Oral history interview with Janice Hooke Moore, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Janice Hooke Moore
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: October 23, 1990
MF: I guess to start—if you could just tell a little bit of general information first about—for instance, when you were at Woman‟s College [of the University of North Carolina] and when you started and when you graduated.
JM: I started—I graduated in 1944 at the age of nineteen. And I started four years before that, but I spent my whole educational life within two blocks beginning in kindergarten. No, we didn‟t have kindergarten—beginning in first grade through graduate school.
MF: So, I guess you went to Curry [laboratory school on the campus of the college]?
JM: I went to Curry, yes.
MF: And then you went back and you got your master‟s at—well, I guess at that time it was UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]?
JM: UNCG, yes, in 1970. From ‟65 to ‟70 because I still had children at home over a period of years.
MF: And that was in the French department?
JM: Yes.
MF: And what was your undergraduate degree in?
JM: It was also in French.
MF: Well, that would make sense, wouldn‟t it?
JM: Yes.
MF: I guess to keep it sort of chronological here, why don‟t we start with Curry. When you were at Curry School, they had—some of the teachers at Curry were student teachers at the college, weren‟t they?
JM: Yes. We had a regular teacher and then she had numerous people (We called them practice teachers.) under her. And by the time I was a senior in high school, sometimes 2
they weren‟t but four years older than I was. We gave them a very hard time. It was a very unnatural situation. And it was supposed to have been a very good school. I do not agree with that.
MF: Oh, really?
JM: I think it was a poor idea, and I‟m glad they quit doing it. We were pretty smart-alecky children.
MF: A lot of professors‟ children?
JM: A lot of professors‟ children combined with, oddly, some of the poorest children in town. They lived on a railroad track in that area, which was kind of an unfair combination. And the student teachers would report back stuff about us. I remember one time a phys[ical] ed[ucation] teacher told my dad that I‟d been—I missed a fly ball in the outfield because I was too busy looking at the boys. Well, it was none of her business. That was my private life, I felt. [chuckles] And so, it was not a great idea.
MF: So some of the practice teachers actually—some of the classes were actually completely taught by practice teachers?
JM: Yes. The teachers would leave, but they were always sauntering back and looking through the door, and we got to be very good at giving them a very hard time.
MF: Yes, I would imagine.
JM: Without that super—not when the main one was in the class, when the regular one came back. It was just not a real natural situation. It was better when they started just going into regular public schools.
MF: And I guess it wasn‟t a very large school, was it?
JM: Oh, it was minute. I think there were a hundred and twenty four in the high school and something like twenty-seven in my graduating class. It was the same people year after year after year. So—which also contributed to our being bratty. [both chuckle] I don‟t know whether you want to know anything about what I remember about what my folks [Editor‟s note: Father was Dr. Malcolm Hooke, professor of romance languages] said about the early days at the college when they got here in 1922 or something like that.
MF: Oh, yes. Yes, that would be great.
JM: I was born in 1925, but they came here—they were from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and they had just come from Paris and the [Collége de] Sorbonne, and they landed in this pathetic little town where the music building was in a cornfield. And they—Greensboro stopped at the top of Market Street before you get to Aycock [Street]. You know where it goes up the hill? That was pure country after that, and they really thought they had come 3
to the little end of nowhere.
MF: Yes, I can imagine.
JM: But they stayed the rest of their lives and were very, very happy here. But that was their first impression.
MF: Yes, “Oh, God, where did we go?” [both chuckle] I can imagine that.
JM: That‟s right. I remember, I don‟t know whether you‟ve come across Dr. [Julius I.] Foust, [second president of the school, head of Department of Pedagogy and Training] one of the early presidents. And I can remember, he was a very tall man. And I can remember when I was about five years old walking with my father down College Avenue and with him, and he was holding my hand and it felt like it was going to jerk right out of my arm, but I knew it was my father‟s boss, so I didn‟t complain. But he was so important. I had been schooled in that. He also—I‟m giving you more than you want to know.
MF: No, you‟re not.
JM: He also—just to show you how small things were back then and how concentrated the faculty was in sort of a family group, Dr. Foust had a granddaughter who lived with him; her mother had died, and she was very large for her age. And so he decided that Sarah [Foust Burton, Class of 1928] was going to go school when she was five. And this made Dr.—so he called Dr. [A.P.] Kephart, who was principal of Curry and informed him that Sarah would be starting at five. This made Dr. Kephart so angry that he called all the faculty members who had five year olds and invited them to come over and try out for the first grade, which was why I started school when I was five—because of Sarah‟s being large. [laughs] But it was that small and that intimate. Then again I remember, and this was still kind of vague—back in the Depression [worldwide economic turndown preceding World War II]—for one month they would see no salary whatsoever. They didn‟t pay anybody, and then there was a thirty-three and a third percent cut and a lot of people were let go. And I can remember the phone ringing and my mother going to the telephone and it would be like hearing about a death, you know. Some other friends had been let go, and it was—where were they going to go? Nobody was hiring. So those were tough times back then.
MF: Yes.
JM: It was a nice group of people though. They were very caring about each other, and they were people with a lot of integrity and very high standards. They worked hard and did a good job.
MF: If you have any idea, just a ballpark figure, about how large was the school at that time?
JM: I don‟t know how large it was when my father came. It was—when I went in 1940, it was about two thousand. 4
MF: Yes. And I guess it was probably quite a bit smaller than that because it did a lot of growing.
JM: Yes. I‟m sure it was because it grew a lot—well, with better times. And I think it was probably, so it would have been quite small, but I have no idea how large.
MF: That‟s something I wondered just out of curiosity.
JM: Has anybody ever talked to you about May Day?
MF: Yes, a little bit.
JM: That was a great occasion for me as a little girl. It was always sort of a front campus there, McIver Building, whatever its name is.
MF: Foust.
JM: The Administration Building is what it was called then.
MF: Foust.
JM: And it was the first Saturday in May. And sometimes it was very cold and sometimes it was gorgeous. But I thought my greatest ambition in life was to be one of those girls—sweeping down in these gorgeous dresses, and they always had their big picture hats. Oh, I just thought that was the most glamorous thing that could ever happen, and I finally got elected to be one of those in 1944, but I was in Florida. I had gotten married my senior year, and so I missed being in the May Day. It turned out all right because, as far as I was concerned, that was the first May Day it had ever rained and they had it inside Aycock Auditorium, so it must have been a bust. [laughs]
MF: So it didn‟t ruin your dream.
JM: Well, so much for those days.
MF: Yes. Oh, gosh. Yes, a lot of people have talked about May Day.
JM: It really was. Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, Dean of Women, Dean of Students, Dean of Student Services, Director of Elliott Hall], who is now in a nursing home, was—I remember she was Prince Charming one time. I used to be—I was also in several as a—I was a mascot of the class of 1932.
MF: Oh, really?
JM: Yes. So I was in several of them, and Katherine Taylor was—she must have been maybe just beginning to teach. I don‟t believe she was still in college. She was Prince Charming several times, I remember. [chuckles] Seems so stupid. During my parents‟ later years 5
and after I was out of college, there were some interesting people around who were visitors in my parents‟ home all the time. Same ones you always hear about—Peter [American novelist, short story writer, Pulitzer Prize winner] and Eleanor [Ross] Taylor [Class of 1940, 1976 honorary degree, American poet] , Allen Tate [American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944], and Caroline Gordon [wife of Allen Tate, notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O. Henry Award], Randall Jarrell [American poet, literary critic, children‟s author, essayist, novelist, and the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate]. My father played tennis with him. They were very close. But this was after I was a married woman.
MF: What about [Chancellor] Ed[ward Kidder] Graham [Jr.]?
JM: What about Ed Graham?
MF: Just a name that I thought of.
JM: That‟s all you have to say to get a rise out of anybody that was around in the „50s. My father and Dr. [Marc] Friedlaender, who was in the English department, had been very, very close friends. And Dr. Friedlaender was one of the best teachers I ever had as an English professor. And in the course of the Graham years, they became bitter enemies, and the faculty was divided right down the middle.
MF: He was really polarizing.
JM: He really polarized the faculty back then, that‟s correct. And I was married and had two children, and frankly we got very tired of hearing about the whole thing. So I‟m not as well versed in it as—
MF: —as you might have been.
JM: I saw it mostly as a tragic thing, breaking up friendships and lining up people. My father, who was—probably led the opposition and with the help of Mr.—Dr. [William C.] Friday [president of the University System from 1956-86], and the people in Greensboro, Emily [Harris] Preyer [Class of 1939, 1977 honorary degree].
MF: Bill Friday?
JM: Bill Friday, yes. He was gotten rid of.
MF: Yes, with the hearing and everything.
JM: But it was a bad—it was an unfortunate time. And I don‟t—I‟m no expert in it. I just think it was a terrible shame for it to be— 6
MF: Yes. Well, the impression I get is that it wasn‟t just one thing he did. But it was just a number of things that he—his whole—. Well, a lot of people said that you could be really put off by him, for instance, when you would first meet him.
JM: He acted like he wasn‟t all there.
MF: Yes. That‟s what some people have said.
JM: I think he was unbalanced. And I think some people maybe who took advantage of that, who want—. You can imagine the power of being behind the throne and running the place. But, anyhow, that‟s water under the bridge.
MF: Yes. Your father, he taught at Woman‟s College, right?
JM: Yes.
MF: And what did he teach?
JM: He was in the French Department.
MF: I figured that. And his name was—?
JM: Malcolm Hooke. He retired in 1958.
MF: Oh, okay. Oh, so he was right in the middle of all that Ed Graham stuff?
JM: Yes.
MF: Dr. [William] Link [head of the history department, associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences] has done lots of faculty interviews, and he‟s particularly interested in the Ed Graham fiasco. I had spoken with May [Lattimore] Adams [Class of 1935 Commercial]. I don‟t know if you know her.
JM: Yes, I know her.
MF: She knows a lot about the entire situation. She was—I think she was his secretary for a short time, and several—a secretary for several other people in the administration. So she had lots of information, and I think that Dr. Link will probably interview her again, specifically about Ed Graham. Apparently she was friends with he and his wife as well. Well, with his wife, that‟s what she tells me. She clarified that real quick for me. She said, “No, I was friends with his wife.” But his wife was really a nice woman from what I hear.
JM: I think she probably was. I did not, I didn‟t know her, but I knew some of her relatives and they were very nice people.
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MF: And a lot of people have told me they felt very sorry for her. I think she‟s living in Durham now. I think she still uses Graham as her last name.
JM: That was a proud family name. They were a good family. And I—later my husband and I, when our son was in Harvard [University, Cambridge, Massachusetts] graduating, we went back and visited Dr. Friedleander and his wife and sort of bridged all those years that had gone by because they had—we had announced our engagement at their house for instance. We had been that close at one time. I‟ve always been glad that—I felt like we filled that gap anyhow.
MF: Yes, it was unfortunate. Some faculty that are still there now really don‟t like to discuss that period of time.
JM: Well, it was, it could cost you at one time [unclear].
MF: [unclear] I guess, some of the other questions that I had dealing with while you were a student at Woman‟s College—. I guess if you could give some general descriptions of student life, what it was like to be a student, what with being at a women‟s college and at the time that you were there with the war and I guess what it was like to be a student at that time at that type of institution.
JM: I really enjoyed it being a women‟s college, having been in coed high school. This was true then and I think—I wish I could say that it‟s not true at all anymore, but I was fairly intelligent and achieved very well academically, and I felt like in high school I had to hide it.
MF: Because you were a girl?
JM: Because I was a girl. Nobody would date you if you were—you fell into that pattern, and it was a real breath of freedom to me to have nothing but girls to compete against, and a lot of the girls from the North who did not feel this way at all. And so I enjoyed being—not having that problem. I don‟t know that I think that‟s necessarily the best way for education to be, but I felt very free, and I thoroughly enjoyed student government and I got very active in that. So I was a town student for three years. I didn‟t live on campus until the last year, which was a mistake. I should have done that sooner, but money was a big factor and, if you can believe it, it was a hundred and twenty-four dollars a year to go as a town student. And it cost three hundred and sixty five dollars a year to live on campus for meals and room and tuition and laundry.
MF: And laundry.
JM: All included. Isn‟t that incredible?
MF: Yes. It‟s quite a bit more now.
JM: [chuckles] It was a lot more than that even when we educated our boys. But it was a very 8
happy place, I felt, and there were plenty of guys around who came on weekends. And we went down to [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, and we went to Davidson [College, Davidson, North Carolina] and we went to [North Carolina] State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina] and various—. That was in the big band era, and the weekends were a lot of fun. We went to football games all dressed up in earrings and lace and a hat and gloves. Can you imagine that? But it was a good time and then Pearl Harbor [surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States‟ entry into World War II.] hit right after—let‟s see, that was my sophomore year, and that made a—of course, a tremendous change in everything. My husband or future husband was at Chapel Hill. He stayed. He got to finish school by signing up for the [United States] Navy, and so then he went immediately into the Navy. But then it became really a girls‟ school. I mean—and the men were from ORD [US Army Air Force]. I don‟t know if you‟ve heard of that Overseas Replacement Depot which was affecting the town—was devoted to the military and they were there ready to ship out. And then there were lots of dances that we went to, but most of the dates—of course, there were people that met their husbands, but for the most part they were so transient that it was a matter of doing your patriotic duty going to one of these dances.
MF: Or your social duty.
JM: I mean, it was not the same, and so we had a lot of weekends where we just all went to the movies, a lot of boring weekends. We were worried about what was going on in the world. And a lot of people started getting married earlier than they probably would have.
MF: Yes. One observation somebody made was that it was the first time they remember students being married and still being students at Woman‟s College.
JM: I got married in March, and at that time we had a—some kind of, I‟ve forgotten what they called it—some kind of honors situation that if you had a certain grade level you could have unlimited cuts, and so I cut from March to May. And because it was wartime, my teachers were very cooperative and sent assignments and sent tests to Florida where we were. And I took them all and then I came back. And we had comprehensives in those days, and I came back and took those and graduated and then moved back to Florida. But when I went back in 1965 to 1970, there was a tremendous difference in the level of what was required for studying.
I mean—and I don‟t know that you learned any more, but a lot more was expected of you. For instance, in French and Spanish classes if we studied Victor Hugo [French poet and novelist] or [unclear] or something like that, we had a lot of excerpts. We didn‟t read the whole novel. But on the other hand, we did read the highlights and we were expected to really master what we did, and I think we more or less did. When I went back, every two weeks you were supposed to finish a novel, read it all in French, the whole thing. And the same—that was pushing it. And I found, even though I was very conscientious, it was extremely hard to get all that done. But there was definitely a level, a higher level, of intellectual achievement that had occurred in the intervening years, partly because—you see when I was in high school, not only had I started when I was five 9
and skipped a grade along the way, but we only had eleven years. So I was fifteen, and that was younger than going to college, but my sons when they finished, were eighteen when they finished high school, and they‟d already had calculus in high school and they had this, that and the other thing, so a lot of what I had in college, they had already had in high school.
MF: Yes. They had a couple years foreign language.
JM: Now we did, we had had that.
MF: Yes, they go up, gosh, through calculus.
JM: I‟m exaggerating when I say calculus.
MF: Well, they offered it
JM: They wanted calculus. and they didn‟t have it. But they got it right after they graduated. I was wrong about that.
MF: Well, they still have up through two years of algebra. Yes, that‟s something I hadn‟t thought about. That does make quite a difference.
JM: It‟s just a matter of time. I mean, you can‟t get in but just so much by the time you‟re—well, most people were sixteen.
MF: Yes, right. Sixteen, sometimes seventeen.
JM: Sometimes seventeen.
MF: And then, well, there were a lot of other things that changed between the forties, between ‟44 when you graduated and ‟65 when you went back. I mean, it was a university; it was coed; it was open to anyone regardless of race; it was much larger.
JM: It was a completely different place.
MF: A completely different school.
JM: And it‟s much less personal also.
MF: Yes, I can imagine.
JM: It was a revelation. Another thing that was interesting when I went back was my first exposure from ‟65 to ‟70 to the anti-Vietnam feeling. And I got it so strongly that I was way ahead of any of our friends, and I began to immediately—well, not immediately, but I began to see it in an entirely different light. Though I will say my father, who of course had been retired since ‟58, said “Don‟t know how we ever think we can win a war on the 10
continent of Asia.” And I feel the same way about the one where we are now. I wonder if we can ever fight that far away from home with the supply problem, when they‟re right there.
MF: It even goes deeper than that. I think that, well—
JM: I have many reasons not for not liking what we‟re in, but I just—that‟s another story. But it‟s a recurring theme, I guess.
MF: It does seem very similar, doesn‟t it?
JM: Yes.
MF: A little bit different situation, but a lot of similarities. There were a lot of things going on at the university from ‟65 to ‟70, a lot of changes. If you could say the throwing out of the so called parietal rules, so that students weren‟t quite as restricted in what they could or couldn‟t do. There was the cafeteria workers‟ strike, I guess, in ‟69. Do you—?
JM: I remember that it was happening, but I didn‟t have much—I was not living on campus and was probably pretty self-centered about what I was doing.
MF: Yes. I think that‟s how I am right now. [chuckles]
JM: I wasn‟t seeing the forest for the trees.
MF: Yes, I know what‟s going on in the history department and that‟s about it. To backtrack just a little bit, you had said that you had become very active in student government while you were an undergraduate at Woman‟s College. To what extent and what was student government like?
JM: Student government was pretty important, at least we thought we were important. The president of the student body was very much looked up to. It was a real honor. And there was a judicial board which was sort of a student [unclear] you can get, police certain activities like cheating in class and coming in late and all that sort of thing. And we had probably no power, but thought we had some. [laughs] It was a good learning experience, I think. I‟ve seen a lot of women in Greensboro who‟ve done things on boards and things who had learned from that process
MF: And the fact that it was an all-women‟s school, do you feel like that made it any more beneficial for people, for women, serving the student council, that perhaps they were better able to—
JM: At that time, had they had been in Chapel Hill, they would never have been president of student government. Let me put it that way. And I don‟t know. For a long time I kept noticing that nobody but men were getting it out of college now, though I know there are still more women than men there. I don‟t know whether that‟s true or not, so that would 11
have been lost.
MF: Right, yes, that whole experience. A lot of people that I talk to feel like the benefit of that experience with it being an all-women‟s school, some people tell me that they feel like because of that it‟s a tragedy that the school went coed.
JM: Well, I don‟t think it‟s a tragedy. I think it was just inevitable.
MF: Yes. Do you think it was a good move on the part of the school?
JM: Well, I think you had too many people who needed an education. It‟s public and belongs to the state of North Carolina and couldn‟t afford to go to Chapel Hill or couldn‟t afford to go to Raleigh, who lived in the area. And I think it was the thing to do. I also think that they—it‟s inevitable that UNCG and A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina] will be one college. I don‟t know just how it will work. I suspect that A&T will swallow up UNCG. I really do.
MF: Geographically or—?
JM: I think that there‟s more—there‟s a larger group out there that will fight for its continued identification than there is—
MF: —a group to fight for UNCG.
JM: A group to fight for UNCG. But that has—that‟s certainly not history. That‟s just private observation.
MF: Sure it is. It‟s a great controversy between the two schools, the faculty of the two schools, right now. And with the administration of the UNC system, as a whole, that—well if you think about it, it does seem rather ridiculous that we have two state schools less than a mile away from each other. And—but then if you look at the other side of the coin, just as it was very beneficial for women to be able to go to a school where they didn‟t have to compete with men, perhaps it‟s very beneficial for black students to go to a school where they don‟t have to compete with white students.
JM: I don‟t think there‟s any doubt about it.
MF: Yes, I don‟t know. I mean, I don‟t know personally—I don‟t know if they should remain two separate schools or if they should be one. But that‟s an interesting point, though, that you say that the students at A&T will probably fight harder than UNCG students. They do seem to have more of a feeling of attachment to their school than UNCG students do.
JM: I don‟t think it‟s ever—I think that‟s one thing that was lost when it was no longer a women‟s college. But I don‟t know that it was ever really strong. And I know they‟re trying to develop this now. It‟s unfortunate, but in America attachment to a school is mainly through sports. [chuckles] Or at a lot of something like Princeton [University, 12
Princeton, New Jersey] or Harvard, that had something else going for it.
MF: Yes. Something like a name going for it. Yes. With the idea of sports, I know we‟re supposed to move into [National Collegiate Athletic Administration] Division I. What‟s the slogan? “Division I in ‟91.” So I guess—oh, that‟s next year. Do you think that‟s going to help the school or hurt it?
JM: I have no idea. I‟m really not—I would think the men would certainly enjoy that relationship. I think, on the other hand, athletics have got schools by the throat in so many ways. I was at a State College [North Carolina State University] game this past Saturday. I hadn‟t seen one that was televised for some time. And I couldn‟t believe how the television ruined that game. It lasted forever. And every time they‟d be all lined up ready to kick off or something, this little man in a white suit goes out there and nobody does anything.
MF: Commercial break?
JM: Commercial. And there were so many of them. It just went on, and it really did something to the momentum of the game just a sell-out. But I don‟t think they are going to be fighting over UNCG soccer rights any time soon.
MF: No. [chuckles]
JM: And I think it‟s probably has given us spirit, and I know the Homecoming events are tailored—. You know, they have a different variety for more recent students and that seems like a good idea to me.
MF: Yes, I know they do seem to be—. The Homecoming Weekends do seem over the years to be getting more varied, I guess— more activities, more different types of activities. Well anyway, back to the 1940s. I hate to keep jumping around chronologically.
JM: That‟s okay.
MF: Some of the faculty and some of the classes that you took while you were a student there—. I know you had to take—well, I guess, two years of general college curriculum as well. What were some of the faculty like? What were some of the classes like?
JM: Well, [unclear] Dr. Friedlaender that I was taught world literature. I remember I could—I really should have been an English major. I took a long time realizing that, but his were really excellent. We had some really good teachers. We had some—most of them were very thorough and organized. Perhaps not that imaginative—I had, let me think, Mr. [René] Hardré in the French department was a Frenchman who came here to settle, and he was a very interesting teacher. We had a lot of characters. Dr. [Helen] Barton [professor and head] in the math department. And I was terrified of her, but I found out later, she was a really very nice person. That was an area in which I was completely unprepared and I took Math for Majors with about twelve people, mostly girls from the 13
North, who had already had all this, and it was a piece of cake, which it was not to me.
The teachers were very dedicated to developing a whole person, I think, a person who was just like they were, I‟m sure. And they were, for the most part, a pretty moral bunch. For instance, my father and his friends loved to have cocktail parties, but he would never have darkened the door of that campus after he‟d had a drink, ever.
One thing we had during those days which—we had wonderful concert lecture series. It was before television, so somebody who wanted to be known, just like the big bands had to go around to the schools, they couldn‟t just be on TV. So the entertainers and the—all kinds of—[unclear] and all kinds of people showed up. And just as writers came. Robert Frost [American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet] came every year and gave a reading, and this was after I was out of school. My mother, every year, would say, “He probably won‟t come next year. Get yourself over there and listen to him.” And I never went. Can you believe that? Isn‟t that awful? It just makes me sick when I think back on it. But a lot of people came to us because they had to keep their thing going. And we had great symphonies and ballets and Broadway-type plays. So they were—that was, during the war. I remember one thing. There was a popular fellow named Tito [unclear] and his Guitar [chuckles], and I never will forget a performance he put on and I think there‟s a sample of the girls who had been too long away from the guys, but it was like the later Frank Sinatra [American singer and film actor] was and the Beatles [English rock band] played and everybody just went bananas, absolutely stark raving mad. And he loved it and he was out there with a wild, wild concert. But I remember that one, Tito [unclear] and his Guitar. Isn‟t that awful?
MF: Tito [unclear] and his Guitar? [laughter]
JM: Nelson Eddy [American singer and actor] came. I knew a girl that never washed her hands where she‟d— [telephone rings]
[recording paused]
MF: I guess we were talking about faculty and classes. And along the same line, with so many other people do you—what do you remember about Miss [Harriet] Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women], for example?
JM: Well, Miss Elliott was a very dynamic lady and was called back to help in the war effort [Consumer Commissioner on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense, Chairman of the Woman‟s Division of the War Finance Committee, Deputy Director of the Office of Price Administration, and United States- delegate to the United Nations Conference on Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in London], so that was quite impressive. And she and Miss [Louise] Alexander [political science professor]—you‟ve heard people refer to her. She was an outstanding teacher. Miss Alexander. And they had fought together for women‟s voting rights, and I didn‟t realize then how recent that really was. It seemed to me—when they talked about it, I felt like it was as long ago as it seems now. I really did when I was in college, you know. But 14
it really hasn‟t been that long. And so she was a really outstanding teacher. She taught a class that was supposed to be a political science class. It was supposed to be a crip course. And she made you write a paper every week about some fact, portion of the federal government. And oddly enough, I remember more from that course than an awful lot of other courses. And when I‟ve been to Washington, DC, I‟ve thought about her as I‟ve gone to the Supreme Court or—and she really taught the Constitution, you know. We took it apart. And it was not a hard course, but she was real interesting telling all these anecdotes from the blue-stocking days. I‟m glad you mentioned it because I‟d forgotten about her until just then.
MF: Yes. I‟ve had courses like that where you thought it was easy, but you actually learned a lot.
JM: Learned a lot. And another teacher was like that. I don‟t know if you‟ve ever heard of her. Miss [Augustine] LaRochelle?
MF: Yes, but I can‟t remember what she—
JM: What a character she was. She lived—she didn‟t die too long ago. She taught Spanish. And she was French-Canadian, I think, and never married. She lived over there on Tate Street, and she had a very trite way of teaching Spanish compared to, say French. And I had to take a lot of Spanish, and she made you read whatever you read, and then you had to tell the story when you came. No matter how bad it was, you had to tell it in Spanish. Which was, in a way, before her time, and so we were speaking some Spanish, bad as it was, at least we were speaking it. And there again, I was amazed at how—considering I took much less Spanish, that I remembered it so well because she just kept hammering it in and she was an exact—. She didn‟t give you but just so much to do, which was sort of a technique in those days. But you were really expected to master that.
MF: Yes.
JM: And there are some advantages in that. It made it stick longer than when you have so much that you just sort of skim the surface of everything. But she—and she was a dancer; she was very ugly. And she—but she danced. And she did Spanish dances around and then when Arthur Murray [dance studios] came along, she signed up for one of those lifetime things, and she went all over the country dancing. And I guess Arthur Murray probably got nine-tenths of her money. But she loved it. She had a good time. She was a great traveler. She went someplace all the time. One year she couldn‟t decide; this is true. She wanted to go to Alaska, and she couldn‟t decide whether to fly or to go by land on the bus. So she did both in the same summer. [laughter] She wanted to go around the world, so she went around the world in an airplane and she‟d get off in an airport and say, “Oh, this is New Zealand,” and get back on and go to the next one. So she—her body had physically gone around the world, but she didn‟t remember very much of it.
[End Side A—Begin Side B] 15
JM: One thing I did during the war—you got the thing on? We had—I was chairman of—this was my senior year, and we had a service league, we‟d call it, and we had—did all sorts of volunteer activities, and it was a sort of a point system then because everything went to the military. We had captains and colonels and all that. It was pretty much of a grand flop, I might say. But people—they were eager to help as far as rolling bandages and knitting and all this, and going to the—. They got credit for going to the USO [United Service Organizations, nonprofit organization that provides programs, services and live entertainment to United States troops and their families] dances.
MF: Oh, okay, yes. There were a lot of dances on campus on the weekends, too, weren‟t there?
JM: Yes, we had a lot of dances that were—everybody was in one of those four societies, and so they had dances and then your class had a dance and they always had big things—big. Hard work to be on the committee. You had to do all the decorating, get the band and so forth. And then there were card dances, so you filled out with your friends before the guys ever got there, so you knew who you were going to dance with. In the summertime, they had much more informal dances. There was sort of an outdoor gym over there near the old Rosenthal Gym. And that was a lot of fun. But it was more like—it was open, and you‟d just—people would just cut in and so forth. Though one time they got so that girls were cutting in, and nobody liked that very much.
MF: Yes, yes. Somebody had told me about those summer dances.
JM: They were fun.
MF: I‟d forgotten that until you mentioned it. With another thing before we jump out, back out of the forties, another thing in the—while you were an undergraduate. There were a lot of traditions. I know we were talking about, like the societies, there was May Day. There were class jackets.
JM: A lot of the women, when we had the forty—when was it? I guess we had our forty-fifth reunion, some of them still had some of those jackets. I never had one.
MF: The big question is did they still fit?
JM: Some people‟s, probably, yes.
MF: Oh, that‟s good.
JM: My husband can still wear his Navy uniform.
MF: Really? That‟s more surprising for a man than for a woman.
JM: But I didn‟t have a jacket. I really couldn‟t afford one. Besides, they were lavender and white and I didn‟t think that was a very exciting combination. [laughs] [unclear] lavender.
16
MF: Oh, yes. You‟d say that if that‟s what you wear, isn‟t it? Let‟s see, there was also—there was also mandatory chapel, wasn‟t there?
JM: Yes. And that was terrible. [doorbell rings]
[recording paused]
MF: Okay. So we were talking about chapel.
JM: Every Tuesday you had to go, and I remember I was a chapel counter, took attendance. And I got so I knew every little light bulb in Aycock Auditorium and the grills—how many holes there were in the grills. [chuckles] One time they had chapel on Saturday. They‟d always do that on Founders Day. I don‟t know why. There was a big football game at Chapel Hill, and Mr. Teague, Mr. Claude Teague, was the controller at that time. And he was a friend of my family‟s, and I was a big football fan, and I told him I was going to miss the Duke-Carolina game because I of going to Founders Day at chapel. And he said, “I can‟t believe that a smart girl like you couldn‟t get a bad cough, coughing fit.” And so that‟s exactly what I did. I got a bad coughing fit and just checked out of there with that coughing fit and never came back. But that was a terrible nuisance—it was really boring and absolutely required.
MF: What kinds of programs did they have?
JM: I don‟t even remember. I just remember being bored. [laughs] They must not have been very good.
MF: Yes. What was it—about a half an hour or so?
JM: About a half an hour.
MF: Do you remember a Black gospel group ever coming? I think they were called the Sedalia Singers?
JM: No. I remember the president of Sedalia [Alice Palmer Memorial Institute, school for upper class African Americans, Sedalia, North Carolina] coming to town. I used to see her at Meyer‟s Tea Room. I can remember—what was her name, Hawkins?
MF: [Dr.] Charlotte Hawkins Brown.
JM: Charlotte Hawkins Brown, right. I couldn‟t think of her right name. I can remember her very clearly. She was a big, impressive-looking lady.
MF: Really?
17
JM: Yes.
MF: Yes. A couple of people remember the Sedalia Singers coming to Tuesday chapel.
JM: [unclear] It was a long time ago.
MF: Yes, well some of those things kind of just have to—
JM: And we had mass meetings. They were political meetings, and they were more interesting. They were called by the students and the student government for whatever reason they might—they were at night. I guess they were required also.
MF: What kind of things did they—?
JM: They were for elections and for people to make their campaign speeches. I tell you, the politics was pretty strong.
MF: Yes. Pretty important in campus life. One thing that I just realized a few minutes ago that I totally neglected to ask you about is how was it different being a town student versus the year—your last year?
JM: It was very different. And for people who didn‟t make much effort, it was really different. There was a town students‟ room, and there town students went to play bridge during—between classes and smoke and generally became more and more town students. And I elected from the beginning to have as little to do with that as I could and try to be a part of the whole college. In fact, I had already started staying on campus with friends when I was still a senior in high school, people that I had met for one reason or another. And so I did visit on campus a lot, and the fact that I was in the student government business, I often spent weekends on campus with friends, and so—. But when I finally went over there to live, the fourth year. One reason I hadn‟t done that besides the financial reason was I thought it would be sort of false. It‟d be so easy to go home, but it didn‟t work out that way. Once I got over there, I was so busy that I stayed. I need to go ask him something.
[recording paused]
MF: So we were talking about the difference between being a town student and a dorm student.
JM: It was very—a lot of the girls really got nothing but their classes out of it and made no attempt to be a part of the school as a whole. It was certain that you had to work at it.
MF: Yes, you had to make an effort.
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JM: But I just found it was so much more interesting to meet people from everywhere, mostly up and down the East Coast. I met girls from small towns in North Carolina that I‟d never heard of. I really enjoyed the people I met. Still see some of them.
MF: Yes, that‟s one thing that I find very interesting is that I can‟t think of a single person I‟ve talked to that went to Woman‟s College who doesn‟t mention that there are friends they made while they were there that are still good friends now. That they still talk with frequently. I guess part of that is location. There are a lot of graduates of WC—
JM: Yes. A lot of them live here. Right?
MF: There seem to be a lot of WC graduates in some of the surrounding communities too. Durham, for example.
JM: Well, it‟s been a good buy in education for a very long time.
MF: Yes, it has. Let me pause for just a second here.
[recording paused]
JM: The next thing I wanted to ask you about is the situation with the rift between the Alumni Association and Chancellor [William E.] Moran. I guess, first, sort of what do you understand the problem to be?
JM: Well, the problem, I guess, really started twenty or thirty years ago when they took over the money raising which had always been done by the alumnae and that became a college function. So when that happened, they had a two-headed monster, and I can see the problem that Moran has—that they want to be independent and yet they need the money. But the college is now raising it instead of the Alumni Association raising as it once did. But on the other hand, Chapel Hill, according to Bill Snyder, who used to be the editor of the Greensboro Daily News and acting alumnus down there, he said they still manage to do that. They have the same set up, and they don‟t have any problem with it and are managing much larger funds and much more power is involved. So there must be some way that it could be worked out.
MF: What about Barbara Parrish [Class of 1948, secretary of the Alumni Association, director of Alumni Affairs]?
JM: Barbara came behind me in school. But all I know is that for many, many years, she has managed with not a great deal of money. She‟s put on a very, very fine commence—you know, return times for the alumni, and they are always very, very well organized, and everything is thought of down to the last pencil. When I was—I was unfortunately elected everlasting reunion chairman of my class, which is a real pain. So it was very difficult in the first years. I had a—ran a restaurant and it was really a hard job. I didn‟t have time for 19
it. But after Barbara came along, she just took over all that and organized it all. You had to do some, but it was very little, and I don‟t think she‟s gotten very much thanks for it. And they pushed everybody out of the Alumni House, which was built with alumni funds. But I don‟t know what the answer is. But somehow or other, if Chapel Hill can do it, it seems to me that there should be a way.
MF: Have you met Chancellor Moran?
JM: Yes, I have.
MF: You have, okay. And aside from the issue with the Alumni Association—I‟ve only briefly met him before—what type of individual does he seem to be?
JM: I have only met him socially. I‟ve heard him at—perhaps when I attended one of those McIver Conferences a number of years ago and I heard him then, and I used to swim at the Y[MCA] with his wife, so I knew her. But that‟s—I really only know him superficially
MF: As far as his role as chancellor, I know there is a lot of building going on on campus, and, of course, the situation we‟re talking about with the Alumni Association. The impression I get is he doesn‟t sit very well with most of the alumni. Just their general impression of him as chancellor of UNCG, most of the alumni—
JM: This may be just the older ones. I don‟t know.
MF: Well most of the ones that I‟ve talked to are graduates somewhere in the thirties, forties or fifties.
JM: I think that would be true. Also, you know the—I was quite impressed with the woman who was the head, the president of the Alumni Association, in the ones [unclear] Sam Ervin‟s daughter-in-law [Betty Crawford Ervin, Class of 1950]. Maybe it was Sam Ervin, Junior she is married to.
MF: Who‟s acting as director right now?
JM: No, no. She has been—she‟s not president now, but she—I went to a boring Alumni Association reunion, and they were reading all this stuff and suddenly I—“What is this woman saying?” And she did it in a very business, calm way and she read out all the report about all the meetings they‟d had with Moran and how nothing could ever be resolved and the promises that were made and the things—. She had some pretty damning accusations. And I was impressed with the way in which she delivered this. It was not emotional, which most or a lot of women would tend to be. I think I would be if I‟d been involved. The years that—she was president for a couple of years.
MF: Oh, was this just before Barbara Parrish?
20
JM: Yes.
MF: Yes. I can‟t think of her name.
JM: I don‟t mean that she was executive. I mean she was president of the Alumni Association, the board, not of the—the no pay job.
MF: Okay, I see what you‟re saying. No, I can‟t think of who that is.
JM: She‟s somebody Ervin. I can‟t remember her first name, but she was quite a lady. Also, there‟s a woman here in town named Laura [Auman] Pitts [Class of 1974, 1976 master of education] who‟s a young woman who worked in Barbara‟s office. And she was extremely upset about it. I knew her at the [First] Presbyterian Church [Greensboro]. She was extremely upset about the situation. And I was interested in her outlook because most of the people I know are so much older. I‟d say she‟s thirty-five to forty.
But frankly, I don‟t lose sleep over any of it. [laughs] I have almost no ties there. It‟s amazing. But there‟s just no one left there that I know anymore. And Dr. [James C.] Atkinson [romance languages faculty] is still there. He was a fine teacher. I had him in graduate school. I took etymology with him, and I thought that was such a boring class, but he made it pretty interesting. And I‟ve been amazed at how much I‟ve enjoyed knowing that and how I see words that I don‟t know and I can figure out what they mean because of what he taught me, which was something I didn‟t really want to take.
MF: Oh, wow, that would help me right now. I‟m going to go take the GREs [graduate record examination] or any of those standardized tests. I don‟t want to miss anything here and usually afterwards I think of things I should have asked about.
JM: I‟m not going away. You don‟t need to interview me again [unclear, recording error?].
MF: As I was saying I don‟t want to miss anything and if there are other things—? Are there, is there anything else that you can think of that I‟ve neglected to ask you about? You‟ll probably think of other things tonight.
JM: No. I think we‟ve covered about all that I have to give.
MF: All right. One last thing then that I want to ask you about is if there are names of other former students that you think would be helpful for me to interview?
JM: I assume you‟ve interviewed Emily Preyer?
MF: Not yet, but I will. I‟ve got her on the list.
JM: Because she‟s had so many other experiences, I think she‟d be interesting, and she‟d have a lot of opinions on everything. I can‟t think of anyone. If I think of somebody, I have your telephone number. I‟ll give you a ring.
MF: Okay. That sounds good. Or you can call either myself or Dr. Link at the history 21
department. Okay. Well, thank you very, very much.
JM: Well, you‟re welcome.
[End of Interview]