March 2016 – Page 2 – History on the Hill

The man responsible for transmitting The Madness

Prolog It’s a curious malady that sweeps the ACC nation just before most of us catch spring fever. Many of us deal with the disorder by sitting in front of our TV sets for hours listening to basketball announcers and … Continue reading →

Prolog

It’s a curious malady that sweeps the ACC nation just before most of us catch spring fever. Many of us deal with the disorder by sitting in front of our TV sets for hours listening to basketball announcers and analysts drone on with a strange and curious language that only those who are infected with the ailment can understand:

“With the game on the line, he tickles the twine with the 3-ball from downtown, to get the “W” and advance to the next level of the big dance and now with a chance to win all the marbles up for grabs . . .”

It’s known as “March Madness” and there is no known cure.

Castleman D. Chesley, circa 1970s-1980s. (Photograph cropped by the editor.)

The Madness is upon us with the 2016 Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s Basketball Tournament on RayCom Sports and ESPN, but what would it be like without that wall-to-wall TV coverage? There was a time in the early days when ACC basketball was only on radio, but one man saw a bright future for the sport on TV.

Morton collection volunteer Jack Hilliard profiles the man who is often called the father of ACC basketball on television, C.D. Chesley.

He put ACC basketball on the map, about 10 years ahead of everyone else, and they are still trying to catch up.

Hugh Morton, March 8, 2003

In the early 1950s sports television was nothing like it is today. I remember as a little kid watching the Washington Redskins on Sunday afternoons at 2:00 on the Amoco Redskins Network. There were no replays, so in order to see a favorite play for a second time, I had to wait until the following Friday night when the local TV station ran a program called National Pro Highlights. The program, produced by a company in Philadelphia called Tel Ra Productions, showed filmed highlights of the preceding Sunday’s games.

Castleman DeTolley Chesley was a member of the production team at Tel Ra. Chesley had a football background having played freshman football at UNC in 1934. He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he was football captain and was also a member of the Penn traveling comedy troupe. Following graduation he became Penn’s athletic director, he but kept his finger on broadcasting’s pulse. Chesley later worked with both ABC and NBC coordinating college football coverage with the NCAA.

During the 1956–1957 college basketball season, Chesley became intensely interested in the UNC Tar Heels coached by Frank McGuire as they worked their way through an undefeated season. The 27 and 0 Tar Heels then beat Yale in Madison Square Garden during the first round of the NCAA Tournament. At this point, Chesley made his move. Being familiar with the NCAA ins and outs, he was able to set up a three-station regional network for the finals of the Eastern Regional played at the Palestra in Philadelphia. Although station WPFH-TV in Wilmington, Delaware was the switching point, the three stations were in Durham, Greensboro, and Charlotte. Matt Koukas, a former Philadelphia Warrior NBA star, called the play-by-play.

Even before Carolina had won the two-game regional in Philly, Chesley was already setting up the network for the national finals in Kansas City, Missouri and added two additional stations. The semi-final with Michigan State and the final with Kansas were both triple-overtime games. Some folks who watched those two games say that the madness for ACC basketball was born that weekend. Castleman D. Chesley would most likely agree with those folks.

The next logical step was to approach athletic directors at ACC schools about the possibility of doing weekly football and basketball games during the regular season. In the beginning, ADs and head coaches were not in favor of adding TV to the schedule. They were afraid that people would stay home and watch on TV, rather than attend the games. Chesley was able to convince them otherwise, pointing out how television could be used as a recruiting tool as well as fund raising opportunities.

On October 12, 1957 the first ACC football TV game was broadcast, a game from Byrd Stadium in College Park, Maryland between the University of Maryland and Wake Forest. Charlie Harville and Jim Simpson made up the on-air broadcast team. Three other games were telecast during the ’57 football season: one from NC State, one from UNC, and one from Duke. While the football games were successful, Chesley had his eye on basketball. On December 7, 1957, the first ACC regular season basketball game was telecast on a regional network. The game was Carolina vs. Clemson from Woollen Gym on the UNC campus.

Seated are (L to R) Bones McKinney, Billy Packer, and Jim Thacker, with Castleman Chesley (standing) behind the scenes at UNC-Chapel Hill versus Marquette basketball during the 1977 NCAA finals in Atlanta, Georgia.

In those early days, the C.D. Chesley Company consisted of three people: Irving “Snuffy” Smith, Peggy Burns, and Mr. Chesley. From the beginning Chesley used equipment from WUNC-TV and students from the University’s Radio, Television, and Motion Picture Department. WUNC-TV’s director John Young managed the personnel and equipment. Play-by-play broadcasters like Harville, Simpson, Dan Daniels, Woody Durham, and Jim Thacker, and analysts like Bones McKinney, Billy Packer, and Jeff Mullins were brought in to handle the on-air while directors like John Young from WUNC-TV, Norman Prevatte from WBTV in Charlotte, and Frank Slingland from NBC-TV in Washington called the shots, often from an old converted Trailways bus that UNC-TV used in the early days.

Television coverage of ACC basketball caught on just like Chesley said it would, and his main sponsor Pilot Life Insurance Company became about as famous as the ACC teams. People across the ACC nation could sing along . . .

Sail with the Pilot at the wheel,
On a ship sturdy from its mast to its keel . . .

C.D. Chesley was pleased with ACC basketball but he was always looking for additional challenges. In 1962 and ’63 he produced TV coverage of the Miss North Carolina Pageant to a regional network of station across the Tar Heel state, and in 1964 he produced regional coverage of the Greater Greensboro Open Golf Tournament.

Chesley was always on the lookout for more football coverage. In the mid-1960s he started Sunday morning replay coverage of the preceding Saturday’s Notre Dame games; in 1967 was able to get Hall of Fame Broadcaster Lindsey Nelson to do the play-by-play and Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner Paul Hornung to do the color commentary. At one point the Notre Dame games were featured on 136 stations and Nelson became known as that “Notre Dame announcer.”

Football commentator and former quarterback Paul Hornung (left) and sportscaster Lindsey Nelson (right), while doing play-by-play for a UNC-Chapel Hill vs. Notre Dame football game. Sports broadcast producer Castleman D. Chesley at center. The year 1975 appears to be printed on Hornung’s employee tag. Notre Dame scored 21 points in the fourth quarter to defeat the Tar Heels 21-14 at Kenan Memorial Stadium on October 11, 1975.

C.D. Chesley started small but his broadcasts were always first class productions. By the 1970s he was broadcasting two ACC basketball games a week. On January 14, 1973 just before the Washington Redskins met the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII, Chesley put together a patch-work national network for the ACC basketball game between North Carolina State and Maryland. It was big time and NC State All America David Thompson became a national sensation.

The C.D. Chesley Company and ACC basketball continued as household names for twenty-four years through the 1981 season. At that point ACC basketball was so big that other broadcasters with bigger budgets wanted in on the action. Chesley’s one million-dollar rights fee could not compete with the likes of MetroSports who offered three million for the 1982 season and RayCom Sports of Charlotte who paid fifteen million for the rights for three seasons starting in 1983. RayCom continues today as the network for ACC basketball.

At the 1977 Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball Tournament, Castleman D. Chesley received a plaque from ACC Commissioner Bob James in recognition of Chelsey’s vision in establishing the ACC Television Network. (Photograph cropped by the editor.)

“His place in the history of ACC basketball is phenomenal, getting the sport out there in front of the public,” said Tar Heel broadcaster Woody Durham in a 2003 interview. “We all knew how exciting ACC basketball was, but here was a guy who came along and let the public see it.”

On April 10, 1983, Castleman D. Chesley lost his battle with Alzheimer’s. He was laid to rest in a small cemetery near his home at Grandfather Mountain. He was 69 years old.
Four years later the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame inducted Chelsey in the spring of 1987. Hugh Morton and Ed Rankin, in their 1988 book, Making a Difference in North Carolina, devoted eight pages of words and pictures to “the man who put ACC basketball on the map.”

Thanks for the cards, Mr. Barbour

Among the jewels of the North Carolina Collection are more than 15,000 postcards. And we have one man to thank for about 8,000 of those items—Durwood Barbour. For 25 years, Barbour combed through boxes at coin and postcard shows looking for images that told stories of bygone people, places and doings in his native state. His collection, housed mostly in shoeboxes, grew so large and valuable that he worried about keeping it at his home in Raleigh. In 2006, he generously donated it to the North Carolina Collection. We learned on Sunday that Barbour died on March 2. He was 87.

Barbour was born in the Barbourtown section of Johnston County, an area near Four Oaks. His parents were farmers and he grew up helping in the fields. In 1948 Barbour enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill. He was the first in his immediate family to attend college and he told an interviewer in 2010 that he earned the money for tuition by raising sweet potatoes. Barbour graduated from UNC-CH in 1952 with a degree in geology, and, shortly thereafter, he began work as an asphalt engineer for the state highway department, where he remained for many years. Barbour made his home in Raleigh with his wife and two sons. Later in life, Barbour sold real estate. He was an active member of two Raleigh Methodist churches, including Edenton Street United Methodist, where his memorial service is scheduled for Tuesday. Barbour was also a local historian, working with Todd Johnson, executive director of the Johnston County Heritage Center, to produce a book of images of his native county in 1997.

Barbour’s interest in postcards grew from his hobby of collecting coins and paper money. His wife, Mary Anne, recalled in 2010 that there were frequently a few boxes of postcards at numismatic shows. As her husband perused tables with coins and paper money, she looked at the postcards. Eventually Barbour, too, turned his interest to postcards. And we’re thankful he did.

As a tribute to Durwood Barbour, here are a few postcards of places or activities that represent significant parts of his life. All of Barbour’s postcards—and a few thousand more—are available via North Carolina Postcards.

Though his relationship to K.F. Barbour is unclear, Durwood Barbour was born near Four Oaks in 1929.

The town of Four Oaks in the early 20th century.

New East at UNC-Chapel Hill served as the longtime home for the university’s geology department. Durwood Barbour graduated from UNC in 1952 with a degree in geology.

Benson’s Mule Days, which takes place the fourth weekend in September, has celebrated Johnston County’s agricultural heritage since 1950.

Durwood Barbour began work for North Carolina’s highway department as an asphalt engineer shortly after earning his undergraduate degree.

Postcard of Edenton Street United Methodist Church

Durwood Barbour was an active member of Edenton Street United Methodist Church in Raleigh.

Naming Aycock Residence Hall at UNC-Chapel Hill

Following the recent decision remove Charles Brantley Aycock’s name from an auditorium at UNC-Greensboro, which followed similar moves last year at East Carolina and Duke, we took a look to see what we could find in University Archives related to … Continue reading →

It didn’t take long for somebody to suggest naming a building at UNC after Charles Brantley Aycock. Just a couple of weeks after the former governor died in 1912, the President of the newly-formed Aycock Memorial Association wrote to UNC President Francis Venable: “There is no educational memorial which could be more fitting than a building at the University.” [University Papers, 20 April 1912]

It would be another sixteen years before UNC named a building for Aycock. During a period of rapid expansion in the 1920s, the university completed four new dorms in 1924. Known for several years simply as “New Dorms,” they finally received names in 1928. The Board of Trustees reported on the names in the minutes from their June 11, 1928 meeting:

“Mr. [John Sprunt] Hill for the Building Committee recommended that the policy be adopted in naming teachers’ buildings for great teachers and dormitories for other distinguished citizens; further that the new class-room building be named ‘Bingham Hall’ and the four new dormitories for Chas. B. Aycock, John W. Graham, W.N. Everett and Dr. R.H. Lewis and that the new library be named ‘The University Library.’ On motion, the above recommendations were adopted.”

That’s about it. There was only a passing mention of the naming in the Daily Tar Heel and nothing that we could find in the University Papers, where most of the early correspondence of the president of the university is held. It is not that unusual that there is nothing in the administrative correspondence; then, as now, the Board of Trustees had the final say on building names at UNC.

Given the strong feelings about Aycock both at UNC and statewide, it’s a little surprising that it took so long to name a building in his honor. In 1904, President Venable wrote to Governor Aycock asking him to consider accepting an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from UNC (Aycock initially refused, but would receive the honor a few years later). Venable wrote, “In the twenty-five years I have spent in the State, I know of no one who has so served her highest interests as you have, and the influence of your administration will be felt for a long time to come.”

Venable was hardly alone in his praise. After Aycock died in 1912, the UNC Board of Trustees passed a resolution in honor of Aycock’s work on education:

“The Board of Trustees desire to place on record their deep sense of loss in the death of Ex Governor Charles B. Aycock, who as a member of this Board and of the Executive committee rendered most efficient service and attested his love for the University. During his administration as Governor, the cause of education was greatly advanced in this state and at all times he was ready to give encouragement to those who were striving to uplift this cause in the South and ended his life with a plea for the education of the child. He gave his best efforts in service for others, and while we will miss his companionship and wise advice, his memory will remain to urge us to follow the example which he has left of striving to do good to those who most need the benefit of Education. To his widow and family we extend our sincere sympathy and request our President to communicate to them this tribute of respect and direct the same to be entered on our minutes.”

The views of the Board of Trustees at the time were shared by many white leaders around the state. Aycock did support public education, but ensured that substantially more support would go toward schools for white students. The Trustees would not have found this unusual; they were overseeing an institution that strictly prohibited African American students from attending and had only just begun experimenting with allowing women to enroll.

Neither the note from Venable or the Board of Trustees resolution mention Aycock’s prominent role during the Democratic Party’s 1898 white supremacy campaign, nor do they note his strong support for a constitutional amendment in 1900 that effectively disenfranchised nearly all African American voters in the state. The prevailing view of Aycock in the media at the time — it is often reflected in the Daily Tar Heel — was of a benevolent “education governor.” We did not find anything in the contemporary statements from UNC leaders reflecting on other aspects of Aycock’s legacy.

Our quick look into the archives did not, by any means, uncover everything related to Aycock and UNC. He had a long relationship with the university, first as a student, later as a prominent alumnus, and then a three-time member of the Board of Trustees. Students and researchers who wish to dig deeper can find a significant amount of correspondence to and from Aycock in the University Papers as well as in manuscript collections in the Southern Historical Collection.