Oral history interview with Mary Jane Wharton Sockwell, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Mary Jane Wharton Sockwell
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: March 8, 1990
[Begin Side A]
MF: So, if you could start by telling about your education, tell a little about yourself, like when were you at Woman’s College [Editor’s note: when Mrs. Sockwell graduated, the name of the college was North Carolina College for Women] and stuff and a little about yourself.
JS: Well, I went to Woman’s College from Greensboro [North Carolina] High School in the fall of ’27 and graduated in the spring of ’31. And so I was there, of course, for those four years and thought it was a wonderful place to go to school. I don’t really know what you want to know except that after that I was lucky enough to get the [Mina] Weil Scholarship, and so like had a year’s graduate work, which came along in ’31 sorta in the midst of the Depression [severe worldwide economic downturn preceding World War II]. But I went—I don’t know why really, when I think back on it—to Yale [University, New Haven, Connecticut] and stayed. I was going to just stay one year, but they said, “No, you can’t get a master’s unless you stay for two years.” [laughs] So I—“But if you stay for three, you can get a PhD.” So I struggled hard and finally, after four years, did get a PhD in zoology.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: But I’ve always felt very guilty about it because I got married and kept it a secret for a year during that time because you couldn’t get married and stay in school. Actually, they had given me a little fellowship, which, when they found out I was married, they reneged on. And my—our parents weren’t very happy about it either. But anyway, now what was I going to say? I forgot—[laughs]—but, as a consequence, I felt guilty about the PhD because I never taught in college. I went—my husband was a law—in the law school, and he went to New York to practice, and so I went out and got a part-time teaching job in a private school. And—it was in actually two different private schools during the course of about eight years, and so it did help me in that respect because I didn’t have to have any education courses.
MF: Right, yes.2
JS: And I could do pretty much what I wanted to. And I always liked science from the fact that I started collecting wild flowers when I was young. And that led me into nature study, and that led me into botany and zoology. So—and I always thought it was a lot easier to teach a subject like that because it was always something you could show [sic] ’em.
MF: Right—
JS: It wouldn’t have to be just words, but it was show and tell, So I enjoyed that aspect of it. But then, all good things come to an end, you might say. [laughs] And I ended up after the war a divorcee with a little girl about three, and I came back to Greensboro and married someone I had known a long time—not well, but had known in high school. And, he had a son, so I had a second marriage and lived back in my hometown, which has been very nice.
MF: Oh, yes, I’m sure.
JS: [laughs] And did nothing then, other than chauffer and cook and keep house and—
MF: Raise children.
JS: And raise two children.
MF: Right.
JS: But those were the days when you didn’t feel bad if you didn’t have a job. Now, I think my daughter would feel really bad if she wasn’t working, I’m sure. [laughs] Everybody has to work now.
MF: Yes. Well, raising children is work.
JS: It is work.
MF: Yes.
JS: But somehow or another, the young people these days do it with the help of day care places and things like that. So that’s my life in a nutshell.
MF: Okay. [laughs] While you were at Woman’s College, what was student life like?
JS: It was fun. It was strict. You’ve probably had someone—don’t know whether you’ve talked to anybody as old as me, but when I was out there, nobody could smoke. Of course, drinking was just absolutely beyond the pale, but you could not smoke. And if you smoked, you were campused for something like three weeks—
MF: Wow.3
JS: —by the Student Government Association. And while I was there my senior year, we had a lot of excitement because the students rebelled, and they wanted to smoke, and so they got up a petition and had lots of people sign it. And we had a mass meeting, and they presented it to the student government. And at that time we were afraid that—we had heard that they were going to smoke, going to light up in Aycock Auditorium. So those of us who were sort of in charge of the mass meeting squealed. We went to the administration and told them our fears. And so they said, “Well, there’s no way they could smoke because it’s against the fire rules anyway.” But that was a very exciting time. As a consequence, the petition—I mean something went through. I don’t remember exactly how the steps worked out, but the students got permission to smoke in various places over there—I think in the next year or two—in say maybe ’33.
MF: Okay.
JS: [Nineteen] thirty-two and ’33. So that was the beginning of that. Another exciting thing was the fact that we were allowed to have a junior-senior in the spring of ’31 and have boys.
MF: Oh.
JS: We’d never had men there to dance with before; we’d dance with each other, if we danced at all. It was usually a little time after dinner when you could go down in the basement of Spencer [Residence Hall] and dance. And—so boys came along, and we had this card dance, and the poor boys that went just suffered a thousand deaths because they had—they’d been used to being stags and cutting in in those days—you’ve probably never even heard of this—but at this dance they were all card dances, so they had to dance every dance because you would swap partners with your roommate and your best friend. You’d have a boy’s card all filled up with Susie and Jane and Marian [laughs] and so forth.
MF: Oh, so they had—actually had a card that listed—
JS: Yes, they had a card listing the names of every person they were going to dance with, and so—I mean my husband said that he thought he’d never go to another dance because after that he went home. This is my—the guy I eventually married. He had lived in Greensboro. He had to soak his feet all night. It was terrible. [laughs] But we girls thought it was marvelous.
MF: Oh, I’m sure.
JS: They got us corsages and all sorts of fun things. [laughs] We were strictly supervised, and Miss [Minnie Lou] Jamison, who was the head mother of Spencer, was standing at the door and sniffing, and nobody could come that had anything to drink.
MF: Was there anybody turned away?4
JS: I don’t know. I really—I’ve forgotten if I ever knew.
MF: Yes.
JS: But they would not allow any drinking on campus at all. So times have really changed, haven’t they?
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: I saw an article in the paper this morning about drinking and going on, still going on very heavily on college campuses.
MF: Yes.
JS: Oh, so those are two rather dramatic things that happened while I was out there. Another thing that happened was the fact that Dr. [Julius] Foust [chancellor] was not very happy with the way student government was set up. So he wanted to revise it, more or less on the same system that our country is, with three branches of government. And so he took a whole bunch of people in the—one summer up to the mountains at—I’ve forgotten now—Camp Greystone, I believe. We had a conference, and he told us about how we ought to do it, and we had a lot of other—the teachers there. And we set up a new form of student government with the executive branch and the judicial and legislative.
MF: When was that?
JS: That, I believe, was about in the summer of 1930, I think—somewhere around that time—I had some pictures here. Where is my book? I may have put a date on it. It was called the Campus Leaders Conference, September 1930. [looking at photo]
MF: Oh, yes. Okay.
JS: This is the group—picture of the group.
MF: What’s this caption, “How many threes can you find?”
JS: Thirty-one, it’s supposed to be.
MF: Oh, thirty-ones.
JS: This was a book we had that had for our fiftieth—
MF: Okay.
JS: Anniversary.
MF: So, class of ’31—5
JS: Yes, class of ’31—these were on a bulletin board, I think—some pictures I took and saved all these years.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: Yes. So, I don’t know—just have a whole lot of stuff. When we had our fiftieth, we had a really big reunion. At that time we had the most people back for a fiftieth that they had ever had for a fiftieth. But my sister, who had her fiftieth this year, said that they had—when they came home, they had the biggest—
MF: [laughs]
JS: —crowd for the fiftieth. So every year, see, classes are getting larger in the reunions. This is the picture of the May Queen.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: We used to have big May Day celebrations. Fancy dresses, and I don’t know how we all managed in those days because it was right in the Depression and nobody had any money. And we borrowed each other’s—if we got invited to [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill or Davidson [College, Davidson, North Carolina] or anywhere for a dance over the weekend—we borrowed each other’s evening dresses; we swapped them around, because nobody was loaded with money.
MF: Right.
JS: Far from it.
MF: How else did the Depression affect school life for you?
JS: It didn’t seem to bother us too much as I recollect. Of course, nobody—we ate in the dormitory, and we—our money—I mean, our meals were paid for. And very few—we went downtown—if we went to the movies, they cost practically what—a quarter, fifty cents in those days? Everything was very inexpensive, and people seemed to manage. I was highly unaware of the fact that we were really struggling. [laughs]
MF: Do you think that maybe being on campus the—it sort of sheltered you a little bit?
JS: Oh, yes. I’m sure it did. And it cost—of course, the tuitions in those days, as I recollect, the whole thing cost you about three hundred dollars a year to go to school.
MF: Yes. That’s what I’ve heard.
JS: That’s about right. And if you said that you would teach, they marked off the tuition fees too—you didn’t have to pay them.6
MF: Oh, really?
JS: Yes. If you promised to teach in North Carolina for a certain length of time.
MF: Oh, okay, I wasn’t aware of that. Sounds similar to some programs they’re starting to try to implement now.
JS: Really?
MF: Yes. Where if you teach for four years afterwards, then your—everything’s paid for.
JS: Yes.
MF: But then if you don’t, then it was like a loan, and you have to pay it back.
JS: Yes. Well, that’s—that’s the same—that’s the way it was. Yes, as I recollect, that’s exactly what it was.
MF: Yes, well that’s not for everyone now. You have to apply, so—
JS: Oh, I see.
MF: Top of the class.
JS: Be worthy of it.
MF: Right, right.
JS: Well, I don’t know what else I can tell you, really, that—
MF: What was dorm life like?
JS: It was fun. It was pretty much—you’d get together and talk a lot and have fun at night and sometimes you’d stay up when the lights were supposed to be out and have midnight feasts, if people got food from home. I was—of course. I lived with my—this is—Greensboro is my home, so I came home almost every Sunday and sometimes almost every weekend, so I missed out on some of those things that went on over the weekend.
MF: Right. But I’m sure just as much went on during the week.
JS: Yes, it did. Except I don’t remember too much. Everybody was working. We were all serious students, most of us. You know, we studied. We didn’t go to college to play. We had some fun. On weekends when we did get to go to dances at the colleges, but most of the girls I knew were serious students. And there were a lot of really smart, lovely, intelligent gals out there, too, in those days. [laughs] I’m sure there still are.7
MF: Yes. A lot of people have said that the quality of student at Woman’s College was—it was considered a very good college to go to.
JS: Well, actually too—you asked me how the Depression affected us. I’ve heard it said that we got a lot of the girls who couldn’t afford—the Northern girls couldn’t afford to go to Vassar [College, Poughkeepsie, New York] and Smith [College, Northampton, Massachusetts] in those days. They came down here, and we did have some very attractive and very smart Yankee gals. [laughs]
MF: Well, I’m one of those Yankee gals.
JS: Where are you from?
MF: Paterson, New Jersey.
JS: Oh, yes? Well, we had several very attractive, nice gals down here. And you wouldn’t have thought they would have come this far south in those days if—unless it had been a question of money. But I believe Woman’s College was, what, about the second-largest, next to Smith in those days?
MF: I’m not sure.
JS: It ranked up there pretty close.
MF: Yes, I’m sure it did, yes.
JS: Yes. Because the [unclear] it was strictly for women.
MF: What kind of rules and all were there?
JS: Well, I think if you left campus as all, you had to sign out, say where you were going. And if you weren’t, it depended on what year you were. Freshmen, I think, had to have permission before they could go anywhere. [laughs] And as you got a little bit older, you could sign out to—well, I could sign out to my home without getting permission, but if you went away for the weekend, you had to go see your housemother or the dorm counselor, whatever, and get permission to go, and normally you would have to have a letter from home saying that the parents gave permission for their daughter to go to Chapel Hill for the weekend.
MF: Oh, wow.
JS: There was a lot of that going on as I got to be a junior and senior. That was a fun thing to do. And, of course, when boys came to the campus to date, they mostly sat around in the—in the parlors and dated. Sometimes you could get permission to go out to dinner with—but I think that depended on how far along you had gotten in your schooling. [laughs]8
MF: Yes, I’m sure it did. And, what about societies?
JS: Oh they—well, there were four of them, you know, the literary societies, so called, and they never had much importance to me. I mean, I don’t remember thinking too much of the society or doing very much in the society. The main thing was the fact that the gals who were the most attractive on the campus were elected to be marshals, to usher in Aycock Auditorium for the plays and things. And the societies nominated and voted on those. They had so many allotted to each society. So that was, I think, the main appeal—
MF: So, that was—?
JS: —of the society. For somebody who was in the society who was popular and good looking, she would get to be a marshal.
MF: So that was real—?
JS: Yes, that was real, real big stuff—to be a marshal. Everybody wanted to be a marshal. Have you every seen any pictures of the marshals?
MF: Yes, just a couple.
JS: Yes, I think I’ve got some here somewhere—not—there’s a gal—these are the marshals, you see. Alethian Society—I guess it’s called—and these are the ones for the Adelphian Society—that’s the way—the kind of dresses they wore back in ’31—they had that, what would you call it, across the shoulder—the scarf—regalia.
MF: The sash? Oh, regalia. Yes, right.
JS: With a 1931 embroidered in white on red satin because we were a red and white class. They still have colors for the classes, don’t they?
MF: Yes, but I don’t think most people know—
JS: Pay much attention.
MF: Right.
JS: And you see, the societies had offices. But I remember going to very few meetings of the society. I don’t know why. We had lots of clubs, everything—
MF: Oh, really.
JS: We had a zoology club, a botany club, a drama society. Oh, gosh, the clubs were just unbelievable. Maybe I’ve got them back here somewhere. And the lifesaving group, swimming coaches, just all sorts of activities. And you know, the Pine Needles9
[yearbook] staff, the Coraddi [literary magazine] staff—do you have all these publications there?
MF: Yes, they had the Coraddi then too?
JS: Here we are. [finds pictures of clubs] The international relations club, the zoology field club, archery club. What’s that? Orchesis, dance, mathematics. Every subject had a club. Golfing; there are the swimmers, botany club.
MF: Oh, look at their bathing suits too.
JS: Oh, yes, and the gym suits. You should see the—we had to wear bloomers for gym.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: Yes, bloomers. I think we had to wear black stockings too. I’m not sure about that—whether we got out of those before I got out of college or not. [laughs] But I know we had bloomers. They were the regular regalia for the—for your gym classes. Home economics, mathematics, Spanish club, French club, and Madrigal club—they were the singers. It was—there was a great feeling of community and your part in it—leaders in this, leaders in that. They were dedicated young ladies, most of these people out there.
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: They really were. College orchestra—the speakers’ club—they had debates, education—they were the ones that were getting to be teachers—taught over at Curry [on-campus laboratory public school]. Curry was— Curry there when you—?
MF: There’s Curry Building, but—
JS: But you didn’t have Curry School then.
MF: No. Why don’t you tell me about Curry School.
JS: Well, lady—gals who got their degrees in education did their practice teaching, part of it, over at Curry. And then they would go out in the city and would maybe help a teacher for six months too.
MF: So it was actually—
JS: A practice teaching school.
MF: With real kids and—
JS: Oh, yes, yes. My nephews went there; my sister’s children went to Curry, and they thought—she thought they got a wonderful education because there were the ladies who 10
were teaching you, for instance, were over the whole thing, but they used the practice teachers in their setup.
MF: Okay.
JS: So now what else can I tell you?
MF: What about—what about classes and faculty?
JS: Oh, I think we had some wonderful faculty members over there. We really did. We had—I remember my English teachers, [Leonard B.] Hurley, Dr. Hurley, and Mr. [Alonzo C.] Hall. They were excellent. And French teacher Alice Abbott—rather Spanish teacher—and then I made the transition. I was going to major in romance languages, and I decided at the end of my sophomore year I was going to go into science. So I had to spend lots of time in the laboratory then to catch up on those things.
MF: Oh, right.
JS: And—but I had some very interesting teachers in science. Dr. [A.D.] Shaftsbury was a zoology teacher, and everybody—he was tall and good looking and fairly young compared to some of them. So people sort of had a crush on him, but, on the other hand, they were scared of him. And his name was A.D. Shaftsbury, and so we called him Archie Devil—
MF: [laughs]
JS: —behind his back, and he could really—oh, he could get on you and just make you feel like dirt. And then there was a Mr. Hall, a kindly gentleman that taught botany, and Dr. [John Paul] Givler was head of the biology department. He was good too. I just think all my teachers were special out there. Some of them had been here at Greensboro High School like Miss Jane Summerell [Class of 1910, Class of 1923, honorary degree 1978] and Miss Laura Tillett. And they went on after teaching there, and [Ione Holt] Grogan [Class of 1913, Class of 1926] was the math teacher—they went on to teach in the college.
MF: Is that the same Grogan for the Grogan [Residence] Hall?
JS: Yes, yes. Right. She was a tough lady too, but she was a good teacher. They were all good teachers. There weren’t any that you thought were mediocre. Of course, now I can’t say the same—the one or two history classes I had were rather boring, but that was probably my fault as much as anybody—as much as the teacher’s. I just wasn’t really into history [laughs] at that point.
MF: Yes, well—what about the relationship with the faculty—the student relationship with the faculty—what was that like?11
JS: I think in some cases it was fairly close because I can remember some instances of girls going to faculty homes—
MF: Yes, yes.
JS: —and little parties and things like that. Of course, with my home here in Greensboro, I didn’t get into that too much.
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: Because I had plenty of connections at home—wanted to get home whenever I could rather than go and visit some old teacher. [laughs]
MF: Oh, sure.
JS: But I think, in lots of cases, the girls out of town found some sorta [sic] homes away from home.
MF: Yes. So they seemed pretty open, pretty concerned?
JS: Yes, yes.
MF: During that time, with the Depression and all, were there any male students that came to school there at that time?
JS: None at all.
MF: Okay. [telephone rings] Let me stop this.
[recording paused]
MF: Because I know—I guess it was during—maybe it was during the Second World War [1939-45 global war], I know that at one point they let some male students come in as town students or something.
JS: Yes. I’m sure they did. But I’m sure there weren’t any time when I was there.
MF: Yes. Do you remember Miss [Harriet] Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women]?
JS: Yes, oh yes.
MF: What about her? Tell me about her?12
JS: Well, Harriet Elliott was not the head lady when I was there. I don’t believe she was even there when I was there. I’ve just heard about her since then. Miss [Lillian] Killingsworth was dean of students when I was there. And she—oh, we couldn’t stand her.
MF: Oh, why?
JS: She was just—she was very mean, everybody thought. And she—I mean, if you transgressed, if you stayed five minutes late on Sunday night and you were supposed to be in, you got all sorts of punishment.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: And she could make you feel very small. We were all scared to death of her. [laughs] Dean of students, I think—but then Miss Elliott came on after that.
MF: Yes. Okay. Who was the chancellor?
JS: Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson.
MF: Yes, that’s what I thought. I wasn’t sure. Dr. Jackson. What was he like?
JS: Well, now, wait a minute. No, the president was Mr. [Julius] Foust. He was the president. And Dr. Jackson taught out there.
MF: Okay. At that time.
JS: And then—oh, he was marvelous, and everybody was very fond of him. And they were a little bit scared of Mr. Foust. Dr. Foust.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: He was a lot older. He was sort of like Miss Killingsworth. They were pretty old, and we were—
MF: [laughs] Kind of ancient?
JS: Yes. We thought they were very ancient.
MF: Yes.
JS: But Dr. Jackson was teaching history. And, as I said, he was the one history teacher that I thought was wonderful. He used to give little—talked about great Americans, and he did a little skit on different people. Every week he’d have one guy that he talked about. Oh, that was practically the most popular class out there, and lots of people took it, even though they majored in science [unclear].13
MF: [laughs] Yes.
JS: And then he became head after Dr. Foust died.
MF: Right. Okay.
JS: And I’ve got a picture here of—our class gave him a—not our class either, but in 1950 the Alumnae Association gave him a car when he retired.
MF: Oh, wow. A car, wow.
JS: Yes. Gave him a car. The alumnae chipped in. Of course, cars didn’t cost as much then either.
MF: I just keep checking to make sure where it is.
JS: Oh.
MF: I had a question I was going to ask you. Oh, I know there were a lot of traditions that went on—there were class jackets and—
JS: Oh, yes. We had red leather jackets with the seal on them.
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: For our class. And the purple and white people had purple ones, and the green ones had green, and there was the daisy chain at commencement. People went out and picked daisies and made a long chain—and the May Day business.
MF: Yes, what about the May Day now?
JS: Well, it was just a whole lot of dancing and singing and just a pageant on the front lawn there in front of the McIver Building, the old building.
MF: Right.
JS: And down—I guess the—that lawn is still there where the old trees are.
MF: Yes, there are some trees and stuff.
JS: And so we used to have the May Day down there.
MF: And didn’t they have—like May Queen?
JS: Oh, yes.14
MF: Was she chosen or—?
JS: I think she was voted on.
MF: Voted on, okay.
JS: Like the picture I showed you—that was our May Queen.
MF: A real, real honor.
JS: And I believe they voted for the court too.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: I think so. So it was sort of popularity as well as good looks.
MF: Yes. [laughs] Well, a combination of both. They kind of go hand in hand.
JS: Right, right.
MF: Did you have Tuesday chapel at that time?
JS: We had chapel. I can’t remember what day. Seems like it was two days a week.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: I’m not sure.
MF: It could have been.
JS: We had a chapel, and we had assigned seats, alphabetical seats. As—we started out way up in the balcony as freshmen, and then we moved down. The seniors had front row downstairs. I remember that. I remember sitting by a girl—my name was Wharton and Westmoreland sat by me. There were two of us Whartons, so Kitty and I always sat together, and then the We girl was over here. But I don’t remember much about chapel other than—really don’t remember much about what went on there.
MF: Right.
JS: Except that we had it, and I don’t think it was exactly religious.
MF: Yes, I don’t think so either. What would happen if you weren’t there?
JS: Now, that’s a good question.
MF: Or was it—15
JS: You had to go.
MF: Right.
JS: If you didn’t go, you had to be sick or be out of school.
MF: Have a good excuse?
JS: A really good excuse. I don’t know who checked on it. I believe the monitors did or they could look at the empty seats.
MF: Yes.
JS: Or the marshals did. I’m not sure. There were lots of things that I guess in those days I was too dreamy to—
MF: [laughs]
JS: —remember or to even think about—to question.
MF: You were talking about student government before. Was student government a real important thing?
JS: Oh, very. It was. Oh, when the elections came along, there was much electioneering going on—lots of conversa—now the nominees didn’t get up and make speeches as they have done—they do— in schools now, I think. But in those days they just were the people who were interested in getting so-and-so elected were the ones who were going around electioneering. Oh, yes, they were very important—the student government offices.
MF: Yes. Could you—?
JS: And judicial board members and the house presidents, they were all elected.
MF: Could you talk a little bit about how it operated?
JS: Well, I don’t know how it operated, except that you just—you voted. I—where you voted and how—I’m sure it was a ballot.
MF: Yes, I mean student government—at the different parts of student government itself. What do you remember about it?
JS: Well, they—the judicial board was, I guess, the most important aspect because they—the girls that had been turned in [laughs]—people who had—it was so-and-so I saw smoking in her room—so she was reported and had to go before the judicial board and be tried, as it were.16
MF: [laughs]
JS: And sentenced. That was their function. And they were the—I guess the most important aspect of it. And then, if a rule got to be changed, the legislature did that. And I think they were made up of the house president—I’m not sure how that worked.
MF: Oh, I’m not sure either.
JS: Do you still have student government?
MF: Oh, yes—oh, yes.
JS: You do?
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: Yes.
MF: I would say it’s an important part of the university.
JS: Well, I was always on the student government, but I said the only reason I was that because I was nearsighted in those days and didn’t wear my glasses, so I couldn’t report anybody.
MF: [laughs]
JS: I just couldn’t see them across the street [laughs] to turn them in.
MF: You’re saying as far as reporting people—is—was that a common thing? Was there a real important honor policy?
JS: Yes, it was supposed to be. I don’t know—I don’t really know whether people turned themselves in, but I never heard anything about cheating. There may have been some going on, but I just never heard about it. As I say, a lot of this is very dim to me.
MF: Oh, oh yes.
JS: And I didn’t—. At the time I don’t think I took too much interest in a lot of things you’re asking me about. [laughs]
MF: Oh, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. For instance, for yourself, when you were a student, if you saw somebody doing something they weren’t supposed to do, did you feel sort of honor bound to report them?
JS: I think a lot of people did, yes. I don’t—I told you I don’t think I ever saw anything.17
MF: Oh, right, right. But I’m just saying.
JS: I think a lot of people did, Yes, they felt honor bound.
MF: Was that something, you think, that was instilled by the college, or something that—?
JS: No, I think it was part of everybody’s upbringing in those days. We were all—we were a product of the generation, I guess, the work-ethic generation. And the go-to-church generation and be-good-girls, you know. It was just sort of all in the culture.
MF: Right, right. I’m sure it was.
JS: You had to do the right thing, you know, whatever that was. And we pretty much knew there was black and white and not many gray areas at that point. And we heard—I mean you would hear that somebody—some gal had gotten into bad, serious trouble with a boy, you know, and she would disappear.
MF: Oh, my.
JS: She would be—you know—have to go home. Oh, that was the worse thing that could happen. To be “shipped” was the word.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: Shipped home, if you were cheating or if you got pregnant or if you really went off and didn’t appear for a few days and things like that. You were shipped home, and that was the end. Maybe you could come back next year. I don’t know. But there were some poor gals that did flunk—and flunked out, too, of course.
MF: Right.
JS: Do they flunk them out now?
MF: Yes.
JS: They do?
MF: Oh, yes. I haven’t had to worry about that.
JS: I’m sure you haven’t.
MF: I’ve seen it happen.
JS: Well, it’s changed so completely now. I mean, I feel as if—it’s not—it’s a university, a huge university.18
MF: Right.
JS: And a lot of people—a lot of day students there. When I was there, there weren’t too many. There were some day students, but not a lot. And it was a women’s, definitely a women’s college—an old-fashioned, you might say, women’s college. Old-fashioned.
MF: Old-fashioned in what way?
JS: Well, just the things I’ve told you—we couldn’t smoke and couldn’t drink and couldn’t ride with boys. I mean, if you were walking home from downtown—now this was where people got reported. If they had been down—you could walk easily from college to main street [Editor’s note: Elm Street], where all the stores were. In those days, we didn’t have any malls, of course. Thalhimers and Ellis—
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: Ellis Stone, it was called, and Meyers and Belks were all on main street. And the movie theaters were all down there. There weren’t many movie theaters out there on Tate Street.
MF: Yes.
JS: So to have any entertainment like that or to eat out, you had to go downtown. And a lot of times when you were walking back, boys would come by and want to pick you up and ride you back to the college. Well, you couldn’t do that.
MF: Oh.
JS: That was bad—to get in a car with a boy. So you couldn’t bum a ride home, [laughs] even though you knew him, even though it was somebody maybe you had dated.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: You couldn’t get in the car with him. And so, some old snoopy gal would be walking along and see Mary Ellen get in the car, so she’d report here. So, that was one bad aspect.
MF: Yes.
JS: I’m sure I’m not hitting the highlights, but I just don’t seem to remember a lot of things that you might be interested in.
MF: Oh, no. You—you’ve given me plenty of stuff. Do you have any, like, anecdotes or something that sort of tell a little about what it was like to be a student there?
JS: Well, I remember—of course, I’ve always been interested in food, as you can tell by seeing me [chuckles]—we had wonderful breakfasts. And everybody would—not everybody would get up and go to breakfast, but—and most of the meals—I believe 19
breakfast was buffet, but the other meals you were seated. And we had blessings at lunch and dinner. And I can remember that on the—there was a special dish that they made for breakfast—now this probably doesn’t sound exciting to you, but maybe we just needed it. But they had liver, which is done country-style with gravy—nice, dark gravy, very thin liver and biscuits. And the mornings that they would have liver, one of the girls would come back to the dormitory and wake everybody up and say, “Liver this morning, get up,” and everybody [laughs] would get up and rush to the dining room.
MF: [laughs]
JS: That’s not a very exciting episode, but it’s something I’ve remembered all these years.
[laughs]
MF: I think I would pass on the liver myself.
JS: Yes, I know—well, everyone probably would now. We liked it—I guess we needed it maybe,
MF: Maybe.
JS: And I think I remember eating broccoli out there—had never seen broccoli before.
MF: Oh, really?
JS: Yes. As a Southerner, we had turnip greens, you know—
MF: Right.
JS: —and beans, but never had seen broccoli until I went to college. [laughs]
MF: Did there seem to be a lot of students who either came there who seemed really worldly or a lot of students who seemed really sheltered?
JS: I think more of the latter.
MF: More sheltered?
JS: Yes, girls from small towns in North Carolina, who hadn’t been away, you know, whose parents were really rather struggling—farmers’ daughters—to send them to school. I think there were a lot of those. And, as a Greensboro person, who had been to a big high school, I remember when we first went out there, there several little gals that were so homesick.
MF: Oh, really.
JS: Yes. Some of us Greensboro gals tried to, you know—helped them along a little bit.20
MF: Some people have told me that for about the first six weeks you couldn’t go home. Did they have that then?
JS: I don’t remember. Probably—probably did—these were the strict days. Twenties, you see. I was there in the fall of ’27.
MF: Okay. One of the other things that I want to ask you about is—I know there’s this—gosh, I don’t know what to call it—I guess rift between the Alumni Association and Chancellor [William] Moran, and I really don’t know much about it myself, personally.
JS: Well, I’ve just heard about it. I don’t know too much personally either, except the effect—the fact that Barbara Parrish [Class of 1948, director of alumni affairs, Alumni Association secretary] resigned because she felt she could not be loyal to both the Alumni Association and the chancellor, and so she resigned, and that—thought that was terrible because she had been such a wonderful person.
MF: Oh, yes.
JS: I mean, she’s so conscientious. When we had our fiftieth reunion, she was just marvelous. She did all these things. She—her mind works with the details and does such a good job of planning, and I’ve just heard a lot of rumor about it—the fact that—
MF: Rumors are still more than I know, so—
JS: Yes, well the fact is that supposedly—see, the Alumni House was built by contributions from alumni and federal government back in Franklin Roosevelt’s [32nd President of the United States] day, and then it was given to the college with the understanding that the alumni, as I understand it, could stay there—that was their headquarters. And now I hear that the chancellor says that if we are going to be independent, if we’re not going to under the aegis of the college, we have to have a separate office off campus.
MF: Oh.
JS: You see, we don’t—the women do not—the alumni now don’t want to just send money over there, which we’ve been doing—non—without discriminating—without saying where it’s going to because we don’t—we’re not really into—we old fogies—into having wonderful basketball teams.
MF: Right.
JS: And soccer teams—and we—the way the boys’ colleges are.
MF: Yes.
JS: Money given for sports. If money—we give money, we want it to be for scholarships or for teachers’ salaries, for merit—things like that. And so I think that’s another aspect of 21
it—the fact that the Alumni Association doesn’t take up its own money anymore. It all goes into the alumni annual giving.
MF: All pooled together.
JS: Yes, you can—I’m sure you can say, “Mark it—earmark it for a scholarship.” Our class started a scholarship fund for our fiftieth, and I haven’t sent money out there in a couple of years just because I was just upset about all this.
MF: Yes.
JS: And I could send it though and say, “Put it in the college scholarship fund”—to the old lady who was a doctor out there, and we—she was our honorary class member, so we set up a scholarship fund in her memory.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: In ’81.
MF: Well, would the money that would be sent to the Alumni Association then—before all this—would go, who would decide?
JS: It’s all—it was all very ambiguous. I think that’s why the chancellor was trying to get it straightened out. I think that was his main reason. He likes to have it very definite.
MF: Yes, okay.
JS: And the Alumni Board of Trustees, made up of alumni, would propose the budget and submit it to the chancellor, and then he would allocate the funds that had come into the annual giving—a certain amount. But when I was involved actively, which was back in the fifties, out there, there was never enough money to have adequate help in the Alumni Office. And that’s—Barbara, of course, wasn’t there at that point—she was a little later. Barbara and Brenda [Meadows Cooper, Class of 1965, MEd 1973] were just working themselves to death. They needed more help. And so the chancellor’s always had the position of being able to decide how much money we have. At least, that’s how I understand it.
MF: Okay, and then now—?
JS: Well now, I don’t know really—I shouldn’t even be talking about this.
MF: Oh, no, I’m just trying to figure it out—trying to get—because I’m just trying to put bits and pieces together—
JS: Yes.22
MF: —to figure out—
JS: Well, I think he has said that if we stay on the campus, we have to be under the university. And if we want to be completely independent, we have to get off campus.
MF: Okay.
JS: Have an office off campus.
MF: Which is kind of inconvenient with the distances—
JS: Well, I would think so, when the Alumni House is right there, and the alumni—
MF: I know that some people have told me that, without being specific because—well, a lot of people really don’t know the specifics. They just—a couple of things have happened and they personally feel offended, and they said that they just feel very distant from the university as alumni.
JS: Yes, well I think all of us old ladies do because it’s not like it was. It’s a university now, coed, and it’s a business machine—Professor—Dr. Moran is a businessman, and we came along—we had educators pretty much as the head guys—ex-teachers and all. It seems like it’s just not the same. It can’t be. I mean, progress [laughs]—
MF: Well, right, but if it—if something could be resolved with this—gosh, I hate calling it a rift, but this situation—
JS: Well, it is—it is.
MF: Then if it could be resolved, how would—how do you think the alumni would like to see it resolved?
JS: Well, I think they’d like to just be able to—oh, and another angle is the publication, the Alumni News, has always been our—the alumni magazine. I think they want to keep it that way. And at one point, I think it was more or less taken over by the college. I think they need an independent voice; that’s the main thing.
MF: Yes.
JS: And not have to be dependent. I don’t know how it would work. But, I mean, they say the minute the Alumni Association is absorbed by the college, the college’s policies—the alumni sometime need to put in a word that might be a little different.
MF: And they wouldn’t be able to.
JS: And they wouldn’t be able to if they’re supported completely with college money.23
MF: And then all the money that alumni would give then would, rather than being like an alumni gift, would just be part of the university budget?
JS: No, it would be the development fund.
MF: Oh, okay, I see.
JS: See, the budget comes from the legislature.
MF: Right, okay.
JS: They give the money to pay the teachers.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
MF: One of the things—you had mentioned that you were active in the Alumni Association in the fifties. And that’s when Ed [Edward Kidder] Graham [Jr.] was chancellor, wasn’t it? Did it—do you—what about Ed Graham? I know he was a rather controversial figure.
JS: He was a—he created a lot of furor. I mean, the campus out there has always seemed like it had factions this way and factions that way.
MF: Right, right.
JS: Ever since—I don’t remember it was that way when I was in college, but it seems like ever since then, the people are warring with each other. [Laughs] And he just wasn’t very popular, and he was a—somebody said, like all small men, he was very much like a little rooster. He was—
MF: Yes. [laughs] I’ve heard someone else use that same example.
JS: Yes, yes. But he would just crow too loud, and he just—everybody just—I don’t know; nobody liked him to speak of, so—
MF: Yes. This other person said that they called it the small man syndrome.
JS: Yes, I’ve heard that.
MF: What kinds of things—I know some people said he’s done some—he had done some pretty outrageous things.
JS: I don’t know a thing of what he did.
MF: Oh.24
JS: It wasn’t as it should be.
MF: Oh, right, Okay, I know—all I know—I mean, I really don’t know much about him. I just know some people had said that he was rather controversial and a little bit outrageous.
JS: He was. Well, I just never did get the real poop, the real low-down gossip on what happened.
MF: Right. All the good stuff, right?
JS: Yes. All the good—I never heard all the good stuff. [laughs] You really need to talk to Betty Brown Jester [Class of 1931, former Alumnae Secretary] because she could fill you in with a whole lot of that stuff.
MF: Okay.
JS: She’s the ex-Alumni Secretary. Ask Barbara about Betty, if you don’t think it would be a good idea.
MF: Okay, I will.
JS: Betty knows a lot more about everything, the controversy and Ed Graham, because she was right there, at that point. I think she resigned while he was here.
MF: Barbara Parrish?
JS: No, Betty—
MF: Betty Jester.
JS: Yes.
MF: Because of Ed Graham?
JS: Yes, I think partially. And, of course, she was a mother. She had growing children, and she worked in the bookstore first, and then she—when Miss [Clara Booth] Byrd [Class of 1913, Class of 1928, honorary degree 1980] retired, she took over for just a few years before they got Barbara because Ed Graham got Barbara, as I recollect.
MF: Oh, really?
JS: I think he did.
MF: Okay. Are there any other—anything else that you’d like to make sure you mention?
JS: [laughs] I can’t think of it.25
MF: Stories are fine too.
JS: It’s been so long ago. I can’t think of anything else to tell you about. This is our—well, our class was—our motto was “Courage.” This is our fiftieth. That was the write-up in the magazine. And this is Dr. [Ruth] Collings [campus physician], the lady we set up the scholarship in memory of.
MF: Okay, yes.
JS: And she was—
MF: I see her name.
JS: Yes. She was able to go to our party and hear about the fact that we had given a scholarship in her memory. Then she died the next fall.
MF: Oh, my.
JS: But we thought it was very appropriate because our motto, which we had chosen, was “Courage.” And she was one of the first women doctors in this part of the country.
MF: Oh, wow.
JS: And she had to have a lot of guts—
MF: Oh, she sure did.
JS: —to do something like that. She did all kinds of things. But she was—well, there are some things on there about her, but I don’t know that you’re interested, but we just thought that Dr. Collings epitomized courage. In our class she had been smart in choosing that motto because we had to have it when we got along in the Depression, after getting out of college in the thirties. Times were hard.
MF: Oh, I see, it says here that Dr. Collings was in Phi Beta Kappa [undergraduate honor society]—that’s a—that was quite an achievement for a woman.
JS: It was—it was.
MF: Yes.
JS: She got her AB [Latin: artium baccalaureus] from Pomona College in [Claremont] California, and then she was one of—I don’t know—one or two women admitted to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine [Philadelphia].
MF: She got her MD [Latin: medicinae doctor] back in the early twenties, didn’t she?26
JS: Yes.
MF: Oh, here’s a picture of her with her dog.
JS: Yes. [laughs] She was quite a lady.
MF: Yes, it seems so.
JS: We were very proud when we were able to do that.
MF: Oh, I’m sure.
JS: That was a great response too. I mean, our class is not a particularly wealthy class, but we got something like eight thousand dollars to start the scholarship.
MF: Oh, that’s a good—yes.
JS: It was a good beginning.
MF: Yes, and that was—
JS: 1981.
MF: Right. Yes, fifty—
JS: Right.
MF: I guess I’m not a mathematician, huh?
JS: [laughs]
MF: Okay—
JS: I just wish I could think of some more things to tell you, but I just can’t. I mean, I just don’t really—
MF: Oh, right. I’m sure you’ll think of—
JS: After you leave, I’ll think of all sorts of things.
MF: Lot of stuff, right?
JS: I got these things out yesterday and sort of looked at them to see if I could refresh my memory, but—
MF: Are these all—?27
JS: This is just a scrapbook I put together for the reunion—the fiftieth—and then I’ve got some pictures of us [unclear].
MF: Are those, like, letters?
JS: Yes.
MF: Between students and stuff?
JS: Yes, they’re letters that were sent in relation to the commence—I mean to the reunion.
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: Not old letters, not letters—
MF: Oh, okay.
JS: —from the thirties, just recent letters. I mean letters then—people saying they had a good time and so on and so forth.
MF: Yes.
JS: I just saved a whole lot of the stuff.
MF: Well, that’s good.
JS: We have another one in 1991.
MF: [laughs]
JS: If we do—
MF: Yes, well I’m sure—
JS: —I’ll have some material.
MF: Yes, to share with other people.
JS: Yes.
MF: Okay, well. I thank you very, very much.
JS: Well, you’re very welcome. Missy, I’m just sorry that I don’t know anymore to talk about.
MF: Oh, you’ve been quite helpful.28
JS: Oh, well.
[End of Interview]