Another birthday for Dean Smith

We’re celebrating another birthday here at A View to Hugh: today is legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith’s 82nd. This morning’s Daily Tar Heel features a front-page story using two Hugh Morton photographs (unfortunately Morton is not credited): the one … Continue reading

Dan Smith cutting net after winning 1993 NCAA championship

UNC men’s basketball team Head Coach Dean Smith cutting down net at UNC vs. Michigan NCAA championship win at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, 5 April 1993.

We’re celebrating another birthday here at A View to Hugh: today is legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith’s 82nd.

This morning’s Daily Tar Heel features a front-page story using two Hugh Morton photographs (unfortunately Morton is not credited): the one above following the 1993 NCAA championship nearly twenty years ago, and the one below after winning the 1967 ACC championship game.  As of 10:15 a.m., there’s no online version of the story, but there is an online readable version of the print edition.

UNC 1967 ACC Tournament champions

UNC-Chapel Hill men’s basketball team celebrating their win over Duke University after the 1967 ACC tournament championship game played in Greensboro, NC. Among those pictured are Head Coach Dean Smith (front row, third from left) and ACC tournament MVP Larry Miller (front row, fourth from left).

Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, 1962

UPDATED, 2/27: As Jack Hilliard points out in a comment below, the page I first posted didn’t include the whole block. I added the previous page, which also includes at least one business still operating in its 1962 location. One of the favorite pastimes of UNC alums returning to campus is to lament how much […]

UPDATED, 2/27: As Jack Hilliard points out in a comment below, the page I first posted didn’t include the whole block. I added the previous page, which also includes at least one business still operating in its 1962 location.

One of the favorite pastimes of UNC alums returning to campus is to lament how much has changed, especially on Franklin Street, the University’s “Main Street,” home to many restaurants and bars long frequented by UNC undergraduates.

The North Carolina City Directories collection on DigitalNC now includes four directories from Chapel Hill, from the years 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1962. The directories have a street directory section, enabling readers to browse residents or businesses by location. Here are the pages from the 1962 Chapel Hill directory showing the main block of Franklin Street:

Hill's Chapel Hill (Orange County, N.C.) City Directory, includi

Hill's Chapel Hill (Orange County, N.C.) City Directory, includi

So how much has changed since then? Quite a lot. At first glance I can see only one business that’s still operating in its current location (not counting churches). Can anyone else find it? Are there any others that I missed?

“An Infernal Passion Undying”

If you read the Daily Tar Heel, you’ve likely read Ian Williams’ iconic column “Why I Hate Duke.” The Daily Tar Heel usually highlights the piece before our first basketball game of the year against Duke. The article is essentially … Continue reading

If you read the Daily Tar Heel, you’ve likely read Ian Williams’ iconic column “Why I Hate Duke.” The Daily Tar Heel usually highlights the piece before our first basketball game of the year against Duke. The article is essentially the Carolina student’s guide to hating that dark, blue school to the North both on and off the basketball court. In his article, Williams states that he hates Duke with an “infernal passion undying.” Many of us feel that way in light of our recent loss, but just how long has the Carolina community loved to loathe our adversary?

The answer is long before that archenemy was actually named Duke University!

Written to be sung to the tune of Little Marie, this song was from William Starr Myers book that documented much of his poetry and writing from his time at UNC. From folder 15, Box 2 of the William Starr Myers Papers, collection #03260, in the Southern Historical   Collection, the Wilson Library.

Written to be sung to the tune of “Sweet Marie,” this song can be found in William Starr Myers’s notebook documenting much of his writing during his time at UNC. (Folder 15, Box 2, of the William Starr Myers Papers, #03260, Southern Historical Collection.)

That’s right.  UNC has the distinction of hating Duke before they became a full-fledged university and was simply known as Trinity College.  Let that sink in for a minute.

For the football game against Trinity College on the 24th of October 1894, William Starr Myers (an editor for The Tar Heel, the forerunner of The Daily Tar Heel) wrote several poems to commemorate the day. One of his songs began:

“I’ve a secret to impart Trinity/We’re going to break your heart Trinity;/And you’ll think that Judgment Day,/Is’nt [sic] very far away, when the Referee calls ‘Play’ Trinity./You will see Trinity, Trinity how it will be/That your faces fearful sights are to see/Every star that studs the sky/Then will wink the other eye, and bid you/’Go & die,’ Trinity.”

A float from the 1951 Beat Dook parade showing a Tar Heel Ram eating a bowl of Duke cereal for breakfast. P0033/0040, the Roland Giduz Photograph Collection, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library

A float from the 1951 Beat Dook parade showing a Tar Heel Ram eating a bowl of Duke cereal for breakfast. (P0033/0040, the Roland Giduz Photograph Collection, the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.)

The rivalry with Duke has  a long history, which has taken various forms over the years. For instance, between 1950 and 1965 there was an annual “Beat Dook” Parade held on Franklin Street near the end of November.

As we anxiously await the rematch on March 9, I think it’s safe to say that yes…our Carolina community truly does hate Duke with “an infernal passion undying.” And many of us wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Tar Heel celebrates its 120th birthday

The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper printed its first issue on February 23, 1893. The Tar Heel‘s editors explained that the paper, issued every Thursday morning, would include “a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” The paper vowed to cover UNC sports, “all society news, personals and every subject of […]

dth_issue1_front2
The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper printed its first issue on February 23, 1893. The Tar Heel‘s editors explained that the paper, issued every Thursday morning, would include “a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” The paper vowed to cover UNC sports, “all society news, personals and every subject of interest to both the students and citizens of the village.” The Tar Heel was published by the University Athletic Association. Charles Baskerville, a Mississippi native and star student at UNC, served as both head of the Athletic Association and editor-in-chief of the paper. The Tar Heel was available by subscription, charging $1.50 per session.

Baskerville and his five sub-editors seemed to realize the weightiness of their endeavor, writing:

This new venture is necessarily entered upon by the present board with no little trepidation, nevertheless with a determination, to make a success which can only be done through the indulgence and assistance of our faculty and fellow-students. Therefore we invite honest criticism and any aid in the advancement of this new project will be thoroughly appreciated.

Indeed, many a fellow student has contributed to the success and longevity of this noted form of Tar Heel Ink. Happy birthday and many thanks to each and every one of them.

Uncovered notables

Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle; Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle. — Francis Quarles, from Emblemes, 1635 There are times when carrying out my twenty-first century daily toils in front of a computer … Continue reading

Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle;
Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.

— Francis Quarles, from Emblemes, 1635

There are times when carrying out my twenty-first century daily toils in front of a computer get to be a bit too much for the eyes and I need to step away from the computer.  When those occasions occur I look at photographs from the collections, which also keeps me rooted in the reasons I do what I do for a living.

UNC student studying while holding a pipe.

“Burning the Midnight Oil” is the quotation that accompanies this photograph by Hugh Morton in the 1942 Yackety Yack, UNC’s student yearbook. The photograph served as the visual opener for the professional schools section.

One of those occasions struck a couple weeks ago, so I wandered off to the unidentified nonflying objects in “Area 5.1″ (actually, the unidentified negatives in series 5.1) of the Morton Collection: “University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1939–early 2000s / Student Life, 1939-1942.”   There are many unidentified negatives in that portion of the collection, including many posed yet candid portraits.

As I examined one negative at a time, I saw a face that was immediately recognizable: Louis Harris.  (Lou Harris, who became an important American pollster, has been mentioned in a few posts and an essay thus far here at A View to Hugh.)  The portrait in hand seemed familiar, and I soon located it in the “Senior Personalities” section of the 1942 UNC yearbook, The Yackety Yack.

Louis Harris

The caption for Harris’s portrait reads:

Campus idealist, reformer, organizer . . . one of few with the courage of his convictions . . . incessant energy . . . needs 34 hour day . . .

The captioned portrait next to Harris’s looked like a different negative I had viewed a few minutes earlier, so I went back to the storage box to find it.  The portrayed: Ferebee Taylor.  That name may not be recognizable to many, but thirty years later Nelson Ferebee Taylor became the fifth chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill.  A native of Oxford, North Carolina, Taylor headed to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a Harvard Law degree after graduating from UNC.  From Harvard he received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, England.

Nelson Ferebee Taylor

Taylor’s caption:

Capable, responsible . . . that “Oxford” accent . . . unanimous draftee for legislature speakership . . . Phi Bete prexy, Fleece, etc. ad infinitum

Because there are so many negatives of unidentified students, we only scanned a sampling when processing the Morton collection—and only a selection of the sampling made it into the online collection.  (Sometimes portraits include multiple poses—there’s one variant of Taylor’s portrait and a few of the opening image above.)  The previously unidentified portraits of Lou Harris and Ferebee Taylor are only two negatives among hundreds.

Wee make Art servile, and the Trade gentile,
(Yet both corrupted with ingenious guile)
To compass earth; and with her empty store,
To fill our Armes, and graspe, one handfull more,
Thus seeking Rest, our labours never cease,
But as our years, our hot desires encrease.

Rediscovering two notable people seemed like enough for one blog post, but while relocating the Taylor negative I saw a different negative with an image that I also recalled having seen somewhere once before.  This portrait (shown below, but tightly cropped from elbow and head on the right to the left edge of the sign) also turned up in the “Senior Personalities” section—this time in the 1941 Yackety Yack with the caption “Gene Whitten.”

Gene Witten with "please" sign

The Yackety Yack tightly cropped this portrait of Gene Witten. The “please” sign directed pedestrians where to walk, and by default, where not to tread.

Eugene Roy Witten (misspelled in the Yackety Yack caption) played an interesting role in the history of UNC student publications.  Although he may have had earlier unacknowledged contributions, Witten’s name first appears as a cartoonist in the masthead of the October 1939 issue of the then soon-to-be-ill-fated student humor magazine The Carolina Buccaneer.  The student publication rode a problematic seesaw from its beginnings in 1924, but the Buccaneer’s eventual downfall was the cover, and to some extent the contents, of its infamous “sex issue” of November 1939.  Witten had one innocuous (by today’s standards, at least) cartoon included in that issue.  The real controversy, however, centered on the magazine’s cover by cartoonist Hight Moore—and the fallout reached far beyond the campus walls.

The details of the magazine’s final saga would take this blog post astray.  In brief, on Friday, November 10th, The Daily Tar Heel editor Martin Harmon wrote a satirical “Buc Review” in the form of a letter to his Aunt Emmy in New Orleans.  That evening, the Student Council directed the Publications Union Board to destroy all 3,000 copies of the issue shortly before its release date.  Sunday’s Daily Tar Heel decried a “Crisis in Student Government.”  On Monday, November 13th, the Publications Union Board decided to reuse parts of the magazine and publish a revised edition, which was to be issued by the end of the week.  Later that evening, the Student Legislature voted 18-13 against the Student Council ban.  A month later, a DTH editorial called the whole affair “the most sensational, the most astounding, the most stupendous bombshell of the [fall] quarter.”

  • A side note . . . The November 1939 issue of The Carolina Buccaneer is one of many items used to illustrate the North Carolina Collection Gallery exhibit, “A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC”—which opened today.

“Let bygones be bygones!” the Buccaneer‘s editors wrote in the ensuing December issue.  After the last issue of the school year published in May, however, the magazine was gone.  What makes this story relevant to readers of the A View to Hugh?  Between its November death knell and May burial, Hugh Morton joined The Carolina Buccaneer masthead as a photographer.  In the March 1940 issue, Morton contributed a photographic essay entitled “‘That’ Week-End” that included his photograph of Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Band performing during the Mid-Winter German dances held on February 15th and 16th.

Why did Morton join the Carolina Buccaneer staff as a freshman, just a few months after the sex issue fiasco?  We may never know.  This time period, however, seems to have been an important crossroads in Morton’s early career as a photographer.  According to a November 1941 DTH article, Morton’s camera had been stolen shortly after he arrived on campus in September 1939.  He didn’t replace it until he bought a camera in a Raleigh pawn shop during the winter of 1940, after which he “immediately” began to work for The Carolina Buccaneer.  With the Glen Gray and Mid-Winter German dance photographs as evidence, that would be mid February.  Additionally, a montage of photographs by G. B. Lamm and Morton appear on the cover of the March 1940 issue of Carolina Magazine.  Morton would go on to photograph for several student and university publications.

An important connection may have been made during or after the Buccaneer debacle: the president of the Publications Union Board who salvaged The Carolina Bucaneer and kept at least some of its parts from the incinerator was senior Edward L. Rankin, Jr..  Nearly fifty years later Rankin would co-author with Morton the book Making a Difference in North Carolina published in 1988.  It would be fascinating to know if Morton and Rankin’s association began at UNC, or in later years.

Gene Witten reading The Daily Tar Heel.

Gene Witten reading the February 4, 1941 issue of The Daily Tar Heel. Morton’s portrait of Witten appears in the 1941 Yackety Yack.

Jump ahead to autumn 1940, and re-enter Gene Witten, named in November to be Editor-in-Chief of Tar an’ Feathers, successor to The Carolina Buccaneer.  Witten’s charge was to produce a “clean” humor magazine.  In the first issue Witten contributed one cartoon, which was more like a sketch with a caption beneath—his only cartoon published in the magazine.  Witten named Lamm, the upperclassmen to Morton, as the photography editor.

Working on another batch of negatives several days after the initial Harris and Taylor discoveries, I uncovered another unidentified portrait of Witten. In this portrait (shown above), Witten is reading (or glancing at, given the strange angle of the newspaper) a copy of the February 4th, 1941 Daily Tar Heel. This portrait also appears in the 1941 Yackety Yack, but it’s cropped vertically.  The typewriter to his left is branded with a “TH” that likely stands for Tar Heel, and may have been photographed in the DTH offices.

Curious about Witten’s life after UNC, an Internet search revealed a website dedicated to his life as an artist.  Witten was a business major at UNC, and worked briefly after college in a New York City advertising agency.  According to the Witten website, after serving in the United States Navy during World War II he “was impassioned to leave ‘business’ and entered the Art Students League in Manhattan in 1946. At the age of 25 he decided his life’s work was to paint.” In addition to working as an artist for decades, Witten became a master frame maker.   He passed away on January 13, 2004.

Now, reader, close thy Booke, and then advise:
Be wisely worldly; be not worldly wise.
— Francis Quarles, from Emblemes, 1635

 

The Dunk for the Ages

Over the years, Hugh Morton has taken hundreds of pictures of basketball great Michael Jordan.  There are 124 photographs of Jordan in the Morton online collection so far.  One image, however, stands out from all the others.  As Jordan turns … Continue reading

Over the years, Hugh Morton has taken hundreds of pictures of basketball great Michael Jordan.  There are 124 photographs of Jordan in the Morton online collection so far.  One image, however, stands out from all the others.  As Jordan turns 50 years old today—Sunday, February 17, 2013—Morton collection volunteer Jack Hilliard looks back at that classic image.

Michale Jordan dunk versus University of Virginia

His biography on the NBA website states, “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.”

It’s easy to see why.  Michael Jeffrey Jordan’s resume includes the following accolades:

  • An NCAA Championship (at UNC)
  • 2 Olympic Gold Medals
  • 6 NBA Championships (with the Chicago Bulls)
  • 5 MVP Awards
  • 10 All-Pro NBA First Teams
  • 10 NBA Scoring Titles
  • 14 NBA All-Star Appearances

The list doesn’t stop there.

Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes in the history of sports. Thanks to the emergence of the 24/7 cable sports channels—and the Internet in the latter part of his playing career—Jordan’s heroics became all access, all the time.  Michael Jordan has been the subject of a Sports Illustrated cover fifty-seven times (so far), and, according to Lew Powell of “North Carolina Miscellany,” he has had seventy-eight mentions on the TV show Jeopardy!.

When recalling Jordon’s UNC accomplishments, Tar Heel fans will often recall the final basket in the NCAA Championship game against Georgetown in 1982 that gave Head Coach Dean Smith his first national title.  Other folks, however, like to recall a different shot.

On February 10, 1983, in a game against the University of Virginia played in Carmichael Auditorium, the Tar Heels trailed by sixteen with 8:30 left in the game. It was then that the Heels started a classic comeback. By the time there was only 1:20 left on the clock, the Virginia lead was down to three points. Then a Jordan put-back made it a one-point game at 63-62. With under a minute to go, Virginia’s Rick Carlisle had the ball and got past Jordan, but Michael came up from behind and stole the ball.  Jordan drove to the hoop, making the famous basket that North Carolina author and sports historian Jim Sumner termed “the dunk for the ages.”  Heels win 64-63.

Hugh Morton once again was at the right place at the right time, capturing the moment with a classic image that has been reproduced dozens of times.  Morton, in his 1996 book Sixty Years with a Camera, called it his favorite picture of Jordan.  Morton always included the image in his slides shows while he told the story behind the picture. The story goes like this.

In early February 1983 Morton got a call from C.J. Underwood, the longtime anchor and reporter at WBTV, Channel 3, in Charlotte.  Underwood wanted to do a feature for his “Carolina Camera” news segment about Morton and his longtime association with UNC sports.  So they both agreed that the game on Thursday, February 10th in Chapel Hill would be a good time to meet and shoot the feature.

As the teams warmed up for the game, Jordan came over to Morton’s courtside location, as he often did.  During the course of the conversation, Morton told Jordan about Underwood and the WBTV photographer shooting the feature. As the two parted, Morton said, “Have a good game, Michael.”

Following that fantastic shot, Michael ran back up the court, brushed by Morton and asked, “Was that good enough?”

In 2009, Michael Jordan was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and is currently the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.

On February 18th when the new Sports Illustrated hits the bookstores, Jordan will once again be pictured on the front cover.  So far he has managed to avoid the legendary “SI Cover Jinx” fifty-seven times. (Fifty times according to the magazine if you don’t count “commerorative and collector’s editions as well as tiny insets or out of focus shots of MJ.”)  If all goes well after next week, you can add number fifty-eight.

Artifact of the Month: A piece of 1957 UNC basketball history

Zealous, maniacal, obsessed, rabid. There’s a reason why writers describing Tar Heel fans proceed directly to the extreme corners of the English language. The UNC men’s basketball team has earned every bit of its fans’ devotion, though, with a storied history of dramatic wins. The team has enjoyed no prouder moment than its 1957 season, […]

Zealous, maniacal, obsessed, rabid. There’s a reason why writers describing Tar Heel fans proceed directly to the extreme corners of the English language. The UNC men’s basketball team has earned every bit of its fans’ devotion, though, with a storied history of dramatic wins.

The team has enjoyed no prouder moment than its 1957 season, known fondly as McGuire’s Miracle (a reference to Coach Frank McGuire). That year the Tar Heels completed a perfect season, culminating in its first NCAA national championship.

Our February Artifact of the Month celebrates that exhilarating season:

Woollen Gymnasium floor section

This section of maple floor was salvaged from Woollen Gymnasium, the home court of the Tar Heel team until 1965. Affixed to this section of the historic floor are two metal plates, one featuring a photo of the 1957 championship team with Coach McGuire, and one bearing the signatures of the starting players: Pete Brennan, Bob Cunningham, Tommy Kearns, Lennie Rosenbluth, and Joe Quigg.

Those stellar players, who practiced and played on the old Woollen Gymnasium floor, attended the 2004 grand opening of the newly renovated Woollen, where these floor sections were offered as a fundraiser.

Fortunately, the Tar Heels’ winning mojo seems to live in the team itself, and not in that old Woollen floor: The UNC men’s basketball team has gone on to rack up four more NCAA championships after that first miraculous season, trailing only two other Division I teams in number of titles won. And any fan will tell you they’re not done counting.

New Online Exhibit on Student Organizations at UNC

When was the first student body president elected? Who’s a Di and who’s a Phi? What’s a Gimghoul? A new exhibit has been added to The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History that should answer those questions and … Continue reading

When was the first student body president elected? Who’s a Di and who’s a Phi? What’s a Gimghoul?

Loreleis Concert Poster, Courtesy of Margaret Moore Jackson

Loreleis Concert Poster, Courtesy of Margaret Moore Jackson

A new exhibit has been added to The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History that should answer those questions and more. It highlights some of the hundreds of organizations that have been a part of student life throughout the university’s history, including debating societies, student government, performance groups like the Loreleis and the Playmakers, activist groups, Greek organizations,  honor societies, secret societies, and others. Check out the new exhibit here.

Chapel Hill Revolutionary Movement, 1969 (Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Records, #40124, University Archives).

Chapel Hill Revolutionary Movement, 1969 (Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Records, #40124, University Archives).

Alumni–were you involved in student organizations while at UNC? Do you have photos, posters, papers, recordings, or other materials related to your organizations? If you are interested in donating these materials to the University Archives to help document the history of your organizations, please contact Jay Gaidmore (gaidmore@email.unc.edu).

The Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 at UNC

In the fall of 1918, students were preparing for battle. In August, Congress had lowered the draft age from 21 to 18, and as part of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), students  drilled daily, anticipating the day that their … Continue reading

Letter from parent J.L. Nelson

A parent asks to be notified by telegram if his son catches the flu (University of North Carolina Papers, #40005, University Archives).

In the fall of 1918, students were preparing for battle. In August, Congress had lowered the draft age from 21 to 18, and as part of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), students  drilled daily, anticipating the day that their numbers would be called. However, before they could be sent to fight in Europe, they found themselves fighting a deadly enemy on their own campus—influenza.

The first wave of the global “Spanish Flu” pandemic began in the spring, followed by a much deadlier second wave in the early fall. By September 1918, it had spread to North Carolina. Concerned parents wrote to university president Edward Kidder Graham, fearful for their children’s health.

Graham's response to a concerned parent

Graham’s response to a concerned parent (University of North Carolina Papers, #40005, University Archives).

The campus was quarantined in October, and second-year medical students and local nurses were recruited to work in the overflowing infirmary. Three students died in a span of less than two weeks, and on University Day, 1918, no public gathering was held. After a few weeks, the situation seemed to be improving. In an October 19th letter to a parent, President Graham noted that there were 30 students in the infirmary and 20 convalescing—significantly fewer than the nearly 130 hospitalized a week before.

However, just two days later President Graham himself fell ill. Within days, he developed pneumonia as a complication of influenza. As the campus grew concerned about his condition and hoped for his recovery, the SATC commander asked that students not disturb Graham by marching or performing drills near his house. After less than a week’s illness, Graham died.

Portrait of Edward Kidder Graham

A memorial to President Graham printed as a frontispiece to the Dec. 25, 1918 High School Journal(Edward Kidder Graham Papers, #00282, Southern Historical Collection).

The next day, all classes and military drills were cancelled, and students were asked to “demean themselves in a quiet manner” in respect for the president. On October 31, Dean Marvin Stacy was appointed chairman of the faculty and assumed leadership of the university. Over the next two months, the war ended, the SATC disbanded, and the health crisis began to wane. However, influenza remained a serious threat. In January, 1919, Stacy also died of pneumonia as a complication of influenza, just less than three months after the death of his predecessor by the same illness.

By the spring, the global pandemic was ending. Over the course of the epidemic on campus, over 500 were treated for influenza in the infirmary and six died—students William Bunting, Larry Templeton, and Kenneth Scott; nurse Bessie Roper; President Graham; Mrs. W.J. Hannah, a mother who caught the disease while caring for her son; and Dean Stacy.

 

Fire Again!

We hope that everyone is enjoying the new semester.  Hopefully you’re getting back into the swing of things without too much trouble.  If everything is going well, congratulations!  It turns out that you are much luckier than some of your … Continue reading

We hope that everyone is enjoying the new semester.  Hopefully you’re getting back into the swing of things without too much trouble.  If everything is going well, congratulations!  It turns out that you are much luckier than some of your predecessors in the winter of 1929 were.

From 14 December 1929, the Daily Tar Heel, Vol. 38, Number 71, in the North Carolina Collection.

In fact, from the very beginning of the school year, various fraternities on UNC’s campus had some pretty rotten luck.  First, there were growing financial concerns and then the great stock market crash of 1929.  Male students were in the position of not being able to afford being in a fraternity unless they took out a loan.  Despite all of this, though, fraternities accepted a healthy number of bids that fall semester, and luck seemed to be on their side.

From the 11 January 1930, the Daily Tar Heel, Vol. 38, Number 77, in the North Carolina Collection.

Their luck ran out, however, at the end of the fall semester.  On Thursday, December 12, 1937 (a day before Friday the 13th), the Delta Sigma Phi house of Old Fraternity Row was almost completely destroyed in a fire early that morning.  When the members of the house woke up and realized the house was on fire, they attempted to call the fire department but could not be connected because the fire chief was already having a conversation of his own.  Consequently, several members had to drive down to the station to alert the chief in person.  At the time, the chief said that he heard a car beeping its horn like mad and immediately thought it was a rum runner being chased by the authorities.  By the time the fire was extinguished, most clothes and furniture could be saved, and it was lucky that the nine men sleeping in the house had escaped with their lives.

From 8 January 1930, the Daily Tar Heel, Vol. 38, Number 74, in the North Carolina Collection.

Delta Sigma Phi did not hold the distinction of being the only fraternity house that burned down that year though.  The Daily Tar Heel was beginning to make daily quips about old fraternity row as the “hot section of town.”  The Chi Psi fraternity house also burned down that winter, on Christmas night.  Unfortunately for the members of Chi Psi, they were accused (rather indirectly and hastily) of setting the fire deliberately to collect the insurance money.  The controversy raged until January 8, 1930 when the students were finally freed from blame of the fire.  In fact, Dr. Coker took great umbrage at the suggestion that any student at Carolina would be so devious and squared off with the insurance commissioner until the whole matter was cleared.

So, count yourself lucky.  If you are rushing a fraternity or sorority this semester, we are certainly glad that lady luck seems to have reinstituted herself on our campus!