Oral history interview with Helen McNaull Stone, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Helen McNaull Stone
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: September 24, 1990
[Bill Stone was also present]
MF: If you could start just by telling some general information about yourself, like when you were at Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina] and some general stuff like that.
HS: I graduated in the Class of '48, which I assume you have there. I taught school straight out of college, decided I would never do that again. And then I worked at Cone Mills Laboratory for two years after my husband and I were married. And then I raised children for eighteen years and went back to teaching, which I swore I would never do, in January of '69, and I found out I loved it then. And I taught until just a couple months ago.
MF: And so you were a student at Woman's College from '44 to '48?
HS: Correct.
MF: Okay. Were you a town student or did you live on campus?
HS: I lived on campus. My major was chemistry. I forgot to say that.
MF: And I suppose you taught chemistry, right?
HS: Yes.
MF: You taught at Smith [High School, Greensboro, North Carolina], didn't you?
HS: I did.
MF: If you could give some general descriptions of student life to get started.
HS: Well, Sue Medley [Class of 1965, MEd 1977, Doctor of Education 1985] and I were talking at lunch the other day—it sure was different in those days from nowadays. When you were a freshman you—the first semester you were not allowed to leave your room at night. We had closed study; lights out at 10:30 [pm]. And then if you had a good enough average, which I was fortunate enough to get, you were able to—second semester you 2
could check out and go to the library or something of that sort; you could move around on campus second semester. Maybe first semester, you could go to the library. I don't remember. But then my sophomore year was the first time in my whole life I'd ever been able to stay up as late as I wanted to without somebody telling me to turn the lights out. And you could check out on the weekends—I think it was Friday night until 11:30 [pm] and Saturday night until midnight. And you had to check out even if you were going downtown to a movie. You had to check in and out, in and out, in and out. Which on campus you didn't have to sophomore year, but anything off campus you had to check out. You had to have parental permission to be gone for the weekend. It was really a whole different game then. There were places in town you were not allowed to go.
MF: Oh, really?
HS: Yes. You could go to the Boar and Castle, which served beer—to what was the Boar and Castle. You might not have heard of it, but it was a famous gathering place, intersection of West Market Street and—where Walker Avenue and West Market run together; over there on the left—let's see, what is there now? There's a dairy over there now. It used to be a drive-in place, and you would have cars and cars and cars of people parked all around drinking beer and eating sandwiches. They had the best onion rings you ever tasted in your life and Boar and Castle sauce. They still sell in some grocery stores, I’ve seen. Absolutely marvelous. Good food. But, let's see, there was a sort of bar called the Piccadilly, I think. It was on Walker Avenue. I think there is still a place there now, but not that name. It's near the corner of Walker and Elam [Avenues]. And that was off limits. You were not allowed to go there.
MF: And so the Boar and Castle was one of the places you were not allowed to go?
HS: You were allowed to go to the Boar and Castle, but not the Piccadilly, which was an inside bar. The Boar and Castle, you could have beer outside. Of course, you could get kicked out of school if you came back with any kind of alcohol on your breath. That was automatic expulsion.
MF: Oh, automatic. No questions asked.
HS: Yes. [pause] Back in those days the Officer's Club was out at ORD. What does ORD stand for? Overseas something Depot, Replacement Depot, I think. And they had soldiers stationed there. In my freshman year, I can remember that they—you could sign out for a Sunday afternoon for two hours to sit in your—not the lobby. What do you call it? Well, it's sort of like the living room, with a chaperone.
MF: Parlor?
HS: Parlor, thank you. You could sit in the parlor, and they had the soldiers who came in and I remember four of them teaching me how to play bridge, playing honeymoon bridge. It was fascinating. That started me playing bridge.
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MF: Yes. I know whist, but that's not bridge.
HS: Whist. I don't think I've ever played whist, but it's—I think whist was the beginning of bridge.
MF: Yes. I think that’s—bridge is a little more competitive, more complicated. Whist is pretty simple.
HS: In whist, do you not keep score?
MF: Yes—gosh, it's been so long. I can't even remember how now. You play with partners just like bridge, but—it's just—I can't remember what the difference is. Now, I haven't played whist in so long. I know that it's—just a, what, a total of thirteen books that you can get total on, you know and you have—
HS: You bid one heart, two hearts?
MF: Yes, yes. Like that. You bid the same, I guess. Yes. Anyway—
HS: Okay. What do you want to know about?
MF: I know a lot of people have told me that dorm life was a lot different from being a town student, and one thing I like to ask people is what kind of differences they noticed; how was it different?
HS: The people that lived in the dorm seemed to be—belong to the school, whereas the town people were sort of [unclear]. I suppose it's not being together at night.
MF: Yes, I suppose that had a lot to do with it.
HS: Everybody sat around and talked and carried on and played cards or what have you. They’d be home, and the people who lived on campus would get together.
MF: Yes, they didn't get that same sense of camaraderie, I guess.
HS: But, of course, in those days we had Saturday classes too.
MF: Saturday classes—were they generally just a one-hour class?
HS: I had two of them, Saturdays.
MF: But I mean the class was like a one-hour credit?
HS: Oh, no. There was a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday class, just like a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class.
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MF: Oh, I didn't realize that.
HS: My chemistry classes seemed to always come on Saturday, and during football season, I always had one at 11:00 [am] which made us late to the [University of North] Carolina [at Chapel Hill] football games. And during the rest of the year I was in Aycock on Saturday morning which was terrible. [laughs] But I never had a year without a Saturday class.
MF: Every year you had a Saturday class?
HS: Every year. And I never missed breakfast a single day I was there. I sometimes went with my pajamas rolled up under my skirt, but I got to breakfast every single solitary day.
MF: I'm a breakfast person myself. I can't go without it. As a dorm student—you started to mention some of those so called parietal rules like signing in and out, and— what else was there that really characterized dorm life?
HS: Well, one nice thing we had then; I don't know whether they have it now or not, but we had laundry service.
MF: Yes, I've heard that.
HS: And it was marvelous to send all your dirty clothes on Monday and then get them back in a nice, clean package on Wednesday or Thursday. I don't remember what day it was. But you just gathered up your sheets and pajamas and the whole works; of course, your pajamas came back starched so stiff you could hardly get them on. [chuckles]
MF: I guess they starched everything.
HS: Yes. They starched everything. It's not like now where you have to worry about which pants you launder and having the right quarters and the soap and everything; you wash it yourself. My daughter went there also, so I was horrified at all the things you had to do as a dorm student that I didn't have to do. My students talk about they want to get an apartment instead of live in the dormitory. I never could understand. Just seemed to me that dormitory life would be—you walk a little distance to the cafeteria and eat. I just never could understand even all this cooking apparatus they have in the dorms now.
MF: Oh, yes.
HS: Our rooms were lots bigger, too.
MF: Oh, really?
HS: Oh, they were much bigger than the present day dorms. I was in Hinshaw my freshman year, and the room was [pause] larger than this kitchen. I would guess that room was about fifteen by seventeen. Big size room. The size of my den. And when I lived in Shaw the last three years, you had a corner room that was designed for three people, and it was 5
huge. Tremendous.
MF: I'll bet. Yes.
HS: It was so big; you could move the beds, dressers and everything, around with ease in all kinds of different fashions and still have walking room.
MF: Yes. The newer dorms do have a lot smaller rooms.
HS: When I went to visit my daughter, I was just horrified, because—
MF: What dorm was she in? One of the high rises or?
HS: Yes. She was in one which was over there off Walker Avenue and down in front of the dining hall. It was that first big dorm on the right after that little road that goes back to the Science Building. I can’t remember the name of it.
MF: The first one to the right after—Mendenhall [Residence Hall]?
HS: I believe that was it. I don’t remember. We went over there and ate with her a lot, but I believe we only went to the dorm one time.
MF: Yes. What about classes? I know you said like with Tuesday, Thursday, [and] Saturday classes, but what else about class?
HS: The amazing part was being a science major, and at that point in time you got no extra credit for laboratories.
MF: Oh, really?
HS: So my friends that were history majors and English majors not only didn't have Saturday classes, but they were through at noon, and I was going to lab every afternoon and sometimes Saturday and I got no credit for that class.
MF: I think they're switching back to that now. You get three hours credit for a class and then you have to do the lab, or they'll call it two hours of credit for the class and one hour credit for the lab. So I think we're sort of switching back to that.
HS: I've always felt that it was very unfair to have history majors and English majors one credit for one hour and science majors one credit for three or sometimes four hours.
MF: Yes. [laughs]
HS: In fact, it wasn't just the lab; it was part of the course. It was just straight three hours credit for a lab course. [unclear]
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MF: How were the classes? Do you think they were—?
HS: I thought they were pretty good, except I hated my sophomore year.
MF: Why is that?
HS: I didn't like anything I was taking. I started out as a math major and got scared to death. [mathematics professor] Helen Barton gave us a diagnostic test, which I didn't realize was diagnostic. And that was the first or second week when I was a freshman. And I made something like 37 or 43 or some ungodly low score, and I always loved math and I thought, "Well, gee, if I can’t do this stuff, I've got no business being a math major." So I filed that day and changed my major to chemistry because I’d worked as a chemist at [unclear] Paper & Fiber the summer before while we were at war [World War II, 1939-45 global war], and they needed some people. And so I worked in industry before I’d even started school, and I enjoyed that job and I thought, "Well, I'm not a mathematician, so I'll be a chemist." And then my sophomore year had organic chemistry, and I never hated or despised or detested any course any worse in all my life. Oh, I hated that course. I'd taken chemistry because it made sense, you know. You just had to memorize and memorize and memorize. I loathed and despised it. But I loved my freshman chemistry and had Florence Schaeffer, who I didn't realize it, but, at the time, was a Miss Schaeffer. We called her Miss Schaeffer, but I thought that was just her preference. And she was head of the department and had never gotten her PhD. And she had a sister, Alice Ryan [Class of 1937], who also taught freshman chemistry. And it's amusing in retrospect, you were required to put the class notes into one sewn-back notebook, and you put your lab notes in another sewn-back–you know what I'm talking about? The kind that you can't tear a page out because the page [unclear]. These papers are open like this, and stitched down the middle of the notebook.
MF: Yes. I know what you're talking about.
HS: And we had to bring it every—even class notes had to be [unclear] they checked class notes which is unheard of this day and time.
MF: Yes. I've never heard of it.
HS: But anyhow, I liked that class, but I did not like organic, and I had the same teacher, whose name I've now forgotten for [unclear]. And I hated it with a passion.
MF: Was it the teacher or just the classes?
HS: I think it was the teacher. She was lousy. She really was lousy. I can sure remember how lousy it was. She was the kind of teacher that it—you didn't quote it back exactly to her with the “the,” the “and,” and the “a” all in the same place she'd given it to you, she took off, and then she wanted exact quotes on everything. Didn't want any interpretation or anything else.
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MF: Just rote memorization.
HS: I don't like that kind of teaching, and I don't like that kind of learning. Now, I had a friend who transferred to Carolina when she was a junior, and she had classes that she loved, but the ones I liked were the freshman chemistry and the analytical chemistry and the physical chemistry. I liked that analytical-mathematical part of it. Didn't care for the sloppy organic part of it. [both chuckle]
MF: What do you like teaching? What did you like teaching, just out of curiosity?
HS: I liked mathematical—the thinking part of any science I taught. That's why I liked it.
MF: And what about your general college courses? Do you remember any of the faculty?
HS: I had Dr. [Richard] Bardolph [history professor], and he was marvelous. Wonderful. Best teacher I had the whole time I was there. And I still remember we had a little group that studied for his political science, and we were all studying one weekend and getting ready for a test on Monday. And I said, "There's no way he's going to ask us all these Supreme Court decisions. That's ridiculous. I'm not going to stay up and memorize those dumb things." And the very next day, sure enough, "List the thirty Supreme Court decisions and tell who they were," like Marbury v. Madison [landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution]and what the decision was, and etcetera, etcetera. And Marbury v. Madison was the only one I could remember, and I nearly died. It brought my nice solid B+ down to a C and cost me dean's list, and I just about had a fit over it. [laughs]
MF: Oh, my.
HS: But he's still my favorite teacher I ever had over there.
MF: I heard that he was a really neat teacher.
HS: Oh, he was wonderful.
MF: What made his classes fun?
HS: He told just fascinating stories and things, and he knew his subject well and he explained it well and kept your interest up with ordinary things about people, like what they were like, and he was just fascinating.
MF: He knew about the subject well enough that he could just throw in interesting subjects?
HS: Yes. And I didn't realize at the time that he was such a young man because he's been judge on the—history judge on the high-IQ bowls. Are you familiar with that?
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MF: Yes.
HS: And I talked to him during those years. He was judge, and I was coach. And I think that was his first year teaching.
MF: Yes. That sounds like about—
HS: When I took that in the beginning of my junior year, which would have been '46-'47.
MF: That sounds about right.
HS: And I think he told me that was the first year he came back, and he was really a fine teacher. Maybe his youth, or perhaps the exuberance that, you know—
MF: It seems like usually you hear people have to teach for a few years before they're—they develop any style.
HS: I know. But he was [unclear]. Everybody was scrambling to get in his class.
MF: Well, that's neat because I've heard a lot of people say that.
HS: I had an English teacher I was crazy about, too, my freshman year, but I can't remember her name right off. I said the chemistry teacher is Alice Ryan. I wonder if I’ve gotten her mixed up—no. She was Miss Ryan—oh, I almost thought of her name but I can’t say it. Oh!
MF: I hate when that happens.
HS: Well, anyhow, one time in her class—I was in this honors English class or something. And one time in class, I'd had—I was up to my eyeballs in hearing an English teacher wanted me to say what [William] Shakespeare [English poet, playwright, actor] meant two hundred years ago when he wrote such and so. And I stood up and said, "I'm just so tired of people telling me what Shakespeare meant. He's dead and gone. Why do I have to believe what they think he meant? Why can't I go by what I think he meant?" And I thought I probably flunked the course and sat back down and was scared to death and she just smiled, and made an A in the class. [unclear]
MF: Wow! That’s great.
HS: I loved that.
MF: With the faculty and with the way the classes were set up and all at Woman's College, I know a lot of women have told me that they feel like they were able to participate more and feel freer because it was a women's college.
HS: Right. They trained women to be leaders. Now you have men on campus, I don't think 9
you have the same—I don't think the present-day situation can bring women out of their shell like WC was able to.
MF: Yes. Do you think that that was sort of a conscious goal of the faculty or did it just happen because of the nature of the university? Or the college?
HS: Well, the [unclear] of the college was actually designed for women. Now, I'm sure the idea behind it was to not only train teachers but to train women to exercise leadership in the community. And I feel that that—I really feel that did happen, and I was very disappointed when they brought men on campus. Even if I'd had the money I would have transferred to Chapel Hill myself.
MF: Really? What was that fascination with Chapel Hill? Everybody talks about that. They say every weekend, they'd go for the football games and—
HS: It was big and the football—[Charlie] Choo Choo Justice was one of the players when I was going to school. And I knew their chemistry was more exciting than ours was.
MF: Yes. I think you had to be a junior to transfer there.
HS: Yes. You had to be a junior to transfer, and I would have changed my major back my sophomore year, but I was so poor that I couldn't afford an extra semester in school. And I couldn't afford to go to Chapel Hill either, so—I worked and made nearly all my tuition, books, everything, [unclear] my dormitory room, selling cigarettes and candy and crackers and things and [unclear].
[side conversation redacted]
MF: What about student government? I guess that gets back also to—well, it goes along the same line as training women to be leaders. How important was student government?
HS: It was important. The Judicial Board made the decisions about who was to be—well, part of the decisions about who was to be expelled from school for drinking and etcetera. And it was very strong.
MF: And it seems like it was really prestigious to be on student government.
HS: Yes. That's right. I ran for something. I can't even remember what I ran for now. I didn't win. I think you had to be elected by [unclear] for two or three years and I was a cheerleader [unclear] society. They didn't have sororities then, and they had societies that you were assigned to. I think it was Adelphian; I don't remember anymore. I was cheerleader for them.
MF: Cheerleader—I was just talking with somebody about this last week. I had not realized 10
until last week that they actually had sort of intramural sports and that they actually had cheerleaders for the different teams.
HS: I just did that one year. I've forgotten which year now.
MF: Whoever it was I was talking with also said that they would not let the sports teams compete with other colleges, though.
HS: I don't remember that. I didn't play sports, so I wouldn't know. I played tennis, and I swam and things of that sort, but I didn't play on a team.
MF: Oh, okay. Was the physical education and the team sports and all, was that just sort of a side note to the college, or was it kind of important? Or where would you place it?
HS: I really don't know.
MF: I guess you sort of had to be involved.
HS: I can't even remember what I cheerlead for at this point in time; I don't know. The societies used to have formal dances once or twice a year. I remember going to those.
MF: Yes. How are they set up?
HS: They were set up with chaperones and dance cards that you'd sign with the little ribbons on them, and you had to have an escort to go. And the escort had to pick you up at the hall and meet the counselor there, and it was pretty much [unclear]
MF: So I guess about the only time you had alone was walking to the dance, right? [both laugh] On walking back home.
HS: Or sitting in the parlor.
MF: Right. And the little cards you were saying that you signed up for dances, was that with—you signed up for dances what? With your date and with others?
HS: With others, yes.
MF: And if somebody wasn't on your card, you couldn't dance with them?
HS: That's the way I remember it.
MF: Yes. That's pretty well chaperoned. What other functions did the societies serve?
HS: Good question. How do I answer it? I suppose that they [unclear].
MF: Yes. I don't recall. 11
HS: And I imagine they took part in politics, but [unclear]. Don’t remember.
MF: Okay. What about some of the traditions at school or at the college?
HS: We had chapel every Tuesday. And every Tuesday they had the same lunch. And every Tuesday I went to lunch because I loved it, praying that somebody wouldn't be there to see me eat lunch. Because they'd have corn pudding, and they had a rye roll and a half an apricot. It's hard to remember what we had. And then the dessert. I don’t remember the dessert. I could have eaten three people's food. I never got enough to eat on Tuesday. [laughs]
MF: It's so funny because so many people tell me, "Well, I remember on Friday, they had the worst dinner, and I never went to dinner on Friday." Or, "I remember Thursday was the best lunch," or something. And people remember.
HS: And Sunday was lousy. They had baked chicken. It was a seated lunch also.
MF: Somebody told me that you had chicken every Sunday. Yes.
HS: But the chicken was not brown, and it had pin feathers sticking out of it and it almost grossed me out to look at it. So I tried to eat away from school every Sunday.
MF: Yes. I think that somebody told me that Fridays were usually liver or something.
HS: I don't remember. I've always liked liver, so that wouldn't bother me. Their breakfasts were marvelous. They had a muffin with a cherry sitting on top of it and sugar drizzled down through the middle. Oh, it was so good, mmm. And some sort of apple spice muffins that were out of this world. I loved breakfast. The worst part then, the first two years—well, when I went to college, I had just started drinking coffee that summer. And so I got to college, and I knew that sugar was rationed. You could have two teaspoons of sugar for breakfast, and you couldn't divide and have half a teaspoon on something and half on the other. You got two things of sugar that came out of this dispenser thing. And I had to have sugar on my cereal and I had to have it on my grapefruit, so I couldn't have it on my coffee. Then I got used to drinking it without sugar, and then about a month into that year, they started serving cream that had spoiled. And you'd put that rotten cream in your coffee, and the odor would hit you and it was just terrible, so I started drinking coffee black from that point, and I never have switched back.
MF: Yes. My husband drinks black coffee.
HS: It's a whole lot better once you get used to it.
MF: [laughs] And a lot of things, I know, at that time were a little bit different on campus because of the war and all. And so, what other things do you remember that really stick out in your mind that were different because of the war?
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HS: Well, they rationed—food was different. They also—I can remember going to Wake Forest [College, Wake Forest, North Carolina] my freshman year to dances. I was pinned to a guy from Wake Forest at that time, and there wasn't any way for somebody to come that far and get you. There wasn't enough gasoline, so all the gals would descend on the bus station on Friday afternoon at the end of classes and catch a bus to Wake Forest on Saturday. I couldn't cut Saturday classes until I was a junior, and then you couldn't be dean's list until the end of your sophomore year, I think it was—or the beginning of your junior. And if you were on dean's list, you had three cuts. And I'd use those on Saturdays once I got them. But I didn't have any cuts my sophomore year, so I suppose I caught the bus on Saturday. [chuckles] I mean, my freshman year. Now, by the time I was a sophomore, there were some men coming back from overseas, and I met my husband my sophomore year. Remember that was the—I told you the first year I could go out at night and I wanted to stay up as late as I wanted to, and so I didn't study too much my sophomore year. [laughs] And then at that point there were some vehicles and more gasoline as the war ended there.
MF: Yes. I also heard that around '47, '48 that there started to be some women in class that had been in the [United States] Army Nurse Corps and so forth that were coming back for their education.
HS: Yes. There were one or two of those, not well, but there were some.
MF: Yes. Did they seem to be a little more serious about school, perhaps?
HS: They probably were, but I don't remember.
MF: Don't remember? Just noticed they were there and that was it? Yes. [laughs]
HS: I was so into the science and math part that there was a small room for [unclear]. There was a group in the dormitory and a group in the Science Building [unclear].
MF: I know one thing I wanted to ask. I forgot I was going to ask it earlier. Some people have told me that there—just these really pretty wild stories of girls sneaking in and out of the dorms and stuff like that. And I guess that was pretty typical.
HS: [chuckles] Yes. You had a corner room, so you could fix the latch if somebody was late and they could sneak in that way and then pretend like they forgot to sign in. So they did that kind of thing.
MF: Yes. I know that I heard that the people who were on the first floors of the dorms would always get their window tapped on to go let them in.
HS: Yes. That happened more than once. [laughs]
MF: Well, I guess they say men will be men, but I guess women will be women too.
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HS: Right. Right.
MF: Also, what about some other people like Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson [chancellor]? Do you remember Dr. Jackson?
HS: I remember seeing him, but I don't remember really talking to him.
MF: Yes. Okay. And what about Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, French faculty; dean of women, dean of students, dean of student services, director of Elliott Hall]?
HS: She came there while I was there and was a fascinating lady, but I didn't really know her well either.
MF: She also taught French, I guess?
HS: I can't remember. I did not have her for French. My French teacher was bilingual, and I found that if you couldn't remember the English word for the French word, if you just inserted the French word in the translation, they practically never, ever caught it. They would read right over it and count it right. [laughs] That was fun.
MF: That's interesting. I wonder why I never thought of doing something like that. And do you remember anything about Miss [Harriet] Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women]?
HS: Not really. She taught social studies, didn't she? I think I was the only person in school that didn't like her teaching.
MF: Oh, really?
HS: Yes. I hated that class.
MF: Oh, I've heard somebody else say that.
HS: Have you really? She had her doll babies that she loved.
MF: That's exactly what I’d heard.
HS: She ignored or put down everybody else. I didn't like her at all.
MF: Yes. That's the exact thing that I had heard from somebody is that if—that so many people liked her, but that this person—I can't remember who—did not because they weren't one of her favorites and therefore she didn't really pay much attention. I get the impression from listening to some people talk that she was a real domineering type.
HS: And two-faced to me because she had big smiles for a certain group and frowns for the rest or something. They were just her pets, and I don't like that situation. 14
MF: Yes. Well, it's not a good situation to learn in, I guess.
HS: I hated all my education classes. They were awful.
MF: Well, I think I better not comment on that. [both laugh] Not a subject to get me going on. I was in the education department seeking my master's, and I'm now in the history department.
HS: Oh, wow. [both laugh] I got my master's in education, and some of those classes were superlative compared to undergraduate ones.
MF: Yes. Yes.
HS: One of our education requirements—I don't remember now—it was something like secondary curriculum. And there were so many conflicts with labs, they couldn't work me into the class I was supposed to take, so I took a fifth grade class in education and had to do a project. And so I chose the Amazon River [unclear] and I ended up thoroughly enjoyed researching and doing the project. I mean, this is really going to help me a lot in science to know about the Amazon River.
MF: Yes. Once again, to backtrack a little bit, something that I guess we just really briefly touched on and then just kept right on going. Do you feel like Woman's College lost something when it went coed?
HS: Yes.
MF: In what way?
HS: They lost this marvelous training ground for female leaders. And it was a place where women went and found that they could learn things and women in the presence of men, still in this day and time, tend to take a back seat. Let the guys do it.
MF: Yes.
HS: So I think you have women going there now who could have been leaders in an all-female situation, whose leadership will never come out in a—when you are competing against males for offices and what have you.
MF: Do you think it was a necessary change or—?
HS: I don't really know why they changed. I was living here. I'm sure I read the paper, but I don't remember the rationale for it.
MF: Yes.
HS: There's many who think it was a terrible mistake. 15
MF: Just a thought that comes to mind—I'm trying to think when they first admitted black students. I know that now for a short period of time before they admitted black students, they had let a few men take classes, even though it was still a women's college. But then when they admitted black students, they reverted back to the old standard that it was only women. I guess part of that was that fear, you know, of having black men go to a school of white women, which seems to have been a predominant fear among a lot of educational administrators. And I was just wondering, since you have lived in Greensboro, if you remembered anything about that.
HS: I remember very well when they integrated the schools because I was teaching then. But I don't remember—
MF: About Woman's College in particular?
HS: I don't remember when Woman's College started having black students.
MF: I know they let black graduate students in somewhere in the '50s.
HS: I would guess that they started letting undergraduate students in in the '60s, but that would be my guess.
MF: Well, let's see. I think they went coeducational in like '63 or '64.
HS: Yes. I think it was '60 something, too.
MF: Yes. I'm sure it was at least two, maybe three or four years before that, so maybe '60, '59 or '60. [Editor's note: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro was integrated in 1956]
HS: I really don't remember. But I always remember the people when we integrated the schools. Are you from Greensboro?
MF: No.
HS: Where are you from?
MF: Originally, Paterson, New Jersey.
HS: I had thought earlier, I picked up a little bit of a Yankee accent.
MF: Yes. Even though I'm down here for a while, people say, "You're not from the South." No, I'm not. [laughs]
HS: I remember when my daughter was in school, Bill and I would go and meet her at the dining hall and have dinner and then we would drive off campus, it seemed that—this would be early evening and it seemed to be a solid black campus when you'd drive off 16
campus. It seemed like all the blacks were outside. I don't know where all the whites were—inside studying or at the library or out somewhere.
MF: When was your daughter a student there?
HS: Well, my daughter's thirty, and she graduated when she was twenty-two. That would have been eight years ago. She graduated in '82. [Editor's note: Lynn Stone Chafin]
MF: Oh, okay. Yes. I know still now that—
HS: [unclear] that there were large groups of blacks outside the dormitories, on the sidewalks, out in the streets.
MF: Well, there's even now, a lot of racial polarization, not just at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro], but I feel like probably at just about any school, at least in this area. There's some camaraderie among—I would guess—maybe I'm overstepping my assumptions here, but I would imagine among all the different minority groups there's some polarization and some camaraderie. Let me see how far our tape is in case I need to switch it over. Okay. I hate it when it stops, and you don't know that it stopped.
HS: And you miss something, yes.
MF: Okay, another, I guess, more current issue is this proposed move to [National Collegiate Athletic Administration] Division I athletics and what do you think of that? Do you think that's going to help the university or hurt it?
HS: I hate to sound stupid, but I really don't know what moving to Division I athletics means.
MF: The Division I is like the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] with Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] and Carolina and right now, I think—well, I think UNCG was Division III and then they moved to Division II and then—
HS: I remember reading in the Alumni [News] a bunch of soccer games and things. I don't really know—[unclear].
MF: Division I means you get athletic scholarships and so forth and move into the field with the "big boys."
HS: Are they going to field a football team, too?
MF: I don't see how they couldn't do that.
HS: Sounds like Division I would necessarily entail that.
MF: That's what I would imagine, but I haven't heard any talk of it, so I don't know.
17
HS: Well, as a high school teacher, I feel like too much money goes to athletics and not enough to books and things you need to learn with.
MF: Yes.
HS: So, I'm not greatly in favor of putting a lot of money into athletics. If it's the kind of program that makes as much money as you spend, then I don’t care, but if they’re going to put money into athletics that need to go into hiring another teacher for a classroom that's too large or something else, I'm opposed. But I'm not opposed to sports. I enjoy sports.
MF: Oh, yes.
HS: But I just have this horrible suspicion that money is needed worse to help people learn will be spent on athletics, and I don't approve of that.
MF: Yes. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is if you know anything about this rift between Chancellor [William E.] Moran and the Alumni Association.
HS: I've gotten some letters and some things he sent defending himself. I've read some things that have been said in the paper, and it sort of concerns me that alumni money is going into general fund, even though he says that it's just being spent on alumni things. I know in the public schools, once money gets into the general fund, it may never get back to where it was intended to go.
MF: Right. It gets lost in the network somewhere.
HS: It falls through the holes. So I have not really discussed this with any former alumni. It’s sort of a redundant phrase there "former alumni." [laughs]
MF: Yes, I didn’t think that—"No longer an alumni." [HS chuckles] What seems to be—I know you said you've read several things that he has written to defend himself. What seems to be his position to—?
HS: It seems to me his position is that the state, the Board of Governors, they're saying that the money has to be done this way; that seems to be his defense. And that perhaps is true, but I—
MF: Almost like he's saying, "Well, I can't help it. My hands are tied. I have to do this."
HS: Yes. That's what I feel that he's saying. But I can understand the people that are raising money for alumni for a particular purpose don't like to have it diverted to X to come back to Y. So—
MF: In anything—in any of the things he's written, has he explained what going into the general fund entails? I mean— 18
HS: His claim is that the money is not suited for any other purpose, is the way I understood his comments.
MF: Yes. It makes one wonder, I guess, why do the extra leg work. The first thing I think of— I don't know.
HS: I don’t know. I remember thinking at one time that the—I don’t think he said this, but I wonder if there was some liability position that the university is in that this money is not done according to [unclear].
MF: I'm not sure it's strange, though. With this whole controversy, it seems as though there are a lot of people saying one thing and there are a lot of people saying something else. But there doesn't seem—nobody seems to have any solid information, you know.
HS: I got really angry at the Alumni Association last year. I paid them a hundred dollars to be a Century member, and then I got another bill for a hundred dollars a few months later and we paid it and discovered we'd paid twice.
MF: Oh, yes.
HS: And so I wrote them, and they did send it back. But that annoyed the heck out of me.
MF: Yes, that they missed that.
HS: Well, I guess it's some scheme to get extra money out of people who don't realize that they've just paid it. You know, if you pay something three or four months ago, you think, "Well, this is for the beginning of the next year or something," and you pay it again. And that was very annoying.
MF: I'll make a point to ask if anybody—if that's happened to anybody, just out of curiosity. Everything, I always say, "Just out of curiosity." All these ideas pop up.
HS: Yes, I did get my graduate degree at UNCG also, in chemistry, too. I don’t know if that matters or not. I would only know about campus at night during that period.
MF: Yes. Right. You were working at the same time?
HS: Yes. Taking night classes and summer classes, the whole bit. I thought I'd never get through. That was the most agonizing way to get a degree I ever saw in my life.
MF: I know. I started out working and going to school.
HS: It's just interminable when you do it that way.
MF: Yes. It’s hard. And then you end up feeling very angry when you hear people say, "Well, but I've got a football game to go to." And you're like, "Well, I've got a job to go to." 19
So—yes, I know how that is.
HS: You know, I've taken several classes over there since then too. When they first put AP [Advanced Placement] chemistry in, well, I knew I was going to be teaching it. And it's calculus based and when I went to school, you didn't have to have calculus to be a chemistry major, which is ludicrous. You didn't have to have calculus at all. They taught us the little calculus they said we needed. I looked back in my books and sure enough, we did. And after taking calculus the whole year, I discovered that all you do is go look up those formulas just like they'd shown us in chemistry and I didn't use them anyhow, so—maybe they had a point. But anyhow, I took calculus over there and then I got my GT [Gifted and Talented] certification over there in ’80 or ’82, I don’t remember when. 1980, I guess, thereabouts.
MF: Your master's was in education?
HS: Yes. And all the time I got my grade reports, it kept saying my master's was in guidance counseling because that's where I started out. And it kept coming back guidance counseling now, so I finally said, "Well, hell, if they're giving a degree in guidance counseling, that's what—I'll claim to be one." [laughs]
MF: I know. It's funny. I'm laughing because I know exactly—I still get a thing that tells me I'm in the education department.
HS: I thought they'd never, ever change it.
MF: I go over to the graduate school on a regular basis to tell them, "This is not correct." And they say, "Okay, we've fixed it." And I get the next thing, and it says I'm still in the education department. Yes. That's so funny because that exact same thing happens to me.
HS: I started off in counseling, but the first course I took they were telling me that I was supposed to just sit there and say, "Yes. Yes." That's counseling? You know, you're supposed to be passive and let the kid figure out what’s wrong and what he’s going to do about his life, and I thought, "Boy, that's not my style at all because I'm going to tell him, 'Now look here, kid, you need to sit down and do so and so.'" This is not my ball of wax. Ain't no way I'm going to do this. And I switched over to—
MF: Was that what a helping skills class or something like that?
HS: It was Introduction to Guidance Counseling or something.
MF: I think it—no, it's the book that was Teaching Helping Skills or something like that. Yes. I think I had that same course. That's funny.
HS: That certainly is not my style.
MF: Yes. Mine either. 20
HS: And at the times when I was teaching, I thought to myself, I was doing more counseling than—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
MF: We were talking about getting your master's. Well, obviously, because you were working at the same time, it was quite different to go to school in that manner. But if you can try to think of your classes, you know—gosh, what am I trying to say? In light of the fact that you were working as well, were the—was going to school—I guess it was UNCG by that time, right?
HS: Yes.
MF: Was it a lot different than when you had been at Woman's College just this being a student part, not dorm life or anything like that? Just the class structure and everything. Was it a lot different?
HS: It felt different, but it was partly because of my maturity and knowing what I was going for, I imagine. I seemed better able to tolerate the dull classes and really enjoyed the interesting classes.
MF: Yes. I know, I don't want to harp on it too much, but do you have any other impressions of like the different departments at the time when you were at graduate school? Say, for example, the education department and what was your impression of the departments?
HS: I thought the education courses were more interesting, although I had one that really drove me bananas, but generally there were several pretty good ones. And I thought the biology department and the chemistry department were both a whole lot better than when I had been there as an undergraduate, too.
MF: So, like the caliber of the faculty and classes—
HS: I think it improved.
MF: Okay, well, that's good. Did you say you got your G certification?
HS: Yes. G certification and also GT. That’s Gifted and Talented.
MF: Oh, okay. Your G certification, you get that with your master's?
HS: Yes.
MF: Okay, your GT certification. Was that something you had to do separately?
21
HS: Well, it was supposed to be eighteen hours, but I had done so many summer—I'd been to Duke one summer. I'd been to Princeton [University, Princeton, New Jersey] one summer. And they allowed part of that to count as credit, and so I had like nine hours, I think it was. I had to be at UNCG to get the rest of it. A lot of teachers did it afternoons, one day a week three hours after school. Some of it sounded like it was quite good, and some of it sounded terribly rinky-dink.
MF: Yes.
HS: But mine were actually college hours of credit I got.
MF: Yes. I guess that's probably a lot more helpful, actually.
HS: Yes. And one of those classes was the worst one I'd ever had in education.
MF: Oh, really. [laughs]
HS: This guy, good looking guy, really good looking and good one on one, evidently—but we were in a room in Curry [Building] with a giant air conditioner. That air conditioner was as big as that wall right there. That thing was, I'd say, four feet square in every direction. Made the worst noise you ever heard. But you had to have it on because it was too hot without it. And this poor guy was dyslexic or something. He would start writing on the right hand side of the board, and then move over this way, and then he would end up drawing a chart, and by then my paper was so messed up there was no way I could fix the chart. [unclear] and he'd write at the bottom of the board and then at the top and you couldn't read it, and he talked so low you couldn't hear him. I was sitting on the front row but with that air conditioner going you just couldn't hear what he said. And I'd look in the back of the room, thirty people, twenty five of them would be sound asleep, and he'd talk right on. That was a miserable class. The very first night, my own interest was at the high level of the I.Q., and he announced the first night that since Don Russell [professor of education] did such a good job with the exceptionally bright, that he was just going to deal with the exceptional children at all the other components. And so he did the low, low, low, retarded level. He did the hearing impaired, the—all these other disabled children. I was not the least bit interested in that, but I lived through it. So—
MF: I don't want to forget anything. I know one thing that Beverly Armfield [Class of 1948] had mentioned. I'll just ask you to see if you remember this. Gosh, I feel like I've really jumped around a lot with this interview. Sorry about that.
HS: Oh, that's okay.
MF: With the war—I know that she had mentioned that there was a shortage of help in the cafeteria.
HS: Oh, yes. We had cafeteria duty. We sure did.
22
MF: What did that entail? Do you remember? She really didn't remember much about it.
HS: I remember it mostly as cleaning trays and sometimes clearing tables. I don't remember actually serving the food. [unclear]
MF: Yes. But everybody had to do it.
HS: Yes. You had a week at a time. Maybe two weeks at a time.
MF: Every day for that period?
HS: Yes, I think so. Maybe one meal a day for two weeks or something. I don't remember.
MF: All right. Also, I want to make sure—I don't want to forget anything else.
HS: Well, we all wore class jackets back in those days, too.
MF: Oh, yes.
HS: Ours were black.
MF: Oh, okay. And did they have anything like with the class colors on the jacket or anything?
HS: Well, that always bothered me that we had black jackets. I didn't feel like that was a color. We had "1948" on the breast pocket. They were black-piped and white, and I kept wishing I was in another class because somebody had green, somebody had red, somebody had blue or purple or something, so pretty. And then, black.
MF: Yes and then they changed it? [both laugh] That's the first year I've heard of them doing that. I've heard everybody else say they had like, you know, green or red or—
HS: Yes, the colors were gorgeous, but I didn't care much for my black one.
MF: Yes. I can't imagine that. Are there any other things that I've forgotten to ask you about that are really important?
HS: I don't think so.
MF: I know you'll think of probably a lot of things tonight.
HS: I've been sitting here trying to decide whether to tell you the story about the time I slipped in the back door or not.
MF: Oh, sure. That would brighten—
HS: [unclear] with this other group out at the Officer's Club at ORD, and somebody—a junior 23
or a senior—spotted this group at this table and went back and told the Judicial Board that there were some UNCG students there drinking. Of course I was one of them. And one poor gal came in the front door late, and so they got her. She got shipped from school. But I slipped in and then signed in later and didn't get caught. And that always did embarrass me to death that she got shipped and I didn't.
MF: Oh, my. So you got lucky?
HS: Yes. [laughs]
MF: Or smart. [laughs]
HS: And they were very careful to check everybody that checked in late that night, the same time this other gal did, and I didn't get caught because my roommate let me in the side door there.
MF: So you planned that before you realized she got caught or after she got caught?
HS: I knew I was late, so I just tapped, and she let me in. Or else I—I think I may have called and told her to get that door so I could get in because I was going to be late.
MF: Yes. [laughs]
HS: My conscience hurt me for a long time. I kept feeling like I should tell on myself—turn myself in because the other gal got shipped and I didn't.
MF: Did you ever talk to her again?
HS: I don't think so. I can't remember right this minute. Just somebody who was dating part of the crew, not somebody I knew well.
MF: Are there—is there anything else? I don't want to leave anything out that's important.
HS: No. Bill [Stone] can probably tell you more about it, the school and the social life part of it than I could. You took a course over there, didn’t you? Didn't you take accounting at UNCG?
BS: Yes. Summer course.
MF: All right. Well—
HS: Oh, the physics teacher was marvelous there. And she was fairly new the year I had her, too. And it's still strange to me that here I was, you know, nineteen—eighteen or nineteen years old and didn't realize that these people were twenty-five, twenty-six. They just seemed old.
24
MF: Yes.
HS: [laughs] It’s just [unclear]—I was talking about Bardolph being such a young man and everything, and what was her name. [unclear]
BS: You didn't act like I was too old. [other person speaks]
HS: Yes. You were seven years older than [unclear]
BS: I was older than some of these teachers now.
HS: Yes. You sure were.
MF: Yes, I know—I taught in Williams High School in Burlington.
HS: Oh, did you?
MF: Yes.
HS: Cliff, Cliff teaches chemistry there.
MF: Oh, I can't think of the last name. I know who you're talking about, though. Yes.
HS: I can't remember his last name right now either.
MF: But I know, I felt like I was not much older than the kids, but they felt like I was so old.
HS: How old were you when you taught there?
MF: Twenty-five, twenty-six.
HS: First year I taught I was just twenty. Wasn't old enough to vote, and all the kids were asking me who I was going to vote for for President. And I kept saying, "I don't tell my political inclination to my students." [laughs] I wasn't about to tell them I was just twenty because I had kids who were eighteen. One was nineteen.
MF: Yes.
HS: But I think that's the reason I didn't like teaching. I was too young.
MF: Yes. Are there any other names that you can remember of people that you think, you know, that we should try to contact to interview? I know you gave me Sue Medley's name.
HS: Vance McAdams [Class of 1948].
25
MF: Excuse me?
HS: I'm trying to think of Bud's last name. We just saw Vance and Bud at the cafeteria the other day. Whitcomb. Vance McAdams Whitcomb works for what used to be Vick's [Procter & Gamble]. She's a chemist there.
MF: What's that first name?
HS: She was Mary Vance McAdams Whitcomb.
MF: Mary Vance?
HS: Yes. McAdams Whitcomb. I run into her occasionally. Let's see if I can think of anybody else. I can't think of her name, but down the street, there's a lady that's blind, that's active, I think, can’t think of her name.
MF: On Lenoir Street?
HS: No. She lives on Alderman Court.
MF: Okay. Do you remember about what year she was?
HS: After me, but I don't remember.
MF: Okay.
HS: And Rachel [Johnson] Phipps [Class of 1947] and her sister [unclear], Rachel was a year ahead of me and [unclear] was probably four years behind me.
MF: All right. Okay. I appreciate your time.
HS: You're welcome.
[End of Interview]