Oral history interview with Virginia "Ginny" Haynes Meserve, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWER: Linda Danford
INTERVIEWEE: Virginia "Ginny" Haynes Meserve
DATE: April 19, 1991
[Begin Tape 1, Side A]
LD: Okay, Ginny, would you tell me something about your earliest impressions of Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]?
VM: Well, living at West End Place, I was quite aware of—of course, and quite near to it, but being an only child my parents thought it would be very good for me to live on campus, which indeed it was. And my roommate was from York, Pennsylvania, and I was an art major, a messy art major, I might add. [laughs] And she was a very neat person, but we made it, and I—let's see. I lived in Coit Hall the first year and then we—let me see. What was the name? We moved over to the new dorm for the remaining three years. And, of course, no jeans were allowed on campus in those days and very strict closing hours the first year. In fact, I wore out several flashlight batteries studying or reading under the covers as most people did.
LD: Tell me something. Somebody told me that they—the dormitory lights actually went out—
VM: Oh, yes.
LD: —so that you could not turn the light back on.
VM: That's true. That's true. And after the first six weeks, if you made, I believe, a C average, you could have the lights until another hour. And as I said, a heavy run on flashlight batteries.
LD: What year did you come to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]?
VM: I was there '41 to '45. In fact, one of my memories—the war started on a Sunday—World War II [1939-45 global conflict]—and several of us had walked—had gone out to the old Guilford Dairy to have milkshakes. They, at that time, were the best milkshakes in town. And when we got back from the milkshakes, that was the big thing on campus, of course, —the war had begun.2
LD: People had heard about it on the radio?
VM: Yes. And they told us, and so that was how, to me, the war started. And having a—well, I have an uncle who was in the war, so, but it—otherwise, I didn't really know anyone particularly in the war but my Uncle Bobby and so after—you could announce your major, but you didn't get into it until you were what, a junior? But you could take one or two courses, and I must say, I just loved going down to the old McIver Building and going up the outside steps to the art—see, we had the top floor and the windows—the light was wonderful and the windows were large and everyone had a lot of space. We had our own—to study the Art 101 and whatever and so; also the outside steps were very good. My other main memory of the art was coming down the steps. I had a friend who liked doughnuts as well as I do, and they had a wonderful doughnut shop down in that little corner. So we—and let's see—
LD: So you were a studio art major?
VM: I was a fine arts major.
LD: Fine arts, which included studio art and art history or—?
VM: Well, everyone had to take art history that was in art. And then studio art—they didn't have the choice they have nowadays. It was really a liberal arts degree. You had a major and a minor, and my minor was English. So, and—I lived through biology. I'd never had any science.
LD: That was a requirement?
VM: A requirement. And I loved my teacher. I made my first D one quarter, but I pulled it up to a C, so I didn't have to hang my head too much.
LD: Do you remember who it was?
VM: No. But I can tell you my art teachers. Now, let's see. Miss [Helen] Thrush was my—she was in graphic arts, and that's the field I really majored in because I liked line. And Dr. [Gregory] Ivy [Editor’s note: Gregory Ivy did not hold a doctoral degree] was my main—head of the department. And by unusual circumstance, after I moved to Kansas, I went to the Plymouth Congregational Church and one of the ladies there was talking to me, and said she had a son, a brother-in-law, who taught art in Greensboro. That was Dr. Ivy. So anyway, he was an excellent teacher. Didn't like purple, but he liked everything else you did. And Miss Thrush was—she loved wood and woodcuts and things like that, so I liked that. And, of course, you took other kinds of art. I enjoyed fashion design except that wouldn't be my field. And let's see.
I enjoyed the English department, too. Dr. [Marc] Friedlaender was my—the hardest work I think I ever did in English. He had a one-hour course, and the first thing he did when we went in there was ask everybody—he knew what we majored in, he had it on his record—and ask us some penetrating question which was out of the blue and then 3
we read Don Quixote, War and Peace. And it was a one-hour course, and I remember when I went in for the exam I really thought the exam he had written on the board was for the class before us it was so hard. [laughs] But anyway, I learned a great deal, and I really—he was a fascinating teacher too.
And let's see. Well, I guess you know after class, not only were you pretty restricted according to time. I can't remember what our hours were. I think they were twelve [am] on—eleven-thirty [pm] or twelve [am] on Saturday and eleven-thirty [pm] on Sunday or something like that. I can't remember. And we had a dance every year, and I guess the one I remember the most because I was on the decorating committee was a winter dance. And at that time, the US Army Air Corps had conveniently put an Air Force right in town [Overseas Replacement Depot], so, of course, in a girls’ school in a war there were very few dates. So anyway, with a whole—a contingent of Air Force people—most people had dates. And anyway we were having a winter dance and I remember our committee decided to make the nickelodeon [a type of jukebox] into a snowman. I don't remember much else about the dance, but that was really a lot of cotton, a lot of fun.
LD: And that's what the music came from? Nickelodeon?
VM: Oh, yes. Yes. And, of course, in those days, you—well, that was the main music for anything, just about. And had an excellent fine arts program. I had never gone to many plays or concerts, so I was really entranced by a lot of the things that I saw and heard there. I remember once Cornelia Otis Skinner [American author and actress] came through, and she had written that book about going to Europe with her girlfriend [Emily Kimbrough]. Our Hearts—
LD: Were Young and Gay?
VM: Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, and she was a wonderful speaker. I mean, she was one of the many, of course. And, of course, having the—I didn't have anything much to do with the theater. I did have to paint a portrait once for some play I can't remember. And—
LD: Didn't the students ever do scenery for plays?
VM: Yes, but I wasn't a—that was—they just happened to need a quickly-done portrait, so I did that. No, I didn't—I spent most of my—well, with three-hour labs in art—and then you could go over any time you wanted to later, except in the evening. So I spent—really, spent most of my time in the art labs because I guess I liked the smell of turpentine. But—and see, my roommate and I—it was really nice. We'd come over to my home because it was only a couple of blocks away about once every two or three weeks to get a square meal. Of course, during the war, I remember we had a—I liked the dining hall, and we all had to take turns waiting tables, which was very good because it surely showed you how hard it was. And on—for some reason, dried apricots were—must have been plentiful because they used to have dried apricots about once a week, but very few people liked them. So the next day they would have apricot cobbler, but since I'm an apricot freak that suited me fine. And—4
LD: In my college, you did well if you liked liver. We had liver once a month. But if you didn't like liver, you had to—and there never anyone at dinner on liver night—just except the people who were nuts about liver.
VM: The healthy ones.
LD: I guess. I was not one of the ones who liked liver, I can tell you.
VM: Well, I loved liver until I had the worst case of flu. I was working in New York [City] at the time after I got out of college and I—. Of course, I used to get liver a lot because it was inexpensive. And I had the worst case of flu I've ever had. I couldn't look at liver because I had eaten it just before that. I couldn't look at liver for about two years. Well, anyway—
LD: Food was rationed during the war?
VM: Yes, it was.
LD: What kinds of food were rationed?
VM: Oh, sugar and meats and, of course, living in town—I had an uncle and an aunt both on the farm, so, as I said, when I got hungry my roommate, Elaine and I just came over here and eat so it worked out.
LD: You don't remember the food in the cafeteria being particularly good?
VM: Well, I don't have a—really a gourmet palate, so it didn't particularly bother me. It was sort of seamy—particularly in the last years of the war because, really, it was difficult to get the sugar. That's when I learned to drink black coffee. I never drank black coffee until I went to college, and you could have—in the morning when you had cereal you had one teaspoon of sugar, and you had the choice, cereal or coffee. So I learned to drink black coffee because I couldn't enjoy the cereal. It wasn't like it is now.
LD: Pre-sweetened?
VM: Pre-sweetened and so, anyway, I think considering all they had to contend with, they did extremely well as far as food. And then my roommate was from Pennsylvania, as I say, so Elaine would come over here, and then I did get up there once. Travel, of course, was rather difficult. Gas was restricted. But then you weren't allowed to have a car on campus, nor were you allowed to be married, nor—in fact, one of the big secrets of our particular dorm—one of the girls had been married and I guess divorced, but no one ever said a word about it. So we thought we were in the real world and things like that.
LD: How did you get up to York [Pennsylvania] when you went to visit your roommate?
VM: On the train. You went on the train to Washington [DC].5
LD: Southern Crescent?
VM: I don't really remember. It was the Southern Railroad, of course.
LD: But you remember you went to DC and then changed in DC for—
VM: Well, I had an uncle, also, that lived in DC, so mother and dad and I used to go up there once in a while. But, no, we'd go up and go over and then we—I have never seen anything like their outdoor markets with Amish people [subgroup of Mennonites known for simple living]—gorgeous fruits and things and the battlefields and so on. History was not one of my strong subjects, but it was nice seeing the real thing. And Elaine, my roommate as I said, liked oysters and my dad liked oysters, so—and mother and I couldn't stand them, but we'd come over and have an oyster dinner for them. And I don't know what—mother and I'd eat something. And we had a lot fun. Most of the time, a lot of the time you sat around and talked.
They had—the dorms had—what, monthly meetings, I guess, to hash out anything that needed to be done. And I remember I was a junior and, of course, with three-hour blocks in art it was rather difficult to work things—you had to work whatever you took in around them. And I wanted to take mythology, but I was a junior and you weren't allowed to take mythology unless you were a freshman or sophomore.
So I can remember—I had a friend of mine named Katherine who was—we were enrolling, and I said, "Oh, Katherine, they won't let me in and I've got to have an eight o'clock class because my lab starts at nine [am]." Well, she said, "Come on and take play reading." I said, "Oh." Well, I said, "Okay." And I enjoyed the course thoroughly. I had never read plays to read plays, and I really loved it and had very little work to do. Our teacher, fortunately, liked to interpret for us. In fact, I liked him—I think it was Mr. [Raymond] Taylor [theatre faculty]—so much that I took another course from him. And the first one he called—we had to read a play, and then we had to make an oral report. And he called on me first. And truly, my voice shook. I was a—What Every Woman Knows I'd happened to read the night before, so I reported on that. I remember that. And then the next semester, we were studying the different categories of plays, I guess. And we were in teams, and ours happened to have melodrama. So that worked out really well because—see, all I had to do was do the character tours of the standard characters and then the different ones would do different things, so—and it was really—it opened a lot of the theater to me. I truly enjoyed it. And, of course, I'm very fond of liberal arts because I think you—it enhances life in a lot of ways. You just put your nose in a paint box, that's all you probably know. So anyway, I enjoyed that part and then—
LD: Tell me something about your curriculum. You said that the last two years you were expected really to pursue your major. The first two years, were they very structured?
VM: Yes.
LD: Sort of general education?
VM: Which was very good, very good.6
LD: And what different things were you expected to take?
VM: Well, you had to take either math or science. I had taken math only in high school because I took one look at the science—all that spelling—and I thought, "I'll never live through that." So I just took math. So I had to take science. And then I took Dr. [Key] Barkley's Psychology 101 for my second science, which was really an amazing thing. I used to go around my family when I had all that knowledge and what—never understand why they didn't understand themselves. [laughs] But anyway and, of course, we had to take—you would be very happy, Linda—we had to take a language.
LD: Oh, good.
VM: And we had to take one in—of course, I had taken Latin in high school too, so you see we had Latin, and we had—let's see, I took—what did I take? French. No, I took Spanish. That's right. And fortunately, I could read it pretty well, but I couldn't pronounce it very well. I think people who are musical have a—sometimes have an ear for that sort of thing. But anyway I enjoyed it, and, let's see. I had science, math, history, and then I had several English classes. Oh, I had a wonderful freshman English teacher, Dr. [Charlotte] Kohler. She was only there that year but—. Of course, I liked to diagram sentences, and she was a bug on that. We spent the first day—we had our assignment and then we diagrammed all the sentences and then the second day of the week—met three times—we were given a topic and the third day we had to hand in our theme and at different times read the theme and explain it. And so that was interesting. And, of course, I worked on the newspaper a little bit. I was one of the cartoonists and then [laughs] I wrote a very learned column on art, which I probably had no idea what I was talking about, but I had—when a new exhibit would come by, why I'd review it.
LD: At the museum? At the Weatherspoon [Art Gallery] or—?
VM: Or somebody would come through or a book or something—do that once in a while. And then I got a little job in the library for a great sum of twenty-five cents an hour. And—
LD: Did a lot of students work on campus?
VM: Not a lot, no. Well, I guess they worked some, but there weren't an awful lot of jobs, you know.
LD: Where could you work? You could work in the library and you could—
VM: Well, you could work—I guess you could work in the dining hall. As I said, they had everyone—we had to take turns at times serving, but I imagine some of the kids worked there. I must say, I didn't—I don't know. I sort of had my head in the clouds or somewhere else those days, I guess. And in—so I really don't know. I imagine some of them—I don't think many of them worked off campus because the hours were really very strict, and they were very careful of us, and I—well, I don't know. Really, we had a quite a lot of homework to do in some of these courses too. Not that everyone did it. I didn't do 7
as much as I should, of course.
LD: But it would have been impossible to work off campus the way students do nowadays?
VM: Well, I think it would be much more difficult. I don't know of anyone that did. But—I never heard of anyone. I don't know whether it was allowed or not because things were so very different in those days. And, of course, it was really interesting too, you—. That's the first time that I had really met people from other states. I had some friends from New York, Irene Kossow Hedstrom [Class of 1945] I guess, now that she—and then I had a couple of friends from Connecticut, and it was really very interesting to me because I had never, you know—well, I come from a large family anyway, even though I'm an only child, so you just—and people didn't travel like they do now. In fact, the few people who went to Europe—I guess one or two did. I know we had one girl on campus who was in—she left after, I guess, her junior year and worked with Martha Graham [American modern dancer and choreographer]. I didn't know her very well, but I meant she was an excellent dancer. She would dance in some of the—[laughs] I did take one course in modern dance because it was at eight o'clock in the morning.
LD: You'd take anything at eight o'clock in the morning?
VM: Eight o'clock in the morning. It was just—. [laughs] I certainly didn't shine in it, but it got me through. I had that, and I guess I took field hockey—and see, they had archery and field hockey. They didn't have the golf course then. In fact, that side—I remember there's a little stream in it— had the most beautiful violets you ever saw by that little stream.
LD: Wasn't there a lake over there at one time?
VM: Yes, there was a little lake over there.
LD: Do you know when they drained it?
VM: They drained it to make the golf course. I think the lake was—I may be mistaken in this, but I think the lake was after I—I think the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief program for men from 1939-42] people put in the lake and then made the golf course because—
LD: During the Depression [worldwide economic downturn preceding World War II]?
VM: Yes. When Mr. [Franklin D.] Roosevelt [32nd President of the United States] came in; they had a lot of beautification of things to make things better. And I think that's when the college got the lake gone. I'm not really sure. And they had Daisy Hill. They have a May Day up there. And—
LD: The hill that's right in the middle of the golf course?
VM: I don't know where it is. It's all so built up. It's so different. I don't even know.8
LD: Well, there's really only one hill, I think, in the golf course.
VM: Well, I don't know. I wouldn't go on record saying that. And let's see. What else? As I say, I'm a pretty poor—my memory is sort of—
LD: Let me ask you some questions.
VM: Okay.
LD: What about going downtown? Did you ever go downtown?
VM: Oh, sure.
LD: For what sorts of—I mean, for shopping or—?
VM: Well, you see, being a town and a campus thing, I sort of went downtown whenever I could get off if I wanted to. I really didn't go downtown too much. I didn't—I really, at the time the college was a new life for me. As I said, we had the concert, and we had the series and we had the play series and then we—I did do a little homework, and I spent an awful lot of time on my art just because I enjoyed doing it. [laughs] I remember once Miss Thrush, as I said my favorite art teacher, she—it was really funny. She would assign something. Like she might say, "Draw a pair of shoes," or something and then one day she said, "Draw five animals and that's all, any five animals doing anything." And it doesn't sound like it takes a long time, but when you don't have a specific thing, it took a long time. Then one day, she brought a live—she brought this rooster, I guess it was, into the art thing and had a big cage and we all sat around and drew the rooster. And then another time, she took us over to the—they had their own laundry on campus, so we all went over to the laundry and sketched the laundry. You know, you were learning quick as well as work. [laughs] And then one time everybody was supposed to come to class with a postcard or something of a painting they liked because you could get them, of course, as you can now. And one of the girls—really a very cute girl, I can't remember her name and she—there weren't but about eight or ten of us in there—and she said, "I want us to hurry because I have a date tonight." And what had she taken? One that she had to do by dots. [laughs] Everybody else was finished long before she got through.
LD: You mean like a [Georges-Pierre] Seurat [French post-Impressionist painter and draftsman]?
VM: Yes. I think it was a Seurat, as a matter of fact. And she was doing all these dots. And anyway I don't know how the date turned out. I never heard the end of it, but—
LD: Were there trams still running downtown from—
VM: Tram? Streetcars?
LD: Yes.9
VM: No. I think the streetcars had gone by then. There were buses all over. It was very easy to get a bus. In fact, when I used to go to town—of course, I used to—there were so few cars, relatively speaking, if you compare them to today. So—and there again, having my own mother and father in town and Mother was one the first ones to have a car because Dad could keep it fixed up, so if we really needed to do anything we had—if we needed transportation, we had it.
[recording error, background noise]
LD: What were the fancy places to shop downtown?
VM: Well, Ellis-Stone's. Let's see, Ellis-Stone's, Meyer's and Belk's [all department stores]. Ellis-Stone's became Thalhimer's, I think. And, of course, there were three or four or five dime stores, which as a little kid I loved. And you could go in. There was Kress. My aunts—I had two aunts who worked at Grant's. My Aunt Tootie ran the upstairs office, so there was Grant's. Let's see, there was Silver's across the way. They didn't have much. But there was Grant's and Kress and Woolworth's. And then, of course, Meyer's and Ellis-Stone's and Belk's were all up at the other end, and there were four or five movie theaters. The Carolina, of course, being the more fancy one which showed the A pictures, the new A pictures. And then there was—at least two or three more on main street which I—one showed mostly B westerns and things and the other one showed third or fourth run.
LD: What street—what was main street? Elm?
VM: Elm.
LD: Used to be called “Main Street.”
VM: No, it was called Elm.
LD: Elm Street. You were just referring to it as the main street.
VM: As the main street of the town. Yes, it was Elm as it is today and it was very—as a matter of fact, a lot of times people would drive down and park and just watch the crowd go by. That was a—well, you learn a lot of things about the world that way, and it was really rather pleasant.
LD: You're not the only person I've heard call it “Main Street,” though. I think that just generally is kind of a—
VM: Well, it was the only—it was "The Street," in capitals. And—well, anyway, we'd go down to town once in a while, but mostly the nine months you really were pretty taken up on college and they had a—of course, a lot of time, you were just messing around talking to your friends too. We had some good friends across the hall that the four of us would—10
LD: Hang around together?
VM: Yes.
LD: You had weekly chapels. Is that correct?
VM: Yes.
LD: And attendance was required?
VM: Yes.
LD: What do you remember going on at these chapels? What kinds of programs?
VM: Well, really, they weren't awfully long. And they usually have a short talk, a morally- uplifting talk, which we needed and really sort of set up the week. And I think we sang once in a while or if there was something coming up that the college needed to know, and announcements were made there too. And—
LD: Did speakers come in from the outside?
VM: Rarely, but once in a while. I mean, it was just a weekly thing and it would have been—I expect it wasn't—it was just sort of your—it's sort of a moral, religious training which just went on and it's just a little, rather—not like going to church, but it was in the same vein. And—
LD: Do you remember a group of black singers called the Sedalia Singers?
VM: No, I'm sorry, I don't.
LD: That does not ring a bell? Tell me something about the [United States Army] Air Force Base. Where was this?
VM: Well, it was off Summit Avenue, and it was established—I think the last—not the first year of the war, but about the last two years or three because evidently it was for people that had—coming back from wherever that were going into officer's training in the Air Force. At that time, it was—it must have been in about '53. '43. Maybe—they probably built it—Mr. [Herman] Cone [Jr., president of Cone Mills] evidently gave the land or—for the duration of the war, and then they put the barracks out there and put in the sewers and all that. And, indeed, you can go over there now and still see some of the buildings. They must have built them pretty well. And the Air Corps fellows were here sort of in transit sometimes for a few months and then they would be shipped out. But, of course, when the war ended in '45, there was no need for it. So I think they sort of downscaled it because when they first came in, it was really rather uncertain both in the Pacific and the Atlantic theater.11
LD: You mean uncertain how much longer the war would go on?
VM: Yes. Yes. In fact, I guess the other war wasn't over—I mean, the Atlantic theater was over in '45, VE [Victory in Europe] Day. But I think—it seems to me it was '46 or '47.
[doorbell rings, recording paused]
LD: Was the college nervous about these men being around in Greensboro?
VM: Oh, I don't think so. They didn't—
LD: There weren't any special social rules?
VM: Well, they weren't near us. And, in fact, the reason I met my husband, I was going over to do that portrait for the play and there were two soldiers on that side of the campus and they weren't allowed on that side of campus at all. It was not in the—and they asked me how to get to some place. I can't, no— and I just said, "You're on the wrong side of the campus. All the girls are on the other side."
LD: Where were they that they weren't allowed? What side of campus were they—?
VM: Well, they were over where the theater is, and all the dorms at the time were all—I don't know where they are now, but they were all to the north.
LD: Near where the tennis courts are now?
VM: Yes. So, anyway, well, they didn't—no one roamed around campus as they roam around now. I mean, you were invited and, in fact, everything was—you had to sign in and sign out if you went out and so on. They had to know where you were and all that. And if you wanted to go away for a weekend or something—well, as I said, living in—I didn't have to go into a lot of those problems because if I wanted to come home, I could go within the given hour. So it really wasn't a problem in my particular case.
LD: But if someone saw a man on campus just walking around, he would probably be stopped and asked what he was doing if he didn't look like he was on his way anyplace particular?
VM: Yes. Well, you just didn't—well, of course, a lot of the girls had dates on the weekends, but you really, during the week, didn't see many people. I don't—very few people. And, of course, there again, you see, there was very little transportation except for the buses. So the boys today probably come up from [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill or where ever couldn't get up, and gas being rationed made a lot of difference.
LD: So how did you meet your husband? One of these two—?12
VM: Well, Walt and I can't remember the other fellow's name. They were looking for somebody, and I said, "Well, you're on the wrong side of campus." And so he asked if he could—where I lived or something, and I said some dorm. So anyway, he called up and later on my roommate and I went out with both of them, and so—very formal. Went to a—probably went to a concert or something. [chuckles] I don't know.
[recording error]
LD: So your husband was one of the soldiers in Greensboro?
VM: He had come back from Brazil. He had been stationed down there, and he came back to go in, but then he was sent—Salt Lake City [Utah] and, of course as I said, when the war ended, a lot of—I think he was there until the final victory in Japan, so—. But he was from Maine, and we kept up a correspondence and after I got out of college, I worked in New York for eighteen months and so he'd come down to see me then. He went back to college. He had the option—see, he had been in college a year, but when the war came along, he had the option of considering, let me see—what did he say—either '45 or '47 put on his diploma. I can't remember how it was because, of course, he was still in college another year or two.
So anyway, it was just a very different world, and the dances, of course, had to quit at one [am], I think. And they were held in the old gym in the floor, that big—it's all cleaned up. And, of course, when the lights were dim, and you had a—there again, there weren't a lot of things you could do because there wasn't a lot of money available, and there weren't a lot of balloons and paper at the price they are now, so—
LD: You mean for decorations?
VM: For decorations. So all of those things were a little different and most people, of course, walked. You would walk to town or, as I said, I think we walked to the dairy that day.
LD: Where was the dairy located?
VM: Oh, it's—well, it's where the old—it's out West Market Street where—let me see. It's between West Market and is it Walker [Avenue]? I believe. The old Guilford Dairy. And, of course, Yum-Yum Ice Cream—everyone knew the Yum-Yum, which has now moved across the street. But it was on the corner. It was the one most people went to because it was right there.
LD: It was on the corner where the [Mossman] Administration Building is now?
VM: And now it's, of course, across the street. But they were known for their—as they are today—for their hot dogs and their ice cream.
LD: What about the Boar and Castle? Was that—?13
VM: Oh, yes, the Boar and Castle. That was a—well, from high school, that was a dating place. High school and college, I guess. And in fact, I was surprised. I was in some grocery store and I know the Boar and Castle's long gone, but they had Boar and Castle barbecue sauce.
LD: They still sell that barbecue sauce, and I think it's owned by someone in Winston-Salem [North Carolina]. Now whether they bought the recipe from the Boar and Castle before they closed. I think something like that—some restaurateur in Winston-Salem markets it.
VM: They must have. Well, of course, I was a little bit of a traitor there because my—one of my father and mother's friends ran the Pig and Whistle, so I was a Pig and Whistle barbecuer, which—
LD: That was a competitor of—?
VM: Oh, one of them. There were a lot of barbecue places around. So, but I—of course, we would go there because we knew the people, and they were very good.
LD: And so was the Boar and Castle near where the dairy—?
VM: Yes. Yes, it was.
LD: Near the dairy. And where was the Pig and Whistle?
VM: No, it was further out High Point Road.
LD: Was the Boar and Castle in the country?
VM: No. But it was certainly not as much in the city as it is. Guilford College, you see, was considered another town.
LD: Oh, really?
VM: Oh, yes. I had a friend who went there, and it was—well, we were—Greensboro, see—really beyond two or three blocks this way, much, many, many fewer houses. See, Sunset Hills was a fairly—I guess it had been in existence about what? Twelve years? Ten or twelve years.
LD: These houses were all built in the mid-twenties, I think. Late twenties, something like that.
VM: So it wasn't center city as it is now.
LD: Your father built this house, right?
VM: No, no. The house had been built. It was during the Depression, and the person who—as I 14
understand, the couple who built it, so my mother said, I think the man died or the woman died, and it wasn't completed. So they bought it, and then my grandfather, as a matter of fact, did a lot of the woodwork on the inside because he was a carpenter as well as a farmer.
LD: But I remember her telling me that they were the first occupants.
VM: Well, the first occupants, yes. But they didn't start the house. They built the inside more. They didn't build the outside so much. So, which was nice, because you can throw a wall here or there.
LD: Make some adjustments.
VM: Yes, well, you need to with each kind of family. But I've always liked this area. Of course, the trees weren't as large and the shrubs weren't as large then, so it's much—it's really much—it's even prettier now. And as I say, we had a little—there was a little shopping, sort of shopping center, up where Hams is around there now. And Hams, I think, was there when I went to high school.
LD: Really?
VM: See, I—well, Greensboro only had one high school which was Greensboro High, where Grimsley [High School] is. So that little shopping center was very popular with the kids when they could get out. And there again, I only—I didn't even know anybody that had a car that was in high school. I know two or three people did because I'd be walking home and they'd drive by, but it was very rare. And in college I'm sure you weren't even allowed to have one on campus if you had one, so that made people—it made it a little more of a community probably because you had to stay—you usually stayed there. And, of course, it was great having the tennis courts. I liked tennis real well. And—
LD: Tell me about—did you have any contact with [Chancellor] Walter Clinton Jackson?
VM: I had him for one course.
LD: Really?
VM: Yes, I did. And he had me.
LD: Back in the days when the chancellor still taught?
VM: Yes. It seems to me he taught poetry, which was rather a thorn in my side because I was so bad at it. But I—as I said, having a liberal education you were exposed to these things and you do get a much—the older I get, the more I appreciate it. Let's put it that way. And it's amazing how you find some of it comes in very handy as you get along in different fields. Of course, I've always liked to write, but I didn't have much of an ear for writing poetry. Of course, we studied poetry more than we wrote it, but fiction was—I mean, 15
whimsy or things were a little more down my line. Maybe I just like to shoot the bull, as they used to say.
LD: Were many of your teachers women?
VM: Yes. About—I guess it was about fifty-fifty, come to think of it. Let's see. I had a woman in biology and in Spanish and, as I said, my freshman teacher in English, whom I thought was excellent and then I had two art teachers that were women or three. And Mr. [Gregory] Ivy was the only man I ever had in art, I guess. And then, of course, I had a man in the drama and so on, but really I thought the teaching staff was—the more I know about it, the better I think they were too. There again, they were very good, very well trained and very compassionate for the most part. And we had our own little—not hospital. What would you call it? On campus.
LD: Infirmary?
VM: Infirmary. Yes, that's right. And a very nice—everybody had to go over when they checked in, and I was so excited that my blood pressure went up and I couldn't play field hockey for six weeks. I remember that. I was appalled. I didn't know how many breaths I'd have, but life settled down, and I settled down, so I got to do it all.
LD: Did they take posture pictures when you got there?
VM: I don't remember. Probably so. Sounds like them, but they did—you had to have an exam before you could be allowed in a lot of courses, in a lot of things in phys[ical] ed[ucation]. And it was really—and, of course, anyone that had a sore throat or anything, it was very convenient because you could just go there and, particularly as I said, so many people were from out of state—I think there were about 2,000 enrollment at the time. Roughly around there, which I thought was huge. Of course, I thought my high school was pretty big with 1,000, but now I don't know what it is. But relatively, those days—of course, the people who—I think they kept the classes rather—I can't remember being in any really huge classes. My art class was—the early 101s were large, but they weren't huge as you hear now.
LD: So maybe fifty?
VM: No, no, no. In those days, thirty would be a big class. And then there were a lot of courses— there'd only be a specialized course. I think, as I said, in some of the graphic arts there'd only be about twelve of us. Or ten of us, even, sometimes because, well, more people liked watercolor, and you had a little taste of all that. And so—and, of course, you can't have a real huge class because you have to have all the equipment. You have to have—
LD: Studio space?
VM: Studio space. And you have to have—oh, well, I do remember one thing too. When you 16
started art, everybody had to have a smock. Mother—my mother made me a smock, and the theory was you were to wear it all four years, and it was supposed to stand alone when you left. Never clean it.
LD: Stiff with paint.
VM: That's right. To show you had really done your work. So, I can still remember my smock. [chuckles] I think it stood alone pretty well. Of course, I didn't paint a lot. I didn't do that much painting. I enjoyed the—as I said, I didn't have that much—I enjoyed the graphic arts which were more the line drawings and stuff. So we didn't get them quite as stiff, but it was suitably dirty.
LD: Did the class—classes had their own colors.
VM: Yes, and you were made—what they did, as I understand it, they didn't want the sorority ups and downs, so they put every—they went down the list so—understand, you were one of four things. I remember I was a Dikean because—
LD: They were societies, right?
VM: Yes. And our color was green.
LD: What were the names of the others?
VM: I don't remember the others. I just remember mine. I was a Dikean, and it was green.
LD: All right. How do you spell that?
VM: D-I-K-E-A-N.
LD: A Dikean. And one—was it Adelphian was another one?
VM: Probably. And one day when you were freshmen, there was one time that you wore your colors. One day.
LD: I see. You were assigned to those at random?
VM: You were just given one. And my roommate and I happened to be the same. See, it depends on where you were in the list. So anyway, it gave you a feeling of belonging and a little feeling of something, but it wasn't stressed a great deal.
LD: What did they do together besides having this color and—?
VM: I can't truly remember if we did much of anything.
LD: You didn't meet regularly?17
VM: Well, no, no. It wasn't like that. You know, as a fourth, it would be two hundred and fifty. And it seems to me—and then when you were an upperclassman, if you saw somebody with the colors, you could have them carry your books or do something as I recall. It didn't play a very large part in my life. And as I say, I think it was—and there again, during the war years, I think everything—it did affect people— the attitudes and what you listened to on the radio and, of course, everybody went—a lot of people—we would go down to the movies and things like that and people had radios but they didn't have TV [television] or stereos.
LD: But in the movie theaters they had newsreels, didn't they?
VM: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. They also had a formula. You had a newsreel and you had a cartoon and you had the coming attractions and then you had the main feature. And popcorn, I think, was either a dime or a quarter a bag. I can't remember. But, no, they always had the newsreel. It was really—What was that man?—and then sometimes they would have special subjects. I remember Robert Benchley [American humorist, newspaper columnist and actor] subjects were on once in a while. He's very good. And—
LD: They rerun those on late-night television sometimes.
VM: Oh, do they? I haven't seen them in years.
LD: They are very funny.
VM: They are. They are. He could make a great deal out of very little, very humorously and—
LD: I saw one that was about how to get rid of guests who've stayed too long.
VM: I probably saw it.
LD: It was cute.
VM: They are. You know, they are penetrating, but they are never cruel and sometimes—I always liked Robert Benchley. And, of course, what was that? And, of course, the earlier cartoons, I think, had so much imagination and so on in them. As a matter of fact, my granddaughter—this will show you how old I am. Her other grandparents at the time lived in Germany. They worked as civilians for the [United States] Army and they would ship over things for the VCR [videocassette recorder] once in a while. And one of the things they shipped—which I'm sure I saw back when I was a kid—was an old, old, early—I think it was by Disney Studio, and it was a Halloween thing about bones coming out and what is that song about bones?
LD: Dem Bones?
VM: Not Dem Bones. Danse Macabre. Anyway, they had all the skeletons would come 18
together and dance, and I was thinking there was so much—it was just so much fun and so much imagination, so I saw that again. Those—not too many years ago. But they'd have things like that in the theater as long as—and, of course, the stars then, were about—there weren't that many of them, and, of course, a lot of the pictures were war related in a very upbeat, propaganda way, naturally. Not—I mean, the realism was not like it is today. And, of course, some of the early pictures, All Quiet on the Western Front and things like that, had it, but—and there wasn't any—I don't think there was such a thing as cinematography on campus. You could take theater—
[End Tape 1, Side A—Begin Tape 1, Side B]
LD: Let's see, what were we talking about? I wanted to ask you about pacifism. Do you remember—were there—was there any pacifist sentiment?
VM: No. No one I knew at all was there because World War II was a—you felt that you were saving the world for democracy because [Adolph] Hitler [chancellor of Germany, dictator/leader of Nazi Germany]—there were—I mean, of course, one had heard the word and there were—of course, there's a large Quaker community here, and I think some of the Quakers were pacifists, but it was not a strong movement at all. And on campus most of the girls had brothers or boyfriends or fathers and it was a—. I don't mean—I don't think war is ever truly upbeat, but the attitude toward it was, "This is something that has to be done or if Hitler goes into England and then it would be a bloodbath over the whole world." And I just felt—I don't think it—I never heard anyone who—they didn't—people didn't talk about the war a great deal, but they just felt it was a thing that had to be done. And there again, women had never worked out as—like Rosie the Riveter [cultural icon who represented American women who worked in factories during World War II], the song and the movie and things like that. The whole—most of the world, not all of it, but most of the people felt that they were contributing toward victory over a very terrible thing. And the farmers too. I didn't know anyone that had prisoners of war work for them on the farm, but that was also part of that war.
LD: Really?
VM: At the end of the war, some of the prisoners of war would be assigned to certain farmers. Well, there was a manpower shortage because every—just about every red-blooded person was off doing something. So at times they did use prisoners of war, which probably they did that in Europe too, for that matter. I don't know. But they did that here. I don't know anybody—whether they did it in North Carolina or not—but I imagine some did where the camps were. And, of course, a lot of people knit or things because of the—well, of course, orlon and nylon—well, there were nylon parachutes and things, but there was a real feeling to send what you could to help. I mean, everybody felt they were part of it, just about.
LD: So after the war started, there was not—19
VM: Oh, well, no protests. No, no, no. As I said, I think some people were—particularly for religious reasons were genuinely pacifist. And I don't remember anybody—that was—you accepted it. I mean, that was their belief. But no one was saying this is—well, some people did, I'm sure, saying, "This is wrong. Any war is wrong." Well, it—when the war stories became out—and, of course, this is the first war they had so many movies of the people who were being devastated and the cities and so on, and therefore you really were more part of it. Nothing like now—you're there on the battlefield with them. But you saw these things and you—and, of course, there again there was censorship, I'm sure, that they didn't show all the horrors.
Now when my uncle, who was shot up pretty badly in Italy, and I don't know whether it was cannon fragments or mine fragments. But, anyway, he was pretty well wounded, and he was sent back to—Where was that place in Georgia? Hot Springs. And my mother and aunts and I went down to see him, and for the rest of his life, which was cut short because of this obviously, pieces of shrapnel would surface at times, and he would have to go back to the hospital and have it taken out. And he was really very lucky to be alive, I expect. So you didn't see that side. That was after a lot of it, after the war. And my uncle was a professional [United States] Navy man, so—but there again, he—we didn't see much of Uncle Aubrey because he was—in fact, he was on the North Sea before we were in the war. He was—they were—his ship was, I think, trying to keep the submarines from the convoys. And, of course, England, being so isolated, it was really necessary to get food and things to them.
In fact, I can remember, which amazed me—you grow up amidst plenty and you just never think about it. When my three children—three of my four children were born, and we were in England for a year. And we lived in a little town called Hyde up near Manchester, and the children went to a little old gray, stone school. And the lady—they had lunch, and Jo Jo, my youngest at the time, became four and a half. First thing, she went to school that morning and came home at three-thirty [pm]. And they had a little lady who had a long stick with a little knob on it, and she patrolled the lunch kiddies while they ate. [chuckles] And the teachers, I guess, had a breath of relief, and she could—I don't know whether she hit them on the hand or what. But my children were excused from having stewed cabbage because none of them would eat it, which was a real good thing. And Gail was in—let's see, Peter was—Jo was in kindergarten. Peter would have been in second and Gail would have been in fourth or fifth, I guess. And so they were teaching— the girls had to learn to knit. And she came home with this blue thing, and I really wasn't a very good mother because I said, "What is this, dear?" I didn't say, "How nice." It was a hot water bottle cover. But, anyway, the thing that amazed me at the school, they gave them each one blue book with lines in it, and they used that for about three weeks; no other paper whatsoever because, as I had never thought of it, they had very little trees and they imported all their paper. So I can well imagine—I don't know what they did during the wars when those came on. In fact, I was almost in shock when we got back and they brought more home the first—more papers home the first week than I had seen in a month. But I mean, it was just so different. It was—and, of course—let's see. The war had been over quite a time when we were in England, but there again we went to Coventry, which was still a shell. Of course, it was very impressive. And in London—you would see blocks that had—20
LD: I think it took England a long time to recover.
VM: Well, it did. There was so much bombed out.
LD: Because there was a severe economic recession after the war.
VM: Well, anyway, that's a little off the subject of college.
LD: Where did you go to work in New York? I mean, what did you do in New York and how did you decide to do that?
VM: Well, another friend of mine, Dot Arnett Dixon [Class of 1945], her father was a teacher over there. And I didn't know Dot too well before that because her father—she had gone to a different—she'd gone to the college high school. There was one connected with the college. Anyway, she and I and two other girls roomed together in New York to earn our fortune and so on, so on. And—
LD: Where did you live in New York?
VM: We lived up near Columbus Circle. We lived up near Columbia, which would—in an old, old—not a tenement—but a lot of people lived in this old apartment house. As we had—let me see. We had two bedrooms, and we had a kitchen that had been a closet. And one of our girls, Bernie, was an aspiring actress and I know she was always taking her exercise and she was worried about being hippy, so she was always banging the door and she got the bathroom door so much closed once with her exercise we had a terrible time getting it off. [laughs] Which is, again, beside the point.
But anyway, another one of my friends, [Barbara] Bobbie Bond Martini [Class of 1945], who was from Greensboro, worked at Macy's, and this lady came in one day with four or five rolls of wallpaper and said, "I need something to match this." And Bobbie struck up a talk with her, and she said, "Are you an artist?" She said, "Yes, I design wallpaper." And she said, "Well, I have a friend who's looking for a job." So her name was Augusta Dillon, and she sent me down—she said, "Well, have her come see me." So I went down, and it just so happened her two assistants had the flu, so I got a job and worked for her the rest of the time there. It was really a lot of fun. She had an old brownstone house, and in the spring when the flowers would come out, they had men who pushed them through the streets at the time. And she would immediately go out when they came through, and she would take her maybe a dozen and just put them down and design her wallpaper. Beautiful.
LD: Lots of flowers.
VM: Yes. And so we lived there until—let's see—for about a year. And then about—I guess the end of it, Mrs. Dillon had a house that she had inherited from an aunt on Long Island, and so we moved out there for the last about eight months. That's when I had the liver and the flu that I was telling you about earlier. And in our basement, we—well, we only had part of the house, of course, and they had two old, iron wash things in the basement—or 21
steel or whatever—and I had to go downstairs to the basement to throw up and stuff and there was a very sharp corner and it was about two or three in the morning and anyway, I passed out on it and slit my chin and slit my head and I don't know what else—I'm sure—and Dot and I were, at the time, in the bed—one of our friends had a rotating system, but anyway, we were in the same bed and I must have looked like I had been mugged or something. She—they called the doctor and he came and stitched me up, gave me some good advice: moderation in everything is the best way to live. He's right, but [laughs] I remember that.
And anyway, we lived there until—well, let's see. Well, Bernie stayed in New York and Bobbie married a New Yorker and Dal married a man from St. Louis [Missouri] and I married Walt, and so after that, we all left. But it was a—I used to love to go to the—there again; my plays did me very well. I just adored the musicals, and it was the heyday of the musical life. Every time anybody came to see me —I saw Oklahoma eight times because every time they'd come, I'd take them. And I remember seeing Ethel Merman [American actress and singer] in Annie Get Your Gun, and I'm sure she could break glass with her high notes.
And, of course, Radio City [Music Hall, entertainment center located in Rockefeller Center, New York City] was very popular in those days. They had a really good stage show as well as the first-run movies. And I was very fond of the ballet. I had never been to a regular ballet, so I—in those days, particularly from Long Island, we'd have to take a—let's see, we took a train, I guess, and then we took the subway. And then I had to change subways, and then I had to walk about six or eight blocks. But I didn't think anything about walking around New York at that time. And, of course, they had the Chock Full o' Nuts [Café], which I was—of which I was very fond, and the automat was fun. I didn't go there too often, but sometimes.
LD: Greensboro didn't have anything like an automat?
VM: No. No, no. They had the Mayfair Cafeteria, which was as close as you'd come.
LD: Where was that?
VM: It was on Elm Street.
LD: On Elm Street.
VM: About two blocks down, I guess, from Meyer's. Oh, another—oh, you asked about good places. Of course, Montaldo's was a very nice—which is still there, but I don't think it's downtown anymore. And they—so anyway, that's what happened—that's how I got to New York, and that's how I got to work for Mrs. Dillon. Her husband had been an architect, and then he did—mostly his designs would be a lot of plaids or things like that, very architecturally based. And another—let's see, one of her friends, Ruthie, was a real good friend of mine. She lived on Staten Island, and we worked most of the time and then Mrs. Dillon had a couple of people who were part-time help. One of them was a—as I understand, I think she was a waitress in Arizona or somewhere in the winter and then she'd come back in the summer or vice-versa. She said that she liked to do that because it 22
was so easy to carry drinks if you were a cocktail waitress. [laughs]
And so Mrs. Dillon—I think that's the one that Mrs. Dillon said had been a ballerina, and she fell down a manhole. And so she couldn't dance as a ballerina anymore. And Mrs. Dillon loved to get her people from odd places. That's how I—the reason I was there is that Bobbie had mentioned me. If I'd gone in and asked for a job, I'd have probably never gotten it. And, anyway, to this day, see, Gus came by—her name was Augusta Dillon, and I always called her Mrs. Dillon at the time, but now I call her Gus. And she is in her eighties and, see, her husband died about fifteen years ago, I guess. She had one daughter. She would—until year before last, she would take her van and her dog and her designs and she would go from New Hampshire, where she moved after she left New York—Peterborough—all the way down and sell her designs still. And she can no longer do it because she had a wreck, and she has disabilities now.
But she used to come by and see us, and she would sit here and paint a lot here at the breakfast room table if flowers were in bloom. In fact, this is one she did in high school, I think, or college. And her husband—now we've got—there's one in the other room. It—this is a watercolor, but it is a piece of wallpaper, but she—this was before I knew her, and she said she and her husband had been somewhere, and a friend came in and had been to the theater and in those days, one was more formal. Threw down her fan, her gloves and her stubs—ticket stubs—and, of course, Gus said, "Don't move that." And she has made—and she sold the wallpaper to the theaters to use in the restrooms and everything. And this is a copy of one. It's a piece of wallpaper in the next room. And I guess—oh, yes, and another—let me see. Who lived next door to her? And those brownstones as you know, are tall and skinny. And Mr. Cugat's brother lived next door.
LD: Xavier Cugat [Spanish-American bandleader]?
VM: Xavier's brother. [laughs] Which pleased Gus too. And I—it was really—she would do the design, and the ones who work for her, what we would do would be to repeat and we worked a little porch really in the back of the second—first floor—second floor. I don't know how they call it, but, anyway, the basement had the kitchen and things, I suppose, from the heat point, and then we were on the next floor. There would be a living room where she painted too, and then we had a couple of desks. And then there were just maybe two or three hundred—
LD: So it was essentially hand-painted wallpaper completely?
VM: Oh, no, no, no. That was the original design; then she sold the hand paintings. But at the bottom, some of them would have twenty or thirty colors, and then you have a little scale. Say you'd have five greens and four blues and two purples and a white and an off-white or whatever. And then you had to do the repeat so, and they, of course, had to match. So it was really very interesting when you—to this day you look at things and you see the—no, she didn't do that one, but you see some of these more elaborate things. I think they do them a lot by computer now which would be—particularly the more plaids and so forth.
LD: Geometric.23
VM: Geometric, yes.
LD: Do you feel like your training at Woman's College served you well?
VM: Oh, yes. Yes, I do. Of course, if I'd been a real serious artist, what I should have done is go on into an art—Cooper Union [Schools of Art, Engineering and Architecture located in the East Village of New York City, formerly tuition free] or something—if I'd wanted to paint, I guess. But yes, I think it served me exceedingly well and not just the painting because I truly do think that the—well, I got a real pleasure out of literature and writing. I like to write to this day. And—I don't do much, but it gave me a joy a lot of things that I can do as I get older and that I do appreciate. I can no longer play field hockey and I can no longer play tennis, but I can still take a pen and a pencil. So that's pretty good, I guess.
LD: That's very good. Was there anything else that you'd like to add about your years at Woman's College?
VM: Well, I'm sure I'll think of a lot of them later on, but I'm afraid I don't—
LD: Do you remember any of the deans being important figures on campus? There must have been a dean of women.
VM: Yes, there was. She was a—as I recall—and I'm sorry I cannot remember her name.
LD: Was it Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of student services, director of Elliott Hall]?
VM: Yes, she was one, I think. I think that was the one. And I remember when we—it seems to me at the table there were eight girls—when we ate in the dining halls, all the tables were round. Seems to me they were in groups of eight, and we had one of the staff eat with us most of the time, which was great. You were also taught a few table manners and how to do things and, therefore, if you worked on it, if you had to set the tables up—as I said, I thought it was a very wide as well as deep education which I really appreciate. And, of course, if you want to go deeper into anything else, you'd go on and take a master's or a doctorate [degrees] or whatever you want in, unless you want to do something—well, I suppose if you wanted to work on a newspaper or something, you could perhaps just go on into the "practical world." But there again, the war began to open a lot of doors for women that had never been opened. I mean, you were a housewife, a nurse, a school teacher or a sales clerk and that was it, just about.
LD: Before the war?
VM: Or work. There were some exceptions, of course, but it was—people began moving in that war, and I don't know whether—I don't think all of it is good, understand, because—but I think it's for the first time that people moved to an extent. I don't know. My grandmother—she probably went to Virginia once in her life. I don't know. But otherwise, she lived in the area. And my particular—my mother and father and I traveled 24
more than most people because my uncle lived in Washington and another of Dad's—one of Dad's Navy buddies lived in Florida. So—and he liked to fish, so we would go—we traveled up and down the coast, but I had no idea of the western part of the state or of the United States or anything like that. And, of course, you didn't have—they had travelogues too, to go back to the movies. You would see these pictures from afar, and once in a while somebody would come through the college and have a travelogue on India or whatever. And it was a very astounding thing. I don't think I even knew anyone that had ever been to Europe.
LD: But lots of soldiers went.
VM: Well, yes, but I meant, just in my personal acquaintance before that. In fact, I didn't even know any—well, my Aunt Tootie—yes, my Aunt Tootie had been to California. She had a—she and three of her friends—she drove and they drove in the late 1920s she said. And that was absolutely unheard of in those days. So you might say she was a liberated woman in that sense. But no one else. No. So I guess there again, perhaps that's why reading and literature was so extremely important in those days. It is still, but it's much simpler to just turn on the TV and look at it and turn it off. [laughs] I remember—well, like War and Peace—I always remember that book because I had to write all the characters on the front two pages. I could never straighten them out as I went along. And that was my one-hour course, and it was really interesting seeing the movie version.
LD: Well, there've been several movies.
VM: I know, but if I'd seen one before, I don't know if I'd ever gotten through the book. So I got through the book.
LD: Good for you. Well, I've appreciated the interview and I've enjoyed it.
VM: Well, thank you, Linda. I have too.
[End of Interview]