Oral history interview with Elizabeth Jerome "Libby" Holder, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Elizabeth Jerome "Libby" Holder
INTERVIEWER: Anne R. Phillips
DATE: April 27, 1990
[Begin Side A]
AP: Testing. It is Friday morning. Say your name.
LH: Good morning. [unclear] 27th. Say what the date is.
AP: April 27, 1990.
LH: Friday, April 27, 1990. I'm Elizabeth Jerome Holder, retired librarian.
AP: And tell me about the Jerome. That's an interesting—
LH: Jerome came from the eastern part of the state.
AP: Oh.
LH: My father was the son of [unclear] and he was one of nine children and we had [unclear]
and he had to [unclear] comes out once a month.
AP: Your mother came here in 1909 [Elizabeth Pollard Jerome, Class of 1913, did not
graduate]? And in 1910—
LH: 1910 she was here for two years. At that time you get a teacher's certificate after two years?
AP: Oh, yes.
LH: And that's what she did. She got her teaching certificate and went back to Winston [-Salem,
North Carolina] and taught first grade.
AP: What made her decide to come here? Just because of school offered that?
LH: Because it was a state school. Her father had died when she was seven years old, and my
grandmother had five children to educate so the oldest child came here. She had her two
years, and then my mother came when she was a sophomore—I mean the oldest sister,
Anna, was a sophomore and then mother was here for two years.
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AP: Yes.
LH: But you could get out in the world and teach after two years [unclear]—
AP: Yes. So she came here and then worked. Was that, do you think, part of your reason for
coming here?
LH: No. My husband died very suddenly in Winston-Salem. He was drowned saving the life of
a fifteen-year-old boy at Boy Scout camp, Camp West, and I had an unborn child. And he
died in June, and the baby wasn't born until October. I had no money. He was on the Salem
College faculty making two hundred dollars a month and still paying for his graduate
school at [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, and so mother and dad took me in.
And they were living in Greensboro. And we bought a house, and I took a year off and
stayed with the baby. Then I went to work for Strong's Book Shop and was in charge of
children's books—
AP: I see.
LH: —and stocking. Here again I got my job at Strong's because I had worked in the New York
Public Library and worked with the head of the children's department who was a good
friend of the Mrs. Strong that owned Strong's Book Shop. So they hired me part time and
then Charles Adams [director of Jackson Library at The University of North Carolina at
Greensboro] came to a meeting and was our house guest, and he was a member of the
Greensboro Library Club and he offered me a job just on [unclear]—
AP: At the New York Public Library?
LH: Of the New York Public Library. I had been assistant librarian at Salem College [Winston-
Salem, North Carolina] for two years, and so I had five years prior experience.
AP: Yes.
LH: I came to work. Mother gave up her job and stayed home and kept my little girl.
AP: Oh my.
LH: And I was here for—I was here until 1958. Then I took five years off and went as a
librarian to Brevard College [Brevard, North Carolina].
AP: Oh.
LH: And when Sue Vernon Williams, who was head of the reference department, retired in
1963, Charles Adams asked me to come back as head of the reference department, and I
did.
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AP: Yes.
LH: And I was here for another thirteen years as head of the reference department.
AP: So from 1963 then you started then?
LH: To 1976 as head of the reference department. Then when I retired in '76, Chancellor [James
S.] Ferguson asked me if I would edit the faculty handbook, and he gave me a job and an
office over with the vice chancellor in the administration building, and I worked for two
years over there to get that handbook out.
AP: That must have been a big—
LH: [unclear] retired.
AP: Oh. That must have been a big job to—
LH: It was very a big job.
AP: Yeah. Well, so you were here then—
LH: A total of twenty-four years.
AP: So you came here first in—
LH: In 1947 and left in '58 to go to Brevard, came back in '63—
AP: Yes.
LH: —until I eventually retired.
AP: Well, I'd be interested in your thoughts on what the campus was like. Think of the student
body and in 1947.
LH: Well, just after the war in '47, of course, and the library, of course, was the Forney
Building. It was the Carnegie Library when it was first built. Andrew Carnegie [Scottish-
American industrialist and philanthropist, founded Carnegie Steel in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, which became US Steel] gave that building and the city library building. And
it was the only—one of the very few times that he ever gave two libraries to the same town
or city.
AP: And Andrew Carnegie did that?
LH: He built this library over here. Dr. [Charles Duncan] McIver [first president of the
institution] met him and went to call on him and told him that this is a struggling little
college and talked him into giving the money for this building, and that's when it was built.
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Now, I wrote the history of the library and that's in the College Collection [now University
Archives], I think.
AP: Yes.
LH: That’s right.
AP: About what year do you think Dr. McIver talked with Andrew Carnegie to come to—?
LH: Well, Dr. McIver died in 1907 [Ed. note: Dr. McIver died in 1906], so it was somewhere—
and now it seems to me that the library building was built in 1905. I'm not absolutely sure.
I've forgotten. You can go back and look it up, but it was before 1907.
AP: That's amazing.
LH: So [unclear], of course, was the library and downstairs in that library was a reading library,
then used by the men stationed at ORD [Overseas Replacement Depot, World War II
facility in Greensboro]. Of course, there were no men on campus except faculty, male
students. During the war they allowed men to come. Burke Davis [author, attended the
college in 1932/33 but did not graduate], one of the very illustrious sons of Greensboro,
came here and stayed and he's very proud of the fact that he was a student here. [laughs]
AP: What was his name?
LH: Burke Davis.
AP: Spell it.
LH: B-U-R-K-E.
AP: B-U-R-K-E.
LH: Yes, and he is now retired and living in Greensboro. He wrote a biography of Stonewall
Jackson [Confederate general during the American Civil War]. He's written a number of
history books, and he was a newspaper man and is really quite well known.
AP: Oh.
LH: So he was one of the students who came up when I came to the library. The reading room, I
think, had been closed already [unclear], but there were still men in the basement. One of
the big changes—of course, there were no black students on campus and even members of
the A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University] faculty were not allowed to
sit in the reading rooms in the library.
AP: To sit in the reading rooms?
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LH: And this is one of the very first things that Charles Adams did was to change this policy.
And he said any person who comes from Bennett [College, Greensboro, North Carolina] or
A&T, any person, any faculty member should certainly get all the privileges at the library.
And he ran into some opposition from us at the stack [unclear].
AP: [unclear]
LH: Well, it was fully integrated by the time we moved across the campus. In 1950, I think, is
when our new library was open.
AP: I see.
LH: But that was an interesting experience, moving the library. We did it in campus laundry
baskets. And they had a chute up to the second floor and our books were packed in the
laundry baskets and sent there—the chute—into an awaiting truck and they were carted
across over to the new library. And each stack was assigned a member of the building and
grounds to help unpack and the man who was assigned to me couldn't read, so he shelved
all the books upside down. [laughs]
AP: [laughs] That's wonderful. He shelved them upside down.
LH: He didn't know.
AP: That's a wonderful story. Well, it's sad a bit, but it's still wonderful.
LH: But that's the way we moved, and it was right during the middle of exams. Mr. Adams had
hoped that we could wait till after commencement to move and buildings and grounds or
maintenance or whatever gave us just a few days’ notice. We had to move May 1, so if you
put in an order for a book in the morning, we guaranteed to find it for you by two o’clock in
the afternoon. It might be in the truck, it might be in a basket, it might be in the new
building. [laughs] We tried.
AP: It might be in the new or the old building or on the truck or on the laundry cart. That must
have been—
LH: But we tried to fill every request—
AP: You almost had to. Yes.
LH: —because it was at their expense to do this.
AP: What was the total number of books, about the total number of books you moved?
LH: That you'll have to go back and read my history [unclear], and I don't have a copy at
home—
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AP: Yes, yes.
LH: —or I would have done this last night. But I knew that we didn't reach a million volumes
until much, much later [unclear].
AP: Yes.
LH: Of course, the women on campus were not allowed to wear pants except if they were going
to Aycock Auditorium to work on a play they could wear pants, but they had to wear a long
raincoat or coat on top. And there was a code for dress, not only for class but for the library.
Miss Hood, who was Marjorie Hood [Class of 1926], who's head of the circulation
department, wouldn't let anybody come into the library with their hair up in curlers.
AP: Oh my.
LH: She very much frowned on chewing gum. No member of the working staff was allowed to
chew gum or [unclear]. It was not until the 1960s that all this changed—when people came
in with their hair up in curlers and blue jeans and what. The dress code—
AP: Just a change.
LH: [unclear]
AP: But tell me, back to '47, tell me about the young women. What sort of students were they?
Tell me a bit about faculty.
LH: Well, all of our students who were there in '47 and '48, several of them are now members of
the faculty. One of them is Elizabeth Bowles [Class of 1950] in the School of Education,
[unclear], [J.] Nancy White [Class of 1946, MEd in 1955, first PhD from college in 1963,
professor in the School of Home Economics and School of Education] graduated. I'm not
sure if she is still here or not. They were very good students. They were very—during the
war, they helped out at ORD. Whole bus loads would be taken out. Now this had passed by
the time I got here, but a lot of the people were still around who had done that, and they
were not allowed, of course, to go downtown except in groups or with people but they were
serious students. They were good students.
AP: Were most of those young women in the forties, late forties, from North Carolina? Do you
know a percentage?
LH: Most I would say. I don't know what percentage, but I would certainly think that a great
percentage of them were from North Carolina.
AP: But—
LH: There were enough from the outside—
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AP: Yes.
LH: —to bring a whole lot of different viewpoints and activities on the campus.
AP: But tell me a bit about the faculty and staff when you came.
LH: In fact, a lot of the original members of the faculty were still here in '47. Dr. [Edward J.]
Forney [business education professor, treasurer of the college] was still around. I'm not sure
when he was Dr. Forney. Mr. Forney and his daughter, Miss Edna Forney [received
diploma in 1908, Class of 1929], was still in there. She was in the business department. I
think she was in the Registrar's Office. Miss [Mary] Tennent [Class of 1913] was the
registrar, and she had been here since she graduated from school, I think in something like
1913. Miss Sue May Kirkland [lady principal] was still alive. I'm trying to think. Mary
McFadden [Class of 1913] was teaching the second grade at Curry [School, laboratory
school on campus]. Miss [Mary Channing] Coleman, head of the gym. And one year there
were three or four members of the faculty, all of them died within months of each other. I
think that year was '48, '49, but I got to know a lot of these people. Oh, Miss Cornelia
Strong, who taught math [and astronomy], she had taught my mother. She was still teaching
math. And one of the nice stories about her was that when she gave an exam or something
she would buy a bottle of ink and bring it for the students to fill their fountain pens with.
AP: She brought the ink?
LH: She brought the ink. It cost—a bottle of ink that was supplied to her belonged to the state of
North Carolina, but could not be given to the students. And one of her students came in one
time and was given some papers back and she reached over and picked up a paper clip and
Miss Strong said, "I'm very sorry, but that belongs to the state of North Carolina. Give it
back." One clip. [laughs]
AP: So the student reached for the paper clips, and she said that belongs to the state of North
Carolina?
LH: Right. Belongs to the state of North Carolina. They were very dedicated people because
they had very low salaries. See women, of course, were discriminated against. All the
campus, it was the men who had good salaries. The library staff were considered non-faculty
at that time. The only positions on the campus we could have were things that did
not have to do with the academic department. Even Charles Adams, who had the title of
professor, could not serve on any committees except building and grounds. I was on the
social committee for a long time. The bookstore—you could be on that committee, but
anything that had to do with academics you were not allowed to do.
AP: The [unclear] curriculum, faculty, governance—
LH: It was the 1960s before this was changed. And the members of the library staff with
master's degrees weren’t considered faculty, and then at that time we were not allowed to
serve on committees. And we did, and we still have all this [unclear]. If you look down over
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the list of committees now, we are very active in everything.
AP: Yes, yes. That seems so—now when we think about it in the nineties, it seems unusual
because—and a bit strange because we have come some way.
LH: Well, the older members of the faculty and many of these older people were very good
friends of some of the older members of the library staff, but they considered them just
clerical help. They didn't quite understand; they though dealing with books was all we did.
AP: Yes.
LH: But I think sometimes that's all we did would be just—
AP: Yes. Would be just [unclear]—
LH: You wouldn't necessarily need to know what was inside—that was the attitude they had to
do it. And Charles Adams fought long and hard for that change, and I was put on a
committee—three university—Raleigh [North Carolina State University], Chapel Hill,
Greensboro, to work on [unclear]. We met long hours down at Chapel Hill and here and
Raleigh.
AP: What was the essence of those meetings?
LH: Well, the meetings were trying to determine at what level the library staff could be
considered academic faculty. Amy Charles (I'm sure you've heard of her.) in the English
department [professor of English literature]—she's no longer living—was one of the
pioneers.
AP: So—?
LH: It was back in the American social studies, the university professors in AAUP [American
Association of University Professors] [unclear]—
AP: So there were faculty members here, some women, who were really then fighting for
rights—
LH: Oh, a lot—
AP: —of library staff.
LH: Yes.
AP: Yes. Here on this campus.
LH: On the campus.
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AP: And Amy Charles was one of those?
LH: Amy Charles—but she didn't come until the late 1950s, but she was very, very much one of
the ones that pushed for recognition of the library staff.
AP: Yes.
LH: And she's very active in that AAUP so it was—a lot of that came to the AAUP before we
were recognized—
AP: Yes. So—
LH: People thought [unclear]
AP: Yes, especially women on staff really did not—had very low salary and not much
recognition.
LH: Oh, there was no recognition, and they saw people would then have a—Miss [Sarah]
Sampson was head of the catalog department, Miss [Virginia] Trumper was head of serials,
Sue Vernon Williams was head of the reference department when I first came. Of course,
all of them just had library degrees, just BSs [Bachelor of Science], I guess at that time, and
they just were not considered capable, I guess. And many of them had close friends. Those
in the history department had [unclear]—
AP: Yes.
LH: The campus was very social—at that time there were lots of things called Coca Cola
[carbonated soft drink] parties and you either were socially chosen or not. This was one of
the favorite ways to entertain. There were several people in Greensboro who were caterers
and who would have a morning Coca Cola party. Of course, they had coffee and tea and all
kinds of goodies and sandwiches. Or an afternoon Coca Cola party, an afternoon tea, and
you got to know almost everybody on campus through these things.
AP: Where were these Coca Cola—?
LH: They were held out in town in the house of these ladies who were caterers. One of them
was right here on Forest [Avenue], right back in the library. Her house has been torn down.
She was Mrs. Winslow, and then there was somebody in Fisher Park. You were invited to
these things and you met all the faculty and the library staff was considered social except—
AP: Except to work—
LH: Yes, except to work. We were almost always included.
AP: That was a good thing to know. A good thing, a happy thing. [laughs]
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LH: Good thing to know. Yes, [laughs] a happy thing. Yes, but you weren't accepted practically.
AP: That must have been—
LH: But that was—
AP: That was strange. So that was in the late forties, going on—
LH: Late forties and a good part of the fifties, and then in '58 I left for five years and when I
came back, the campus was changing. Of course—
AP: Could you tell me about that.
LH: The hippies, the hippies, they were all of them very active at that time. My child was a
freshman in college that year, so I was fully aware of the changes.
AP: So what was the—
LH: At the end of her first semester at Swarthmore [College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania], she
sent back all of her clothes, and she said, "All I need is jeans and one skirt to wear to what
they called collection," which was the mandatory, whatever we called it.
AP: Chapel. Sounds like a Quaker school.
LH: It was a [unclear].
AP: Where was she?
LH: Swarthmore.
AP: Yes, collection. Well, so you—from '58 then—for the next five years there was a good bit
going on here so when you came back—
LH: Right, that I missed.
AP: And so when you came back, you must have noticed changes.
LH: I did notice a lot of changes then. There had been an undercurrent movement, of course, to
get more library staffing set on the academic. I'm not really sure at what point Charles
Adams was allowed to serve on committees. It may have been longer back than I realize. It
may have been in the—at 1950. When we first moved into the new building, we had a state
meeting. Now an original meeting of the Southeastern Library Association came here in
Greensboro. And it was interracial, and he had a reception in the library with the black
librarians and this was quite an innovation.
AP: Innovation.
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LH: Yes. He insisted that we would have it in the library and be open to everybody in the
Southeastern Library Association, and one member of the staff absolutely refused to come.
AP: To come at all?
LH: To come at all and he ordered her to be there. He's ordered her not to have to participate but
to be there.
AP: She had to be there?
LH: And everything [unclear].
AP: Did she come?
LH: She came. She showed up.
AP: Yes.
LH: She could not accept them socially. We could admit blacks.
AP: And so the year, that would have been '63?
LH: Sometime in the early fifties.
AP: In the early fifties?
LH: In the early fifties. I'm not sure exactly.
AP: Well, now how widespread was the Southeastern Library Association? And this would
have included black women?
LH: Oh it included everything in the Southeast from Florida on up through Virginia, I think, the
librarians and staff.
AP: College staff members?
LH: Oh yes.
AP: And directors from all over the area.
LH: From all over.
AP: And so Dr. Adams insisted—
LH: Well, we had a section in what is now the reserve room, but at that time it was called the
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general reading room and that was a little library within a library. We had closed stacks,
you see—
AP: Oh.
LH: —when we moved into the building. You had to ask for what you wanted unless you were
faculty or unless you were a student who was given a stack pass. But the general reading
room was a small library within a library, and we picked out a very choice fiction, poetry,
drama and made a little library and that was on the open shelves. But the reserve room was
across from where now the microforms are. That was the reserve room.
AP: I see, yes. Well, I'm interested in the—those years, the fifties and especially, coming on into
the sixties plus the change in well—in civil rights throughout Greensboro, but then the
social patterns here on this campus. What about the student body? When were first blacks
admitted here or about that, you came—
LH: It seems to me that the first blacks were admitted in the fifties, but I'm not sure about that.
You'll have to go back and—
AP: Yes.
LH: I think they were admitted before I went to Brevard [College, Brevard, North Carolina].
And, of course, it's just a little, tiny group, something like four or five girls. And they were
huddled together in one end of the dormitory.
AP: Do you know which dorm?
LH: What? No, I don't. This is something I—. You'll just have to go back and find.
AP: Yes, yes, that's—
LH: But it was—
AP: How did the other women students accept the black students? Do you remember?
LH: Some of them accepted them quite easily, and some didn't at all. I know that in the dances,
the blacks had them with their black dates. I don't think there was any intermingling by
black and white, but I may be wrong about that because—
AP: Yes.
LH: I'll have to admit I didn't attend the dances. Just simply [unclear] what my memory of them,
they were almost completely isolated. Now I am sure that there were some students that
made an effort to get to know the black students, but it was a long time before they were
really assimilated—before there was any warm up, hopefully, of the black students.
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AP: Well, of course, that was about the time then the coming of coeducation. And how did you
feel about that?
LH: Oh, I was perfectly—I mean I was solidly behind integration straight through and, let's see,
in the public schools or a university. And I thought well, how hard for them [unclear]
because wanted to get in and join the Sit-ins [1960 Greensboro non-violent protests at
Woolworth’s Department Store which led to Woolworth lunch counter desegregation in the
South]. I really didn’t know what reception that would be at the university. But I belonged a
long time before I came in 1937 to something called the Southern Conference of Human
Welfare [interracial coalition of Southern progressives], which was pushing for the rights of
the blacks. And I was a member of that. In fact, when I came in '47, we had to sign a pledge
that we were not Communists.
AP: Oh.
LH: Everybody had to.
AP: Who wanted you to sign this pledge?
LH: This was the university. This was pledge to any new employee of the university. You had to
sign a pledge that you were not a Communist, and you did not belong to any Communist
organization. And Charles Adams interviewed me, and he said, "Now I hate to ask you this,
but are you a member of any Communist organization?" And I said, "Well, I am a member
of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and I'm also a member of the Greensboro
Junior League." He said, "They cancel each other out." [laughs]
AP: They cancel each other out. [laughs]
LH: [unclear] And he said—but he was very much against that type of people and Southern
whites.
AP: Yes.
LH: Typical [unclear] with the library staff and I'm sure on campus because he had grown up in
South Dakota where he went to Amherst [College, Northampton, Massachusetts] and
graduated from Amherst. And I worked for the New York Public Library, so he was all
for—
AP: Yes.
LH: —integration on campus.
AP: That made him a different sort of a—
LH: A different person, and he was little suspect because of that. He was from the North.
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AP: The North.
LH: And he didn't know how we felt in the South.
AP: And there were some—was there that feeling of North and South?
LH: Oh right, very definitely.
AP: Through those years?
LH: The Northern people did not understand the South and didn't understand our relationships,
and it was difficult. It really was.
AP: Yes. I'm interested in this Communist pledge. I’m sort of intrigued. Who was—?
LH: Well, this was—when did [Senator Joseph] McCarthy [Republican US Senator from
Wisconsin who made claims that there were large numbers of Communists and spies inside
the American government and elsewhere] come in?
AP: '52.
LH: Junius Scales, who was a Greensboro boy and was imprisoned as a Communist, he grew up
in Starmount, Hamilton Lakes, a beautiful home, and he's living in New York and a friend
of mine went to call on him not long ago, and they talked about those days. But he was a
student at Chapel Hill and joined the Communist party. A whole lot of young people did in
the 1930s, and then when Germany and Russia betrayed the Communist party, a lot of
them, of course, realized it was a mistake and pulled out. But they had this on their record
that they had joined the Communist party and supported it. Well, the Southern Conference
for Human Welfare—now Gene Park was executive secretary and chairman for that for a
good many years, and he and my husband had known each other while growing up in
Pfafftown [North Carolina]. And so because he was affiliated with it, I had joined. I thought
if Gene Park was in it, it was something worth doing. And there was a person called Mary
Price [Adamson], who was also with this same outfit, and she was admittedly a member of
the Communist party. And her family lived in [unclear], and she married a Scott [W. Kerr
Scott] and he ran for governor sometime in the 1940s or fifties.
AP: And that was sort of radical for a very—woman to do.
LH: Of course, she got very few votes and all the college kids went bad and threw—I don't
know whether it was rocks or glass or something—at her when she made her talk. One of
them apologized to her niece. Two of her nieces was a good friend of mine and also a
graduate of what was then Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina], and he
said, "I'm so ashamed." [unclear]
AP: Where were these college kids from? These students from?
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LH: From Greensboro?
AP: Just all over the city.
LH: All over the state. This was just not done.
AP: So college students threw things.
LH: College kids were very much opposed to anything that had anything to do with the
Communist party.
AP: Or maybe women's rights or some of that big stuff?
LH: This was—just could have been in it. I'm not sure.
AP: But the fact that she was a woman.
LH: She was a woman, and she was running for governor.
AP: Oh my.
LH: She had very strong supporters here in Greensboro. There were a lot of people who very
strongly campaigned for women's rights, but it's not universally accepted.
AP: Yes. Let me—
LH: Now, you'll have to come back and find—but this was in '47 when I was happy to sign the
pledge.
AP: And the administration here—now who was in charge?
LH: When I was here, when I first came in '47, Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson was the chancellor.
Then Edward [Kidder] Graham [Jr.] came. He was here until 1955. And he left, and then
Mr. Hill was the next president from—
AP: Dr. [William Whatley] Pierson came in '56, but then Dr. [Gordon] Blackwell.
LH: Yes, but between him was—[Chancellor] Otis Singletary was before Chancellor Ferguson
and before him was Gordon Blackwell.
AP: Right, right. So Dr. Jackson was here when you got here.
LH: When I got here.
AP: And then—
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LH: And he was here until 1950.
AP: How was he thought of?
LH: Oh much beloved, much beloved. And, of course, all the older people had known. He had
taught history here for many years before he became the president and then went to take
him to the university. He was made chancellor.
AP: And then—tell me about Dr. Graham's coming here and circumstances.
LH: Well, Dr. Graham was the son of Edward Kidder Graham, who had been the University [of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill] president. He died during the flu epidemic; I think it was in
1917 or '18, somewhere in there. And little Edward was brought up by his aunt and uncle in
Chapel Hill and he [laughs]—oh, at one time, this is what type shows how small a faculty
we were. At the very opening of school we had a faculty dinner, and it was held over in the
—one of the big student dining rooms. And each department had had staff and entered his
office and had staff meetings. When Dr. Graham came, he stood up and he called on all
these deans who were head of the School from Home Economics, Margaret Edwards [ed.
note: She was head of the department of home economics.]. He said, "Margaret, will you
stand up and introduce the members of your staff?" Well, you could just feel this shock.
You didn't call Miss Edwards "Margaret." She was Miss Edwards to everyone. And Dr.
Helen Barton was head of the math department. "Helen, would you introduce your
associate staff?" Well, he started off on the wrong foot from the very first, and even I, who
had only been here three years at that time, realized that this was terrible.
AP: Did he realize it? Do you think he did?
LH: I don't know whether he realized it at the time, but he came with the idea that we're all one
big family—we're on a first name basis, just a clod. These people had been entrenched for
years. The chemistry department was headed by a woman or was it that? Who was the
lady? But home economics certainly was and math certainly was. The others were all men,
I guess. And there was no—and certainly one man, I don't know why [unclear] [laughs]—
AP: So the women were very—were in charge of departments—
LH: They were in charge.
AP: —and very respected.
LH: Oh, see they moved mountains. And Dr. Graham just didn't understand.
AP: Yes. So how did the nature—what happened after this, '50-'51?
LH: Well, a lot of this I didn't realize until many years later, and there was a lot of gossip about
Dr. Graham, but I didn't know it. I know it's [unclear] after this. There was a lot of gossip
concerning Dr. Graham and [unclear]—
17
[recording paused]
AP: How she was sort of on campus?
LH: She, of course, was a graduate of the department, North Carolina College of Women. She
graduated back in 1928. And she went into the WAVES [World War II all-women division
of the US Navy] during the war and, when I knew her she was just out of the WAVES and
had come back. Harriet Elliott [history and political science faculty, dean of women] was
the dean when I first came, and she died very shortly after I was on campus, I think. I think
she was maybe the third person who died that year [unclear]. And then as far as I can
remember Katherine Taylor [Class of 1928, dean of women, dean of students, dean of
student services, director of Elliott Hall] was made the dean. Maybe she was Miss Elliott's
assistant. I'm not really sure, and I've forgotten, but she was difficult to know, very
reserved.
AP: Is that right?
LH: Even in later years, she and I are neighbors. She lives on the street just immediately back of
me. And I knew she did not drive an automobile. She did not drive a car; her maid drove a
car. Maybe Miss Taylor owns a car, I don't know, but the maid knows how to drive one.
And I would call and say, "I'm going down to a play, concert or something. May I give you
a lift down?" She would always say no and turned me down so often I just stopped having
to suggest it. She has Alzheimer’s disease now care around the clock. [unclear]
AP: I see.
LH: I'd turn the corner and see her out walking sometimes. Very independent and very, very
reserved. People who knew her liked her very much, but she had a very small circle of
friends.
AP: I see.
LH: She was not [unclear] and she's very strict about Elliott Hall and the way people looked and
dressed when they came into Elliott Hall.
AP: Yes.
LH: Everything was spotlessly clean; there were no scuff marks. She ran that place—
AP: The present Elliott Hall, are you speaking—?
LH: The one I'm talking about—
18
AP: Which was constructed about what year?
LH: It was the same time that the library was built. No, not the library because the old infirmary
was where Elliott Hall is now. That had to be torn down, and I've got pictures of the old
infirmary taken when my child was about five or six years old. She was on a sled—
AP: Yes.
LH: —so it was later than the library, but sometime in the early fifties.
AP: So she ran a tight ship?
LH: Very tight ship.
AP: And she wanted things—
LH: Of course, she was the counselor, residence hall counselor, in Weil and Winfield
[Residence Halls] for a long time. She once found out about how her students had
[unclear]—
AP: Yes.
LH: I think she was greatly respected. She wasn't really very outgoing as far as some of us were
concerned.
AP: Yes.
LH: And that was my feeling, although I was on the campus for a long time.
AP: So, well, and Dean Elliott, how was she thought of?
LH: Well, she left to go and was in [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt's cabinet during the war
[World War II]. She was gone a while. And I think Mrs. [Annie Beam] Funderburk [Class
of 1916] of the romance language department—she taught French, she was acting dean.
AP: I see.
LH: Oh, and the story—there's a wonderful story about this. I don't know if you really want this
on tape or not.
AP: I'd like it on tape.
LH: Of course, the girls and boys were not allowed—no girls allowed to be married until after
she graduated. And one time during the war, a girl was graduating on Monday morning and
her fiancé had leave through Sunday night and they wanted to be married on Sunday
afternoon before she graduated on Monday and they had to get the Board of Trustees’
19
permission to do that. [unclear] Graduated in '45, some boy came to campus and he wanted
to get married, made plans for a wedding, something that was strictly forbidden but he was
given permission by Mrs. Funderburk to do it. And then he had to go fly west to meet his
regiment and he was in the airport, somewhere like Seattle [Washington]. I won't say where
it was and waiting for his plane and there was a woman there waiting for her plane, and
they got to talking and she asked where he was from and he told her, said, "I've just flown
in from North Carolina." And she said, "Where in North Carolina?" And he said,
"Greensboro. I have a girl at the Woman's College." And she said, "Oh." And had he just
been there? And the said, I think he said he had just gotten married. And she said, "Well,
was that permitted?" And he said, "Oh yeah, the dean is off somewhere with the
government, and the woman who is acting dean is just a pushover." [laughs] [unclear]
AP: [laughs] She was listening to this story?
LH: She [laughs] [unclear]—
AP: That's amazing.
LH: Half of what was going on.
AP: Do you think she took it personally?
LH: [unclear] Everybody knew—
AP: I wonder what are the chances of—[unclear]
LH: Just one of those, no chances of—
AP: One in fifteen million.
LH: Making fun of her getting permission to [unclear]—
AP: Things were very strict then?
LH: Very, very strict. Oh yes. Of course, you had to sign out and the day you had to be in.
[unclear] You went out at the doors. The end doors would be locked at seven o’clock at
night [unclear]. Very strict.
AP: In your own work in the library—now I know you served as acting director here. You were
doing that after you came back here from Brevard.
LH: When Charles Adams retired, he resigned and went to Hawaii [unclear].
AP: What was that year like?
LH: Hectic.
20
AP: Yes.
LH: All I really did was just hold things together. They were planning the new addition and that
was getting off the ground. And I didn't want to take the responsibility of planning. I didn't
know that much. Charles Adams had left the plans [unclear] and so I was just trying to hold
the fort. There was also some resentment—
AP: Because you were a woman? [unclear]
LH: [unclear] When I went off to graduate school—leave of absence 1952 to 1953, got my
master’s degree in library science but some of the people who had not had a five year break
thought I was not a good choice. Charles Adams said once that I had had administrative
experience and so Dean Mossman [unclear]. There was one particular member of my staff
that was very resentful.
AP: Yes.
LH: And did not accept me.
AP: And probably made that pretty difficult—
LH: Made it very difficult.
AP: —difficult for you, yes.
LH: But I don't want to go into it.
AP: Yes, yes, well, I understand. That would be just—I suppose we have these normal traits,
problems and jealousies in any organization.
LH: Sure, sure. [unclear]
AP: [unclear] Alumni house and I had to do the Friends of the Library Dinner.
LH: [unclear] Nobody would do it. Nobody would say it. It was horrible.
AP: [unclear] Get the bottle of bourbon [unclear].
LH: [unclear] And he was real [unclear]. Jim Thompson [library director] was the one that we
chose.
AP: Yes.
LH: He came in, and at that time we started adding men. Had a man in documents; we had
[Robert] Bob Gaines [head of documents/microforms]. But he was not the first. [unclear]
21
AP: [unclear]
LH: There weren't many strong men. [unclear] came to library school as a last resort.
AP: So library school was—
[End of Interview]