Oral history interview with Roger F. Davis, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Roger F. Davis
INTERVIWER: Anne R. Phillips
DATE: March 19, 1990
[Begin Side A]
AR: Why don't you introduce yourself?
RD: This is Roger Davis; I'm director of purchasing at [The] University at North Carolina, [at]
Greensboro. I'm being interviewed by Anne Richards [Phillips] to bring up some
reminiscing and some memories from my almost thirty years at the University.
[tape interruption]
AR: What made you first decide to come here? How'd you get to Greensboro?
RD: Well, I grew up in Archdale in Randolph County [North Carolina], and graduated from
High Point College in ’57. And I was a salesman for about eight years, and I've been a
schoolteacher—a seventh grade schoolteacher—for one year. And I was looking for a job
that was kind of between a traveling and selling and school teaching, and I did not want
to be transferred and moved around so much. I wanted to stay in this area. So I came here
to the university.
I might add that I did not know that the university had a personnel department and
that sort of thing. When I was in college, the dean was the top dog. And in this case I
wrote Dean Mereb Mossman, and ’course she only hired the faculty, so she processed my
application upstairs to the business manager. And the business manager at that time was
Mr. Henry Ferguson. He'd taken the place of a Mr. [Wendell] Murray, who'd died of a
heart attack. And he had brought with him from [The University of North Carolina at]
Chapel Hill a man by the name of Albert Wilkinson, and he was assistant business
manager. They had a secretary—Mrs. Virginia Simpson—who had been in essence the
personnel department. And she was in the physical plant area, and she moved up to the
business affairs office. So they hired me on July 1, 1964. And I was one of the few men
on the staff at that time. There were teachers—men teachers—and men administrators,
but very few men clerks and lower echelons of employment. I started out at the university
at a very low salary of $5,400. [laughs]
AR: This was 1964?
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RD: This was 1964.
AR: Any benefits?
RD: Ah yes, we had quite a few benefits—about the same as we have now. Except that to be
vested, it was a lot longer than it is now, and we did not have all the disability insurance
and that sort of thing. But that was one of the things that attracted me to the university is
the state employee retirement benefits and also being around academic people and
students. I always thought that was fascinating type of work.
AR: What's good or bad about being around academic people?
RD: Well, that's hard to answer because academic people are different. They're different from
people I've called on as a salesman, obviously, and they're different from students when
I've taught school. I think it's a happy medium between the business world and the public
school system. I have enjoyed working with faculty. They know what they want. And
sometimes in the early years I've had the ladies say they never had any trouble getting
what they wanted until us men came here. Now it's more women than there are men, so
it's reversed back to more women than men now than it used to be. But I've enjoyed it,
and there's people like Dr. [Richard] Bardolph in the history department who's renowned.
One of the first jobs I had here was starting to buy land and houses for the university.
I didn't actually do the actual negotiating; there was a department in Raleigh [state
capital] that did that. But we built a building—forgot the first one now—but it was, I
believe, an addition to Elliott University Center. And later we built an addition onto the
McIver Building.
AR: Oh, you did?
RD: Yes.
AR: Which way? Which way did it go?
RD: Well, the first part of the McIver Building had been there since about 1960, and they'd
torn down the old original McIver [Memorial] Building that they'd built [in 1908]. I
suppose back around the turn of the century. So we added an addition to McIver and tore
down what we call "the old laundry." The laundry had been down on the corner of
Walker Avenue in front of the old addition to the Home Ec[onomics] Building, Stone
Building. And they'd used it for Channel 4 for many, many years—UNC-Chapel Hill
[television] station. Then they moved all those back to Chapel Hill, and we tore the
building down and put—where the art gallery is now—the Weatherspoon Art Gallery.
AR: About what year was that?
RD: That was about 1966-67.
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AR: Well, when you did most of your work, was someone suggesting, you know, what you
should do next? Or did you help on the planning, you know, and procurement of land
and houses?
RD: Well, of course, the trustees decide when they're going to build a new building—how it
will be funded and so forth. Then it becomes a business office—the vice chancellor of
business affairs decides what we'll do. Then have committees to pick a site. Once they
pick a site, then the state steps in and makes offers to the homeowners. Where the
Graham Building is now there were about thirty-five houses in that area. And there's a
little Gladwyne Court that was where the new art building is now. And there were about
six or eight houses there. So I would go out and talk to the homeowners and make the
initial contact and make the initial offer. Then if they were not satisfied with that, we
would have an appraiser come in and make an official appraisal. And then someone from
Raleigh would come up and make the actual transfer of property.
AR: Who lived in those houses, say, where the art gallery is now?
RD: Well, they were individual houses, just like those up and down Spring Garden Street.
Here on Highland Avenue across from my present office there were a couple houses
owned by Dr. [Robert] Watson [professor] in the English department was one of them
and Dr. [Elizabeth] Carriker [class of 1964, MEd 1970] was another, even a couple black
houses down in the middle of the block that no one even knew was there. We tore all
those buildings down. And we had one house that stayed out in the middle of the street
for many, many weeks because it was mired up in the mud. And one morning I came in,
and the bulldozer was going to push it over. And when the bulldozer hit the side of the
house—it was during the hippie generation [youth movement in the United States during
the mid-1960s], and several hippies had been camping out inside in this abandoned
house. So when they looked up and saw the blade of the bulldozer coming through the
side of their bedroom wall, so to speak, they took off running down the railroad tracks,
and we never saw them anymore.
AR: That must have been a sight.
RD: It was.
AR: Well, what about the hippies? I mean, I've heard about Tate Street. What was going on in
the sixties—well, the early-to mid-sixties, about the time you got here?
RD: When I first came here in July of ’64, President [Lyndon B.] Johnson [36th president of
the United States] was running for his first elected term after serving with [John F.]
Kennedy [35th president of the United States]—and after he was assassinated, becoming
president. And he came in on a railroad car where the campus supply store is now, and he
was supposed to make a speech. But it happened that he had to get off the train in
Danville [Virginia] and go back to Washington [DC], and Lady Bird [wife, given name
“Claudia”] came on. There was a siding that we put the train on, and she spoke from the
back of the train, much like Harry Truman [33rd president of the United States] in the `48
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election. So that was exciting.
AR: Did you hear her?
RD: Yes, I did. Me [sic] and Mr. Wilkinson were the ones who had to make the arrangements
for backing the train in. Quite exciting.
AR: Did that take a lot of, you know, Secret Service, a lot of coordination here?
RD: It did. Special telephones so that they could always be in touch with Washington. Later
when the hippies really got going, I think we were very fortunate to have Dr. James
Ferguson as chancellor. Dr. Otis Singletary was picked by President Johnson to work on
some of the poverty programs, so he left the campus for a couple three years and Dr.
Ferguson became the acting chancellor. And then when he came back for about six
months or so, then he got another job and went back to the University of Kentucky, and
Dr. Ferguson became the actual chancellor in the late sixties. He was a very kind person,
very empathetic person, and had a good way with students. And the hippies would wake
him up at two or three o'clock in the morning, and he would come out on the balcony of
his bedroom in his bathrobe and calm the situation down.
Sometimes—all the administrative offices were in the old Foust Building at that
time, and many of us who worked on the second floor or in the building would have to
step over the hippies in the reception area of the Foust Building because they would be
camped out all night long. I remember one time they acted like they wanted to be violent,
so they came in to get Mr. Henry Ferguson, the business manager, later vice chancellor
for business affairs. We started down the second floor hallway, with the chief of police
and Mr. Wilkinson on one side and me on the other, and we were trying to get him down
the fire escape and out to a car and away from campus because they were chanting that
they wanted to get him and that sort of thing. But it was not as dangerous as it appeared
to be.
AR: I see. Maybe a little bit unsettling.
RD: Unsettling, different. Most of the people in this section had never been used to any kind
of street demonstrations and that sort of thing.
AR: What did they want? What were their demands?
RD: Well, I don't remember any specific things. I think they were more or less parroting the
national symbols and national people. If Kent State [University, Kent, Ohio, known for
May 4, 1970 shootings by Ohio National Guard where four students died], for instance,
had an uprising against something, they would storm the administration building and that
sort of thing. They obviously wanted more say-so in the government of the university.
And I think Dr. Ferguson, being the type of man he was, kept a lot of potentially
dangerous situations calmed down, so that they did not turn into catastrophes.
AR: How did he do that? These were students here, the hippies, those who were
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demonstrating.
RD: Right. Most of them were students; there were a few outsiders.
AR: What did he do?
RD: He would just talk to them and have them come in, and, if you ever knew him, he was
kind of like everybody's favorite grandfather. He was very brilliant and not a pushover by
any means. He was a brilliant man. He had a calming effect on anybody he talked to—
"Come on in, and let's have a cup of coffee; let's talk about it."—whatever your problem
was or whatever your stature was on the campus hierarchy or the students. I think he kept
the campus politics and campus unrest calmed down so that we did not have a Kent State
or any violent fatal accidents.
AR: What was the faculty doing in those days? How were they reacting? Were they aware he
was sort of running interference for them?
RD: Well, I think in some cases the faculty were on the students' side, and in some cases—the
older ones who did not understand why their students were doing this—just thought it
was a bunch of problems that would go away. I, frankly. for one thought it was funny.
You know, you normally don't go to work and step over people lying [sic] on the floor
prostrate. And so it was kind of a joke, but it very easily could have turned into
something like Kent State where people were killed.
AR: That was a different time. So that sort of settled down, I guess, in the sixties. But that was
after Dr. [Edward Kidder] Graham [Jr.], of course, was here. Did you know much about
the Graham controversy?
RD: No, that was before my time. I really did not know. I had been a salesman and traveler so
I wasn't even in the city at that time, so I really didn't know much about it.
AR: Yeah, but Dr. Ferguson sort of calmed things down.
RD: He calmed things down, yes.
AR: What about students in the sixties? Now that was just after men were admitted here.
What was that mood on campus when men—? Who decided the men were going to come
here to school?
RD: I'm not sure who decided. At that time I came here—July 1 of ’64—was I think,
technically, the legislature had admitted men to the campus either in July of ’63 or July
of ’64; I don't remember which. But students actually came on campus as students
effective July 1 of ’64. Of course, we had no bathrooms for the boys. It had always been
girls' school. We'd never had sports and the other things that the boys would be interested
in. So the first men that came here frequently were out of place because there was no
facilities here for them because it had been a predominantly women's college. I believe
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during the Second World War there were some men that came here on temporary
assignment from the government, but, as such, they were not students.
AR: Do you think the women students accepted the men, or did they sort of resent them and
not want them here?
RD: I think there was a certain element of the campus that had taken great pride in being a
women's college. Years ago, when I lived in this general area, the women went to WC
[Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina] and the men went to Chapel Hill.
And the women, I think, resented, in some respects, progress taking men on campus. I
think they really preferred to be a women's college because they did take pride in it—
they wore coats with symbols on it and everything. And when you had a coed school, it
took something away from it. It was a very prestigious school for women.
AR: Was that the feeling here?
RD: Yes, yes. I remember when I was growing up in Randolph County, I had a fifth grade
teacher who graduated here or came here in 1899. And she had one year of college here
at the university, and she never married, and she never went on to further education. But
she was one of the best teachers I'd ever had. And I think it spoke well of Dr. [Charles
Duncan] McIver [first president and founder of the college] at that time—trying to
educate women and send them back out into rural areas. Even though they were not
college graduates, they were very, very educated people and became excellent teachers.
AR: They took the learning seriously?
RD: They took it very seriously. And this tradition went on into the twenties and thirties and
the forties and the fifties.
AR: Well, what about women who were teaching in, you know, high schools and, say, here,
who were not married? Was it the general rule to have women who were not married to
be faculty members?
RD: I don't think so. I don't think there was any policy or effort made to that. When I came
here in the sixties, just about all the administrators were women and a good portion of
them not married. But I don't think that was by design. I just think that historically
women had been teachers, and these teachers—In fact, Miss [Mereb] Mossman
[sociology and anthropology faculty, dean of instruction, dean of the college, dean of
faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs] had been raised in China and [was] a
sociologist in China, and she was not married. Then she came to the United States and
back to UNCG. So we had some wonderful lady administrators.
AR: What was Miss Mossman like?
RD: Well, she scared me to death because she was about eighty pounds of wit and about five
feet two [inches tall], and she'd had polio as a child so she walked with a crutch. She's
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still living. She lives here in Greensboro. And she's one of the smartest, sharpest-minded
persons I've met. She was empathetic. She could be a tough administrator; she could be a
lovely lady. And I think that the intestinal fortitude of this lady can be illustrated with a
story. She drove, in the mid-sixties, a big old Chrysler, and, because of her infirmity, she
had a special spot in front of Foust Building. And one day at five o'clock [pm] we were
all leaving work, and she'd gone out, gotten in her car, opened the door to back up and
fell out. And the Chrysler ran over her. It happened to run over her bad leg that she'd had
from polio. And she lay there; we were all standing around, and we were crying—big
men—didn't know what to do and what not to do. She was laying [sic] there obviously in
pain, and didn't shed a tear.
AR: You mean under the car wheel?
RD: Under the car.
AR: Well, how did people get the car off her?
RD: It ran over her and stopped. So she was in the hospital for a while, and she came back and
they gave her a room in the dormitory. And me [sic] and others would take work down to
her in the dormitories, and she kept right on as a good administrator.
AR: And she wasn't crying?
RD: Tough lady, tough lady.
AR: Sounds very tough.
RD: And a very brilliant lady. She had quite a career before she came here.
AR: Why was she attracted to Woman's College, do you reckon, in the first place?
RD: I don't remember. I know that—I believe her parents were missionaries to China, and she
and her sister or maybe her family were born there. And I assume she came to the United
States for an education in the twenties and then went back to China. And apparently
because of the war or something, she came back to the United States. I'm guessing at all
that; I don't really know. But she anyway came back here, I think, in the early fifties. And
was first dean of the college, then dean of the faculty and then vice chancellor for
academic affairs. She retired, I believe, in 1975.
AR: I've never heard the story about the car running over her. That was such a bad accident.
RD: Well, she was very stoic, and, you know, I remember George Hamer at that time had just
taken the place of Mr. Phillips, Charlie Phillips who had been vice chancellor for
development since way back in the Depression, 1932. And he later became a state
representative, but he came out and he was like the rest of us; we didn't know what to do.
She was lying under the car, and Chryslers in those days was a big heavy car, and she
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was a little bitty woman. But she was stoic.
AR: So she—I was going to say she ruled—she managed well and wisely and well and fairly,
and she passed your application on to the proper people. [laughs]
RD: I told her in later years, I said, I wanted to be with the university, and I was slightly
ignorant. I didn't know they had a personnel department and a facility for going through
being hired. I said, “I simply sent it to you.” I said, “You could have thrown it in the
trashcan.” I said, “You didn't; you sent it upstairs—at that time the business affairs office,
and I was hired.” And I've always been very appreciative of the fact that she was just [a]
total stranger; she didn't throw it in the trashcan; she sent it upstairs.
AR: I guess—I mean, that was a miracle, a coincidence or miracle, that she took action. So
when you came here, what were some of the main changes in the grounds—in the
buildings and grounds, purchasing? What were some of the main jobs that you saw
needed to be done, first five years, the first ten years?
RD: Well, when I first came here, as I said earlier, most of the administrators were women,
and they were small offices. Miss Kathleen Hawkins—Mrs. Kathleen [Pettit] Hawkins
[class of 1923]—was student aid director since back in the twenties, and her entire office
consisted of one desk and a student. And she had what we call a shoebox. She had a few
cards in that shoebox, and she would call various people to give funds to people who
needed to go to school and couldn't pay a tuition. Today we have an office. It covers two
floors and scores of people. The accounting department was four ladies, and the director
of accounting was a man who taught in the morning in the business department and came
over and was director of accounting in the afternoon. My point is, every office around
campus was very, very small—sometimes one person or two or three people. It was not
like it is today where you have scores of people working in any given area.
AR: Which was better, then or now?
RD: Well, it's hard to say because we only had three or four thousand students, and you could
handle it much easier. From the standpoint of a family and good working relationships, it
was much better then than it is now. We knew who got married, who didn't, who died,
who had babies, who went on vacation, whatever. And it was really very sympathetic and
empathetic people because we were small. We could understand each other's problems
and happiness. As we got older and bigger, it kind of got into more businesslike and less
personal. So I resent that—I hate that it's necessary for growth, I'm sure.
AR: It is a change. We look around and see computers and—
RD: Right.
AR: —and not shoeboxes full of cards.
RD: Right. That's exactly right.
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AR: That a big difference, so—. [laughs] Well, what about the town? What was the feeling in
Greensboro—in the town—about Woman's College? What sort of relationship between
the town and the college?
RD: Well, from my personal knowledge, I thought the town was not appreciative of the
campus being here. But when you get into meetings with people who grew up in
Greensboro in the twenties and thirties and forties, they always referred to it as "the
college." "The college" this, "the college" that. And they were very proud of the college.
As far as town and gown, I think there was a separation there, but I think most people
respected the college very highly. Aycock Auditorium, at one time, was one of the
biggest auditoriums in the Southeast. It brought a lot of cultural events here that—
Greensboro did not have a coliseum, and they did not have anything except tobacco
warehouses to have a group of people. So it was kind of a cultural center. In that sense I
think they supported it. In a financial sense, I don't think they did.
AR: Do you think Greensboro thought of this, "Well, all right, just let the state legislature take
care of it, or it's part of Chapel Hill, or [North Carolina] State [University], and let them
run it?"
RD: I think that was the prevailing thought, and I know from when I was growing up that, like
I said earlier, the men went to Chapel Hill and the women went to WC. The women
became schoolteachers and mothers. The men became governors and lawyers and
businessmen, and so whatever money they made in private business went back to UNC-Chapel
Hill. Whatever was left over came to their wives' school at WC. So we got the
short end of the tail.
AR: She wasn't quite taking it out of the egg money, but maybe one step removed—maybe the
farm women, not town women. [both laugh] What about the women administrators? I’m
sort of intrigued about that—who they were, how did they—managed and coped and ran
the college?
RD: Well, I think they ran it better than most of us men now, to be honest with you. And the
reason I say that is they were dedicated people. In many cases, they were not married, so
they could give their whole life to the college, and they did it—morning, noon and night.
Most men would not put up with working for low pay and that long of hours. I think
McIver said something about "Educate a woman and you educate the family," or
something to that effect. I think that was true of the women administrators here. They
gave their whole life to the university, and it was a very, very close knit group of people,
who were dedicated, personal in their teachings.
AR: And the students and faculty I suppose picked up on that?
RD: I think so. I had some friends from high school days who came here in early fifties, and
some of them teach at colleges now. And they say that college was very cloistered and
very homey and very secure and very learned, and it was. In fact, I think that was part of
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our problem in later years. Most of the people here, including myself, never went on the
other side of the mountain to see what somebody was doing in computers or new
methods and so forth. We were kind of incestuous in that sense, and yet it was a good
relationship. But progress and time moved on, and we needed to move with it, and so
many of us, out of ignorance, didn't keep up with the latest things.
AR: But the systems you had were working?
RD: They worked. They worked, and they worked fine, much better than they do now.
AR: Because it was small enough.
RD: It was small enough.
AR: The staff knew each other and the administration.
RD: Right. Right. You pick up the phone, and when you’d call someone, they knew you, and
you knew them. You'd say "Hi, how's your wife, how's the kids?" whatever. And you got
the answers. Today you go through committees, and you go through cloisters of layers of
people—all of which are necessary—and computers, and it was more direct then, more
personal.
AR: And maybe just more efficient, really.
RD: In some respects, yes it was.
AR: But if you say size makes a difference, and change makes a difference—
[recording paused]
AR: So I want to ask you a little bit about when black students came to the university. What
was—that was also in the sixties. What was it like on campus? What sort of feeling
prevailed?
RD: Well, I think the men caused more of a stir—when the men came—than the blacks did
when they came. I don't remember any overt racism here as far as the blacks are
concerned. To my knowledge at least, it wasn't. It was probably the—’72-’73 before we
started having black secretaries. We had two or three in our business affairs office that
were very efficient. And I don't think there was any problem there. I think from the black
perspective there was not enough facilities and programs for them—just as there weren't
for the boys when the boys came here. The college was set up and geared toward women,
and so for the men to come in, we wouldn't have a bathroom. We didn't have facilities for
men, we didn't have football. The blacks came in; there was Neo-Black Society [student
organization that focuses on making university appreciative of African-American culture]
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for a while. And they didn't have a choir, for instance. And they didn't have the
organizations that they could join and be black and be part of the black society.
AR: When we think of the campus here—white young women and then some white men, and
maybe a lot of the students were from rural areas, we think—maybe they were more
conservative than in the city. Did that make the difference? That the student body
accepting—
RD: Well, I think it did. I grew up in the South, and I grew up in the country. And many times
in the country, blacks and whites—even forty, fifty years ago—they worked together, ate
together, slept together in an area. It was only when they went into town or went
somewhere else that they'd become separated. I think there was a big difference between
the rural black and the rural white. They were closer than most people thought. And they
had less problems communicating than other people thought. If you went into the ghetto
in New York City or Chicago or London or anywhere else, I'm sure that a black-white
situation there would be a standoff because they don't understand each other.
AR: And hadn't worked together?
RD: That's right. But on the farm if you're priming tobacco or choppin' cotton or corn or
whatever—it's just another body doing the work.
AR: Everybody's working to the end of the row.
RD: End of the row. That's right.
AR: And you're working for lunchtime and you're working for a break, but you're working to
get the job done together. Makes a difference. Well, when the demonstrations happened,
say, at Woolworth's [nonviolent protest against racial segregation which led company to
reverse its policy], did any of the Woman's College students go there to participate?
RD: I was travelling at the time, and I was dating a girl here in Greensboro who happened to
be working at [Moses H.] Cone [Memorial] Hospital. I didn't know of any personal
students there. Since then I have read that there were several women from UNCG [The
University of North Carolina at Greensboro] went downtown on the second or third day
and subsequent weeks and gave them support. But it was mostly Bennett [College] and
those A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College] students who
demonstrated, and there were some whites, and some white students from Greensboro
and Guilford College, in particular, and UNCG.
AR: What did the administration think when Woman's College students went downtown? Did
they think it was good or bad?
RD: Well, time I came in ’64, most of that had already settled down after President Kennedy's
assassination [November 22, 1963] and the sit-ins in the early sixties, February of ’60. I
don't know what the official question was. I was on a plane one time, and this question
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was brought up, "Who do you work for?" And I tell them. They said, "Oh yes, I work for
a university, and you haven't had the problems, even though you're in the South, that
some of the other places have—Kent State for instance." And the lady was a dean, and
she said, "I know you're a dean." And she was talking about the dean of men, the dean of
women, the dean of the faculty, and Chancellor Ferguson. And she made the point that I
just made earlier. We did not have rabble rouser administrators. We had people who were
able to listen to the black side of the question and the white side of the question and the
men's side of the question and the women's side of the question. And this lady made the
comment, she said, "I think UNCG would have had a much rougher time if they'd had a
hard-nosed George Wallace [Alabama governor with pro-segregation attitude, ran for
President of the United States four times] or hard-nosed white person in power at the
time. But because of the chancellors and the deans, men or women, were empathetic
people and willing to listen, they kept the confrontation from blowing up."
AR: That is interesting. What about—I've heard about a Black Panther [Party, African-
American revolutionary leftist organization] demonstration at the dining hall, perhaps it
was cafeteria workers. Was that before you got here or after?
RD: I can't remember any one instance. We did have—ARA [food service company] took
over the dining hall the day I came to work here—July 1 of ’64. Before that we had our
own employees and so forth. There were some employees who were still state employees
working for ARA, and it may have been that there were some problems and maybe black
students took up for them. I just don't remember that part of it.
AR: I heard something about that. Well, let's see, if you came in the sixties, what other
buildings did you all plan for, say, in the seventies and the eighties?
RD: Well, we built about thirteen buildings in thirteen years—either built them or renovated
them. As the hippie generation came in, we quit building dormitories. Our last dormitory
was built in ’63, and I came in ’64. We added an addition to Elliott University Center.
We added the Taylor Theatre, we added the addition to McIver Building, and the old
Weatherspoon Gallery.
Finally we built Phillips-Hawkins [dormitory], and it was named after Charlie
Phillips, who I mentioned earlier who was director of development and Kathleen
Hawkins, who was the student aid director. That was the last dormitory that we had built,
and it was built so women were on one side and men on the other because that was the
custom at that particular time.
We renovated quite a few buildings. The Curry Building in the early eighties was
gutted, and we built the Ferguson Building which is beside of it and we built the Graham
Building in ’69 or ’70, in that area. We built the [Moore] Nursing School Building in
1969. We moved out of the Petty Science Building, the old science building, and moved
into the present science building. It was in three parts, and they gave out of money so
they had to stop, and so they put biology and a couple other people in there. Only later
did they get the money to put the third stage on the Psychology Building.
One of the biggest jobs was the ten-story library. It was quite a job—moving over a
million books from the old Jackson Library over to the new ten-story addition. But the
13
director was able to—we bought special little book carts and they'd take off a book cart
and put it in the cart and push it through to the new building, take it up on the elevator.
Margaret Moore [class of 1935, nurse, nurse educator] and I worked very closely on
that nursing building. And I remember one night about two o'clock in the morning—must
have been ’69 because I had a new baby—she was two weeks old—and at three o'clock
in the morning, the phone rang. And Margaret Moore wanted to know something about
some furniture. And I said, "Margaret, do you realize it's three o'clock in the morning?
You just woke up my two-week old baby." And she apologized profusely for the rest of
her life, and she said, "I was sitting here at my table going over the blueprints, and it
didn't dawn on me that it was three o'clock in the morning." And I think that goes back to
what I said earlier about the people who were working night and day and dedicated. She
was not married, and she was very instrumental—that's why her name's on the building.
And Eloise Lewis was [founding] dean, and she gave untold hours to the nursing
building. So we have built quite a few buildings around here.
AR: Those—all of those stories, especially the two o'clock in the morning with the young
baby—that's amazing. What about—going back to the library and moving all that, how
did you physically move it? Did you hire people or did you get students?
RD: Yes, the director at that time was, Stan [?], forgot his last name now—Stan somebody,
and he hired a bunch of students and a lot of workers—temporary people—and we
bought special little carts. And so he could take a row of books off of the old shelf and
put it on the cart, roll it into the floor, and he had different people on different floors, so
that they got up to the sixth floor and he would say, go down this way and so forth, and it
would come off the same way and go back on the same way. The funny thing about it—
and we were always talking about low bid when we buy things through purchasing, and
that's what the state says we have to do—the valve broke about a year later on a Sunday
and threw hot steam through ten floors of the building. And as the hot steam went out
into all the stacks of books, the bookcases expanded and dumped all the books right out
onto the floor. So it was a joke for many, many years that that twenty-five dollar valve
that was low bid should have been a more expensive valve, and we wouldn't have had
that
problem. But that went on for years. The carpet curled up on the floor; the books fell off
the bookcases. But as you look at it now, it's a very nice building and one of the biggest
nicest things that we've built on this campus—the heart of any campus—is the library.
And we have a very good one. We were fortunate to have a lot of good directors. Stan
Hicks was his name. He was assistant director of the library.
AR: That's quite a story, especially about the valve and the low bid. Never knew that was
going on. Was that after Dr. [William E.] Moran [chancellor] came here?
RD: It was before. We moved into—let's see, we moved into the Mossman Administration
Building in 1975 and, if I'm not mistaken, the Jackson Library was ’76 or ’77—
somewhere in there, and Dr. Moran did not come until ’79. Our previous director, who's
still living, is Dr. Charles Adams. He was there just before we moved into the new
building. I think Dr. [James] Thompson, who just recently resigned, was the new director
14
at the time we moved into the new building. It was a humongous job to move a million
books.
AR: Yeah, tremendous.
[extended track interruption]
AR: —physical plant, which is just west of us, and the smokestack—it seems almost an
unusual construction. Why the tower and the tile roof?
RD: Well, if you look at that building—I'm making this up, I'm not sure I'm historically
correct—but in the twenties, they had a lot of art deco type things and Chinese-looking
tiles, this sort of thing, and I've seen that building was built in the twenties. And that's
why you see that facade of tile and brick. It's much more elaborate than you'd have today.
AR: Well, yes, for a physical plant it’s the top. It's a really a very appealing building,
interesting with the roof—
RD: Well, it was interesting when I was buying my houses here that the ladies were always
mentioning the soot from the tower. So they switched from coal to oil, then they switched
from oil to natural gas. When they switched to natural gas, the smokestack quit giving off
the black smoke and soot. So the ladies were certainly happy when the university went
back to using natural gas instead of coal.
AR: That would make a difference. The smokestack is pretty high. Do you know how high
that is?
RD: No I don't. But when the weather's damp, it comes right back to the ground and settles all
over the houses and so forth.
AR: So how big an operation? What's it like to run a purchasing department division of the
university?
RD: Well, it's to me a very exciting job. I've enjoyed it. I'm ready to retire next year, and I'm
ready for that now. But over the years, to look back at the campus and to say, "I had a
part in that building, or I had a part in that carpet, or that desk or whatever,” I think is
important. The state of North Carolina has very restrictive rules in purchasing—much
more restrictive than most states. A lot of people don't like that. We have state contracts
and rules and regulations we have to follow. I don't even like them at times. But if you
look back over a span of twenty or thirty years, you'll see that North Carolina and the
university system, has, I think, got good service for their money. They've avoided
scandals and kickbacks and that type of thing that happens in many person functions at
large universities or large cities. And I think it's all because of the foresight of the state of
North Carolina. Our budget has to balance; we do not go in deficit every year. And we
15
must do certain things. And while we here in Greensboro may get a better price on a desk
or a car than we got on the state contract, those up in the mountains, in the very far west
and far east, did not have that competitive advantage. So, overall, I think it's best for the
state that we have centralized purchasing in Raleigh and these restrictive rules.
AR: So that is centralized.
RD: Yeah, we could do better here in this Piedmont area because we've got competition and
get better prices. But Western Carolina, East Carolina, those on—Elizabeth City State
[all universities]—those are the extremes of the state would have to take and pay
whatever the law would allow.
AR: What about low bids? Does this mean a valve, a twenty-five dollar valve, might be
defective and cause steam to spout all over? Does a low bidding mean you have not quite
as good a quality?
RD: Not necessarily; that's a misnomer. Let's say you specify that you want a Cadillac. If
someone bids a Model-T Ford, then obviously that's a cheaper price, but you do not have
to take the Model-T Ford just because it's a cheaper price. The key word is "low bid that
meets specs." So if you specified a good valve or you specified a Cadillac, all we're
supposed to is find ten Cadillac dealers to give us a cheap price for it. But it does not
mean that you take less value or less quality because it's cheaper in dollars.
AR: I see. So you still—you have some control over what you're bidding on and buying.
RD: And the state has an awful lot of loopholes that are legal, and with permission and by
going through certain procedures, even the strict rules can be modified or exempt and
that sort of thing. So if you really have a good reason to want something that the state
first says you cannot have, if you go to the proper person and present your case and they
buy it, then they say, "Fine, we'll exempt the rule, and you can go ahead and do what you
want to." So it works out.
AR: When you say North Carolina has more restrictive rules, why is that?
RD: Well, it was the state personal contract division that was set up in 1932, middle of the
Depression, and one of the things is that they were very conservative Democrats. They
wanted to make sure that the few tax dollars they had were spent wisely. Over the years
in places like New York State and other areas are just millions and millions of dollars in
debt because they spend and spend and spend. Well, in the state of North Carolina, if you
get ten million dollars, you have to spend ten million; you can't go into deficit for fifteen
million or twenty million.
AR: [laughs] Looks like the federal government needs to take a few lessons.
RD: That's right. [laughing] So—but we do have a lot more restrictive persons and rules
coming out of Raleigh than a lot of states, South Carolina, for instance. If you're a state
16
agency down there, or at least a few years ago this was true, you could just about do
anything you wanted to. There were no rules, no centralized purchasing in Columbia,
[South Carolina] or anything like this. I think they've changed some of that since then.
But I kind of like the idea that we have some central control in Raleigh. There's a
movement in Chapel Hill and other places now to raise our statutory limit. If it's not on
contract and over five thousand dollars, we have to bid it through Raleigh. If it's under
five thousand, we can bid it from Greensboro. They're trying to raise that to fifteen or
twenty thousand, which I think is a good rule. But it took us thirteen years to get it raised
from twenty-five hundred to five thousand. So—but inflation took care of that.
AR: Five thousand would cover what, or fifteen thousand would cover what? What can you
buy for it?
RD: Not much. Not much. And that's true; that's why it needs to be raised from time to time. I
think originally in the thirties it was something like a hundred dollars. But you have to
remember that the average person made five hundred or a thousand dollars a year. So you
know, things change and inflation comes in. What I could buy a few years ago for a low
price is now three times that.
AR: So you cover purchasing of just—everything. Materials, furniture—
RD: Yes, mostly movable equipment. We do not buy books. The library buys their books. The
book stores here serve the students. But we buy furniture; we buy equipment and
supplies, services, typewriters, computers, elevator maintenance contracts, computer
maintenance contracts, desks, carpet, you know, just about everything.
AR: That's quite a lot of responsibility.
RD: Yes, and I've enjoyed it very much.
AR: How do you cope? How do you keep it all straight? How have [you] coped with not just
the paperwork, but with the people?
RD: Well, I think it's a matter of communication. I was a salesman, as I said earlier, for about
eight years before I became a purchasing agent. And I think everybody's job—whether
you're a teacher, a purchasing agent, or a salesman—you really are a salesman—
salesman in the sense that you have to communicate. If you don't communicate, then
you're in trouble whether you're a teacher or whether you're a purchasing agent. And
usually if I'm working with a person who has a research grant or something and he has to
have a special widget for that particular research grant that he's working on, his
experiment, it's foolish for me to tell him he has to have this because that's what my rules
say. I take it the other way around: Tell me what you need to do and I'll find the
loophole, or I'll find the rule that fits you.
And I think that we are here—and a lot of us forget it; I do at times—if we don't
serve the students, either through the teacher or through research or whatever, then we've
missed our calling because if the students are not here, none of us have a job. And after
17
all, if I buy a defective piece of equipment for a teaching tool or a research tool, then I’ve
met the letter of the law when I haven't accomplished what the professor was trying to
do. So I think it's a two-way street. Him saying, “Look, this is what I need; now you find
the best source to buy it from.” And that's a challenge at times. In earlier years, they
would have X dollars, and they'd come in and say, "Roger, buy us new tables and chairs
as many for X dollars as you can get." Very little thought was given to color or how
fancy it was, this sort of thing. We had so few dollars that we had to stretch them as far as
we could. Nowadays, the emphasis is on style and color and what we'd ideally like to
have.
AR: My guess is, though, is that the early chairs and tables were much better constructed than
maybe this fancier—
RD: In some cases, in some cases, because sometimes when you make them pretty, you don't
make [them] structurally sound. You've probably seen a lot of the old wooden tab and
arm desks. Those things are still being made, but very few people buy them. We've got
some on campus that are probably sixty or seventy years old. And they're written on and
they've been cut on, but they're serviceable. The newer desks that you buy now—if they
last ten or fifteen years, you're lucky because the plastic breaks. But they're pretty, they're
nice.
AR: The construction's different.
RD: It is different.
AR: So how many people here on your staff?
RD: We have five here in the office. We have two buyers and a receptionist and a secretary
and myself as director. And we divide it up, in most cases, by commodities or
departments.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
AR: —most of the furniture—
RD: Usually a buyer will learn how to handle printing or how to handle furniture better than
another will. We try to give it to the buyer whose instinct is for a certain type of
equipment. And if you do that over and over, you learn what you need to learn. I handle
most of the bids that go through Raleigh simply because—not that they can't do it as well
as I do—but because I know the people, and I've worked with them. My counterpart in
Raleigh is my age, and he and I have worked together for twenty-five years so that helps
grease the wheel, so to speak.
AR: Well, it does make a difference. It's going to be a tremendous loss when you're not sitting
18
at that desk doing this job. I know you have to think about it personally, but it's also
going to be a loss for the university.
RD: Well it's been true I never learned the art of politics. And I don't mean that in a bad sense,
I mean it in a good sense—facilitating people, communications—when I say politics. But
when my boss retired eight years ago, I didn't realize how much I picked up from him,
and I learned an awful lot from him. A man told me the other day, he said, "Roger, I don't
mind you coming down to Raleigh because we know that you're not going to put us out
on the spot; we're glad to help you." Now he says that because he's got experience
working with me, not because I'm great and wonderful, but simply because he's got
twenty years of working with me—history. And a new person may inadvertently put him
in a bad political light or say the wrong thing or not say enough or not send him complete
information or—but you know. It's just like your job or anybody else's job; you learn it
after thirty years.
AR: And it does make you different—interaction with, you know, with other people.
RD: Well, every time I've hired anybody in the last eight years to work in this office, I want
two things: somebody who can communicate with people and who works on their own
without being so closely supervised. I think if you hire good people, teach them what you
know, leave them alone, check on them occasionally but don't dot every “i” and cross
every “t,” and trust their judgment, then nine times out of ten, they'll be happier, you'll be
happier, and they'll govern themselves. So you don't have to stand over them.
AR: That's quite a skill. How did you learn it in your own life? Was there anything in your
background, your mother or your father's background, that helped you to be that sort of—
RD: Well, my mother died when I was a freshman in college, and my daddy died soon
afterwards, and we grew up in the country—there was three of us. And I remember my
dad coming to me when I was thirteen, and he said, "Well, now son,” he says,” long as
you earn your own money, you keep your nose clean, and you don't worry your mother,"
says, "I'll never really ask what time you come in or where you've been." He said, "The
minute you step over the fence and do any of those three things," he said, "I'll come down
on you.” And I think that's true. He put the responsibility on me; as long as you don't do
this, as long as you don't do that—and he drew some lines. And we followed them. And
he didn't have to be at the door every time I came in. And I try to do that with my own
children. And I think it's true of any human being relationship. If you're a salesman,
you've got a certain point and you sell your product, but you don't step over a fine line. If
you're a purchasing agent, you don't belittle the person you're buying from simply
because you, at that moment, are driving the wheels, so to speak. Because sooner or later
you're going to need him as bad as he needs you.
AR: So it's a matter of respect.
RD: It's a matter of respect, responsibility and communication.
19
AR: Sounds like your dad was very wise. What would you have done to tangle with your
mother? What would have gotten her upset?
RD: Well, I don't know. My mother was a very religious kind of person, and yet she was not a
narrow religious person. She believed in much the same as my father: "Here's the Bible,
here's the Ten Commandments, here's the rules of this family, now you follow them and
you won't have any problem with me. You break them, and I come down on you." And I
think she was much the same way; she'd put the blame on me so to speak. And I think
that ultimately is the answer.
AR: It must have been a loss. How did you cope with both their deaths?
RD: Well, I think because they did do a good job of raising kids. I had a nine-year-old sister,
and that was the hardest problem because she had to live with an aunt while I was in
college. But I think too many times as a parent and as boss, so to speak, we don't give our
people credit for being responsible. If you always open that door for somebody, they're
going to expect you to open the door. Let them learn the hard way, and I think it sticks.
AR: I think that's a good rule in parenting or teaching or in running a business. What was your
greatest joy here in all your time?
RD: Greatest joy at the university?
AR: And maybe your worst mistake. You can answer either one, or both of them.
RD: [laughs] Well, the biggest mistake that I remember making is I didn't check out a piece of
equipment. When we built the new addition of the art building, one of the professors
wanted to buy an art kiln. And I was young and inexperienced, and I just bought it
because it was in a catalog—it never dawned on me to check out the electricity
specifications with our physical plant. And the box came in; I opened it up, and suddenly
it was—I'm making this up—a 220, and we didn't have 220 electricity. And the man says
if we’d plugged it in, it would burn the building down. Well it scared me to death. But he
was trying to teach me a lesson—before you buy something you don't know what you're
buying, check with somebody that does. So from then on, I did check. [laughs]
AR: And your best times?
RD: I think the people I've worked with has [sic] been the best thing, especially up until the
last five or six years before we got so big. It was one big happy family, and we fussed
and fought and argued and everything else, but it was never any recrimination or
anything bad—it was just getting the job done. I miss the fact that we're so big. I wish we
were smaller. But that's impossible.
AR: Well, I hear you. You have to be pretty philosophical about it, and we have grown a lot
bigger.
20
[recording paused]
AR: It's been good to hear about. Any other comments about people, staff, materials, or the
state of the world, or what's happened at UNCG?
RD: Well, I think UNCG was so cloistered for so many years and so regional, most of our
graduates, I assume, came from the Piedmont or North Carolina, went back to be teachers
and doctors, and so forth. And they've done a tremendous job. Nowadays, I think we have
grown past the regional status. I think we're into reaching out with research, reaching out
with people who come from overseas, blacks, whites, male, female. We're getting more
humongous and monogamous, I guess, is the word. But we're sending our people out
farther into the country and internationally, and, I think, in a few more years, some of our
graduates will become governors or become president or whatever and make really
outstanding marks for the university. And the university will be proud that they were our
graduates. It's most like High Point College where I graduated—they were mostly
ministers and teachers, and they never had a great deal of money to give to their alma
mater. Now they're becoming much better because they have some graduates who have
made money, who've achieved certain political or business success. And they're glad to
share it with them. So I think that's part of growing. You grow but you reach out, and you
spread your wings, so to speak, and to fly to other areas. UNCG is going to be on par
with UNC-Chapel Hill or State or some of the others who are better known.
AR: You've helped make all that. I mean, the feeling I have about your work is that you
provided a steadiness, the people could count on you, and they knew what you were
about.
RD: Well, I hope so. That's what I try to do.
AR: You could count on them. I mean, you have rolled with the punches.
RD: Well, that's true, you have to. And I was lucky to have worked for some very, very fine
people here—Dr. James Ferguson, Mr. Henry Ferguson, Mr. Wilkinson, Dean Mossman,
and all the other people who came before me, so to speak. And they passed on, I think, a
job to me and an attitude to me that I couldn't have bought at any university. Practical
experience, practical association, walk-softly-carry-a-big-stick type of thing, you know,
get the job done. And I think the United States and I think the world's missing something
because we've gotten so yuppie fast in the eighties; we've lost touch of what's really
important in life. If you don't make money on Wall Street and drive a big car, that you're
nobody. And there's many a little old lady and little old man that went to college and
spread his wings and never got any recognition, but he contributed a lot to society, and he
contributed a lot to himself. I think my generation is better satisfied with their life than
some of the younger people around because they've been on a treadmill, chasing that
dollar and chasing that status and chasing something that may be will o' the wisp, so to
speak.
21
AR: There's a question of values. Do you feel that has changed?
RD: I think it has, and I think it's going to swing back. In the nineties.
AR: Ten, twenty, thirty years. Do you think that we here in the Piedmont, North Carolina
have any corner on the market of wonderful values or family life or treating people right?
Do you think this is special quality?
RD: I think there's good people everywhere. I've been in the [US] Navy and travelled around
the world, and if you take the time in New York City or San Francisco or London to get
to know people on their level, that people are people just about wherever you go. I
think—we have a joke here in this office—one of my buyers is a native North Carolinian
and the other one is from New York State, and we're always talking about the Yankee-
Southern syndrome. One likes biscuits, one likes bread, you know, that type of thing. But
I think people in metropolitan areas to survive have had to appear cold and hard and fast
and crooked, maybe. Whereas people in the South have been cloistered, in the South, for
so many generations that, you know—you don't drink beer down Main Street of USA
because everybody's uncle and aunt lives next door. In New York City, nobody knows
you so you can get away, so to speak, with murder. But once—no, I don't think we have a
monopoly on it. I would like to think that the whole world could be like this area has
been in the past, but that's not practical.
AR: I like what you say about cities and people all over the world. That makes sense. Thank
you for your time. Thank you very much.
[End of Interview]