Oral history interview with Helen Howerton Lineberry, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Helen Howerton Lineberry
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: April 6, 1990
[Begin Side A]
MF: I guess if you could start out by telling a little bit about your education—like when you were at WC [Woman's College of the University of North Carolina] and maybe briefly something about what you've done since then. I know that's kind of being a little vague.
HL: I was transferred, Missy, from St. Genevieve's of the Pines [Asheville, North Carolina], and we used to jokingly call it St. Genevieve's of the Woods of Asheville. My mother thought I was too young to leave home at the tender age of sixteen, but anyhow I didn't want to go to WC. We're going to call it WC.
MF: Right.
HL: I didn't want to go there to begin with because I wanted to go to [unclear] Art School. But since I—but well my mother wouldn't let me, so since I had a friend who went to [University of North] Carolina [at Chapel Hill], and he was going to be there and that was just fifty miles from WC, I'll go to WC. That worked out well. But I came down on a train, believe it or not, from Asheville.
MF: And this was—?
HL: This was 1938. The—and since I was a transfer, I was a third person in a room and put in Woman's Dorm, which was where all the leaders in the school roomed. And it was a wonderful dormitory. I was put with two young ladies there, two gals, and one turned out to be a real good friend and the other one is a friend.
MF: Yes.
HL: The kind that would sweep my socks with all the dust out into the hall. [laughs] But she was a real neat person too. We would move our beds out on—we had porches then, our little balconies, and we'd move our beds out there—Eppie and I would—and sleep out there during the snow time, rain time. It was great, just great, and left our room for a study room just for the desk. And then every now and then we'd bring the beds back in. The—that was when we had Walker Avenue going down by the dorm.
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MF: Going all the way through campus?
HL: All the way through. We—when Al [husband] and I moved here in 1955, we moved up on Chapman [Street] at that time, on the corner of Walker [Avenue] and Chapman, and I thought, "Oh I can just walk right through town," but no such luck. There was no more Walker down at the campus.
MF: Yes. They had cut it off.
HL: They had cut it off.
MF: Did they go over a bridge at one point?
HL: Yes they did. No, the campus went over the bridge to—
MF: Oh yes, the bridge was the walkway.
HL: Yes. I think, it could have been a—not having had a car in those days. I can't remember if it was a walkway, but it was a bridge that went over Walker. We had a good time, and that was when we first—we opened a bar on campus, I'll have you know, and it was called the Ice Cream Bar. [laughs] And it was a fun place to go. You could always go there and get some refreshments. They put it there because we would leave campus so much to go down to the Tate Street. I call it the dip because it kind of dipped down there.
MF: Yes
HL: —and we would go down there and get our refreshments. And one of the best things that we ever had down at The Corner, eating place drug store, was a grilled doughnut with ice cream on top of that and chocolate sauce on top of that. [laughs] That's when everything else failed; we would go down there and refresh ourselves with all the good protein.
MF: Carbohydrates, right?
HL: Right. Right. The—and art was my major. I'd gone down there. My dad had thought a business course would be great for Helen because she could always make a living. And I went down and changed everything to art—did not want to do anything but paint. And then when he found out that I had done that, he said, "Well if you insist on art, you should have a teacher's certificate." So I did get my certificate, and in doing that I had to go to summer school for two summers thereafter because of the courses I had to have whatever it took to get my certificate. One of the best summer courses that I have ever had was the art colony down at Beaufort, North Carolina, which was a little over a month long. And Gregory Ivy, the head of the art department, took the art majors down there. I guess there must have been about twelve of us. And we had a ball. We had the best time I've ever had in Beaufort. And I've loved Beaufort ever since. Have you been there?
MF: Yes I have. 3
HL: It's just this—oh, that's another story, the things we did down there. We did paint. [laughs]
MF: Some, right? [laughs]
HL: No, we would go out and sketch in the mornings and go back to the little community center and paint in the afternoons, but the community center was right next to a fishery, and when the wind blew the wrong way, we were all excused [laughs] from the center, from the community center, and would go somewhere else and do some more artwork. But we did work, and we did paint. And we did have a good time. Many times we'd put on our bathing suits and go over to the beaches and sketch and swim.
MF: Yes, of course.
HL: And I don't know whether this should be on the tape or not.
MF: What—like a story?
HL: Like a skinny dipping.
MF: Oh.
HL: [laughing] But we sent Mr. Ivy and one lone male student on up waaaaaaaay out. There were no houses there except for the lighthouse, the [United States] Coast Guard, and they weren't near. So he—we told them what we were going to do, and I think they did the same thing. But we took off our bathing suits behind the sand dunes and all eleven of us streaked across the—we were the first streakers—streaked across the beach and dove into the waves, and swam and swam. If you've never been skinny dipping. It's a joy. [laughing] Actually I think I could have gone to England until a porpoise came up in front of me, a dolphin I guess, and he was about twelve feet in front of me. And I saw this big old head come up, and I looked back and there was shore so far away, and I was—I still think the porpoise saved my life. Had he not shown himself, I would have been still swimming and going down. I barely made it back.
MF: Oh wow.
HL: But it was a great experience. Those summer schools can be fun. And for one of the summer schools I—we went to the June Germans, one of those all-night affairs down at Rocky Mount [North Carolina]. Those were good college days. I guess you knew that the college had societies. I don't know whether they have them now or not. They didn't have sororities.
MF: No that I know of.
HL: Everyone belonged to a society. There were four of them. They were good. They gave everyone an involvement in the social part of the school. Our teachers were very good, 4
very patient. They had to be with a bunch of females. I don't know exactly how much you want me to tell about those college days.
MF: Oh, as much as you feel comfortable with.
HL: I feel comfortable—being an art major we feel comfortable with most anything. The—you want to turn it off a second.
MF: Okay.
HL: Speaking of the Woman's College, I did enjoy a women's college. It was great to go—you could roll your hair up and you could go and do most anything that you wanted to and you didn't have the—. When the men came, around—and it was fun having the fellows come. And every year when a new class of females came in, the young men from Greensboro, the town, would come over and case the new group.
MF: Check them out? [laughing]
HL: To check them out. And that was interesting. There was one thing that happened at Woman's Dorm. I had come in—I think it was a Sunday night from a date and fairly early—and everybody was huddled around the radios. There were no TVs [televisions] in those days. And I might add it was good because one could listen to the radio and use their imagination, and whatever they wondered, whatever they were hearing. It was Welles. What's his name, the one that—?
MF: Orson Welles?
HL: Orson Welles. [October 30, 1938, radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds news bulletin form of performance] That had the space men coming in to attack our country, and I thought everybody was crazy when they kept saying, "We're being attacked by the men of [planet] Mars." And I thought this is dumb, and I started going around listening to what everybody was listening to, and I heard parts of it, and they were believing it. And in the same breath I thought this was very possible, but I wasn't scared. I had all the faith in our own [United States] Army to take care of whatever was coming from outer space. And then later, if you could see the girls—I mean, they were describing places. Some of these girls from New Jersey—
MF: Oh right.
HL: —that they—it was some of their home places, the towns in which they lived. And they would call home. One of them called home, and said, "Mother what's happening up there?" and she told her what she was hearing. And she says, "Daughter, you're going crazy. There's nothing going on up here." And then they did not interrupt the program.
MF: Right.
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HL: And they went right through the—I suspect it was an hour with no interruptions. And you could visualize this happening because to me nothing is impossible. And who knows we may still have some wonderful men from—. We haven't discovered them yet, but they may be out there in the black hole somewhere.
We—and the food—to me the food was good, and I gained ten pounds that first year eating everybody's desserts. But it was just good. I enjoyed the fellowship of a girls' school. And it made the men a little more special, and I'm sure we became a little more special to the men because we didn't go on the buddy buddy system so much.
And our art department was the best in the country at that time. I don't know how it rates now. I know [University of] Georgia [Athens, Georgia] later on was—has developed a good art department. We were not allowed to—we could smoke on the campus. I didn't smoke then.
MF: Didn't it start around '39 where you could smoke on campus?
HL: You could smoke anytime. When I went there in '38, you could smoke in the rooms.
MF: Yes, because I think—I don't remember who had told me, but somebody had told me that they had—it was in the late thirties sometime that they had gotten permission to be able to smoke.
HL: Well, it was probably before I got there.
MF: Yes.
HL: I did not—if I smoked, I would buy one from my roommate for a penny. And I smoked maybe once a month or once every six weeks, but I mean I really—I didn't call that smoking, and I didn't really like it, except every now and then you just want to do one for the heck of it. The—what else should we talk about?
MF: Well, how about dorm life. What were the dorms like? Were there any rules and regulations?
HL: Oh dorm life was—oh yes, we had those rules and regulations, and we had to be in certain hours, perhaps I think now, maybe eleven o'clock [pm] on the weekends and ten o'clock [pm] during the week. They had little dating parlors, and it seems to me most of fellows also had cars that drove up from [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill. I know the young man that I dated had his car. We didn't parlorize too much. And we had our housemothers, and they did their best to keep us straight. I like the idea of their doing the laundry. I think everyone—I don't know if they still do it over at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] or not. But they had the central laundry system, and you had your baskets and you put your clothes in a bag and someone picked them up, and then they brought them back clean. Some of the things were highly starched, and some of the slips were starched. [laughing] Not really, but they were—and it was a good service and I liked that, and I don't know why we don't do it now, but I guess there is a reason. The meals and having their clothes taken care of—I'm not a good 6
housekeeper, and, as I told you a while ago, one of the roommates used to get all the dust kitties. She could stand it no longer and she'd start sweeping up the room. And my other roommate wasn't a good housekeeper either. But I've been trying ever since to correct that habit of being a good housekeeper. It kind of doesn't come naturally. We did not get to cook on campus like they do. I think in the halls they have little cooking areas, do they not?
MF: Yes.
HL: That must have been fun. That must be fun.
MF: Yes.
HL: We didn't get to do that. I guess some of the gals could have had little hot plates in the rooms. I'm not even sure about that. It was perhaps a no-no in those days on account of being a hazard and catching fire or something. We were not allowed to drink on campus. However, sometimes—and I didn't drink then either, but I did like to collect—I got an idea from one of the girls in collecting the whisky and liquor bottles because they did come in wonderful shapes and sizes. So I started collecting them, and come spring break I did not put everything up. I just left those bottles sitting out in the window probably, somewhere, and when I came back from spring break, the first thing I heard, "You're wanted in the counselor's office, in the housemother's office." And she showed me the collection in a box that I had gotten. She says, "Explain that." [laughing] And I told her that I was collecting the different shapes and sizes of the bottles and, which it was true, but before it all ended I had to go see Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson [chancellor], so I didn't get kicked out of school. But that passed too. He said, "I believe you Miss Howerton. If you'd been drinking it, you'd have been dead." So it—and tennis—I loved the sports there. I got my lifesaving certificate and swimming which I had been doing, but I hadn't received the lifesaving certificate. I learned to play tennis by the rules. We had a tennis court in the back yard at home, but I didn't really know how to play right.
MF: Yes.
HL: And I learned that, the correct way of playing tennis. WC had a lot of good things going for it. I do wish, though, that I had come there as a freshman. I just—you have two years against you really in developing many things when you transfer to a school. You lose out in getting to know the girls because by then most of them had already made their friends. And they were very kind to me. They accepted me though like good gals should, but you really do—from the beginning you're all in the same boat and you develop friendship—I think a little deeper friendship. And you also develop more of a leadership quality as a freshman because you don't come in cold turkey.
MF: Right.
HL: And no one knows who you are in the junior year. The—but it all just—I never did graduate per se in a graduating exercise because I got my certificate, my diploma, in 7
summer school.
MF: Oh, right. So you didn't go through commencement?
HL: No. Which was all right because it's a long, drawn-out affair.
MF: Right.
HL: But I did appreciate going to UNCG or WC. It's a good school—and they've had—. I'm a little bit disappointed—well of course that's just one person's opinion. I wonder why they turned it into a—combined it with the young men coming in.
MF: Coed [coeducation]?
HL: Yes, to a coed school. I don't know what advantage that has had, except for the people—that gave them, the men, a place to come and get their education. I expect that was what it was supposed to be—giving education to people who wanted it. We can pause for a second and see what else you might want to know.
MF: Well, since you brought that up, how do you feel—do you feel like either the reputation of the university versus the college, or even the quality of education of the university versus the college, do you feel like there's a difference there?
HL: I think the college was a little—of course, it had to be a little closer because it was one sex to begin with. It was smaller. And we—well, this is just another opinion. I think you get more individualized attention and you get more quality classwork and education perhaps. And—I know that's been disproven.
MF: No, I don't think it has. I don't know.
HL: It could have been—we could have opened up a school for young men in Greensboro, having Carolina—I don't know what you would call it—Carolina at Greensboro for men, and it would have worked the same way. Of course, they always go back—it's more economical using the same buildings and the same teachers.
MF: Yes.
HL: Economics is not everything. Bigger is not better, which is a cliché now, but you do need the individual attention even at those tender years when you think you're grown up.
MF: Right—and you're not.
HL: No you're not. You're not quite ready, but you do need somebody to take an interest in you.
MF: What about student government? What do you know about student government?
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HL: I don't know too much about it. I wasn't that involved. It worked well. I don't think—I can't remember at this point anything that stands out in my mind that was anti-student government. We must have had a real—we must have had some pretty smart gals on that student government because everything ran fairly smoothly as well as I remember.
MF: Yes.
HL: I think had I been there a little bit earlier I would like to have been involved in the student government. But it was—it ran well.
MF: Yes. Was it an important part of campus? Campus life?
HL: Not to that extent. Not to me rather. I'm sure, as in any other university or college, the student government—that's where it all starts and it radiates out, the rules and regulations and the disciplinary measures and things of this sort. But it—and the young ladies were selected and elected on their qualifications, which was the way it would work naturally.
MF: Right. Yes.
HL: But they were—it was a good group. It was a fun group, and I enjoyed the people that I met and got to know and developed friendships with. And our fiftieth anniversary is coming up; our reunion is coming up this spring. And I hope my ex-roommate will come down from Vermont and stay with me here.
MF: [laughs] Former roommate, right?
HL: [laughs] Yes, former roommate.
MF: Wow, Vermont—that's a nice place.
HL: It's a good state.
MF: Let me ask you about some of the people like Dr. Jackson. You had mentioned him. What was he like?
HL: Oh he was nice. He had to have a sense of humor [laughing] to put up with me. He was good. I liked him very much. He had much respect from the students.
MF: Right. Okay.
HL: And Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of student services, director of Elliott Hall] was one of our—she was the one that said to me, "Explain that."
MF: Oh, really.
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HL: She was a real—she real great person. I'm trying to think of that cute little lady that was my housemother my first year there. And I see her—well I did see her; she may not be with us anymore—every now and then here in Greensboro, I cannot think of her name. But she married during the time that she was a housemother, a most attractive woman.
MF: I'm not sure. I usually have some of the names written down, but—
HL: But she was at Woman's Dorm, and that dorm is long gone, that and Kirkland [Residence Hall]. But I do have a lithograph that I did of Woman's Dorm, which was one of the—well, it was a project doing the lithograph, and I chose to do the little porch up there where we would sleep. And one of the—and that gave me—it put Walker Avenue as it was going down beside the campus. And a girl sitting on—well, she was studying on the other bed, and I was sitting on my bed sketching, and you could see the pillars of the little porch up there on the second floor. So I have probably the only picture in lithograph of the little porch there at Woman's Dorm on the second floor with the beds outside, with the beds on the porch.
MF: Oh. Even when it was cold outside?
HL: Oh, it was wonderful. Just keep on piling covers on and let it snow. And it had—it did snow in on us.
MF: Oh really?
HL: Yes.
MF: But you withstood it?
HL: I liked it. Oh, I liked it. I would have been a good camper, I think.
MF: Yes, I would be if there were no bugs. I don't like bugs.
HL: I don't like them either.
MF: What about Harriet Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women]? What do you know about her?
HL: Not much. It's a name that we respected.
MF: Yes.
HL: I'm sorry; I'm not versed on—
MF: Oh, that's okay.
HL: —some of the finer points of WC. 10
MF: That's fine. That's all right. What about some of the traditions that they had on campus? I
know they had a lot of traditions that they had—well, as a transfer student I don't know if you knew about class jackets and—
HL: I'm trying to think if I had a class jacket. I did. I did. The last time I saw it was in Asheville. [laughing]
MF: So it still survives? [laughing]
HL: No. No, I think the moths took it over the last time I saw it. They were wool jackets as well as I remember.
MF: Yes. Some people had had wool, and some people had had leather ones.
HL: No, I didn't have a leather one.
MF: I mean it changed.
HL: Yes. Yes, I'm sure it did. Yes, I guess it would change.
MF: Yes, I don't know why it was wool or leather. I don't know if it had any significance. What about the—there was May Day, the May Queen?
HL: They had May Day. When you say May Day, I think of my daughter who was May Queen at Grimsley [High School, Greensboro, North Carolina]. It was a lovely affair. I remember seeing it, going to it. It was lovely. It was one of those picturesque things, just like the good book says it should be—colorful, May Day. I don't think they do that anymore, do they—
MF: I don't think so.
HL: —at the first of May? It's a lovely tradition. Some of those old traditions we need to bring back. It—I'm sorry that it's not being done. It's not—if you evaluate it, it really wasn't an important thing, but it was a good tradition—I mean as far as character building, that sort of thing. But it was a good tradition.
MF: Yes. They had—
HL: I believe they did have what they called the hut or someplace down on campus where they would go and have a coke [Coca Cola, soft drink] and music and we would dance. The girls would dance with girls. But, if you didn't—the fellows weren't around at that time.
MF: Right, so you had to dance with who was there?
HL: Right. And with some of the music we had then, you had to dance. Wonderful.
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MF: Didn't they have like Tuesday chapel? It may not have been on Tuesday.
HL: You are stretching my memory. [laughing] Tuesday chapel. That does sound familiar. There jolly well could have be a Tuesday chapel. And we went. We went to chapel. They would have some good programs.
MF: Yes. Do you remember any of the programs that they had?
HL: No.
MF: Yes. I know some people told me about.—that once a year they would have the Sedalia Singers come, and they were like a black gospel group from Sedalia. Do you remember that?
HL: I don't remember that. We would have some, I think, good music coming, like symphonies coming. We would put on our fineries for—we would get dressed up for some of the occasions that they would have at the Aycock Auditorium.
MF: Yes.
HL: And that was good. [chuckles] This has nothing to do—and concerts is what we would have. This has nothing to do with it, but my son went to college. He would say, "Mother, we are going to have so and so this concert." And I visualized them as wearing this tux and things of this sort. It was not that way at all. [laughs] It was a concert that you're familiar with these days.
MF: Like a rock concert?
HL: Yes. So—but when they—to me when they said concert, it was a dress-up affair.
MF: Right.
HL: So they had good programs at the auditorium, at Aycock.
MF: Yes.
HL: Oh you want—I told you a while ago about sleeping at Foust [Building]. Should I tell you about that?
MF: Sure.
HL: It's one thing about having time to come in. We were coming back from a weekend, my roommate and I, a weekend from my home in Asheville. The fellows brought us back, and they were going on to Chapel Hill, and we almost got to our dorm in time before the doors closed. And then it was—I guess we would sign out until Monday morning early for class. But if you came in after hours on Sunday night, that was bad news, so we just 12
spent the night on some sofas they had there at Foust and listened to the radiators pop all night long, being scared to pieces thinking it was some guard might be coming around. We heard all the crickles and crackles. But we didn't get much sleep. We giggled a lot. She'd be in one sofa, and I'd be in another sofa, and we'd listen to those things, scare us half to pieces too. But those rules—some rules and regulations are not the best. We—because you'd be campused if you got in late.
MF: Did you get campused?
HL: Yes. About five minutes late. I mean, if you're going to get campused, you might as well stay an hour later.
MF: Yes. Make it worth it, right?
HL: Make it worth it, instead of five minutes. I guess that's why we slept in Foust because we didn't want to get campused again.
MF: Oh, so you got away with it that time?
HL: Yes, of course. We weren't late. We had until probably eight o'clock [am] to come in. I've forgotten how that went, but I think we could sign out until Monday morning.
MF: Oh right. So it just looked like you were coming back from home in the morning?
HL: Yes. There's always a way to get around something.
MF: Right. What were—?
HL: I don't want my children—now that they're grown, I don't want—I never said things like this to them when they were growing up. You just don't tell your children the things that you used to do. [laughing]
MF: Oh I know. I know.
HL: Until they are adults.
MF: Or maybe not even then. [laughing]
HL: That's right.
MF: You build up this image and just let them believe that's what you're like. [laughing]
HL: Yes. Well, they know all the secrets now though.
MF: [laughing] What were some of your classes like? Do you remember? I mean, just generally what did they seem like? The academic side of the university? Was it good or? 13
HL: Yes, they were good. And I was a fairly good student. I used to do the honor roles at St. Genevieve's, but that was a very small school which was where I learned to study. And I did appreciate the classes. I enjoyed going out in the biology, not biology, botany. We used to do the little parks, and I wish I could think of that precious man's name. He would crack the whip every now and then. They would take us over in the park next to the campus over toward West Market Street. And if they keep on building buildings, they're going to build that park up to the buildings. We used to do a lot of botany tours through those paths through there. That was good. And everything—being an art major, you just did what you had to do.
MF: Right.
HL: And the academic part—as far as the history, I enjoyed the history. I would have liked it—if I had known then what I know now, I would have enjoyed the history so much more.
MF: Right. Doesn't that always seem to be the case?
HL: Yes. And if I had known my dad better then than I think I do now, I would have appreciated his knowledge of history because he was a history buff. And I love history now. We can't go forward unless we know our history and our mistakes and our successes that we have made in the past, so we can, won't, stumble so much in the future. We'll find new places to stumble, but they should not be a repeat.
MF: Right. Right. Make new mistakes.
HL: Right.
MF: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is—there was this, for lack of a better word, a rift between the Alumni Association and Chancellor [William E.] Moran.
HL: Yes. I get letters on that, and I read them, and I have a hard time deciphering them and understanding them. I don't know why they're trying to separate the alumni from the system. It has worked so well in its own way. I imagine it has come under the heading of computerizing and probably putting things under one head. But in doing that you're going to lose a lot of—I think the alumni kind of likes to have its own little system. I'm afraid it may do more damage than good for the school as far as the Alumni Association is concerned. From where I'm sitting right now, I'm just getting a picture of it. I'm not in on the inside of that—just from hearing and knowing the Association for what it has been, it has worked so well. And I think the people enjoy giving more to a smaller type of Association that the alumni have now. Not that the alumni is smaller—
MF: Yes, I understand what you're saying.
HL: —but the business part is small, than under the wide scope of a university. It—we have an identity now, and I think we feel as though we might get lost as we go in to a merger, 14
so to speak, with the bigger part.
MF: You were saying that you read the letters you've received—like letters from the Alumni Association and letters—
HL: From the university.
MF: —from the university? And you said that you're having trouble deciphering what the
disagreement is or—?
HL: Why they want to do it. Why they want to do a little merging there.
MF: Yes, like what the—
HL: The Alumni Association I thought and as much as I knew was doing a good job all by itself.
MF: Yes.
HL: And it was still part of the university. It wasn't all by itself. I think they're trying to put the giving part under one roof so to speak.
MF: Yes. Does it seem like a control issue?
HL: Well, it would be more control.
MF: Yes, I mean like a fight over financial control?
HL: Well, there again I don't think the alumni giving to me is a different part of giving than to the university. It all goes into the same pot eventually, but it may be that we get to call the shots a little more by being a separate identity.
MF: Yes.
HL: I'll have to talk to Dr. Moran to find out for sure—eyeball to eyeball, face to face—until I find out. It's like a show and tell. You've got to tell me about it.
MF: Yes.
HL: The letters are fine, but you don't really get the feel, you don't get the facial expression, you don't get a lot from tone.
MF: Right.
HL: You don't get a lot from letters.
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MF: Right.
HL: Maybe we should start sending letters in video form. [both laugh]
MF: But then you have the problem that so many people are such good actors.
HL: That's true, but you can usually discern.
MF: Yes. Have you met Chancellor Moran?
HL: Yes.
MF: Oh really? I have to admit you're the first person I've met who has met him.
HL: Nice person and has a nice, creative wife. I expect my husband has more to do with—. Well, I know he does. He knows more of the people at the university than I do. He gets involved in most everything. And he and Dr. Moran are good friends.
MF: What's Dr. Moran like as a chancellor?
HL: As a chancellor? I think he's done a good job. Has a nice twinkle in his eye.
MF: I've never met him.
HL: Well, go by and say "hey" to him.
MF: Is he the type that that would be okay?
HL: Sure. Yes, he'll—just tell him you want to meet him. You don't get in that position by being standoffish.
MF: Right. Right. In the position of chancellor?
HL: Yes.
MF: Because they had a search committee that picked him, didn't they?
HL: Probably. I mean they should.
MF: I'm sure they did. Yes, I imagine they did. I can't imagine to picking a chancellor without one.
HL: And he had to be approved by the Board of Trustees, and they had to have a search committee. Lots of recommendations coming in.
MF: Yes. 16
HL: Inquiries.
MF: Why do you think he builds so much at the university? It seems like he's got a real building boom going on.
HL: Well, I don't know why. I guess it may be because other universities are building and if—and being a chancellor and having a certain amount of pride in his school, I guess he wants to keep up with the next-door neighbors.
MF: Keep up with the Joneses?
HL: Yes.
MF: Or maybe outdo the Joneses? [laughing]
HL: See now I'm speaking of something that I don't know anything about.
MF: Right.
HL: I'm just wondering.
MF: Yes.
HL: As I say, you wonder why. I hadn't even thought about it, but they are doing a lot of building.
MF: Oh yes.
HL: And they are—I went into a new gym for the first time the other day to see my grandson play basketball, and I appreciate that parking place they put over there. They bought that property over there and put a parking place for folks that attend things at the gym. And it was impressive. I just can't imagine that is the same area I used to swim in. [laughs]
MF: Oh right. Gosh I'm trying to think—it just occurred to me—I was thinking there's been the construction with all the new parking. There's the physical activities complex. I guess that's what it's called. I guess three new buildings.
HL: I don't know how many new buildings, but I do know it's hard to park.
MF: The cafeteria renovation, the dorm renovation. There really has been a lot.
HL: And Elliott Hall has been—that has been a really, a profitable business.
MF: Oh, the university center?
HL: Yes. Is that what it's called, the university center? 17
MF: I think they just call it Elliott.
HL: Well, I just call it Elliott Hall. What do you call it?
MF: Elliott.
HL: Well, that's where they have the big ballroom and a good cafeteria. Good food. I haven't eaten there in some time, but I used to go over there, and I used to have lunch.
MF: Where? In that Dogwood Room?
HL: Wonderful food downstairs. And I liked the way they put the students' art around, different.
MF: They've got a game room in there too. Have you ever seen it?
HL: No.
MF: Your grandson would like that.
HL: Oh I'm sure they would.
MF: Pool tables and ping pong tables and video games.
HL: I like the pool tables.
MF: And pinball machines and music and televisions and the whole bit.
HL: Really?
MF: Yes.
HL: Where did they put that?
MF: If you go in the doors, the glass doors that face Dogwood Room, instead of going in
those doors, go in the other glass doors and go down the hall, the back hallway to your right there. And it's right on that left side, the whole left side of that hallway.
HL: Sounds good, but now I would love to take a—to audit courses over there. I did one time. I took a—I wanted to get into sculpturing, and I took a clay course.
MF: I have to check this from time to time because it will cut off on me.
HL: I took a course over there in clay. I guess that's what you call it. I took it with the students. Now being an art major and having had clay before, I wanted to learn more than that. I wanted to learn the mechanism for bronzing, things of this sort. It was slow for me, and 18
I—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
HL: —at the pace of the students go.
MF: Right.
HL: Whereas I did not have other classes. I just wanted to do sculpture. And it goes back to when I wanted to go to Traphagen Art School. I just wanted to take art. And I'm wondering—the thought came to me just then—if they could have an accelerated class in, well, not only the arts, and have a class that would go a little faster in some of these specialties.
MF: Well I don't know, I guess that's—there's that Department of Continuing Education. It's in Foust [Building] now.
HL: My dear old building, huh?
MF: Yes. I know the director of continuing education. His name is John Young. And I guess he's the one who would know about that.
HL: I just may have to speak to John.
MF: Very nice fellow. Very nice.
HL: I'm sure he is.
MF: Yes. His wife died a few years ago.
HL: I'm sorry. How long has John been there?
MF: Well, he was already there when I was working on my undergraduate degree.
HL: I know I had to go through a special area to take my course that I did.
MF: And so let's see—I started there. He's been there since at least 1982. I'm not sure how much before then.
HL: Before then.
MF: Right.
HL: This was several years ago that I was doing this. It was an eight o'clock [am] class, and it 19
was not easy—
MF: Oh, gosh.
HL: —for mama to get over there and leave that breakfast table.
MF: I've had three different semesters with an eight o'clock [am] class.
HL: And finding a place to park was a challenge then.
MF: You have to get there at seven thirty [am] to get a parking place for eight o'clock, I know.
HL: Yes, you do. And for the art department where the art building was then, it was hard, and it's still hard to find a place to park.
MF: Right.
HL: The Weatherspoon [Art] Gallery has a good place to come through and park. But I don't know how you all do it. You go from from—of course, many campuses that are larger than UNCG. It's good to walk that far, but I don't know how you get to classes on time.
MF: You get there early.
HL: But how can you leave one class and go to another?
MF: Oh as far as—you mean getting from one class to the next? You have fifteen minutes between classes.
HL: It doesn't give you time to stop by the room, does it?
MF: No, well, I commute, so—
HL: Did you commute during your—?
MF: No, my undergraduate, no. I guess I had a couple of classes that were back to back and maybe sometimes got there a couple of minutes late.
HL: Well, now tell me—I remember we were—we had to—we couldn't cut classes. I think we had three cuts or something. What about your classes now? Do you—are you free to come and go as you wish as long as you meet the expectations of the grades?
MF: Well, I think it becomes obvious when they don't see your face there. Some professors will specify you have this many cuts, and others just expect you to act professionally, I guess.
HL: Do any of the classes give you unlimited cuts? 20
MF: I'm sure there have been some. I've never been the type to cut class though.
HL: No, you wouldn't. You're a—what was it you said you were? I think of Phi Delta Theta; that’s a fraternity.
MF: I was Phi Beta Kappa.
HL: Phi Beta Kappa. No, you couldn't cut classes and be a Phi Beta Kappa. That is quite an achievement. You like to study?
MF: Yes.
HL: That's an art. That's wonderful. And you retain it.
MF: Well, I don't know about that.
HL: And you're interested in everything. Just from talking to you a while ago, you have a wide scope of interest.
MF: Well, anyway.
HL: I ought to be interviewing you.
MF: No. No. [laughing] I'm trying to think—also, are there any—were there any other things I know—well, gosh, you were—you transferred to WC in '38. I guess that's sort of catching the end of the Depression [severe worldwide economic downturn preceding World War II] there.
HL: That's one reason why I went there because it was inexpensive, and I had planned to go— before I had the ring on my finger—to go up North to school. And the only reason I wanted to go up North was to ski, and that was before skiing was popular. [laughing]
MF: So these are the real reasons for choosing schools, right? [laughing]
HL: Absolutely, yes. Money plays a big part in it. And I'm wondering if what it costs to go to Traphagen College, but I know I couldn't go because—well, they said it was too far away. And it was out of—my parents probably just thought that this art world was another world, and it was. I still haven't gotten over wearing blue jeans with paint smeared on them. I think—I wonder if we started a trend back then. [laughing]
MF: Very possibly.
HL: It was good. It was—well UNCG is—I don't know how it stands. Usually it's
kind of a mediocre?
MF: Oh well, it's a good school, but it's not definitely considered one of the top three, like 21
Woman's College was apparently considered one of the top three women's schools in the nation.
HL: See this is a—see Meredith College [Raleigh, North Carolina] is still a women's college and that is a top college, and it may be because they haven't diversified.
MF: Yes. I've just been wondering about why, now that it's a university, it doesn't seem to have the same stature that it had when it was a women's college. And is it because of the difference of college to university or the difference of women's school to coeducational?
HL: I think the women's school to coeducational. That's just what I think.
MF: Yes. Inside North Carolina itself, UNCG is a very good school, one of the top, one of the top five perhaps, but outside of North Carolina I doubt that very many people who've heard of UNCG, but when it was Woman's College, there were very few people who had not heard of it.
HL: Not heard of it. We had students from everywhere. I don't know what they—who they have now or what they have. We certainly did have a lot of students who were from other countries as well as faraway states because it is a—it was a good school. And it still is a good school.
MF: People, foreign students who came in, were they in the mainstream of the college? Or were they—
HL: Not particularly.
MF: —sort of isolated?
HL: Not really isolated. They didn't—they weren't too active on campus.
MF: Right.
HL: But they were very good in education, and they got it.
MF: Yes.
HL: And something else. I think UNCG now has perhaps an outstanding department in interior decorating, or it did recently
MF: Right.
HL: So we still top in some areas.
MF: In some areas, right. Perhaps then instead of looking at the whole university, it's more a case of looking at individual departments?
22
HL: Yes. I don't know about the education. And see, I did get my teacher's certificate here, and I taught one year, and then I went on to Traphagen School of Fashion Design in New York for a short period of time to learn illustration and whatnot. The—but I do think—I've forgotten my train of thought about what I was going to say. What was I—?
MF: I'm trying to think.
HL: When I thought about New York and Traphagen that created another world out there.
MF: Oh right.
HL: That's all right. And this tape. Do you cut off what you don't want to hear? Or do you have all these old pauses and mumblings?
MF: Oh well, when it gets transcribed—
HL: You can put in what you want to?
MF: Right. Oh well, no. It will be transcribed verbatim, but, of course, you won't have a thirty second pause, "What was I going to say?"
HL: Yes.
MF: Right. It will read a little nicer. Are there any other anecdotes or anything else that you think is important to characterize the nature of Woman's College when you were there? Anything that can't be left out?
HL: When I think of Woman's College, I think of people going to classes. And I think they didn't dress sloppily to me, like people say they do if the men are not around, but in those days we dressed very decently compared with the way it is now.
MF: Oh, well I'm sure.
HL: I think of camaraderie. I think the comradeship that we had and the feeling that you had. It was all part of a unified effort in the sense of being together for one purpose, and that of learning, of being with each other, and helping each other, and just doing what you could to make the whole thing work.
MF: Right. And that came from more than just Woman's College being, well not small, but not incredibly large. There was something more than just the size of it that created that.
HL: Oh yes, there was. You don't get that by size.
MF: Right.
HL: See, I wasn't even for consolidation of the [Guilford] County Schools. [laughing] I'm just 23
maybe for individualism and friendly competition among schools. My husband was chairman of the school board back when we had integration, and had I not been his wife, I would probably have been his worst enemy. [laughing]
MF: Was he for integration?
HL: He thought it was the only way to go.
MF: Yes, there were some board members who just gave lip service—
HL: He was—no, he said education was for all. You don't consider race. And it was—that didn't—race didn't bother me; it was neighborhood schools. It was going to one school and having a feeling of loyalty to a school.
MF: Do you think with many people that that was more the issue for them rather than race, that they wanted the schools to remain part of the community they were in?
HL: I think people did, people want, people liked their neighborhood schools.
MF: Yes.
HL: And I think it's—and I think the blacks liked their neighborhood schools. They wanted the same education as the whites were getting, and I don't blame them. And they weren't getting it as—and we tried, as you know, started putting white teachers in the black schools thinking that might help with the quality of education. I don't think integration has helped with the quality of education at this point.
MF: Right. Yes.
HL: But it may be down the line that it will in the long run. It will equalize the opportunities. But at one point we had the—when you could select your own school and go to it, which was, I felt, good. You could go to this school over there if there was room.
MF: Freedom of choice.
HL: Yes. And that was good.
MF: Yes.
HL: Busing. We've always had busing.
MF: Yes. Up North too.
HL: Down here too. When I was a child I was bused even though I lived a mile from school. If I had time I would—well, usually my dad would take me, but I could ride the bus if dad had to leave early or something. But I could walk to school. 24
MF: Yes, at a mile, yes.
HL: And our children. When we lived here. Well, of course, living here in Greensboro, we lived out at Hamilton Lakes, and they were bused to the junior high and to senior high, and that was about five miles away. And that's not what you'd call a neighborhood school, but they were bused. But what made it different—the blacks had their schools, the junior and senior highs, and we had—the whites had theirs. And this, and the blacks perhaps, probably didn't have the quality education because the PTAs [parent teacher associations] always got behind the schools and helped out in the special, extra things. And at that time the blacks couldn't afford it. They can now, but—and I will say that a lot of it is due to integration because they are getting a better education. Sometimes it takes longer, but sometimes we kind of let things take their course, their own natural course, but it takes longer. The blacks and the whites would have come together later. Perhaps this is in my own thinking; perhaps for a longer and maybe a little more peaceful, it would have just been a natural way of doing things. But that's just my thoughts. Anyhow, my Al was for integration. He was for everybody getting the same thing. And I would argue with him about this and that. And then he'd get upset. And I'd say, "Listen, I'm just sharpening you up for the public because there are a lot of people out there who think just as I do." And they did a great job here during integration time. They were very successful as a whole.
MF: Have you ever read the book, Civilities and Civil Rights by William Chafe?
HL: No, I have not. Tell me about it.
MF: It just talks about Greensboro as an example of the rest of the South, sort of a microcosm. But he says that basically that although Greensboro thought of itself as being very progressive in race relations and so did the rest of the country, but in reality they weren't as progressive as they thought.
HL: Probably not as much as the blacks would like them to be.
MF: Yes, that's sort of the premise of his book. And it's obviously much more detailed and complicated than that. That's just trying to give a simplistic overview. But it's an interesting book.
HL: I wonder if Al has read that.
MF: It talks about the board of education and all in quite a bit of detail.
HL: Well, to begin with, Al wrote a letter to all the churches at the beginning of integration when they passed the—the day he went into office was the day he passed the law that everything was going to be—
MF: The Brown [Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954 landmark US Supreme Court case in which the court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional] decision? 25
HL: Yes. And so he went in with this challenge on his shoulders. He is good at going in for challenges. He does a great job with things of this sort. But he wrote a letter to all the churches, the blacks and the whites, to kind of pave the road with their membership in integrating and to—the way to go about it. And that, I think, was the first—I think it was a very strong step in coming in as peacefully as we have done. And people all over this town worked hard together. There was dissention along the way, but not bad. I think for the whole we worked real well together. We had people to threaten us. They were going to cut off my blonde hair. They were going to do this [unclear] and they put a police car down there at the corner of our house. But it didn't frighten us. We're not easily frightened. Are you?
MF: No, I don't think so.
HL: It was—
MF: Or at least it doesn't deter me.
HL: That's right. Well, let's just say respect is a better word. [Laughing] But education-wise, going back to the college, we do have a good educational system here. I don't know about the practice teaching these days, and I had to go through practice teaching at Curry. Do they still have practice? They don't have Curry [laboratory school on campus] students anymore, do they?
MF: You mean from the community to come in.
HL: Yes.
MF: No. Curry is used as a classroom building.
HL: Right. Right. It used to be the select school to get your education, and you did get a good education there.
MF: Right.
HL: I don't know what they're teaching, our teachers now, but—and it's another world of teaching than when I taught school. It's the discipline. It's awfully hard to teach when you have the discipline problems.
MF: Yes, I know about that.
HL: And I don't know what they can teach the young teachers to do to cope with this.
MF: Part of it is confidence. Part of it is just knowing how to handle people.
HL: To handle people. Well, are they teaching a lot of that in school now?
MF: Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure how you can teach it. 26
HL: I guess a lot of the psychology of it. You just have to know what to expect.
MF: I think it's sort of more common-sense type knowledge than it is something you can teach somebody.
HL: And you have to love people. You have to want to help people and let those things be the goal. There are some teachers that just have it and some who just don't.
MF: I know. Now the key is to explain why some do and why some don't, right?
HL: That's right.
MF: Not a question I want to tackle.
HL: It's born in you, I think, and the students know.
MF: Yes, oh yes.
HL: They know if you want to help them or not. And I imagine that—I know that our education department over at UNCG must be much—so aware of that now. Now I think they got off the beaten path in the sixties. Don't you or have you read back that far?
MF: Not about the education department itself.
HL: The mode of teaching, the way of teaching?
MF: Yes, there was a new—a bunch of new theory in the early seventies about how kids should be taught, but I'm not personally very aware of how that's affected UNCG's education department.
HL: I'm not either. If I were real smart and energetic, I'd just go over there and get real nosey and find out what's going on. But right now I have—right now my time is taken up with Al and his—and the things that he's involved in, so I don't get a chance to go play alumnus.
MF: Yes.
HL: But when I do get over there, I thoroughly do enjoy it. I haven't even been in your library.
MF: Oh, we've got an archives section that has a bunch of stuff on UNCG and WC and all of Dr. [Charles Duncan] McIver's [first president of the institution] papers and a lot of stuff.
HL: See those are the things I'd like to go browsing through. And it takes a long time to do that.
MF: Yes. 27
HL: The only thing I ever did was to (It took me a week.)—I was looking up a patent for Al. Al, as I told you, is in the [North Carolina] legislature, and I go with him when he's in Raleigh. They let me stay down there. I went over to [North Carolina] State College [now University, Raleigh, North Carolina], and I went to the library for a week doing research on patents, and I enjoyed that little experience and getting back into it.
MF: Oh.
HL: Researching and things of that sort. It was fun. I was looking up a patent to see if—I had something in mind—I still may do it yet, but I was wanting to see how much had been done in this particular project.
MF: Okay.
HL: Probably could have done it right here at UNCG, but when you're here—
MF: Yes, you'd have too many other things to do.
HL: —you have too many things going on.
MF: Are there—is there anything else about WC that—
HL: —stands out in my mind?
MF: Yes.
HL: Well, I can remember when they built the new dorms. I call them the new dorms. We called them A and B.
MF: Which ones were they now?
HL: Those—I don't even know the names of them. They're down below the quadrangle, the two on the end down there. I think there are two as you come up from the West Market [Street] entrance.
MF: Phillips [Residence Hall], Hawkins [Residence Hall]?
HL: Hawkins sounds familiar.
MF: Strong [Residence Hall], and I can't remember what the other half was named. [Editor’s note: Moore Residence Hall]
HL: But they were halves. And that was my last year. My last dormitory. My senior year. I think I was in B. It was before they had found appropriate names. And people to do homage for.
28
MF: Okay.
HL: And down there, I'm just trying to think if we had a little kitchen when I said a little while ago that we didn't. We didn't. I can't remember one in Woman's Dorm. But I think we could have had something down there at B. We had a little kitchen, and everybody labeled their things.
MF: Right, right, but that doesn't do much good sometimes.
HL: No, it doesn't.
MF: Okay.
HL: I wonder—have you interviewed any more transfer students?
MF: No, I haven't.
HL: You get a different picture, I'm sure.
MF: Right.
HL: I'm a little more vague with what you perhaps want to find out.
MF: No, no, actually—
HL: I do recommend four years at one school if possible.
MF: Right.
HL: And yet there's a trend coming up now for high schools to be extended into a junior
college affair. I don't know if you were aware of that or not.
MF: No.
HL: It's been talked about. And then just have a—the universities the last two years or even going on to two more years because a master's [degree] seems to be the thing to have these days with what you're getting now. Are you entertaining the thought of getting a doctorate?
MF: Yes, I'll entertain the thought, but I don't know what I'll do about it. Thanks a whole lot.
HL: Well Missy, if nothing else comes from this interview, it's just getting to know you. You are just a doll.
[End of Interview]