Oral history interview with Pat Cross, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Pat Cross
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 15, 1991
[Begin Side A]
MF: And if you could start with some general information like where you were from and when
you went to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] and that type—just
some general information like that first.
PC: Okay. I lived in New Jersey until I was eleven, but then I moved down to Greensboro. My
dad started a business down here. And, actually, some of my best UNCG memories were
before I was really a student there because I was a student at Curry [laboratory school
association with School of Education]—
MF: Oh, okay.
PC: —which was the demonstration school run by the department of education. And I was at
Curry seventh and eighth grades. And we were the little kids who thought we ran UNCG, so
it was a very nice setup—
MF: Yeah.
PC: And was a lot of fun. One of my two best friends was the daughter of the chancellor, so we
played in that wonderful house, which is really a beautiful house.
MF: Oh, I'm trying to think—
PC: Blackwell, Gordon Blackwell.
MF: I was trying to think, yeah, who was the Chancellor? Blackwell?
PC: The chancellor. And Blair Blackwell and Ginny Bardolph and I were buddies and we
would—I remember making our Halloween costumes in the basement. Big paper mache
things for Halloween. That's my best UNCG memories, really, the very best. [laughs]
MF: Yeah.
PC: But I was a freshman in '64 and graduated in '68, and I was a town student the whole time,
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living at home.
MF: Right.
PC: And of that time, I lived with my parents most of the time. I lived in a—we rented—five of
us rented a little house one semester, which was a big adventure and was a lot of fun, on
Kenilworth Street.
MF: I bet. Oh, yeah. There are still a lot of houses rented by students there.
PC: Yeah. If you dumped a glass of water in the back door, it would make it—the spill would
make it all the way out the front door. It was a perfect plane.
MF: [laughs]
PC: [laughs] It was great. We rented from Mike Haley. I think he may be one of the trustees
[1983-91] at UNCG now. He's the head of Triton-McDonald's Corporation and a nice
fellow. He took a chance on some college girls. He was not so sure about it at that point. The
neighborhood hadn't turned over so much. It was a little more residential then.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And now it's pretty well—
MF: Yeah, I think just about all the houses there—
PC: It's a mess now. It's not quite what it was.
MF: Yeah. I think they are all, almost all of them are rented by students now. What was your
major?
PC: Psych. Psychology.
MF: That was my undergraduate major too. And, well, I guess, first of all, before going into other
things, since you were a psychology major, maybe we could talk about the department at that
time, while you were a student.
PC: Okay, it was—I was very interested in clinical things, and it was a very experimental
department.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And you sort of evolved discovering that. There wasn't probably—I remember [Dr.]John
Edwards as a teacher I liked a lot. But he was, you know, just part time. He wasn't a regular
faculty member.
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MF: Yeah.
PC: He was a practicing psychologist who just taught a little bit. But with him I got abnormal
psychology, and—his courses, though, were really, really interesting to me.
MF: Most of the department, though, sort of followed the experimental?
PC: Well, that sure seemed to be the leaning. It wasn't preparing me for—as an undergraduate, it
wasn't preparing me for clinical.
MF: Right.
PC: That's why, when I went back for a master's [degree], I didn't even start into psychology,
even though I think it's evolved a little more clinical. I went back to child development and
family relations master’s.
MF: Yeah. I think the department probably still swings toward that slant.
PC: Experimental?
MF: Well, maybe behavioral, but certainly not clinical at the undergraduate level.
PC: Yeah, yeah, behavioral.
MF: But that's funny because, with the GREs [Graduate Record Examination], the GREs for
psychology are just about all experimental questions and—so it would have helped you on
the GREs. [laughs]
PC: Yeah. When I took the GRE, I didn't have to do a specialized one. You know, I just took the
general.
MF: Yeah, did you take the subject area in psychology?
PC: I didn't need to for what I was applying for in grad school, so I didn't do that. It would have
been interesting to see if I knew anything about that. I don't know.
MF: Oh, I took the subject area and did horribly on it.
PC: Is your—but your master's is history?
MF: Yeah. Oh, but on the rest of the GREs it was fine, but on the subject area I did horrible.
PC: That's why I didn't take it.
MF: Yeah. It was a nightmare. [laughs]
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PC: [laughs]
MF: You look, and you go, "I didn't have that class," you know. [laughs]
PC: [laughs] That’s right. When did I miss it?
MF: You know, “Can I skip this question?” What about some of the other coursework and some
of the other faculty at UNCG?
PC: All right. You want me to remember specific people?
MF: If you can, sure, but also sort of—what you remember about how some of the courses
were—?
PC: Okay, as a freshman, the reputation was that they were going to eliminate unnecessary
freshmen through the history course, the two-semester history. And I don't remember the title
of it. World civilization or something. I had Dr. [Walter T.] Luczynski [history professor],
and I really loved him. He was great. He was interesting. And I survived it. And the other
one was biology, that two-semester freshman biology. I don't know, somehow they loomed
ominous in front of most of us.
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: It was that way when you got there—still? They were powerful courses. I sort of majored in
electives. I had that reputation because I had too many interests, and I took all kinds of
extraneous different things—interior design and floriculture, which was basically like a
flower arranging—
MF: Yeah.
PC: Was it—by Dr. [Virginia] Gangstad [associate professor of biology]? Is that her name, I
think? And we learned about oriental ying yang, different design things. And all of this was
[inaudible]. It was very different.
MF: Did you take any music courses there?
PC: Yeah, I was in the choir.
MF: Oh, okay.
PC: Yeah, I love music. I just was too lazy to major in it.
MF: Yeah, it's a lot of work.
PC: Yeah.
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MF: I've talked to several people who were music majors, and the amount of time involved—
PC: I took voice when I was first at UNCG—private voice for a little while. And I don't know, I
didn't play the piano. It's hard to take voice when you can't accompany yourself.
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: You really need to practice, and it's hard to accomplish it. I just didn't do good [sic] in it. But
I love singing. But I still sing with it.
MF: Oh, wow, that's great. I can't sing. At least, well, I can't sing well. Anybody can sing.
PC: Yeah, right.
MF: And being a town student, did you feel at all removed from—?
PC: I felt completely removed, yeah. You know, I think that's a big mistake to be—I think people
should struggle, or anyway they can for the first two years at least.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And I think once you become a part of the community, you could function fine in an
apartment. You know, everybody wants an apartment after they—
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: You know, I have a daughter who's a freshman, and she thought after the first semester she
was ready for an apartment. And I really think it's important that she stay on campus for a
while and get a feel for what's going on.
MF: Sure.
PC: But you know, I'd say most of us were people who went to high school in Greensboro
together, the crowd I was with. And most of us—money was the reason we went to UNCG
because it was here, and we could live at home and it was cheap.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I thought I was going to St. Andrews [Presbyterian College, Laurinburg, North Carolina]
until about two weeks before school started. And I applied to UNCG at the end of August
and went.
MF: Yeah, St. Andrews is pretty expensive, I think.
PC: Well, any private—you know, I don't have any idea what it was then.
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MF: Right.
PC: I don't know why I was ever going to St. Andrews. I must have known somebody who said
“St. Andrews,” so I applied to St. Andrews.
MF: Yeah. My brother started out at St. Andrews.
PC: Did he?
MF: Yeah. I don't know why. He stayed for a semester.
PC: Well, I'm glad I didn't now. I mean, in retrospect, a university with a fair amount of size has a
whole lot more resources, and just there's things coming on campus that are interesting.
There's a lot more departments that you can participate in. You know, I feel good about a
university. I just think ideally it'd have been better to have been to one in a different town.
MF: Oh sure.
PC: You know, [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill or something.
MF: I'm trying to keep up with somebody who lived in the dorm, and I'm trying to think of some
comparative things. I know for example, there were still, for students living in the dorms,
still a lot of the same rules and regulations that Woman's College [of the University of North
Carolina] had had. Was there anything that you noticed, even though you were a town
student, that seemed to sort of still drag along, that were from Woman's College days?
PC: I think when I was there—I don't know if it changed while I was there or—at some point in
time you weren't supposed to walk upstairs in Elliott Hall with pants on.
MF: Oh, okay.
PC: Can you believe that? And my sister graduated from Smith [College, Northampton,
Massachusetts].
MF: Yeah.
PC: Talk about different economies. And they were probably wearing jeans in 1920 at Smith.
MF: Yeah.
PC: You know, they were so much more progressive, and I just thought it was such a joke.
MF: I think it was some time in the sixties that—in the early sixties—that some of the girls had
gotten, had successfully petitioned the administration to be allowed to wear pantsuits around
campus.
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PC: You know, I really don't remember that exactly much. I know there was some problem about
upstairs in Elliott Hall. We still had Tuesday teas. I don't know—do they have Tuesday teas
anymore?
MF: What's that?
PC: I liked Tuesday teas. Now, I worked for the food service, whatever the name of it was then, I
don't know. And I think we were paid $1.25 an hour. And, see, I don't think 1965 or six or
seven is so terribly long ago that $1.25 an hour—. And they thought they could make you
wear a hairnet, which I basically never wore, but—and so we did different waitressing, like
in the Dogwood Room.
MF: Yeah.
PC: Or at banquets, which they were having all the time. Elizabeth Carriker [Class of 1964, MEd
1969] was—I don't know if she is still working at UNCG or not.
MF: I'm not sure, but I've heard her name.
PC: And Terry [Terrell Weaver, Class of 1959]—what's Terry's last name—I know Terry real
well. She's been one of the director-type people at Elliott Hall forever.
MF: Oh, I know who you are talking about. Terry, she's got brown hair. I know exactly who you
are talking about, but I can't remember her name.
PC: I know her real well, and her name has just left me because I'm—
MF: I would have known if you hadn't forgotten it.
PC: All right, anyway, I worked with them up at Elliott where they sell candy now, on the main
floor of Elliott Hall.
MF: Yeah.
PC: Used to be the main Elliott Hall desk.
MF: Oh, that did.
PC: That was the information desk, and I worked there with [Dr.] Eleanor [Walker] Gwynn
[MFA, master of fine arts, 1967], I remember—Gwynn's a dance professor at A&T [North
Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University] now. She was a grad student. They
were always in charge, and undergrads were assistants or something. What was the question?
I really lost it. [laughs]
MF: Tuesday teas?
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PC: Tuesday teas, all right. Every Tuesday, I guess about 2:00 [p.m.], Elizabeth Carriker's
kitchen crew got these wonderful little finger sandwiches and cookies and all these plates in
this table all laid out with this wonderful stuff and flowers. I mean, you know how starving
students are and how crummy food service really is.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And it was wonderful. And you were supposed to—I think it was a carryover from a
women's school—when you come in and you look decent, and you have a little plate and tea
and act like a lady and all this.
MF: Yeah.
PC: None of which we related to in any way whatsoever. It was how many sandwiches could you
get on your plate and not be embarrassed, kind of.
MF: [laughs] Yeah.
PC: And you go sit all over the ballroom there and eat. You had to behave. I mean, there was no
wild behavior or anything.
MF: Yeah.
PC: But it was fun.
MF: I know now they have the commuter student delis in the Cone Ballroom.
PC: Oh, do they?
MF: Once a month, yeah. And, yeah, I think it's the same sort of thing now—how much can you
get on your plate without everybody turning around and going, "What a pig." [laughs]
PC: That's right. But that was nice, and it really—there was an attempt for it to be a very genteel
thing.
MF: Sure.
PC: But, you know, when I look back on things that I remember, that was nice.
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: It really was nice.
MF: I bet it was. It would be nice for there to be something like that now. But yeah, it does sound
like—[telephone rings]
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PC: The machine will pick it up, if that won't bother you.
MF: Oh no, it won't bother the tape. If you need to get it, I can pause the tape.
PC: That's all right. I take business calls on this line, so—
MF: Oh, okay. I was going to say—
PC: We may hear a strange kind of female voice in there.
MF: Oh, that's okay. Also, with having been a women's college, even though there were men on
campus, I've heard that really there weren't that many, and it's still basically—seemed pretty
much like a women's college during the sixties.
[answering machine in background]
PC: Oh, okay. Let me just write that number down. I'm sorry.
MF: Sure.
[recording paused]
MF: Well, what I was asking you just a minute ago was with UNCG just having become
coeducational and just having become a university as well, there seemed, from what several
people have told me, there seemed to still be this carryover of an image as a women's school,
and that even though there were men there, that there weren't very many men, and that most
of the campus life and academic life seemed to still be a women's college.
PC: The changeover was slow, and the men that were there were interested in traditional female
majors like music, design, and they weren't guys who wanted to date girls—most of them.
[laughs]
MF: Yeah.
PC: Which, you know, sounds like a terrible bias. But you know, it was a slow changeover to a
real coed campus.
MF: And also it was still relatively recent that it had become racially integrated, and so I'm
wondering if you remember anything about that.
PC: You had mentioned that, you know, as something you might bring up, and I really have so
few feelings about it as far as impressions. You know, it was just a continuation. One of my
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real good friends, who is also a marriage and family therapist it turns out now, was, you
know, a black girl who I didn't know in Greensboro until we were in college. I'd grown up
without any—much separation between black and white in my mind, and I really was not too
conscious of—you know—if there was any kind of agitation or if there was any kind of
situation, good or bad. I don't have a feel for it. I have two black-white perspectives from
UNCG unrelated to my time right there. One is, after school, my first supervisor was
Claudette Burroughs-White [Class of 1961], who was maybe the first black admitted. I don't
know, one of the first certainly.
MF: Yeah. One of the first two.
PC: Because I lived across from dean—oh boy, what was her name? Dean of students’ house on
McIver Street—what's now the psych building, is where I lived.
MF: Oh, okay.
PC: Before I went—you know, as a child—eleven, twelve, thirteen—I lived in that house next
door to the Pfaffs. You know, Eugene Pfaff from the history department. Dr. Pfaff was a
history professor.
MF: Oh yeah, right.
PC: I just remember when I first saw Claudette over there, and then later worked for her—that's
one perspective. The other perspective is—I told you about playing with the [Chancellor
Gordon W.] Blackwells and the [Dr. Richard] Bardolphs [history professor]. Well, the
Bardolphs gave me an early upbringing into civil rights and the rights and needs of black
people, and so I always had an activist heart, having grown up in that house. You know, I
guess as I saw black people coming into school—it was kind of like—well you know, it's
slow, it's long overdue and I just felt comfortable with it. So I don't remember anything
else—
MF: Yeah.
PC: —that kind of attitude about it.
MF: Yeah, that's usually what I hear from most people I talk to is that it just didn't seem—it
wasn't terribly earthshaking, and most people say it just seemed like it went slow, and that it
was overdue.
PC: Well, now, we did go to school at an interesting time. It was just before all the real
outspoken student uprising business that started in about 1970.
MF: Yeah.
PC: Drug culture really flourished in about 1970.
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MF: Yeah.
PC: So that, like, I left school pretty naive and inexperienced and I, you know, I'd been a very
straight person who hadn't experienced a lot of wild and crazy things. And suddenly I was
dealing with students to me on probation and doing counseling with them who were
introduced to drugs in a culture that I was pretty naive about, even though I was not that
much older than they were.
MF: Yeah.
PC: But, I mean, all hell broke loose right after we left on a lot of the country. You know, as far
as UNCG, it probably was not terribly a hot bed of much.
MF: Yeah. I know that Tate Street developed a pretty infamous reputation.
PC: It did, and, see, having grown up on McIver Street, that was my backyard and my friends—
two of my best friends lived on Tate Street.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And Tate Street still doesn't have a great reputation.
MF: Yeah. Well, a lot of people—in some respects, I guess, I can agree with this, a lot of people
say some of it's unwarranted but—
PC: Well, I'm sure some of it's a hangover, but there are still some kids who kind of disappear,
teenagers in Greensboro, and they're found on Tate Street, in some—still some drug culture.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I have no idea how much of it was going on at all. I guess any time you have a deteriorating
neighborhood around a campus, any campus, becomes low-income housing and/or student
housing, and that overlap can get kind of messy.
MF: Oh sure.
PC: It opens up for all kinds of activity.
MF: Yeah. Especially with students who are ready to experience anything different.
PC: And think they are immortal, so whatever they experience they assume they'll survive.
MF: [laughs] Oh yeah. Kind of an attitude that I think that age group has.
PC: Yeah.
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MF: Residential College was starting about that time, wasn't it?
PC: I really didn't know anything about it. I wasn't exposed to it. I didn't know it was an
opportunity, and couldn't tell you now exactly what it is.
MF: Yeah. I think 1968—I'm not sure if it was '68 or '69, but was '68 the year—?
PC: I graduated.
MF: Right. Was '68 the year that the administration began to allow students to have beer in their
rooms if they were old enough?
PC: I didn't live on campus. I don't know. They did? They did allow that?
MF: It was either '68 or '69.
PC: And some schools still certainly don't allow that. That's interesting.
MF: Right. Cherry Callahan [Dr. Cheryl Mann Callahan, Class of 1971, PhD 1987], I can't
remember what her maiden name was—
PC: I remember Cherry, yeah.
MF: Oh, yeah, she was one of the ones involved with getting that.
PC: Was she?
MF: Yeah. And also one of the ones involved—
PC: She's the new incoming president of the Junior League in Greensboro.
MF: Yeah, she works in the vice chancellor's office for student affairs.
PC: That's right.
MF: Yeah. She had told me, I think it was '68 or '69.
PC: I really don't know a thing about that, which is just another example of how you are cut off
from—
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: —but now, I did, it was my sophomore year, I lived in that little house on Kenilworth Street,
and then after my junior year I got married.
MF: Oh, okay, and so then you were—
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PC: But my husband—we lived together a short time in Greensboro, and then he went to active
duty because that was Vietnam [War].
MF: Oh, right. That's right. How did Vietnam seem to affect campus? I know probably at UNCG
it was nothing compared to other campuses—
PC: Well, I was leaving. I mean I graduated in '68 and can't even tell you exactly the years—
obviously, it had been underway. Oh, everybody—guys wanted to stay in school so they
wouldn't be drafted.
MF: Yeah.
PC: That was a major, major—my husband was on an intimate relationship with Ethel Kirkman
at the draft board downtown. She ran the draft board. And he would go every week and find
out what his number was.
MF: What for?
PC: Because he was on leave of absence from Chapel Hill, not being ready to do it at that point,
and I remember the day I graduated from UNCG, he was sitting in the stands or whatever,
the audience, and I had to sit with the class on that lawn. It was boring.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I had to take him to the airport in three hours to leave for Vietnam. And that was, kind of,
difficult, you know. It was a strange day. You know, it was sort of supposed to be important
that I was graduating from school, but he was also leaving, and I didn't see him for nine
months.
MF: Yeah, I know, my husband just got back from Saudi Arabia.
PC: Did he? [laughs]
MF: So when you say that was a strange day I'm like, yeah, I can imagine. [laughs]
PC: I remember standing there waiting, and the stupid plane—he was supposed to pick up some
military shuttle to take him to Norfolk [Virginia] because he was on the aircraft carrier.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And it never came. We waited and waited and waited.
MF: The same thing happened with us.
PC: And it's like this, you're supposed to have this nice goodbye, and after several hours it's kind
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of like "I wish you'd leave."
MF: Yeah, the same thing happened to us.
PC: It did? Really? [laughs]
MF: Yeah, he was supposed to leave at noon, and then he was still there at 5:00 [p.m.], and then
at 6:00 [p.m.] they wanted to get all the family to leave, and so we left and then by the time I
got home—this was at Fort Bragg—and then by the time I got home the phone rang, and he
was still there, and they weren't leaving till three a.m., so I said, "Do you want me to come
back down" And he said, "No, I can't go for another hour of those goodbyes. Don't come."
PC: Oh, it is strange.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And you feel bad that you're wanting to finish it, but it's a kind of torture that's unlike
anything else. It's interesting.
MF: Yeah. So I know exactly what you mean, you know. And then wondering when they're
getting home.
PC: I wrote to Bob Hope [British-born actor and comedian who entertained United States troops]
and asked if I could come with him.
MF: Oh really?
PC: I thought, "Shoot, it's worth a try." Didn't work.
MF: [laughs]
PC: [laughs] I said, "I'll do anything. What do you want?"
MF: I didn't want to go over there myself, so—. There were still a lot of students from up north
coming to school here at that time. Well, there still are now. During the time that it was
Woman's College, the thing I hear most frequently is—is that the northern girls seemed so
much more prepared, but, of course at that time, there were only eleven grades in most
southern schools, and there were twelve there. But did there seem to be any kind of
difference in academic preparedness between—
PC: None that I was aware of.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I mean, you know, having lived through Greensboro and the southern schools with my own
children, I'm much more aware of education and its strengths and weaknesses.
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MF: Yeah.
PC: You know, now I think our kids have a—it's pretty bad—bad public education.
MF: Yeah. Yeah, but there are no easy answers either.
PC: Yeah. You know, kids who went through a prep school education or something, wouldn't
have come to UNCG.
MF: Right.
PC: But I sure didn't notice. It’s just more native intelligence. There were just kids who were
really sharp, you know.
MF: Yeah.
PC: But now UNCG has evolved, so that it's now—having just had two daughters there in
school, I have a daughter who will be a senior and a daughter who’s a sophomore in college
next year. One at Emory [University] at Atlanta [Georgia] and one at the College of
Charleston [South Carolina].
MF: Oh.
PC: UNCG is looked at as one of those crip places that basically anyone can get in.
MF: Yeah.
PC: That's heartbreaking to me because in 1964 it wasn't looked on with quite that attitude.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I had had a friend who was dean of something, not students, but he was a dean who is no
longer at UNCG, who gave me a good, long two-page written explanation of why. And I
think—I don't know if some of it is unfortunately somewhat tied to educating minorities
there. We have got to educate people from this state, and there have to be some places that
will admit high school graduates with qualifications that—I don't know—just because they
need—want—more people to be admitted, they continue to be lowered, or something. I don't
want to pretend to know their reasons, but I don't feel like the teaching, in my limited
experience, having been back and so on, suffered, and that it is, you know, producing weaker
people. But I feel like it is pretty loose about who can get in. And it's sort of, you know, you
like a little bit of snob appeal from where you've been.
MF: Yeah.
PC: You want some pride in where you've been and when it gets to be that easy, well, it's
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disappointing.
MF: Or at least be able to hear some who couldn't get in.
PC: [laughs] Yeah, right, a few who couldn't get in, right.
MF: Yeah. [laughs]
PC: I have actually heard a few that couldn't get in, but I don't know why. That must have been a
mistake. I don't know. [laughs]
MF: How was it different when you went back to school?
PC: To graduate school?
MF: Yeah.
PC: I was not—when you go to school part time—I didn't go full time—it's maybe not fair to
judge too much. I just—it's kind of lonely. You're doing your own thing, and nobody in
school is particularly interested, and you get any attention only if you demand it. And I had
some good courses, interesting. I liked what I took, but now I get letters from the School of
Human Environmental Sciences saying, "Oh come, we're going to have this reunion or
something." I have nobody to go reunion with. I have no feelings for that at all.
MF: Yeah.
PC: But, you know, that's too bad.
MF: Well, yeah, but it's kind of par for the course when you work and go to school.
PC: Yeah, yeah.
MF: Also, I'd like to back up just a little bit and ask you what Curry School [laboratory school on
campus] was like.
PC: Curry was nice. I couldn't—we moved to Greensboro when I was eleven, and I—Curry,
evidently, my brother and I could not go that year because of space allotment. They just
could allow so many kids. The next year we could, and I went to a public school called
Central, which is now Weaver Center. And Central was—I had never been with kids that
were like the kids at Central, and I found it a terrifying, scary experience. You know it was
just strange. But Curry, when I finally got there the next year, felt like this—it was
academically challenging. We kept—they did experimental things. I remember twelve of us
being pulled out for experimental math business, and they were kind of attuned to your
needs, and classes didn't seem to be too large. Such a small school, but seventh grade
through twelfth grade had cohesiveness in that big—big area. I remember somebody asked
me out when I was in eighth grade, and he was a senior. I remember being so terrified,
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making up reasons why I couldn't go because of the thought of going out with a guy that old
terrified me.
MF: [laughs]
PC: And I looked at it later and thought, "Shoot, why didn't you go?" But I wasn't—you know,
wasn't brave enough to do it.
MF: Yeah.
PC: It was a cross section of kids. There were faculty kids. You know, a lot of them came from
homes with really good minds and were very interesting. And neighborhood kids who were
much more blue collar, you know, different. They were not quite the same home atmosphere
as faculty kids.
MF: Yeah. What about—I don't know how active you've been with the Alumni Association or if
you're aware of the big controversy that was going on between [Chancellor William E.]
Moran and the alumni.
PC: Yeah, I'm certainly not articulate on it, but I'm certainly aware of it.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I was pretty supportive of Moran's attitude.
MF: Yeah.
PC: It seemed like a lot of to do about nothing.
MF: Yeah.
PC: From my understanding, what he was implementing or changing was standard operating
procedure on many and most campuses, and it was just a better way to do it and people can't
stand change.
MF: Yeah.
PC: That took away a lot of autonomy from that group, and I understand that people did resent it,
and it felt rough, I'm sure, but I don't think it was inappropriate.
MF: Yeah. What about Moran's push for some of the physical building on campus? Well, I mean,
the obvious intent being to build a bigger—to move towards a bigger school. And I guess—
one of the specific things that seems a little controversial—there are very few people who
don't fall in one extreme or the other—is his push to move to [National Collegiate Athletic
Association] Division I athletics. I wonder what your thoughts are.
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PC: My husband would have a good answer on that. All right, Division I athletics enables us to
offer scholarships. Is that the major—?
MF: Yeah, to offer scholarships and also to attract—. I think the other major idea here is that
there's a certain crowd of spectators that it would attract.
PC: And it would be income for the school.
MF: Right, because it would mean becoming part of the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference]
basketball thing.
PC: Well, I have—you know, this goes with my personality. I see every aspect of every question,
and somewhere in the middle I understand the lure of it, and I see the evils of it once it
happens. My husband went to Chapel Hill, and it's a wonderful academic community, but
sports participation and sports heroes and everything gets such a disproportionate amount of
awe and, you know, the world is really cockeyed and mixed up.
MF: Yeah. [laughs]
PC: In academic institutions—in a sense it's a shame to go that way too much.
MF: Yeah.
PC: But in my limited experience, there certainly are things going on at some good, respected
schools—and some of this I'm sure of is not rumor—where kids who are at schools that are
not schools eligible to be giving financial aid, are giving financial aid to their athletes.
There's no question.
MF: Yeah, sure.
PC: There's no question. And, you know, I think it's better to do it straightforwardly, you know,
and above board, than to do it otherwise.
MF: Yeah, it's easier controlled if it's above board.
PC: We buy Wake Forest [University] season tickets because we love ACC ball and don't want
to drive to Chapel Hill. It's too far.
MF: Yeah.
PC: I mean it's hard to drive back from Chapel Hill starting at 11:30 at night on a weekday.
MF: Oh yeah.
PC: And that's what it is. We like basketball, so we go to Wake Forest, and it's easy. It's quick.
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MF: Yeah. It's just right down the road.
PC: And also you can give a minimal donation to Wake Forest and be eligible for good tickets.
You have to give a very large donation to Chapel Hill, and you still sit in the ceiling. We had
tickets there for a couple of years.
MF: Oh yeah, those are prime—saved for the big donators, yeah.
PC: Yeah.
MF: Same with Duke [University].
PC: Yeah, oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
MF: I think you have to be in the Iron Duke Club to even get your name on the list. I'm not
positive. I could be wrong, but I've heard that. I think the Iron Duke Club is like some major,
I don't know a number, figure, but something substantial.
PC: Well, all of that—you know, we do live in a world where money speaks, and it's too bad. My
father-in-law is a Golden Hokie at VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University],
which is, you know, they dust off his seat and help him sit down [laughs] every time he
comes in.
MF: Yeah.
PC: Unfortunately, that's not a school that I care about seeing their athletics. I wish it was.
MF: Yeah.
PC: No, we love Carolina [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] basketball. We love
Duke too. I mean, I'm so proud of Duke, and I'd love one of my kids to get in Duke. [laughs]
Hasn't happened yet. I have one left. Maybe he'll get in Duke. But I lost my train of
though—it just took off. Whatever I was going to say, it just took off. Never mind. I can't get
it back. I do that when I'm doing public speaking sometimes too. It's not good.
MF: Yeah, well you learn ways to camouflage it, you know.
PC: Start singing or something.
MF: Well, I had to give a lot of presentations when I was working at the prison, and you would
learn to just go on to something else, and it's better to let them think that you jump around
than that you forget what you were going to say, yeah. And so, I just—
PC: I should not be so honest.
MF: I just go on to something else. You can, you can get pretty good at it and make it sound like
you're just drifting on to something else. What do you see for the future of UNCG?
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PC: What do I see for the future?
MF: Kind of a vague, general question.
PC: Yeah. Goodness. You know, I don't like that the world is as political as it is. But I see that
through this direction in athletics there could become a UNCG following and enthusiasm
and financial support base and so on that will enable the school to fully develop in better
ways than it could without it.
MF: Yeah.
PC: So, even that in that sense, I think that's good. I'd like to see it be kind of a little more
demanding as far as academic entrance and so on.
MF: I think it's starting to.
PC: You do?
MF: Well, I don't know that, you know, firsthand, but I've heard they're becoming more selective
with applicants, and that there's actually an SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] cut-off now. And
so—
PC: There actually wasn't before? [laughs] Really?
MF: Yeah, I believe there was no cut-off for quite some time with the SAT. But, I mean, you
know, this is all stuff I've heard second hand, so it's not verified. But those are the type things
that I've heard, and I don't know how much trust to put in hearsay. I don't know. Is there
anything you can think of that I've left out? You'll think of something tonight.
PC: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure there is, but—
MF: But you can't think of it.
PC: Yeah. I don't know what exactly is important in this. I wonder if anybody will read this after
all your work. Do you think people will?
MF: [laughs]
PC: What a terrible question.
MF: I'm not sure. I know that there is at least one student who has used some of these interviews
for a pretty major paper, so—and I think Dr. [Allen W.] Trelease at the history department is
going to do something. I'm not quite sure what. I haven't talked to him about it.
PC: You know, when I think of UNCG, it's so colored by my childhood involvement with it, and
21
the fact that, you know, the psych department is where my house was or the parking lot, I
guess.
MF: Yeah.
PC: And it's wiping out my history. [laughs]
MF: That's quite all right.
PC: I really don't know, and, you know, unless you have specific things that you—or you just
have things I didn't get into enough that you—
MF: No, I think —I just like to leave that open in case there's something someone was dying to
say.
PC: There's probably some major thing that happened that I have—I do remember that I'm—
nobody ever got caught decorating that McIver statue, but I got caught.
MF: Oh really?
PC: Yeah, man, everybody got away with it, and I was just such a straight student that the night
that I was up there rolling toilet paper all over that statue the police came, of course.
MF: I think it was shortly after that that they got the rock that's there now, to try and keep people
from painting the statue.
PC: I didn't paint it. I was not defacing it. It was all very temporary what I was doing to that
statue.
MF: Yeah. It's getting repaired right now.
PC: We used to—also when I was a child—climb over, you know, the demonstration nursery
that's on the corner of McIver and whatever that street is that runs [sic] the college?
MF: Yeah.
PC: We would climb over that fence and play in the nursery. It was wonderful fun, but, boy,
those campus cops—the campus cops were our primary enemies when I was little because
that was our play yard, and we weren't supposed to touch it. It was interesting.
MF: Yeah. [laughs] Thank you.
PC: Sure. Yeah. And good luck to you.
[End of Interview]