I am working with some Hugh Morton negatives today, and I just came across one that seems to be misidentified or misfiled. Morton filed this unidentified negative amidst those of other negatives he pulled together when compiling images for the book Making a Difference in North Carolina—a book we have referred to many times here at A View to Hugh. One slight problem: Morton filed this negative among those for Governor J. Melville Broughton and he’s not depicted. Instead we see a different North Carolina governor, R. Gregg Cherry, seated on a sofa surrounded by eleven other people. Who are they . . . and where and why are they gathered?
Here are a couple guesses to get started:
- The person seated in the middle of the scene looking down and away from the camera looks like John W. Harden. In Making a Difference in North Carolina, his chapter is titled, “John W. Harden: PR Pioneer, Noted Communicator.” A caption under one of the photographs in the book notes that Harden served on the State Board of Conservation and Development—a board on which Hugh Morton also served.
- The man on the far left looks like Bill Sharpe, one-time editor of The State.
- Is that photographer John Hemmer in the righthand corner wearing a striped tie?
Please add a comment if you think you might recognize some of those faces.