Oral history interview with Frances Ashcraft McBane, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Frances Ashcraft McBane
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: February 19, 1991
MF: If you could start, I guess, by giving me a little bit of general information about
yourself— where you were from and when you went to Woman's College [of the
University of North Carolina] and just some general information like that.
FM: Okay. I grew up in Wadesboro, North Carolina, and came to Woman's College in '44,
graduated in '48 and then went back for the master's program and received my MM
[master of music] in '70, I believe it was. [Editor’s note: Mrs. McBane received this
degree in 1971]
MF: Okay. MM. Is that master's of music?
FM: Of music.
MF: Okay. All right. I didn't realize that—yes. Come to think of it, they do have the—they
may the MFA [master of fine arts] program also.
FM: Yes.
MF: Okay. And when you were getting your master's, were you real involved in the campus
then?
FM: No, because I had a family, and I stretched it out over several years and was not involved
in the campus activities at all.
MF: Okay. But obviously, you were in the music department. Okay. All right. Did you live in
the dorm or were you a town student?
FM: I was in the dorm for my undergraduate degree; I guess you're talking about?
MF: Right. Right. What was dorm life like, sort of generally?
FM: It was very pleasant. It was—my freshman year was during the war and so, of course,
we—things were different. The boys weren't around, and on Saturday nights we would
listen to the Hit Parade [radio program] and cry [laughs] because there was no one to
date. But dorm life was very nice. I lived in Gray [Residence Hall], and Miss [Ethel]
Hunter was the housemother at that time, and we had some pretty rigid rules. But it
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was—it was very nice.
MF: Were the dorms pretty full at that time? Because I know there seem to have been periods
where they were real full and then, like for instance, during the Depression [worldwide
economic downturn preceding World War II], they were very empty.
FM: Well, I think they were quite crowded. There were three girls in the room next to me. It
was a corner room, a little larger, but they had three in there. So I thought it was pretty
well full.
MF: Yes. Okay. I know being a music major, it kept you sort of out of the mainstream of
campus a little bit, but what are some general descriptions of student life at a women's
college—at Woman's College in particular, but at an all-female school?
FM: Well, let's see. I enjoyed very much being in a girls' school because, of course, the girls
ran everything and we had our role models, and it, I thought, was very special, and I
think meant a lot to all of us.
MF: Sorry. I'm trying to—because of this cold, I'm having trouble thinking what I was going
to ask. With—you were saying the girls ran everything, et cetera [Latin, and so forth].
Did you have any dealings with student council or were you active in that at all?
FM: No. I was not.
MF: Who were some of the role models?
FM: Let's see. Kathryn England [English faculty] was there at that time and she, in particular,
as far as I was concerned.
MF: Yes. I know there were some very good professors in the music department.
FM: Yes. Miss Alleine Minor was head of the piano department at that time, and Mary Lois
Ferrell, who died soon after that, but—and Miss Grace Van Dyke More was head of the
music education department at that time.
MF: Did you get teaching certification while there?
FM: Yes. And Mrs. Claire [Henley] Atkisson [Class of 1916] was the [music] professor who
was in charge of that.
MF: What kind of education did you get in the music department there? I get the impression
from several people that I've talked to that it was a very broad music education that you
received at Woman's College as compared to something more specific at other schools.
FM: I expect it depended on your major. The first two years were pretty well set and were not
too different, but in the junior year, those who majored in instruments or voice or
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performance of some kind, it was much more technical. And then the music education
people got into the practice teaching, I think, and that sort of thing.
MF: Okay. And what did you major in?
FM: Piano.
MF: Piano. Okay. So you did have a lot of rather rigorous labs and so forth?
FM: Well, I was never—no. I mean, when you say lab, what do you mean?
MF: Well, that's what I've heard somebody call it. I'm not sure. Somebody was saying
something about music lab.
FM: I really don't know what that means.
MF: Okay.
FM: Unless that was relevant to the music education in some way.
MF: Perhaps.
FM: But I didn't do anything that I would put in that category, exactly.
MF: Okay. A lot of recitals and so forth?
FM: Yes. And the performance end of everything was very, very demanding in terms of time.
MF: Right. How do you feel that the music department stood against some of the other music
schools in the nation?
FM: At that time?
MF: Yes.
FM: Well, that was really the reason that I chose this school. It had such a—such a good
reputation at that time, and I think the piano department was small, but I think it was
excellent. And the level of performance was exceedingly good, I thought. I had had some
experience with, what they called back then, a master teacher or someone who—well, it
was Edwin Hughes [American pianist and editor], who had a studio in New York, but
came down this way and gave lessons, went to Winthrop College [Rock Hill, South
Carolina] in the summertime, and I went several summers and studied with him there, so
I had heard some pretty good pianists.
MF: Yes. I'm just looking at this—somebody else that I had interviewed was Mrs. Esther
Bagwell Matthews [Class of 1949].
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FM: Oh, yes.
MF: Yes. I think she was—
FM: Esther?
MF: Esther, yes. I think she was there about the same time that you were.
FM: Right. Now Esther—was Esther a piano major—was she?
MF: Yes. I think she was piano and voice both. I'm pretty certain. I didn't write it down, but
yes, I think so. And she mentioned somebody. George Thompson?
FM: Oh, yes. He—I'm sure she told you—was head of the choir, taught organ and was just
someone that everyone knew. He was a character of sorts and just a very unusual person.
MF: Yes. And then another person, I think, was Phillip Moreland.
FM: [Edwin Phillip] Morgan.
MF: Morgan. Okay.
FM: Yes, he and his wife [Inga Morgan] were rather new [piano] faculty members when I
went in '44, so they were there a lot of years. I think Inga had just retired recently, and
Phil died this last year. But they had quite a long tenure there.
MF: Yes. I get the feeling it was a pretty impressive department.
FM: It was. It was quite a demand for excellence, and the recitals were excellent.
MF: And how would you characterize that or contrast that to the department now?
FM: Well, you see, I don't know exactly what's going on now.
MF: Right.
FM: I got a pretty good view of it back in the late '60s and around '70. And, of course, it was
so much larger, and I felt for that reason you—it—. Well, I had some applied piano, but I
got my degree in theory and composition when I went back and whereas, with a smaller
department, your piano exams were really like a small recital. You played the entire
sonata or whatever it was that you had prepared, and with a larger—in the larger school,
it—I don't think I should say this. [laughs] Well, some of the students would memorize
the first page and the last page and just bet on the fact that they'd be stopped and told—
then told to finish the movement.
MF: Oh, no.
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FM: Oh, and I stood there, and I just shook my head. I couldn't imagine such a thing. I
couldn't have taken an exam, but there were all sorts of ways to get around things. But I
shouldn't tell that on them to be recorded. [laughs]
MF: That's interesting. I never—so it's quite common for them get—go through and then be
stopped and say, "Just go to the end."
FM: Yes, because, you see, they had so many to listen to and so that just was a—and I don't
know how prevalent that is. I just know when I was waiting to go for my piano exam, I'd
hear that discussion. And it was sort of funny. [laughs]
MF: Yes. That is—that is funny. I guess you find a way to get around it no matter what you're
in.
FM: I guess. I think you'd better delete that part of the record. I just thought it was kind of
funny I thought of it.
MF: I think that's a riot. Yes.
FM: I do too. The thing about it is that I couldn't have stood it. I mean, I just know they'd call
for some section that I didn't know.
MF: Like go to the middle. Yes. Go to the middle.
FM: But, anyway, when it was small, of course, it was very close knit and so naturally things
could be controlled like that a whole lot better. There was just more time to do
everything.
MF: Do you think the quality of the student being accepted has gone down at all?
FM: Well, of course, I was in the graduate end of it, so I don't—I really don't know how to
answer that question.
MF: Okay, because I know, simply from the increase in numbers, I'm sure that makes it a little
more likely to get students that don't maybe measure up to the top of the class.
FM: Right. Well, there were some students in some of my graduate classes that I did not feel
were prepared—had been prepared in the undergraduate.
MF: Yes, but I'm sure you run into that everywhere.
FM: Yes, sure. But I thought the graduate courses were very good and stimulating, and I
enjoyed it very much.
MF: Not being a—not really having any training whatsoever in any of the arts, it's very
difficult for me to imagine when you're talking about classes and so forth, what that
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entails. What are some typical courses that you had to take both when you were an
undergraduate and then as a graduate?
FM: Well, of course, music theory, in both undergraduate and graduate, which is very
technical. I'm sure you know that. And some of the courses were optional, such as
symphonic literature. I think that was an optional course, and sixteenth-century
counterpoint.
MF: Now what is that? See, I'm—
FM: Well, it was the early music. And we went, actually, all the way back to the church
modes and so forth and then just combining melodic lines in imitation and voice leading.
And that's what counterpoint—counterpoint, actually, is voice against voice. In other
words, the voices don't all start at the same time. Simply put, I guess—you know what a
round is?
MF: Yes.
FM: Well, that's the basic concept, I guess.
MF: Sort of a composition a cappella [without musical accompaniment], I guess, typically—
FM: Well, I guess the early ones were.
MF: I just know that in some pop and rock music now, there's this new trend to try and release
either these acoustic versions of songs or like these a cappella. And I think you—in the a
cappella versions, you run into a little bit of that counterpoint?
FM: Yes.
MF: Okay. Is that what you're talking—I'm just trying to see if I'm on the right track.
FM: Well, that really is the way that music began, combining lines of melody rather than from
a harmonic standpoint. That came later, so you see the church modes were based on—
well, I guess you'd call them scales of certain types, but they weren't like our major and
minor scales. They had—and that's what the Beatles [most successful and critically
acclaimed rock band, formed in Liverpool, England, in 1960]—that's what I remember
about them. Some of their songs actually had that sound to them, of modes rather than the
diatonic scales.
MF: Yes. Okay.
FM: So we examined melody from the very earliest samples of it and from that a very
technical standpoint of what was happening.
MF: Okay. Well, I have a little bit better idea now, I think. Yes. It's—I guess for someone who
was not a music major or something it's hard to imagine what they do over there
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because—
FM: Yes. I bet so. They're not just playing things all the time. But the analysis—for instance,
when we took symphonic literature, I don't think my eyes will ever be the same because
we examined orchestral scores and—which was very unfamiliar to me. And the notes
were so small, and it was—you'd look all the way down a page and here's a measure for
each instrument and you're looking at all of it at the same time and you know. [laughter]
So, I found that very time consuming.
MF: Oh, I'm sure. Yes, just to make sense of it.
FM: Just to analyze it. In other words, so much of that was analyzing how the composer put
the music together.
MF: Going on with some of the other topics—with the societies that they had at Woman's
College, I know as a music major you were sort of a little bit taken out of the mainstream
of campus life, simply because of the amount of time you had to spend in the music
department. But what purpose, if any, did the societies serve for you or other students
that you were familiar with?
FM: Well, as well as I can remember, we were just put in a society, and I'm trying to
remember if the society—if the societies had individual dances. I can't remember that. I
know that the marshals, I believe, were elected from the societies. That's the way I recall
it. But I cannot remember very much about the actual activities that we had. We—the
music majors pretty well knew what was going on. I mean, we weren't totally removed
from things. We just didn't—the truth of the matter, we did not spend as much time in the
dorms playing bridge as most people did. [laughs] Other than that, we pretty well knew
what the score was.
MF: Yes. Just had more things to get done. Some of the dorm rules, to someone who went to
school like myself in the early years of the 1980s, which is—well, some years later,
[chuckles] the dorm rules that they had at Woman's College seemed really quite alien to
someone like myself. I'm sure they just seemed rather matter of fact, though, for
everybody who was—all the girls living in the dorms at the time—but what are some of
the rules and regulations that seem to stand out to you the most when you think back?
FM: Well, let's see. Of course, this was an academic thing, the fact that you had to average, as
everybody called it, in order to have your weekends. You know, to be able to—and I
can't remember exactly the specifics of it. But after—and it may have been mid-semester—
if you averaged, then you got so many weekends and if you didn't, maybe you
didn't get any. I can't remember exactly how that worked.
MF: So that's keeping a certain grade average?
FM: Yes.
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MF: Okay.
FM: Let's see, of course, the dorm rules. You had to be in by a certain time. I believe it was
eleven o'clock [pm], which although we had not come from homes where rules were that
rigorous, we didn't question the fact that in order to have some sort of control over that
many people and be able to live together, we didn't question the fact that there was—that
that wasn't just okay. We complied and wouldn't have dared not comply because you
didn't want to get in any trouble. [laughs] But let's see, what else? Other than times to be
in, and this, of course, and in retrospect, it was really sort of nice—the housemothers
pretty well kept their eyes on the boys that came in. They knew what was going on and
were really housemothers.
MF: Right. What about with guys coming to visit? How did that work?
FM: Well, let's see. You—it worked fine. I'm trying to remember if we had any restrictions
about where we went. I don't think so. I can't recall any. It seemed to me that just the
curfew was the only thing. There may have been. I just don't recall.
MF: They could only visit in the parlor, right, if they came to the dorm?
FM: Well, you could leave with them.
MF: Right. But I mean, if they came to the dorm, they couldn't go to your room?
FM: Oh, no.
MF: Okay. Well, they can now.
FM: I know. [both laugh] Oh, me.
MF: It's quite different, I guess.
FM: Yes.
MF: Excuse me for keeping sniffling. I'm sorry. What about with the war [World War II,
1939-45 global conflict] having—I guess, well, it was still going on when you came to
school. How did that seem to affect student life for you, for example?
FM: Well, we were so busy doing what we had to do, you know, that I don't know that the war
affected the student life other than there just weren't as many boys around in order to do
things with. But as far as life—life on campus was such a cloistered sort of existence; it
was like a world unto itself really. And so I can't recall that the war affected the student
life other than we were concerned and upset about—about it.
MF: Right. I'm so annoyed. My nose keeps running. I'm sorry.
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FM: I'm sorry I don't have any Kleenex. I gave the last to my husband, and he went off with it.
MF: It's not going to help. It'll keep running anyway. I think with the war going on—didn't—I
can't remember if this was during this period or not, but didn't students have to do some
kind of duty in the cafeteria?
FM: Yes. Okay. That is coming back. And we did—I think—I believe they had family-style
meals, which I don't know whether you still have those or not.
MF: No.
FM: And breakfast and lunch, I think, were cafeteria style. And I never understood how those
girls carried those big trays with all the serving dishes on it. I never could understand
that. But, anyway, the piano teachers were very unhappy that we were supposed to go in
and carry those big trays.
MF: Oh, yes.
FM: So I think the pianists could get excuses not to do that part of it—
MF: But to do something else.
FM: —do something—it was okay behind the cafeteria line or something of that kind. But I
hadn't thought about that. That is true. That's—was quite different.
MF: With the family-style meals, that seems like such a novel idea to me. What did that seem
to do for the students? Did it seem to promote some type of togetherness?
FM: Well, yes. You had the same table each time. And it was just—well, so much nicer. It
came—your food came in the serving dishes, and you sat—well, it was just much nicer
than the cafeteria.
MF: Yes. That does sound—sounds kind of neat.
FM: And I guess you don't do that at all anymore?
MF: No. I know another thing that I wanted to ask you about which is, well, somewhat more
of a recent question is when you attended Woman's College, it was a female—all-female
institution, and now UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] is a
coeducational institution. Woman's College had this incredible national reputation. And
while UNCG is a good school, it doesn't have the reputation that Woman's College had. It
doesn't seem to be in the same ballpark even. And I was just wondering what your
opinion was on that as far as how it relates to having been a women's institution and now
being coeducational. Do the two seem like related issues?
FM: Well, I just feel that the whole campus situation is entirely different. How that—it would
relate to the excellence or non-excellence of the school, generally, I just don't know
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unless the same quality of students are not accepted. I don't know that this is true, but in
enlarging to the extent that it has that would just seem to be just a guess on my part. I
don't know why going coeducational—
MF: Yes, because it was right about the time it became a university and became
coeducational, within a five year period, and the difference from a few years before that
occurred and a few years after is—there's quite a difference in the status of the school.
FM: I wonder sometimes if the being the all-female school, if there weren't just a very terrific
pride in this, in the excellence that this school could have and whether some of that
dissipated when it was open to the men. I don't know. But I can see that it would be—it
would take something away from the feeling that this is a women's school.
MF: I suppose it would also place it in a completely different league as far as national
reputation or what have you.
FM: That's true.
MF: Do you personally wish it had remained an all-female school?
FM: Yes, because I think it had a great deal to offer that the coed—I mean, for women—that
the coed just—well, I don't know. I was looking for the word. It's not as special because
it's coed.
MF: Do you think that women attending Woman's College somehow—I'm hunting for a word
here—got something out of attending a female school that they can't get out of a
coeducational institution?
FM: Yes. Yes, I do think so.
MF: And what did—how did they benefit from this?
FM: Well, let's see. I'm trying to get a handle on this now.
MF: I know it's difficult—these are difficult questions to try and answer because it's not
something you've sat down and tried to think out.
FM: Well, I still believe that, essentially, it was the fact that the women controlled everything,
you see. And this is a unique thing. I mean, it's certainly not true in the—out in the world
or in the town or in anything of that kind, but you take a cloistered situation where the
women are in—they are in control and they feel such a pride in this. And, as I say, I don't
know what the situation—I'm not familiar with the faculty. But we had some extremely
fine faculty members. You know, women—and it was just that the whole school was just
striving for excellence. It was just like a fever sort of. And I feel that it just is sort of
diluted.
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MF: I just recently read a thesis that a graduate student at UNC [University of North Carolina
at] Chapel Hill had written on—I guess this was maybe five years ago or so that she
wrote this—in which she talked about a high level of student activism at Woman's
College. And the only reason I'm asking you about this now is because I've just read it
this weekend and so I'm curious as to your thoughts. Apparently, she believes that, partly
because of being a women's college, that there was a very high level of student activism
on campus, student interest in civic issues and so forth. Did that seem to be the case to
you? Did there seem to be a really high level of student activism, for lack of a better
description?
FM: When it was all—
MF: When it was all women. During the time that you were there?
FM: Yes. I felt that as a group, we were stimulated to be interested in everything that's going
on in our environment, our world. And the Girls State [nationwide summer program
sponsored by American Legion Auxiliary that teaches citizenship]—I don't know what's
happened to Girls State. Is it still in effect?
MF: I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm not sure.
FM: Well, Girls State would meet at the—. And everything—it was just, as I say, just
emphasizing what contributions that women could make to the world and the fact that it
was as though we were practicing at the school, you see.
MF: Oh, yes, yes.
FM: And we didn't have anybody to—we didn't have the men to vie with for leadership roles
and that kind of thing. So it was something where we, as a group, were particularly
stimulated.
MF: Yes. There was a—what I hear you saying is that there was a lot more opportunity for
leadership and a different situation than most women had ever encountered.
FM: Right. Right. That's what made it so special, I think.
MF: But this also seems to be almost something that operated sort of in microcosm—well,
that's not even an appropriate analogy, I guess, but sort of isolated.
FM: Cloistered. It was just a place where we were all cutting our teeth on how to be effective
and how to do things and how to be leaders and how to make contributions and how to
excel and all of those things. And with all of the leadership positions open to the women,
you see, we had—I don't know how much more, but a great deal more opportunity to do
these things.
MF: So, activism, yes, but activism in a closed community, sort of,—
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FM: Right.
MF: —for the students there. Okay, that makes more sense to me, really, than the thesis that
I’d read. Activism, I thought yes, but I guess I felt also, that it was—there was something
limited about it that I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
FM: Well, in toto [Latin, totally], it was limited to an extent, but it was like saying you can do
all of these things. You can make these contributions, and that's why it was so exciting
and stimulating. You can make a difference, and you can do all these things. So it was
like being in training for the real world because, after all, the college campus is not the
real world. It's far from the real world, no matter what the situation is. It's always
cloistered, isn't it, to an extent?
MF: Always protected.
FM: Yes. Nobody's out grubbing for that next meal. [laughs]
MF: You don't have to tell me about that. I'm a graduate student. I know. Another issue that's
really very recent that I wanted to ask you about is—I'm not sure how active you are in
the Alumni Association at this time, but I know that we've just cleared a major hurdle
with a big rift between the Alumni Association and Chancellor [William] Moran, and I'm
not sure what the decision was. I still have yet to take the time to find out exactly what
the agreement was, but I've found out a little bit about the controversy, although even
that's been hard to find out about.
FM: I don't—I'm not extremely familiar with it. I tried to read the report to understand what it
was that they all settled on, and it looks as though it will take quite a little while for that
to work. It's certainly an intertwining of everything, and I'm sure they spent a lot of time
and I'm sure that's fine. A great deal of it sounds like semantics to me. How you want to
say this or—it just—and I shouldn't make any comment at all because I don't know that
much about it. But it's—they have certainly seemed to try to work out a way for it all to
mesh. Now I can't—it's hard to imagine how some of it's going to work, but I'm sure—
I'm sure they'll figure it out. [laughs]
MF: Yes. Someday.
FM: But I'm just sorry about the ill feeling that came from it because it certainly didn't do the
school or the Alumni Association any good.
MF: No, I'm sure it didn't. I know that Moran—the actions he's taking seem to suggest that
he's trying to build some type of reputation for the University. I'm not talking about the
Alumni Association right now, but he's on a real building spree and moving towards
[National Collegiate Athletic Administration] Division I athletics and to join the ACC
[Atlantic Coast Conference] and so forth. What's your impression of some of the
endeavors he's undertaken?
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FM: Well, I think that it's hard to assess whether bigger is better. Now there are a lot of people
who will disagree, who think you're very unenlightened if you don't think that bigger is
better. And—but I'm not too sure about that. So I'm sure that the building is needed and
warranted and so forth, just from the way the school is growing. What is the student
count now?
MF: Somewhere around twelve thousand, I believe. That's including graduate students.
FM: Well, it's not as big as Chapel Hill, but that's pretty big.
MF: Yes. It's sizeable. Chapel Hill has a much bigger school, but also, Chapel Hill's graduate
population is considerably larger than UNCG's graduate population. So that's one striking
difference. They have more PhD programs. I think that's where that difference comes
from. I know I've whizzed through quite a few topics. I don't want to leave anything
out, so I want to give you the chance in case there's anything I've skipped.
FM: I'm not sure that I have really told you anything that you haven't already heard. And I
apologize for that.
MF: No. You've told me a lot about the music department that I wasn't aware of, so—
FM: Well, good. [laughs]
MF: I wasn't aware that it was really quite so different from the mainstream of campus. It
really was its own little school.
FM: Yes.
MF: And that's something I guess you can only get a feel for that through talking with people
who have been part of that school.
FM: Yes. Yes.
MF: Also, if there are any names that you could suggest of people that you think would be—
of alumni that would be good to interview.
FM: I was just trying to think, do you want names of people from different periods?
MF: Sure.
FM: I mean, I just didn't know what you—
MF: As long as they're accessible, that's all.
FM: Yes. They've got to be around here somewhere. Let's see. Well, I can think of any
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number of people. There are so many graduates that are in Greensboro. A whole lot of—
how many have you interviewed?
MF: Oh, we've interviewed probably about a hundred and twenty, so—
FM: In Greensboro?
MF: In the area. Yes. There are a few from Durham and Chapel Hill and Raleigh, so in the
Piedmont area.
FM: Have you interviewed any retired professors?
MF: Yes. [Dr.] Bill Link [history faculty] has done that. Yes.
FM: Because I know there are a number of those around.
MF: Oh, right. Yes. I'm sure he's gotten some interesting interviews.
FM: Well, I'm sure that [Barbara] Bobbie Parrish [Class of 1948, former director of Alumni
Affairs, Alumni Association secretary] can—I mean, she knows who's in town.
MF: Oh, sure. I just always ask just to see if there's anybody that just stands out, like, "Oh,
you've got to get this person."
[End of Interview]