residence Hall] is real old, I think.
MF: Yeah, Shaw is the international student dorm now. They call it "I House."
JC: Well, you see, Walker Avenue was still open all the way through when I was there.
MF: Right, all the way through campus. Yeah, it stops right there at the library.
JC: That's when—I think when I was a freshman or sophomore is when they closed it because
that's when the library started.
MF: Wasn't there a bridge or something that went through?
JC: Yes. Well, that bridge is still—no, that's the bridge where College Avenue, but there's no
bridge there; it’s just flat.
MF: Right.
JC: Now, there was a bridge on—College Avenue went over Walker.
MF: Right. Okay. Also there were a lot of the traditions. There were class jackets and Daisy
Chain and you mentioned Tuesday chapel. One thing I wanted to ask you about Tuesday
chapel—only a couple of people have mentioned it, and I've been trying to see if I could find
14
out a little bit more about it. Some people have mentioned that they remember once, maybe
twice a year during Tuesday chapel, one of the programs they would have is a black gospel
group that would come in called the "Sedalia Singers".
JC: I don't really remember that at all. But I know where Sedalia is. You've probably been
through it on your way from home if you've gone the back roads.
MF: No. I go down I-85.
JC: No, it’s on [US Route] 70.
MF: I've seen the exit.
JC: I don't really remember that. I just remember chapel as being a crushing bore. I just wanted
to get there and get out.
MF: Really?
JC: Yeah. Because see, they let everybody to go to lunch at one time. And we all got out at one
time. And we all had to go to lunch at one time. So it made it horrible. ’cause there—you'd
either you'd just skip it or you'd just stay in the line forever because everybody was making a
bee-line back to the dining hall.
MF: Do you remember any of the programs for Tuesday chapel? What they were like or
anything?
JC: No, not really.
MF: That's funny because most people tell me, "I don't remember anything about it."
JC: I don't remember except it was always on Tuesday. And it always rained. It rained a lot on
Tuesday. I don't know. Now the Christmas concerts stick in my mind a lot because before
school was out for Christmas holiday, the university choir had a Christmas concert that
ended at midnight, and would start about 10:30 [pm] and last until midnight. And they had
standing room only because they got as many townspeople as they could wedge into Aycock
[Auditorium], and then a lot of the students would go. And it was really impressive. It was
one of the highlights of your Christmas season because you didn't have television. And you
didn't have all of the things you have around holidays now—about being able to go from
place to place or have television or movies or a lot of Christmas entertainment. That was a
big thing locally in the city and from the university. It was a real—. [pause] The guy that
played the organ, I remember his first name was George—I can't think of his name now, but
he was the organ professor they had from the university. And one of the girls on my hall
majored in piano and organ, and he had fiery red hair, and he was the organist and the choir
director for the choir.
And, of course, George Dickieson [professor of violin], who is still here in town, and
he was on the faculty—music faculty then, and he's still here. He writes “Letters to the
15
Editor” every now and then, and his wife's mother was the one I mentioned that taught me
child development, Dr. Bess Rosa [Ed. Note: Anna Bell’s mother was Thelma Bell.]. Her
daughter's name was Anna [Bell, Class of 1943], and she married him at the time that I was
in college. George Dickieson came here as probably a violin professor or something and was
unmarried and young, and she—Mrs. Rosa's daughter—married him and they’re still here,
and he's been very active in music in Greensboro all these years. You know, like forty years.
And I still see in the paper every now and then he writes a letter to the editor about
something. Or you'll read in the paper something about some music group, and his name is
mentioned. And, actually, Jane [Wharton] Darnell [Class of 1945], who was my roommate’s
voice teacher, lives right down the street. She's still around. And her husband was on the
faculty over there. I don't know what he did. I don't know whether he was in music, or not.
His name was [Robert] “Bob” Darnell [associate professor of music]. And they live here,
and I guess he's—Bob’s retired. I mean, they still live about four houses down. It’s
interesting there's so many college people over here because I think Dr. [Josephine] Rigg
[visiting lecturer in child development and family relations] has been a long time. She's
mostly been retired for twenty years. She's way on up there.
MF: Yeah, if she's been retired for twenty years.
JC: She's at least eighty-five, I do believe. She just got back from driving to Missouri or
someplace to visit her relatives. I couldn't believe it.
MF: Wow. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the time that you went to Woman's College
with the war having just wound down or however you want to say—how did that seem to
affect campus life? I know that you said that you had a lot of returning veterans—
JC: We had some—yeah, not many. We had a very small class. I never did figure out quite why
we seemed to have a smaller class than the one on either side of us. The Class of '50. We had
a real small class, and I don't know if that was because we were—I don't know quite why we
did, but we've been acknowledged and noticed that our class was small. And I don't know, I
think it had much more impact on the coed schools because you got the men returning—
because my husband [William H. Craft] was a football manager at Chapel Hill—and you
see, they had Charlie Justice, Art Weiner and all of the returning veterans on the team, and
that was a big deal for them, and they were all coming back from service. So it really didn't
make as much of an impact to us except we had some older people in our class, which
seemed sort of strange, but they were a lot more, as I said, serious about getting an
education.
MF: Oh, yeah.
JC: Supposedly they could go on—use the G.I. Bill [of Rights, formally known as the
Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944].
MF: Yeah, that's right. I didn't think about that. Yeah. I would imagine they got all of the benefits
of the G.I. Bill. Were they usually, say for instance, in the [United States] Army Nurse Corp?
16
JC: Probably. I don't really know. I don't really know what they were. Just two or three stick out
in my mind. But I was never really friendly with them. I was one of those people in the gray
area that was not a student leader and was not the one that was kicked out, just kind of got
through in four years and got a job and got on.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
JC: She was at the library at Curry a lot. And she was a real dear. And, of course, she was a real
professor too, but I never thought of her in that context. She was just ran the library at Curry.
But, as you see, everybody over there was a professor at the school, and at the time when
you are in high school or elementary school, you don't think about any of those terms. I
mean, the students come in for certain grading periods to teach, but this professor is always
there in the classroom. And when the student teacher wasn’t there, you had a college
professor teaching you even if you were in the fourth grade.
MF: Oh, yeah.
JC: You see?
MF: Yeah. I understand how it works. I didn't understand that's how it worked at the time.
JC: Yeah. They were involved in education—the professors. By and large, they were all old
maids, you know. And they weren't real young then. A lot of them I’d say we had were
probably in their forties when I was in the fourth grade or something.
MF: Well, I’d imagine that made for a good education?
JC: Oh, it did. And we laughed because we figured—I guess we took S.A.T. [Scholastic
Aptitude Test]—we took some kind of placement test to get into the school. And we said
they wouldn't dare turn us down if they educated us over at Curry. They didn't have the nerve
not to admit us. [laugh]
MF: Well, there's just three more questions that I have, okay? One is about the—well, for lack of
a better word—the rift between the Alumni Association and Chancellor [William E.]
Moran? And I wondered if you knew anything about that?
JC: Well, you know, Betty Crawford Ervin was in my class, and I just know from what I've
heard from her by mail. What she sent out—I got it. I don't know who she sent it to, but the
letter came out. And, as I understand it, they don't want the Alumni Association to fundraise
independently or the university having control of the money. Is that correct?
MF: Yeah. What I've been able to determine is—I guess that's about as accurate as anything I
know.
17
JC: I mean, they want it to be under the umbrella of the university and not the Alumni
Association—to have direct control over where the money goes.
MF: Right—that it goes to the university, and then the university allots whatever money to the
Alumni Association.
JC: Well, Sally [Schindel] Cone [master of education, Class of 1972] is a friend of mine, and
she's on the board [of trustees] over there, and she was very opposed to Moran dictating
these terms. I'm ambivalent in a way because I really don't feel that I know enough about this
to make a judgment, but I feel like in a way I'm not one of these women's libbers [liberation
feminist movement], but the university became coed, which I think was just a natural
evolution, and, of course now, they're trying to go to [National Collegiate Athletic
Administration] Division I, so I wonder if anybody's ever happy. You give in one area, and
then they say they've gotta [sic] do this too to be competitive. So the women to one degree—
the ones that are opposed to this feel that they are taking their last measure of control over a
women's college. You know—that you took away the Woman's College and then you started
implementing all these sports and making it more of a jock school, which —and now you
take away the fact that women had any control over an alumni association, which had been
primarily women up until recent years, and I can see how you don't want two groups fighting
over how to allocate the money. But I think women resent the fact that they think the money
may be misspent, as far as their wishes are concerned—that it may go into athletics. And my
husband was a fundraiser for the university; he’s been involved in it since the Spartan Club
[athletic booster club] was first founded. And I'm ambivalent about it. I mean, I don't go out
and raise money for them, and I'm not sure if I want them to get Division I and all these
things. I think that its losing a lot of it's luster by trying to become like every other school,
unfortunately. And I see Moran's point. You don't want two camps trying to allocate money
and fighting over it. But I think the women felt like that was the last measure of control they
had. I mean, I think there's been some infighting about use of the Alumni House, the facility,
for office space.
MF: The development office now is downstairs, and the development office is a university
program.
JC: And I'm really sorry about Barbara Parrish [Class of 1948, Alumni Secretary, director of
alumni affairs], but I somehow think when you have progress, you step on toes, and
everything that happens is not for the best for everybody. Or—well, it’s just a natural
progression, if you start these things, and implement these programs or become coed or do
whatever you are going to do in athletics and become bigger. This is a natural evolution of
how things are going to progress. And that doesn't mean that I'm for or against. I think this is
just the way it is. And if by starting this—in becoming the coed school and trying to become
more well-rounded, which is what you have to do to attract qualified men students, this just
part and parcel of what goes along with it.
MF: Do you feel like Woman's College lost something when it became a coed institution?
JC: Yeah, but I still think in my own mind it may have—it was something that was going to
18
happen sometime or other. I think it lost because I think women become disenchanted with
student government and running for office and being head honcho and being in charge
because sometimes women will vote for a man just because he's a man. And I think they'll
vote against a woman because they think that for some reason they would rather have a man
in that particular office, but maybe they’re not better. They just think maybe men run—I
have seen this. The men hold the office when they are not the predominant students over
there. I think that is what is happening now is that you have men holding the elected
positions. I don't know why—maybe the men turn out to vote and the women don't. Maybe
they get apathetic.
MF: There is a lot of apathy in regard to student government elections.
JC: There has always been, but I think it's been to a greater degree when women felt like—well,
we really—they’ve taken part of our rightful place, our heritage. And whatever you want to
call it, they are trying to take away our influence and water it down.
And I think that once you become coed, these other things just kind of fall into place.
And it’s just a natural progression of how you will become bigger in sports, and you can’t
get men over there if you don’t. Or they assume you can’t. You want well-rounded men. The
university wants to attract money from the community, and they want to appeal to more
people in the community to be interested in the university. [interviewer interrupts]—sports
come in. It’s just to me a natural progression that once they start it, this is the way it’s going
to be. I'm sorry, but I think that it was engraved in stone that sooner or later it was going to
happen.
This is not the only school to go coed, and everybody hates it. You hear and read
about Colby Junior College in Connecticut [Ed. Note: Maine] going coed and—a picture in
the paper about it today. One of my closest friends went there. But it just seems like this is
way it is today. It’s not better, it is just different. And it seems to be the way they attract
more of a financial department.
MF: —a girls’ school over on the west coast. I can’t remember where.
JC: Well, see, Greensboro College went coed; they have to do it a lot of times to even hang in
there.
MF: That was what they said. The school (which school I can’t remember) last year over on the
west coast, they voted to go coed because they said they didn't have the financial support to
keep it a women's college.
JC: I wonder how Randolph-Macon [College, Ashland, Virginia] and Hollins [now University,
Roanoke, Virginia] are hanging in there. Even Washington and Lee [University, Lexington,
Virginia] has gone coed. I think it is a natural thing to happen. I think the women hate to lose
control. The last-ditch control was the Alumni House—its use, its space and its fundraising. I
gather that Moran is not all that popular [unclear]. I have no feeling one way or the other, but
I hear pros and cons.
MF: I have talked to some people that like him, and I’ve talked to other people who vehemently
19
dislike him.
JC: I am very neutral because I don't know him well enough to comment. And I think this is
related to the fact that he wants to take control and run the university. Maybe what he is
doing is the only way to do it. I don’t know. I think the once they went coed it was just a
natural progression to go into this, including they money, the sports, the whole nine yards
MF: The buildings, all the buildings—he was really associated with this big building frenzy on
campus.
JC: Well, of course, if you don’t try—I think he has done a good job. At this particular time in
the university’s development, it is a necessary evil because if you don’t keep up with other
branches or try to protect your turf, the money is not there for everybody. And so some—the
go-getters who scream and holler the loudest are the ones going to get the allocations. And
you can't sit back ever and take a year off—not in the education game.
MF: I want to give you a chance to mention anything else I neglected to ask you about.
JC: Heavens, no. I can't think of a thing.
MF: Lastly I was going to ask you if you had other names to suggest of people that you thought I
should get in touch with. I think you’ve given me quite a few. Are there other names of
perhaps people that were in your class or you were in school with that you think would be
good to contact?
JC: Did you ever talk with Emily [Harris] Preyer [Class of 1939, honorary degree 1977]?
MF: The name is on a list that either I have or Dr. [William] Link [history professor] has.
JC: She’s a real trip. She is [Lunsford] Rich[ardson] Preyer's [jurist, member of US House of
Representatives, grandfather founded Vick Chemical] wife. He teaches part time at Chapel
Hill; he is a local celebrity. She graduated there [Woman’s College], and she is one of four
or five sisters—they probably all graduated. Jane [Harris] Armfield of 1960, master’s degree
in 1963, honorary degree in 1988] is her—bet Jane Armfield graduated there too. Jane
Armfield is about 80. They are all interesting as they can be. They can tell you stories that
you would not believe. See, Emily (Rich Preyer was in Washington quite a while as a
congressman.)—so she’s been—and they live over here on Sunset Drive. And he teaches
part time in Chapel Hill now—just a few classes.
She would have graduated about 1940, and her sister would have graduated in about
1935. I’m not sure that her sister graduated there [Lou Harris Tucker did not graduate.], but I
think all those girls went there. Emily is a trip. She’s been very involved in the university
process through the years; she’s been a very active person.
And then Sally Cone got her library science graduate degree over there [Ed. Note:
master of education] over there, and she is on the board [Ed. Note: Board of Trustees]. She
didn’t go to undergraduate school—she went to Chapel Hill [Class of 1954]. She’s been on
the Board of Visitors over there, and I don’t know if she’s still on it or not.
20
Another friend of mine who’s been a fairly active graduate is JoAnn [Fuller] Black
[Class of 1953]. She would have graduated in about ’53. Her husband works with Southern
National Bank here; she was practically there in my time frame. And I really don’t—beyond
that—I mean I meet people all the time that went there, but you just can’t—you just don’t
always ask, “Where did you go to school?”
MF: Right. I have heard a lot of people say that they’ll go to a dinner or something like that and
they’ll look across and they’ll see someone wearing a WC ring and they’ll say, “Ah, what
year?” So I thought that was kind of a neat thing.
JC: Well, it’s gotten so big now. To me, it was a lot—it’s just like anything else. When it was so
small, it was—it seemed huge at the time. But by today's standards, it was not big. And, as I
said, we had a real small class I don’t know how many we had, like 2,400 or something ,
which then would have been small. We had the Daisy Chain and two societies, the Alethian
and another one. I never figured out the purpose of them was. They didn’t seem to mean all
that much.
With no sororities, there were really no bases. If you didn't have friends in your
dorm, your particular department, you didn't have them because there was no gathering place
for anybody—the Soda Shop or something, but—usually you ran around with the people on
your hall. That’s kind of the way it was.
MF: I think it’s still sort of that way. The people you meet on your hall when you are a freshman
are the people you sort of—
JC: I have a very good friend here who would be interesting to interview if you want someone in
the same time frame. She was a French major and has been very involved in the language.
She teaches over at Grimsley [High School, Greensboro, North Carolina] now and has been
there for 20 years now. Her name is Ann Oakley, and she was in the Class of 1951. She lives
on North Elam Avenue—Mrs. John Oakley. You can interview people who were there when
Dr. Jackson was there, people would know more about the war years. See, I know nothing
about that, and that would have been a real interesting time to see if they had—
MF: Or the Depression years.
JC: The times when they had food shortages or stamps. One interesting thing—somehow or
another, they had farm property
MF: Yeah, the college dairy.
JC: And every dessert was piled high with whipped cream. Lord, we all gained twenty pounds
then. Everything was high on calories.
MF: Oh, yeah, lots of milk.
JC: They had never heard of a salad bar. Well, no one did then.
21
MF: Well thank you so much.
JC: You are welcome.
[End of Interview]