Oral history interview with Hollis Rogers, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Hollis Rogers
INTERVIEWER: William Link
DATE: April 10, 1990
WL: I’d like to start today just by asking you to tell me a little bit about yourself. Where you were born and what brought you to this institution in 1947?
HR: Well, for the record, I was born in Calloway County, Kentucky, extreme western Kentucky near Murray. They have just been in the limelight because they were one of the sixty-four teams in the [National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s] basketball finals this year. And October 7, 1911, to establish my age, and I did a bachelor’s degree at Murray State University [Murray, Kentucky], which was in commuting distance of home. And from there went into high school teaching, to the University of Kentucky [Lexington, Kentucky] for a master’s in botany. My bachelor’s was in biology, my master’s in botany, and—on the faculty of the University of Kentucky, and taught botany as an instructor for a year and decided I had to have a PhD if I stayed in the circuit. So I went to Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] to start on a PhD in botany and forestry. Got an additional year of that and got drafted in December of ’42. Spent the next three years winning World War II [1939-45 global conflict] for you. [chuckles] Came back to Duke.
WL: You were in the [United States] Army?
HR: In the Army, yes.
WL: Where were you stationed?
HR: Spent eighteen months in New Guinea, twelve of that in the combat area—very fortunate. I was studying ecology at Duke and just finished a very good course in world ecology when I left Duke and passed through New Zealand, Australia and then spent eighteen months in New Guinea in the rainforest jungle and all parts of it, coastal and interior, because I was with an aviation airborne battalion of what was then the Army Air Force. And so I had—and they soon pulled me off as photographer with the unit and a lot of special privileges, so that I travelled all over and got a good education out of it—I think better than any graduate school I ever attended. [chuckles] And then came back to Duke to finish. And when I got back, they said, “Gosh, you’ve been out for two, three years. You’re behind. It’ll take at least two years to catch you up.” So I did the two and was in the process of dissertation finalizing. And, frankly, they pulled a retroactive on me and said if I held my assistantship, I would have to take the college entrance exam—that it was a regulation on campus. And I refused to be intimidated. And so I says, “Okay, I’ll 2
go and write my thesis off campus.” And had an appointment—Guilford College [Greensboro, North Carolina] was wanting a science educator with my qualifications. I made a telephone appointment with Dr. [Clyde] Milner, president of Guilford, for eleven o’ clock [am] on a certain day. The night before I started, my department got a call that the Woman’s College [of the University of North Carolina] needed somebody with my qualifications. So I had a nine o’ clock [am] appointment at the Woman’s College to go on to Guilford at eleven—and signed a contract at ten and called Guilford College and cancelled my appointment—came here. [chuckles]
WL: So somewhat coincidental or maybe slightly accidental that you ended up here rather than Guilford.
HR: Oh, yes, some, apparently because—well, I think this an interesting aside on this. Fifteen years later, on some committee—I was meeting the committee, in Dr. Milner’s office at Guilford, and when I walked in, he jumped up and said, “Young man, you’re late. I had an appointment with you fifteen years ago, and you’re fifteen years late for it.”
WL: He didn’t forget you.
HR: He was that kind. [chuckles] Oh, yes. And just gave me fits. He said, “We still haven’t filled that position because we were so disappointed that we didn’t get you that we just left it open,” and they had.
WL: Well, tell me about your first impressions of Woman’s College.
HR: Well, I was also asked to apply for a job at the City College of New York [New York, New York] at the same time. And my wife says, “If you go, you’ll go single,” [laughs] “I refuse to go.” And so I came here. We pledged each other that we’d stay nine months; I would finish my dissertation, get my PhD, and get out. And we still had [yet] to get out [laughs] forty-three years later. No, I found it a delightful place—Greensboro a delightful place to live. The Woman’s College was a luxury that the state could not afford to keep.
WL: How so?
HR: That utterly segregated student body—we had the brains of the country as students because it was so highly selective. They—it was well known. But, as I say, it was a luxury the state could not afford to maintain. But I fell in love with the job. They brought me here to teach science education, and I had courses that just suited my background and training and the finest students in the world. And you just don’t beat that. And so—
WL: Tell me a little bit more about the students.
HR: Well—
WL: How would you describe the student body—a little bit more detail?
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HR: It was totally female and, at that time, totally white, which had—that’s another story later on. But—and it was tough. It had the highest standards anywhere and not imposed by the faculty, imposed by the students. An honor system was not even mentioned. It was just a way of life here. [chuckles]
WL: It was assumed?
HR: The students—
WL: Yes.
HR: You know, I don’t credit the faculty with the quality of education they were doing. I credit the students. The crazy kids just didn’t know any better. [laughs] They came to get an education, and they did anything they could do. Of course it was a little embarrassing for me, just out of the military. Duke said they kept me there for two years to rehabilitate me, so I’d be secure in civilian life because I was a sergeant in the Army. [laughs] It took quite a bit of rehabilitation. And—but I got out of the habit of opening doors when I—when I would start—I think I was number—the twelfth man on the faculty when I came here in ’48. And with, I don’t know, five or six hundred females between eighteen and twenty-two. When I started toward the door, somebody would open the door—reversed. But I—
WL: Were there not—there were not very many men then on the faculty?
HR: Not a man, as a student.
WL: On campus, but on the faculty?
HR: I think I was number twelve.
WL: Number twelve.
HR: Yes. Yes. It was a woman’s world, which wasn’t bad for a young man just out of the Army.
WL: Did—in terms of faculty committees and faculty meetings—did women tend to run things, you know?
HR: Oh, yes. It was—the chancellor, Chancellor [Walter Clinton] Jackson. And his daughter was his secretary, and the dean of women were the administration—total. [laughs]
WL: That was it. Yes. How would you describe Chancellor Jackson? What kind of person was he?
HR: Well, he was history—he was a history professor [chuckles]—that’s the only thing I had against him—you understand what I’m saying? 4
WL: He was an okay guy aside from that?
HR: Well, for instance, at—he hired me. He interviewed me and talked to me very thoroughly. He was history, and he could do an interview. And he hired me, and, of course, I was given an assistant professorship contingent on finishing my PhD and a very bountiful salary, $3,500 for nine months. That was different money than it is today.
WL: Yes. Was that a pretty good salary for then or—?
HR: They thought they had gone all out for me because I was a prize. Yes, they had full-time teaching faculty I think for $1,800, $2,000 a year. And, well.
WL: Was he a strong figure?
HR: Oh, yes.
WL: Jackson?
HR: Yes, he had grown up here. He was well established with the faculty, and he controlled the committees and so forth. And you were either on track, or you were off track. And so, at—during my first year decided we liked it and bought the lot where this house, where we live now.
WL: Oh, really?
HR: But were renting—and walking through the old Administration Building one day, Chancellor Jackson popped out and says, “How’re you gettin’ along?” I said—he wanted to know. He handled that way with every faculty member. “How’re you getting along?” I said, “Well, I like it.” I said, “In fact, I’ve just bought land, and I’m planning to build.” He said, “You don’t have tenure. You can’t afford to do that.” And I said, “Listen, man, when you live in a tent for three years, you’d like to have a house of your own.” He says, “I understand that.” He says, “I’ll see you in a few days.” In a few days, I got a letter stating that I had—that he as chancellor was giving me tenure even though it wasn’t legal and might be challenged, I was on the tenure track and had security here. [laughs] That’s the kind he was.
WL: So he just gave you tenure, right?
HR: He gave me tenure—at the end of my first year. But as it was, he said it could be challenged, but he was still—I was on permanently.
WL: Nobody in the department objected to that or—?
HR: Nobody objected. No, I was pretty popular in those days.
WL: Was that—was the faculty fairly strong in terms of its role? 5
HR: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There was a minimum of PhDs. It was the old school, and the people that controlled it did not—now Dr. Jackson had a PhD—but there were very few. And it was a hard-working—and they thought they established the standards, but I do think [laughs] the students did. You can’t force standards on the student body. If they aren’t equal to it, you can’t do it. But—
WL: It was the quality of the student body that made it—?
HR: The quality of the student body that made it. And I think it’s interesting—very quietly, when the color line broke, a few black females came to the campus. And they were the cream of the crop, and well, three of my black students are now medical doctors—one in California, one in Chicago, and one I’ve lost. I don’t know where she is. But I know those. I know that—two of them communicate with me every Christmas. I’m a little worried—one of them—Ada Fisher [Class of 1970] should be involved in this history because—Dr. Ada Markita Fisher, the daughter of a Durham black Baptist minister, embraced the Jewish religion. She’s a Jew. And she was a troublemaker on campus from every angle. And I loved her and—
WL: How was she a troublemaker? In what sense?
HR: She was too bright for the faculty. [laughs] And she felt that blacks had their rights in the world, and this was a time when they didn’t, and she fought for everything. And, in fact, ten years ago, the late Chancellor [James S.] Ferguson came to me and said, “You know, I didn’t know that we had Dr. Ada Fisher here on campus for some meeting, and she informed me that without you, she wouldn’t be Dr. Ada Fisher.” [laughs] I didn’t know he even knew her. She was the kind that could sit in your class and say, “How much time, more time do we have this semester?” And she would tell you how many more minutes that class would meet before final exams. [laughs] Well, I fought with her all the time, but recognized and respected her. And wrote letters—I don’t know how many—it was before the photocopy and before word processor days, so each one had to be written specially, and got her into the University of Wisconsin [Madison, Wisconsin] Medical School. And then she would run out of money and we’d have to get grants for her—took her five years, but she graduated. And is now—she has been through everything in the East with graduate programs and things to go with it, and is now a medical doctor with the Monsanto Corporation, I believe, in Chicago [Editor’s note: Dr. Fisher is medical director, Amoco Oil, Chicago, Illinois]. Every year she gets out a four or five page typewritten report—
WL: I see.
HR: —of what’s going on. And she has adopted a son. She’s never married, and she’s adopted a son. Oh, Ada is probably in her fifties now. But the one thing that always worried me—she’s always insisted she wanted to be my physician, and she’d had, always held that we should kill off the old people and give the kids room in this world. [laughs] Those two just don’t mix. [laughing]
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WL: Makes you wonder if you want her to be your physician, I guess.
HR: Yes. Go ahead.
WL: Go ahead.
HR: As I say, I take over so you—
WL: That’s all right. Go ahead.
HR: The blacks came on campus like that, and they were fantastic students.
WL: This was in 1956, wasn’t it? The first black students?
HR: Yes. Somewhere in there.
WL: Yes. It was.
HR: And then the legislature started talking about bringing men on campus.
WL: Yes.
HR: And I went into my natural history class one day, and a beautiful redhead from Asheville [North Carolina]—when I walked in the room to start class, she stood up and says, “Dr. Rogers, we were discussing it, and we wanted to ask you a question.” I says, “Shoot.”
She said, “We are wondering what is your attitude toward bringing men on campus.”
“Well,” I says, “I can tell you. I’m against it because there will positively be dilution, and they could be competition.” And the class just roared. [laughs] And they said, “We knew that’d be your attitude.” And it was. And it really weakened our program completely. It—when—because the first men who came came by default. If they had brains, they could get a scholarship. If they had money, they could buy their way in. But if they were caught without brains or money, they could get in here.
WL: So we were left with that—with those kinds of students—not very good students?
HR: Oh yes. Definitely. And—
WL: —couldn’t get in anywhere else?
HR: For—and some of the old ones, Professor Thiel, Dr. Albert Thiel who was a botany professor and who was my mentor here on campus because I came in the department with him. And he was botany; the department was biology, and we were the best of friends, never had a better one. And when this happened and he was retiring, he says, “Don’t give up.” He said, “Give it twelve years, and it’ll be a university. It’ll take that.” And it did. And it became one, but it took twelve years.
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WL: In terms of coeducation, did—where did this come from? Was there much support in the faculty, or is it something that you got straight from above?
HR: Economic. The state. As I said in starting, the Women’s College was a luxury that the state could not afford to maintain. And it was.
WL: And so they finally realized this was—
HR: They just—economics became such that they had to have more places to send people to school—and they went the cheaper way. It was economic. And everybody knew it had to be done. But it still knocked the props out from under the best school in the country.
WL: Yes. Was the faculty—how did the faculty feel about it—other faculty that you knew or—?
HR: Had nothing to do with it. The legislature did it in Raleigh. I think the faculty felt the same way I did. It had to be done, but it ruined the playhouse. We had one. You’ll never know one like it. My wife had enjoyed that. It was the general thing on campus, when a young male came on campus. They asked my wife, and she had learned it from an older one, “What’s going to happen if your husband falls in love with one of these beautiful students he has?” And she said, “That would be his problem, not mine.” [laughs] Because that was the attitude of the community. Gosh, you had—and we had Miss North Carolinas and contestants in Miss America. I taught two or three of the reigning Miss North Carolinas. And—while they were Miss North Carolina, they were in my classes three days a week. They were—and when you mention student body I get a vision like that. [laughs]
WL: What did students do for fun in those days, Woman’s College students?
HR: Principally, do their academic work. But on weekends, Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina], [North Carolina] State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina] Clemson [University, Clemson, South Carolina], Guilford [College, Greensboro, North Carolina], all the males came to Greensboro. [laughs] It was totally integrated Saturday and Sunday because it was favorite grounds—
WL: And there were males all over the campus?
HR: On weekends there were males all over the campus, yes. Yes.
WL: But during the week, generally they were—
HR: Generally during the week they did—the girls had no need to put on social competition.
WL: And that was a good thing, you think?
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HR: Well, it was ideal for the faculty. I don’t know how it—it was good for that age, you know.
WL: And helped create this kind of atmosphere that you described earlier of very dedicated students—
HR: Oh yes.
WL: —very hardworking students.
HR: Yes, yes. There was no social competition. One of the things that I observed, I think the first year I was here—an old beat-up farm truck came in with daddy, momma, and daughter in the cab and her luggage on the back. And she was delivered to her dorm. A few minutes later, a small limousine came in, with liveried chauffer and momma and daughter in back and daddy up front with his gold-headed cane and delivered daughter to the same dormitory. And they could well have been roommates and friends for life because it operated that way. That doesn’t go on now.
WL: Yes. The background of the students then was quite diverse?
HR: Oh, yes. But the academic ability was high and accepted.
WL: Did students and faculty interact a good bit?
HR: Oh, yes. Yes. You were supposed to have teas and parties and so forth a lot to have the students out.
WL: That was expected?
HR: And there were little academic clubs on campus—a botany club, a zoology club, a history club, a math club, and a faculty sponsor. And they were supposed to have a picnic, and—a lot of times on campus and a lot of times at a faculty member’s home. And so you got acquainted with them—they were in and out. My three children, who now range from 34 to 42 in age, grew up totally associated with college students. They lived with them. My daughter, who went to University of Kentucky [Lexington, Kentucky] for two years and was thrown into a chemistry class of 350 students—the professor came in at the back door to the auditorium and lectured to them and walked out. Met him in the hall one day. Growing up as she did she says, “Sir, I’m Shannon Rogers. I’m number so-and-so in your chemistry class. I’d like to chat with you.” He says, “What’s your problem?” She says, “Well, I grew up on the University of North Carolina campus, my father’s a PhD botany professor, and I think you’d be human if I could get to know you.” He said, “By God, come into the office. I want to talk to you.” [laughs] Because the difference in attitude,
WL: Yes. And that was typical of—that kind of relationship was typical of—
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HR: Oh, yes it was, it—here, everybody knew everybody. There, he was just amazed that a student would speak to him outside the classroom. You know what I mean? [chuckling]
WL: Right. I guess there were regular student assemblies as well?
HR: Oh, yes. Oh, yes there was a chapel program—I don’t remember now how many days a week—and all kinds of student activities on campus. Yes.
WL: And faculty would take part in all of this?
HR: Oh, always. Yes.
WL: We were talking earlier about commencements—about films of commencements. What were commencements like? Where were they held?
HR: Beautiful, formal affairs. The campus was run—what did they call them? But young ladies were selected from each of the upper classes. They had beautiful white gowns with sashes giving the year they would graduate, and they were the hostess for every activity on campus. When Aycock Auditorium opened, they were the ushers. And they needed men around, so the first year I was here, I was pushed into being on the Aycock Auditorium committee, which meant that about eight or ten of us on the committee, and four of us would be there every time there was a function in Aycock Auditorium to be hosts and to be strong-arm, if needed, and I was much in need, just being out of the military as a commando [laughs]—and you would have a dozen of these young ladies who would escort the patrons down to their seats and all of that kind of thing. And again at commencement they were functioning, and they are beautifully photographed in Archie’s film in here.
WL: Would—commencements would be held in Aycock? Is that the—
HR: Yes, in Aycock or out of doors sometimes, but most of the time in Aycock in the earlier days before they began to outgrow it.
WL: Yes. It used to be possible to have the whole student body in Aycock?
HR: Oh, yes, oh, yes. Yes. The whole student body could meet there, and the entire families of the—in the ’40s and early ’50s the entire families of the—and every faculty member sat on stage for commencement.
WL: Oh, really?
HR: Yes.
WL: Up on the stage of Aycock?
HR: Yes, yes. 10
WL: That’s interesting.
HR: It’s changed. [laughs]
WL: Yes. Quite a bit. Did faculty members frequently go into the dining hall of students, in the dining hall facilities?
HR: Well—
WL: I’ve heard some people say that they would be invited to dinner. Maybe that was a little—
HR: Oh, yes, yes. Yes—everybody in various clubs and organizations would invite you in. But they had another thing. The faculty dining room in now the home economics building basement, north side, the entrance there by the science building, was where home economics trained their institutional food service people. And it was—they ran a beautiful public dining room down there that students who got tired of the routine food could go there and eat and did a lot, and faculty could get two meals a day there at a very reduced price. Let me stop that scratching. I’ll be right back in a second. Cat was missing; there he is, that’s Mugsy Bogues. [chuckles]
WL: Oh, I see. He wanted to get out. We were talking about student life. I’m wondering about the nature of the administration. You talked about Chancellor Jackson. Maybe we can go through the other chancellors. [coughs] Let me think. Let’s see, Chancellor Jackson was succeeded by Chancellor [Edward Kidder] Graham [Jr.].
HR: Chancellor Graham. And Chancellor Graham did not defer to the ladies who ran the institution. So they went after him and—
WL: I’ve heard about the problems of his administration.
HR: Oh yes, they fired him.
WL: He was run out eventually?
HR: Oh, yes, he was run out, and he was a good chancellor. But he was too liberal minded for the old guard that ran the institution. And—[presumably the cat enters the room here] Mugsy has no objectionable characteristics. He’s a perfect pet. He doesn’t have any brains, but he loves everybody. He doesn’t bite; he doesn’t scratch; he loves people. He doesn’t know a stranger. And you see, the relationship—he and the dog are the best friends on earth. [laughs] So—
WL: So Graham was opposed by an old guard, but—
HR: An old guard that said he’s got to go. And so the university system had public hearings. And I went over for—I was assigned my time to testify, so I stopped mowing my lawn, 11
took a shower, dressed and went over. One of the deans at [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill was conducting the hearing, and I went in and I said, “I protest having to do this.” And I was—
WL: Did they require all faculty to do this?
HR: You had a chance to if you wanted to.
WL: You were assigned to a block of time?
HR: Yes. And I told them—I says, “I’m doing exactly what I came here to do. He has the environment for me to work, and I’m working. And I had to stop mowing my lawn to come over here and defend my way of life. I approve of what he’s doing; I don’t approve of the shenanigans going on.” And that just blew up the hearing. They wanted to talk to me for a while. [laughs] But that was true. That was what the problem was—was he didn’t defer to this old guard and their way of doing things and so they got—
WL: He wanted to change things?
HR: He wanted the school to grow and to move, and—
WL: Why were they unhappy about that, do you think?
HR: I think Marge [his wife] and I were present at a dinner function that started his trouble because it was a buffet, and we were going through the line getting our plates, and one of the powerful old guard went through and got a plate and delivered it to the new chancellor. And he says, as they always said at home, “You touched it, you eat it, I’ll fix my own.” [laughs]
WL: That didn’t go over too well, huh?
HR: And right then he started downhill, and I think that was the thing that did it, was that attitude. He—you see he was a relative of the family of Frank Porter [Graham, president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States Senator], the great old university educator. And he grew up in a more affluent situation and had more liberal views on the world. And he was a fisherman and a sportsman and a playboy. They didn’t like that.
WL: Yes. So they didn’t like his kind of lifestyle and—
HR: And the whole thing. He—and the fact that they couldn’t run the show. He was chancellor, and he ran the show. So they got him. And he was followed by Gordon Blackwell, who was a good chancellor. Blackwell was here when the school was given the Chinqua Penn house and plantation [English manor home near Reidsville, North Carolina, built by Jefferson and Betsy Penn, owners of tobacco interests]. And I was on the committee to go up when it was received, and it had great potential. But Blackwell 12
didn’t last long. He couldn’t move like he wanted to so he went to Furman [University, Greenville, South Carolina] and left us.
WL: He couldn’t move. Move in what sense?
HR: Well, there were just too many restrictions placed on him, I think was the problem. I don’t know. But I hated to see him go because I was doing well under him too. It was under him that I was tapped to bring the National Science Foundation Program for science teachers and high school students on campus and was able to get about roughly $335,000 over a few year period to spend here. And—
WL: This was a period of great expansion in terms of science education?
HR: Well, that was the period after Sputnik [Soviet Union’s first artificial Earth satellite launched in 1957] in the late ’50s and early ’60s. It was all science education, and we got grants to bring high school teachers on campus to—using the science faculty on campus with supplemental pay, and paying the travel expenses and all school expenses for these teachers to enrich the science program. And they came from as much as seventy-five or a hundred miles away, commuted in to classes. And we used the best science faculty, practically all department heads, to do the classroom teaching for them. And, of course, it runs its cycle. I think the best thing we did— we got a grant to bring forty brilliant high school juniors on campus for six weeks. These were females; that was the female days—forty brilliant high school students selected from anywhere in the United States that we could get them—on campus to live in the dormitory, to take courses in science and mathematics, to enrich them, and we kept one of them. Dr. Linda Curtis [Class of 1968, MA 1971] in the biology department was one of those kids we brought in. [laughs] And they’re all over the world now. We did that for three years, so there are a hundred twenty of them. They came in the summer between their junior and senior year in high school, so that they could get their enrichment, go back and seed their high school with it before they went on to college. Now [clock chimes] we would get hundreds of applications when I was directing the program and, with committee members to help me, we would select the ones we wanted from the hundreds of applications.
WL: Let’s see—after—back to the chancellors—after Gordon Blackwell was Singletary.
HR: Singletary—
WL: Otis Singletary. What about him? What did you think of him as a chancellor?
HR: I liked him, got along very well with him. I think the thing that got him—of course, the University of Kentucky bought him and bid a lot, and former faculty member there I could keep up with it. Of course, he took a year leave of absence to go to Washington [DC] for something and managed to get his old college prof, who was dean of the graduate school, Ferguson, to take over the interim chancellorship while he was out. And I think part of what caused Singletary to go was the fact that that was the period when they were buying up all the property around campus for expansion, and some of his staff 13
was indiscreet in the way they took in the [unclear] to throw those—you see most of the faculty lived on McIver Street, Tate Street, and Spring Garden, right around the campus. And they would receive a notice in the mail that they were to move out of their house by a certain date, and it was under the chancellor’s name. And he got very unpopular around there for that. He just decided to move up and let his best friend in the world have his job, was what he did. And he did well at Kentucky.
WL: So he became somewhat unpopular because the expansion of the university was moving faculty out of their—
HR: The old retiring and retired faculty was being kicked out of their homes. [laughs]
WL: This the old guard again?
HR: The old guard, yes.
WL: The same old guard?
HR: The same old guard, yes.
WL: Did they own these houses, generally?
HR: They owned the houses, but—
WL: What about Ferguson—James, Jim Ferguson? Was he—how would you characterize his chancellorship?
HR: A fabulous old history professor. And it was just at the beginning of his administration that I had my first fatal heart attack [chuckles], and was off for a little while. And I got amazed after that when I was visiting the Administration Building for something, Chancellor Ferguson would run and open and hold doors for me. He was that kind of a gentleman. I’d have to laugh at him when he would do it because I was back in good physical condition, but he was that sensitive. I had been—I think the nicest thing I got was before he came in. You see, I had a heart attack that came on me in the classroom, the 12th day of March in ’64—and was hauled out to the emergency room in Wesley Long [Hospital] and was there for a month—and one of the early survivors at that age and of a heart attack like that. In fact, at five o’ clock [pm]—I went to the hospital about 1:30 [pm], and at five o’ clock [pm] a team of five or six cardiologists came to my oxygen tent. And Dr. Joe Christian, who used to practice down here at the College Corner, he retired two years ago—I’m playing with him now—told me he says “Now I know you. We’re going to tell you the truth. You’ve had a genuine heart attack; EKG [electrocardiogram] and everything shows it. And our calculation is that you have one chance in ten of seeing breakfast time in the morning. And we’re going to give you thirty minutes to wind up your business with Marge, and then we’re going to knock you out.” I said, “Well,” I said, “those are much better odds than I’ve been facing and I think conditions are improving.” He turned to the group and said, “I told you he didn’t have 14
any sense.” Well, I survived and went back, and in September I was opening a new, and my last, National Science Foundation Institute. So I got up to my office. And in those days, still they had a—
[End of Side A—Begin Side B]
HR: —paperwork shuffled up ready for me. The opening of it the next morning, this was Friday night that they had it, and the next—so I finished up and by that time, my wife and two of my kids had been in an automobile accident, and they were hospitalized. So I was here at home with one son, and so I decided I’d go to the reception, get something to eat and drink and chat a little. When I went in to the receiving line, [William] Bill Friday, the president of the [Consolidated] University [System], broke out of line and he came around to where I was in line and said, “What’re you doing here?” I said, “Well, vacation’s over. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.” So he took me back to Otis Singletary and Dean [Mereb] Mossman [Sociology and Anthropology faculty, dean of instruction, dean of the College, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs] and stated to them that I had said I was coming back to work, but he wanted them to watch me, and if they ever caught me doing another day’s work, let him know and he’d fire me. [WL laughs] He wanted me saved.
WL: Was Friday much—Bill Friday much of a presence on campus? He must been; he knew you.
HR: Bill Friday was the ultimate university president. He was the ultimate. He was the end of them; there’ll never be any more like him. He—you haven’t been here long enough to have known him on the job?
WL: Well, I came in 1981, and he retired in ’86, I think, so I—
HR: But it got too big?
WL: Yes, it wasn’t the same.
HR: Well, I dealt with him from the time he was secretary to President Gordon Grey and a student organization on campus had a schedule that Gordon Grey was to speak to them, but they could not get a verification of it. So I called the office, and got his secretary, Bill Friday, and told him what my problem was, and Bill said, “By God Hollis, I’ll get on this and get back to you in a few minutes.” And he worked that way with his entire career. That’s the first personal dealings I had with him. He worked that way.
WL: He worked a very—
HR: And during the time I had the, those brilliant high school kids on campus, there was a little girl from western North Carolina by the name of Kathy Friday [Kathryn Friday 15
Wilson VanLew, Class of 1966] that was in the Institute. And I always took—the staff and I took those kids to Chapel Hill and spent a day on campus there, including a private conference of them with the president of the university, Bill Friday, in his office. And when they filed out, he signaled me to wait. He wanted to talk to me. So when they got out he says, “Hollis, did you know that that little blonde is my niece and my favorite kid in the world?” And I said, “I didn’t until I got her here, Bill. Honest, I was innocent, I was suckered. Her qualifications got her here.” He says “Well, I’m going to ask you a favor. Get her to ask and manipulate early admission to Woman’s College. I want you to be in charge of her through her college career.” And I did, and I did. And she stayed and then came back later with her husband [Ronald D. Wilson, 1973 MS], who did a master’s degree in chemistry on campus after they were married. Yes, Bill and I were pretty good friends. [laughs]
WL: So, he was a pretty regular presence on campus in that regard?
HR: Oh, yes. He was in and out a lot, yes.
WL: Did he come to faculty meetings fairly frequently?
HR: He would—once or twice a year he would appear to answer questions. You know, he—in my opinion and the opinion of the nation because he held every office university presidents held and was the top. I think he’s the best, and that’s what has made the system what it is now. I don’t know. I sit back and watch the system being run now as a commercial operation.
WL: And that wasn’t the case when he was here?
HR: It wasn’t the case when Bill Friday was here. It was run for the students, and the faculty was protected to do that. And I’m afraid that is not the case now, but I’m not involved and I don’t have to worry about it. Retirement’s good, and I insist all the time that the state is paying me to stay out of town. And I’m trying to cooperate. [laughs]
WL: One administrator who spent a long period of time, which I suppose really coincided with your own tenure on campus, was Mereb Mossman. What—how would you characterize her as an administrator?
HR: I’d rather not. I wasn’t old guard. [chuckles]
WL: And she was?
HR: She was.
WL: So you want to “no comment” that one?
HR: No comment on that. [laughs]
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WL: All right.
HR: One comment—I was two years out of the Army, two and a half years married, when I came to Greensboro and accepted the job and came over house hunting for a place to live with my wife and my baby. There was a house on Forest Avenue facing the—what is the Elliott Center that had an apartment upstairs. And I was advised to apply for it. And I did. And it would have been ideal, just what I wanted. I learned later that a sociology professor lived in the apartment below and didn’t want a child making noise on the floor above.
WL: An unnamed sociology professor?
HR: Dean Mossman. [laughs]
WL: Yes. You will name her. So you didn’t get the apartment?
HR: We didn’t get the apartment. And that was the reason they gave for it.
WL: They actually told you that was the reason?
HR: They actually told that was the reason that they couldn’t let me have it because a permanent resident down below didn’t want children above her. And that sort of clouded my—oh, I worked with her very well, and—but there were certain traits that I didn’t approve of.
WL: Yes. And that particular episode might have been revealing of some of the—of those traits?
HR: I think so. I think so. Yes.
WL: Tell me more—I haven’t heard as much as I’d like about the biology department—how it changed, what kind of a department you came into, and how it—?
HR: Well, let’s see, when I came in, I guess there were about a dozen members, and it was biology. It had originally been geography, geology, and biology. And previously—one of the instructors in it for a year was T. Gilbert Pearson, who founded the National Audubon Society after he left here. But he wasn’t successful and left after a year and went to Guilford [College]. The biology department was old school. Freshman biology, which was required of most everybody, was one of the hurdles in survival in the institution. It was anatomy, physiology, and the students were required to dissect and draw everything. And there was a formula. And it didn’t matter how well they understood it, if it was not properly and formally drawn and labeled, it was no good. And that was never my way of doing things. I didn’t care whether they—they could draw it if they could; they could compose a poem about it if they could do that; they could whistle it if they could do that; they could dance it if they could do that, it didn’t matter.
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WL: As long as they understood it?
HR: I wanted them to comprehend it. And I was a little at odds with that process, but part of its changed and part of it hasn’t over the years. Professor John Paul Givler with a—I believe he had a master’s degree—was head of the department, and he was an old school biologist. For instance, many times I would go early to my botany laboratory. I’d have a lab session coming up, and I’d have materials to get set up on my tables and everything, so I’d go in and start work on it, and I’d be up on a ladder getting material out of the cabinets, and the lights would go out. And I learned to know that Professor Givler was saving electricity. One of my colleagues, who came from the University of Chicago to teach, wanted to do a lot of research. And Professor Givler forbade him using the lights at night to do research.
WL: To save electricity?
HR: To save electricity, yes. The school cannot afford to support your research. I always insisted—Professor Givler was a devout Methodist, and the Methodist Church missed its best bishop [chuckles] when he became a biologist.
WL: And he was head of the department?
HR: He was head of the department for many, many years, I don’t know how long, but retired on age, I guess, about ’60, sometime there [Editor’s note: Professor Givler retired in 1949]. He was here for quite a few years and, no, maybe in the ’50s that he retired. I don’t remember, but he was replaced by Victor Cutter [biology professor], who was the ultimate and the best and my teammate. And we did everything together. And that was under Cutter that we had the National Science Foundation Program, and everything just exploded. His wife [Lois Cutter] came on the [biology] faculty. He prematurely—he spent his career a lot of the time doing cancer research and died of cancer. And I had to handle the whole problem because, as I say, he was my best friend. We did everything together. And even if I was wrong, he supported it. [laughs] And he was a very personal graduate school friend of Chancellor Graham. So that helped that situation for us. The world was wide open to me in those days. I could do anything I wanted to. And it’s awful nice to have that fortune.
WL: So you got good support?
HR: Oh, total support from he and Chancellor Graham because they were old trout fishing buddies from Cornell [University, Ithaca, New York] [coughs] and so—and Cutter was the son of Victor M. Cutter, Senior, who personally owned United Fruit Company—multimillionaire in those days. Dr. Cutter grew up in Boston on the same street with the Kennedys and people like that and was chauffeured to school with an armed chauffeur to protect him. When he finished high school, his dad presented him with a seat on the stock market in New York, and he turned it down and went to Cornell and got a student assistantship [laughs] to do his graduate work—that kind of a guy. And had boundless energy. He was a rabbit hunter at night. He taught; he attended every scientific meeting in 18
this part of the country and took students to them. He was a science educator, researcher. His attitude was, “If a faculty member felt compelled to do research, he would support it to all limits.” But if they wanted to teach, he would not force them to do research because the research would not be effective. He had an enormous amount of research going on. He taught classes and did a super job of it. He taught in the institute for me. He was department head. I was institute director. He taught in the institute for me and did a fantastic job of it.
And then one day in the summertime, not many people around, he called me on the telephone from his office to my office, and says, “I want you to take my calendar and cancel every appointment I have. I’ve just been to the dentist, and he diagnosed that I had thrombus carcinoma in the roof of my mouth, and I’m leaving for Sloan Kettering Institute [New York, New York] to see what they can do. And want you to cancel all appointments for me.” That knocked the props out of me. Three years later, I had my major heart attack [chuckles]—overworked, overstressed, crap like that.
WL: Yes. That must have been a very busy time for you.
HR: It was. It was—
WL: Managing all these different things.
HR: Yes. I had to cancel out on every appointment he had because he was involved medically, and they couldn’t stop it. It ate him up and destroyed him. Then his wife, Dr. Lois Cutter, a PhD in botany, and I finally conned her into coming back on the faculty and teaching. She just retired two or three years ago.
WL: Did you notice—in what respects did you notice change coming to the institution in the 1960s and 1970s? It’d become UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] rather than WC by 1963. Men are on campus—
HR: It was, as I said, dilution and competition as it expanded. And it expanded too fast. And the new students were not the quality of the—the additions were not of the quality of the old ones, and all standards had to be lowered. And you see, it was ’64 that I got orders from Bill Friday to the chancellor and the dean that if they ever caught me doing another day’s work he’d fire me. I was to loaf the rest of the time. But I didn’t; I had a lot of fun.
WL: Did you take a year off or—?
HR: In ’40—let’s see, 25 years from ’47, when would that be—’67, ’72 I was in the process of producing a documentary movie that I thought was quite a project and asked for a one semester sabbatical in ’73—I never had one—and stipulated it was to finish this documentary movie, and it was approved by the department head and everybody, but the dean, Dean Jones, who was academic dean under Ferguson, I guess by that time—
WL: Yes. Stanley Jones?
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HR: Stanley cancelled it because it was not of educational quality. Of course, it has been run on Public Broadcasting and [chuckles] things like that. And I think that resulted in my receiving the senior faculty member of the year award. And that was after that, and poor Stanley was saddled with the job of taking me to Chapel Hill to formal dinners and presenting me as the outstanding faculty member, when he had cancelled the one sabbatical I requested during my tenure here. I went out on my own and finished it—sort of a sore place there, naturally.
WL: Yes. Jones must not have been in his office too long when that took place? He came on board about ’71, this was ’72, ’73.
HR: Yes. I’ve forgotten his tenure. Of course, the first thing that happened, a kid ran over him with a bike in front of his house and broke a leg and made an invalid of him for quite a while.
WL: Oh, I didn’t know that.
HR: He had problems, but like Dean Mossman, he didn’t fit my schedule, so I stayed away.
WL: Having taught here for a number of years, thirty-one years, how would you characterize the changes that affected the institution?
HR: Well, it went from the Woman’s College to the University, and it required about twelve years to mature. And now it is a university now, but there’s a twelve year period in there in which it was in transition, and it hurt the program, of course, during that schedule.
WL: The addition of graduate programs, for example?
HR: Graduate—I was one of the first to teach graduate work here.
WL: Did your department consider adding a PhD at any point?
HR: Add—I was asked by our department head to write my evaluation of the process. And I got up here at four o’ clock [am] one morning and sat down and wrote a manuscript on the subject. My wife typed it, I turned it over to Dr. [Bruce] Eberhart [biology professor], in which I said, “There is an excellent PhD program at Chapel Hill in biological sciences. In fact there are about three at Chapel Hill. There are two or three at Duke, and one or two at NC State. And our mission should be below that. We have no business doing this.” And we still haven’t. [laughs] I was about the only who—because I was brought here for science education to produce teachers in the primary, elementary, high school, and college. But PhD was a different thing, and they have spent a fortune—you know, right after I submitted that letter, they brought in a dean of the graduate school from somewhere at a big expense to do a symposium on that. And he told them the same damn thing I had put in the—he just quoted my letter, and he had never seen or heard of it. [laughs]
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WL: So he came up with the same reasons—
HR: The same reasons that I did, exactly. He came and studied the situation and said, “No way. You have another mission. You do undergraduate and the master’s program and leave the PhD to the others.”
WL: Yes. Do you think that’s true of the university as a whole, generally?
HR: No. Home economics—the outstanding school in the nation.
WL: Yes.
HR: And others. But, basically, we were a lower level. Of course, now we’re a university. I don’t—of course, we have a—and immediately at the same time they hired total faculty for doing the PhD program, the entire biology faculty, and today they’re sitting there waiting for their program, twenty years later. And it’s depressing for me to go out there and visit with them because they are not doing what they were hired to do, and it was Dean Mossman that had that dream.
WL: I see. She started building for a biology PhD program?
HR: Oh yes, she brought Eberhart here from Princeton [University, Princeton, New Jersey] to have a PhD program in two years. And he died without it too. And it was—and he hired every faculty member in the department with that objective in mind, and that was the total stress. But I had enough prestige they left me alone, so they never bothered me. Within a semester after I retired, every course I had taught was taken out of the catalog.
WL: They didn’t replace you? They didn’t bring somebody in who did the same thing you did?
HR: They brought in three people to replace me and new courses. Well, it’s not my—I don’t—[William] Bill Bates took over the headship. And it was interesting—I had read the faculty handbook. I knew, as a professor emeritus, I had voting privilege on faculty from—on campus for life, and all of these things, and I retired December 31, ’78. And in January, they had three of our faculty members campaigning for the headship of the department because Eberhart was retiring. When I retired, it was interesting. The chancellor, the dean of arts and science, and the biology department head all relinquished their jobs the same time. I just assumed that they could run the place without me. [laughs] You know what I mean? So they were campaigning; three of them were campaigning for the headship in the department, and one of them, who’s never been department head, made an appointment with me to talk about supporting him for the headship. And my retirement was announced that I would retire before the vote. And two of them who had appointments with me to talk about assuming the headship did not keep their appointments because I was retiring before. They didn’t know that three voting members on the biology faculty were former students of mine—[laughs] protégés of mine—three, no, there were four of them that— 21
WL: That was four votes.
HR: Four votes if I said so. [laughs] But Bill Bates kept his appointment and talked about it and said, “Now, Hollis, you’ve been here longer than anybody. You have been through every administration; you know all the politics, and for God’s sake, if I do get the headship, I want you.” Said, “I’m not asking you to vote for me, but if I get it, for God’s sake stay on here and help me because you know the ropes.” Well, Bill got all except three votes. The other two got three votes. And Bill had the best office in the building because Eberhart—when they built the new life sciences building, the other faculty was squabbling for their offices, and I didn’t approach him. Finally at the last minute and he came to me and said “Aren’t you moving?” I said, “Yes, tell me where to go and I’ll go.” He said, “Well,” he says, “the office there on the second floor next door to my office has a picture window that looks out on the School of Nursing and the whole world there—the best office in the building and two of them are fighting over it. And if you will accept it, I won’t have to referee a fight.” So I got it. Bill came in and he says, “Don’t move. I want you next door. I want to be able to hit the wall and say, ‘I’m coming, I want to ask you something.’” So I stayed through Bill’s tenure.
Well, no, after about three or four years, I was still working on filming. I, in the Army turned out to be one of the Army photographers, so Marge and I are both professional nature photographers—still working, in the public once in a while. And—but as time went on, I suggested I be moved into a more remote office because I wasn’t doing so much anymore—and got Sarah Sands [associate professor of biology] into that office and then into another one and finally, about four years ago I thought my lease was about up, so I cleaned out and moved out. I still haven’t turned in my master key to the building, though. [laughs]
[End of Interview]