Stephen Fletcher – Page 27

A Spark of Greatness, part 4

Today is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, which A View to Hugh commemorates with the fourth and final installment of “A Spark of Greatness.” Using photographs by Morton, Edward J. McCauley, and Don Sturkey, “A Spark of Greatness” highlights some of the key events that led to Kennedy’s campaign visit to the Tar Heel State in September 1960. The story presented in A View to Hugh draws from contemporary newspaper accounts and the book Triumph of Good Will, John Drescher’s account of the gubernatorial contest between Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake that preceded Kennedy’s visit.

As the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial candidate, Terry Sanford believed that John F. Kennedy would win North Carolina in the 1960 presidential election, but to do so Kennedy would need to campaign in the state. As the Raleigh News and Observer reported on July 15th, 1960, Sanford “told newsmen he is sure that when Kennedy goes to North Carolina, ‘as he will,’ he will convince voters that he has a spark of greatness.”
The North Carolina delegates’ caucus that followed the formal nomination emphasized not only the need for vigorous campaigning in the state, but also a personal appearance by Kennedy. Kennedy did indeed campaign in North Carolina; perhaps just as importantly, as John Drescher notes, Sanford “made Kennedy’s campaign his campaign.”
There are many photographs of Kennedy’s daylong campaign tour in North Carolina in the North Carolina Collection by Hugh Morton, Burlington’s Daily Times-News photographer Edward McCauley, and Don Sturkey, chief photographer of the Charlotte Observer. Sturkey’s photograph of Kennedy, U.S. Congressman Herbert C. Bonner, and Terry Sanford riding in a convertible approaching the football stadium at the Eastern Carolina University in Greenville may be the quintessential photograph that captured that “spark of greatness” reflected by the enthusiasm of onlookers chasing the motorcade. Ironically, this image did not appear in the Observer’s coverage of Kennedy’s campaign swing through the state. (Morton and McCauley’s photographs can be seen by clicking on the links above. Sturkey’s photographs are not available online; the link, however, leads to the collection’s finding aid.)
John F. Kennedy campaigning in North Carolina. Copyright Don Sturkey, 1960.

Photograph copyright Don Sturkey, 1960.

After Richard M. Nixon’s nomination for president on the Republican ticket, pollster Lou Harris showed Nixon ahead of Kennedy in North Carolina by a margin of two-to-one. A month after Kennedy’s campaign swing through the state on September 17th, another Harris poll had Kennedy ahead fifty-one percent to forty percent. On election day, Kennedy won North Carolina with fifty-two percent of the vote.
Fast forward to January 20th, 12:51 P.M—the time Kennedy began his inaugural address. Among its memorable passages, Kennedy observed, “The world is very, very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.” And among the memorable accomplishments of Terry Sanford during his governorship was the North Carolina Fund, Sanford’s innovative initiative to address the state’s dire poverty.

Billy Joe Patton

As mentioned in a comment earlier today, noted amateur golfer Billy Joe Patton of Morganton, N. C. passed away on New Year’s Day. Yesterday, the Golf Digest website published a tribute to Patton, which describe Patton as the “swashbuckler” of a handful of great players during “the last chapter of amateur golf’s golden era in the United States.”

Patton is pictured above (cropped by me) after finishing second at the 49th Southern Amateur Championship held at the Linville Golf Club from June 14th through 18th, 1955—a little more than a year after he nearly became the first amateur to win the Masters at the fabled Augusta National Golf Club, which ended in a showdown playoff between legends Sam Snead and Ben Hogan. A detailed account of the 1955 Southern Amateur Championship notes that after the preliminary rounds, “It was then up to Harrison and Patton and they came through with a fine match to reward the hundreds who puffed up the hills after them.” If you look closely at Patton’s left hand, you’ll see he had a puff himself afterward!
Have a look at more photographs of Billy Joe Patton in the Hugh Morton collection.

A Rivalry for the Record Book

When is a Volunteer a Tar Heel? When he’s Jack Hilliard, our devoted volunteer (with an upper case “vee” in this case for Valiant, of course!) with the Hugh Morton Collection. Jack has contributed several posts on A View to Hugh, and his latest covers the history of football contests between teams sported by the University of Tennessee Volunteers and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. After Tennessee paid a hefty $750,000 fee last year to cancel the schools’ confrontations for the 2011 and 2012 seasons, irony brings the two one-time rivals together this year to face each other on December 30 in the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl.

The Volunteers from Tennessee and the Tar Heels from North Carolina fought side-by-side during the American Civil War. Twenty-eight years after those hostilities ended, however, the University of Tennessee Volunteers and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels took up a different battle—on opposite sides of a gridiron.
UNC versus Tennessee, 1931
That first battle took place on an old athletic field south and east of Smith Hall on the UNC campus. It was November 3rd, 1893 and the Tar Heels won that day 60 to 0. The teams would not meet again until 1897—this time in a driving rainstorm on Curry Field in Knoxville, and once again the boys in blue were victorious. The next game, in 1900, was also a Carolina win, but finally the Volunteers beat the Tar Heels in 1908 before 2,000 fans in Knoxville. Between 1909 and 1918, there were no games; the 1919 game, according to author Smith Barrier in his 1937 book On Carolina’s Gridiron, being played in “two inches of mud” and ending in a 0-0 tie. When the Tar Heels went to Tennessee in 1926 the game was played for the first time on Shields-Watkins Field, where UNC lost again by a 34-0 score. The Heels suffered another loss in ’27 when the series finally returned to Chapel Hill where 7,000 turned out for the game on Emerson Field. The photograph above (not by Morton, but from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection, 1799-1999) depicts Tennessee’s “Breezy” Wynn getting tackled during the 1931 contest—a 7-to-0 Tennessee victory—held at Chapel Hill during Kenan Stadium’s fourth year. Carolina wouldn’t win again until 1935, and then again in 1936. Eight seasons would come and go before the teams would meet again. Starting in 1945 and continuing until 1961 the teams met every year alternating home and away.
The 1946 game is considered by many to be a classic. Head Coach Carl Snavely took his Tar Heels to Knoxville to meet Head Coach General Robert (Bob) Neyland’s Volunteers on November 2nd. Carolina was ranked #9 and Tennessee #10. About 1,500 students and alumni made the trip over the mountains, many on a special train called the “Football Caravan” which pulled out of Durham on Friday, November 1st with 10 sleeper cars. Two of those cars carried Director Earl Slocum and the Carolina Band, which was making its first trip since the Second World War. The Volunteers took an early 6-0 lead, but early in the second quarter the Tar Heels pulled off a play that is still talked about when UNC alumni and friends get together. With the ball at the Carolina 27-yard-line, UNC’s Charlie Justice dropped into deep punt formation. He faked the punt and took off around his left end, he then reversed his field two times and finally scored. In the record book, the played covered 73 yards, but all who saw the play believe Justice covered more than 100 yards. Many of those fans call it Justice’s greatest run—including Charlie himself. Justice teammate Joe Wright related the story of the famous play at the Justice statue dedication in 2004. Wright said that all 11 Tennessee players had a hand on Justice at some point and that tackle Dick Huffman (known as “Big Sid)” had “two shots at him.”
Snavely called it one of the outstanding plays he had ever seen; Vols Coach Neyland agreed. Duke Assistant Coach Dumpy Hagler who was at the game scouting the Tar Heels said it was the greatest he had witnessed in many years watching football. And teammate Jack Fitch told Justice, “it was the prettiest thing I ever saw.” Replied Charlie, “Thanks Jack, but it wasn’t good enough to win.” Tennessee won that afternoon 20-14, much to the delight of the 35,000 in attendance.
The following year it was Tennessee that made the trip over the Smokies and came into Chapel Hill on November 1st, 1947. The Tar Heels, led by Justice, put on a 20-6 winning performance before 40,000 fans that Saturday afternoon. UT’s yearbook “The Volunteer,” described the game this way:
“Choo Choo Justice and his traincrew, all steamed up because of last year’s loss to Tennessee, engineered a victory over the Orangeclads.”

It was during this game that Hugh Morton took the photograph above, his most famous image of Charlie Justice. In fact, it is one of the most reproduced pictures in the entire Morton Collection. The picture is featured in Morton’s 1988 book, “Making A Difference in North Carolina” . . . it’s on the facade in the east end of Kenan Stadium . . . it has been printed in the UNC Football Media Guide many times (twice on the cover) . . . it was printed on the cover of a Justice Celebrity Roast in 1984 . . . was on the game-day ticket for the game with Tulsa in 2000 . . . and the Justice family selected it for the front of the bulletin at Charlie’s memorial service in October, 2003.
On October 30th, 1948, the largest crowd in Tennessee sports history to date, witnessed another Tar Heel victory. Before 52,000 fans the number three ranked Tar Heels beat the Vols 14-7. Justice passed to Bill Flamisch and Art Weiner for Carolina’s touchdowns.
Early in the 1949 season Carolina lost a game at LSU, but when the team returned to Chapel Hill about 5 PM on Sunday, October 23rd, hundreds of students were gathered on the steps of Wollen Gym and hundreds more lined the street and surrounding area. Several emotional speeches were given by the players and Head Cheerleader Norman Sper closed the ceremonies by leading a mighty cheer . . . “BEAT TENNESSEE” . . . Carolina’s next opponent. But that didn’t happen. The Vols were victorious by a 35-6 score as 44,000 dazed fans set in Kenan under threatening skies. This game would become a significant entry in the record book. Tennessee became the only team to beat a Justice Era UNC team twice.
Tennessee continued its winning ways over the Tar Heels during the next eight years while winning a national championship in 1951. When the Volunteers came into Chapel Hill in 1953, the “Gridiron General” Robert Neyland had stepped down as head coach and stepped into the athletic director’s job. Photographer Morton captured Neyland in his new role. Morton also deftly captured a Tennessee cheerleader with her skirt whirling about her.
The Tar Heels would finally win again in 1958. UNC’s “Alumni Review” headline: “Tar Heels Top Tennessee Jinx and Win 21 to 7.” The Volunteers would pick up two more wins in ’59 and ’60. The most recent Tennessee–Carolina game was played on November 4th, 1961 and like that very first game in 1893, the Tar Heels won; the score in ’61 was 22 to 21. Although Carolina has won only 10 games in the series while Tennessee has won 20, Carolina will take a one-game winning streak against the Vols into the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl on Thursday, December 30th, in Nashville—a game already in the record book because it will be the first meeting between the two teams in a bowl game.

A Rambling Ram and A Traveling Trophy

Rameses XVIII made his first 2010 Kenan Stadium appearance for homecoming on October 30. He had missed the earlier games due to the untimely death of his caretaker Rob Hogan. Hogan suffered a fall at his farm just outside of Carrboro on September 15 and was hospitalized the following day. He developed a condition in which damaged muscle tissue dies and releases toxins to the kidneys. Rob Hogan passed away on October 8, 2010. He was 54 years old.
“Rob Hogan, the love of my life and my guiding star, passed away this morning at 7:40,” his wife Ann Leonard wrote on a CaringBridge.com page. “May he be at peace. We will miss him.”
Today’s post from Morton volunteer Jack Hilliard is dedicated to the memory of Rob Hogan and takes a look at the history of the beloved Tar Heel mascot as well as a later Tar Heel tradition . . . the Duke–Carolina Victory Bell, which UNC retained after its victory over Duke two weekends ago.

The caravan traveling North on November 10, 1949 consisted of cars and trucks, trailers and trains, buses and a plane or two. Headed to New York City for a meeting with the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in Yankee Stadium were, fans and players, coaches and managers, cheerleaders, majorettes and a marching band. And oh yes, Rameses VI and the Victory Bell were there too as was photographer Hugh Morton.

On that day in ’49 the UNC mascot idea for a ram was 25 years old. Morton’s photograph above of Rameses with handler G. B. “Bushy” Cook is undated, but it’s likely from that same era.
In 1924, UNC’s Head Cheerleader Leonard Victor “Vic” Huggins decided that the Tar Heels needed a mascot. After all, Georgia had a bulldog, and NC State had a wolf. As Huggins explained in a 1962 interview, “I remembered the 1922 football team and its powerful fullback Jack Merritt. They called him the ‘battering ram.’ What about a ram for a mascot?”
So Huggins approached Athletic Director Charlie Wollen with his idea. “How much will it cost?” asked Wollen, who was known for being frugal with athletic funds. When Huggins told him the cost would be $25, Wollen smiled and took $25 from his personal wallet and handed it to Huggins saying “go get us a real he-man ram.”
Rameses I arrived from Texas in time for the pep rally on Friday, November 7, 1924 . . . the night before the big game with Virginia Military Institute (VMI).
On Saturday afternoon, November 8th, a homecoming crowd of 5,000 jammed Emerson Field for the big game. Rameses ran onto the field with the players to the delight of the Tar Heel faithful. The Horned Dorset sheep spurred the team to its finest effort of the 1924 season, holding the game scoreless late into the fourth quarter. With the ball at the VMI 30 yard line, UNC Head Coach Bob Fetzer called on kicker Bunn Hackney to attempt a field goal. But before Hackney ran onto the field, he stopped and rubbed the wooly head of Rameses. Seconds later, Hackney’s drop kick sailed through the goal post and Carolina won the game 3 to 0. (When was the last time you saw Carolina attempt a drop kick? Maybe never.)
The right tackle on the Tar Heel squad was Henry Hogan and in 1924 he began a family tradition of caring for Rameses . . . a tradition that continues to this day.

Twenty-four seasons after UNC Head Cheerleader Vic Huggins introduced Rameses to Tar Heel fans, another head cheerleader had another great idea. In the late fall of 1948, Head Cheerleader Norman Sper thought there should be some kind of traveling trophy for the winner of the annual Carolina–Duke football game. After all, Minnesota–Michigan had “the little brown jug,” and Indiana–Purdue had “the old oaken bucket.” So Sper, along with Duke Cheerleader Loring Jones came up with the idea for “the victory bell.” Jones designed the model frame and Sper got an old railroad bell from the Southern Railway.
Following Carolina’s victory over Duke in Kenan Stadium in 1948, the Tar Heels were awarded the bell first. Hugh Morton’s undated negative (scanned and shown above) depicts the victory bell and UNC cheerleaders—with Sper front and center. The photograph appeared in The Carolina Gridiron, the title of UNC’s then game-day football program, on October 15, 1949 so Morton likely made the shot during one of the two previous home games.
Whenever Carolina has been in possession of the bell, the cheerleaders wheel it out ringing it just before the team comes onto the field. It is then displayed in front of the student section. Over the 62-year history of the Victory Bell, UNC has captured the bell 41 times to Duke’s 20. (There was a tie in 1975.) Duke’s first possession came following their win in 1950. It is the tradition for the winner to paint the platform of the trophy to match their school colors, and in recent years a spray-paint job has been performed on the field.
UNC football historian Lee Pace tells an interesting story following Carolina’s 20-14 overtime win in Kenan Stadium in 2007 game. The Kenan Stadium maintenance crew was making its clean-up round when they discovered near the Duke bench a paper bag filled with more than a dozen cans of royal blue spray paint. Obviously a plan had been made to make a quick color change following a Duke win.
Said Pace, “in the end, no one from Duke had the heart or energy to lug the bag back to Durham, so Butch Williams of the UNC staff stowed the paint in the maintenance shed on the off-hand chance anyone in Chapel Hill needs royal blue spray paint in the coming millennium.”
Whether it be a pre game ceremony on the turf at Kenan, rambling down 42nd Street in the Big Apple for a special pep rally, or on the sideline at the “House that Ruth Built,” Rameses and the Victory Bell will always be fan favorites for Tar Heel alumni and friends everywhere.

A Spark of Greatness, part 3

This is the third post on the story behind John F. Kennedy’s campaign visit to the Tar Heel State in September 1960, drawn from newspaper accounts and the book Triumph of Good Will, John Drescher’s account of the gubernatorial contest between Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake that preceded Kennedy’s visit. There’s an interesting story that photographs by Hugh Morton and other photographers in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives can help tell. In light of the silver anniversary of that momentous campaign, and during the anniversary month of Kennedy’s assassination, I’ll be contributing a series of posts touching on that pivotal time in North Carolina and the nation.

Sanford chose Kennedy.

Sanford’s decision was a bombshell, and the reaction in North Carolina was explosive. Sanford made his decision while vacationing in Myrtle Beach after his run-off victory over I. Beverly Lake. When Sanford informed Robert Kennedy of his decision, John Kennedy was thrilled and he wanted Sanford to make one of the nominating speeches at the Democratic National Convention (DNC). Sanford, mindful of that his decision would not be popular with many North Carolinians, was reluctant. “Don’t do me any favors,” Sanford told Robert Kennedy. “He really needs you,” Robert Kennedy told Sanford. At the wishes of the Kennedy campaign, Sanford delayed announcing his decision until the Saturday before the DNC in Los Angeles in order to supply a boost to the Kennedy campaign going into the convention. Sanford also agreed to deliver a nomination speech, as seen below (photograph cropped by author).

Fifty-four North Carolina delegates cast their votes for Johnson; by comparison, only eleven Tar Heel delegates sided with Sanford to back Kennedy. North Carolina’s most prominent delegates were Lyndon B. Johnson supporters, including incumbent governor Luther Hodges (who had his sights on the vice presidential nomination) and United States Senator Sam Ervin Jr., seen below holding the Wednesday, July 13th night edition of the Los Angeles Herald Express. In contrast to the larger headline stating Kennedy was slipping, a smaller headline above the two photographs reads, “‘Solid South’ is Wavering.”

How daring was Sanford’s decision? Sanford’s support of Kennedy was an important symbolic victory for Kennedy because Sanford was a southerner willing to support a presidential candidate from outside the south. Sanford broke what most thought would be a solid bloc of southern support for Johnson. But Sanford’s decision may have been even more critical facing his upcoming race for the governorship. Back home the response was often vitriolic, so much so that Sanford and his fellow North Carolina Kennedy delegates came to be dubbed the “Dirty Dozen.”

A Spark of Greatness, part 2

This is the second post on the story behind John F. Kennedy’s campaign visit to the Tar Heel State in September 1960, drawn from newspaper accounts and the book Triumph of Good Will, John Drescher’s account of the gubernatorial contest between Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake that preceded Kennedy’s visit. There’s an interesting story that photographs by Hugh Morton and other photographers in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives can help tell. In light of the silver anniversary of that momentous campaign, and during the anniversary month of Kennedy’s assassination, I’ll be contributing a series of posts touching on that pivotal time in North Carolina and the nation.

John Kennedy immediately sought out Terry Sanford at the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce meeting in mid January 1959. Sanford was one of only a few of the 1956 Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates in attendance, and Kennedy knew Sanford was a potential delegate for the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles. In the above photograph, Hugh Morton captured Sanford (lower right corner) and others listening to Elizabeth “Buffie” Ives, Adlai Stevenson’s sister, during the 1956 DNC. Charlotte Observer photographer Don Sturkey (whose collection is part of the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives) attended the Chamber of Commerce gathering, but Sanford is not depicted in any of the seven surviving negatives—one of which is shown below [cropped by the author].

John F. Kennedy at Charlotte Chamber of Commerce Copyright Don Sturkey, 1959. North Carolina Collection.

A year and a half later, Sanford was more than just a potential DNC delegate from North Carolina—he was the North Carolina Democratic Party’s candidate in the 1960 race for governor. Sanford had captured the most votes among five candidates during the primary on May 28th, but not enough to avoid a run-off election. On June 25th, Sanford defeated I. Beverly Lake after a month of near-rancorous campaigning. Sanford was now a de facto DNC delegate, and he had to choose between, essentially, Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson for the party’s presidential nominee. North Carolina did not hold presidential primary elections until 1972. Prior to that time, party delegates attending their national convention declared their support for a presidential nominee. Within the state’s Democratic Party the governor and party chairman, both de facto delegates, traditionally selected the remaining delegates—by electoral district and at-large—at the North Carolina Democratic Party Convention, which had been held in Raleigh on May 19th. The party’s candidates for governor and lieutenant governor also became de facto at-large delegates.
Kennedy had impressed Sanford in Charlotte, but now as a gubernatorial candidate his choice had the potential to make or break his upcoming election battle against Republican Robert Gavin—even in a historical one-party (Democratic) state. Sanford’s campaign manager told him, “History is knocking in this opportunity to associate with Kennedy,” while another aide cautioned, “You can’t be for Kennedy. It will kill you.”

A Spark of Greatness

I initially wanted to write a post for the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s campaign swing through North Carolina on 17 September 1960. The story behind Kennedy’s trip to the Tar Heel State fascinated me, however, so I launched into Triumph of Good Will, John Drescher’s account of the gubernatorial contest between Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake that preceded Kennedy’s visit. There’s an interesting story that photographs by Hugh Morton and other photographers in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, can help tell. In light of the silver anniversary of that momentous campaign, and during the anniversary month of Kennedy’s assassination, I’ll be contributing a series of posts touching on that pivotal time in North Carolina and the nation.

September 17th, 1960—just nine days before this country’s first televised presidential debate—found Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy campaigning in the Tar Heel State. Two months earlier, Kennedy had emerged victorious as the party’s nominee at the Democratic National Convention, held July 11th through 15th at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. The pivotal connection between these two events was North Carolina governor-elect Terry Sanford. The Kennedy–Sanford alliance crystallized during the Democratic National Convention, but first some back-story.

According to Drescher, the first time Terry Sanford spoke to John Kennedy was in early 1959, when the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce invited Kennedy to address its members. Kennedy agreed and, in return, asked the Chamber to invite delegates who attended the 1956 Democratic National Convention (DNC). Sanford had attended the DNC, but supported Estes Kefauver. Kennedy and Kefauver emerged as the two top candidates for veep after presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson decided that convention delegates would choose his running mate. Delegates select Kefauver by a final margin of 755.5 to 589, with the third place finisher Al Gore, Sr. receiving 13.5 delegates. North Carolina Governor Luther Hodges received 40 votes on the first ballot, but none after the final tally. Morton photographed Kennedy speaking to the North Carolina caucus as a candidate for vice president at the 1956 DNC, as Luther Hodges, seated to Kennedy’s right, watched and listened.

Capturing Cherokee, NC

The latest in our series of essays inspired by photographs from the Hugh Morton Collection focuses on images made of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, whose Qualla Boundary lands are primarily in eastern Swain and northern Jackson Counties, just south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The essay, “More than Tourism: Cherokee, North Carolina, in the Post-War Years” is by Andrew Denson, Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University. Denson specializes in Native American history and the 19th-century United States.

Thank you for visiting

V2H_visits
On November 1st, A View to Hugh quietly celebrated its 2nd birthday and during its years of life, this blog has received many visitors. So in this holiday season, we’d like to thank you for being a regular or occasional visitor. Have you ever wondered how many others of you in the blogosphere have been to this site during the first two years? Well, 323,012, if web statistics can be believed!
“How many visits has A View to Hugh received in two years?” would seemingly be an easy question to answer, but it isn’t. Let’s use an analogy to show why. You may take a trip to see family and stay with them for the holidays. If so, let’s say during your stay that you go to the grocery store, the shopping mall, church, and a friend’s house, and that each time you left each of those places you went back to your family’s house, your primary place of visitation.
When you return home and people ask you what you did for the holiday, you would likely say something like, “I visited my family”—that is, you made one trip to visit your family. But if Webalizer, a Web usage statistics program, was keeping tabs on your comings and goings, you went to your family’s house five times—your first arrival and each time you went back to your primary visitation place. Every time you entered your family’s front door would be counted as a “hit.” (In other words, if your family’s house was the home page for a View to Hugh, you made five “hits.”) So, our 323,012 total includes not only initial hits on the blog’s home page, but all hits to the home page.
Counting all those hits is useful to people managing Web servers. For those more interested in gauging readership, however, that tally is meaningless — especially since we know that it includes hits made by computers “crawling” Web sites, such as Google indexing for faster search results. To counter that hyperinflated number, Webalizer tallies “visits,” defined as “a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity.” (The are a host of other issues related to Web statistics, but for fear of putting you to sleep, if you want to read more I’ll refer you to Wikipedia and Google where you may search the terms “Web analytics” and “Web statistics” some restless night).
Going back to the example of visiting your family: once you got there and entered any door, all your subsequent departures and returns, running in and out of the front and back doors, etc., would all be counted as one “visit” after you left their home and didn’t return for a predetermined length of time.
If you recorded all of your family visits over the course of your life, you could make a chart to see how they fluctuated over time. That’s what the chart above illustrates for A View to Hugh: the trend for the number of visits during our first two years (blue line) in comparison to our sister blog, North Carolina Miscellany (red line). At the end of two years we’ve surpassed 25,000 visits per month. That number is still inflated compared to the actual number of individual people reading the blog. (Ever read an entry on your computer at work then check it out again at home? There’s two visits!) What the chart does show without a doubt is the continual growth of interest in A View to Hugh, the library’s most frequently visited blog. And for that, we again express our deep appreciation to you, our readership.
P.S. If you did venture into deeper reading about Web analytics, the chart above uses the “total entry pages” calculation.
P.P.S. Happy holidays!

When Sadie Hawkins Came to Town

Photomontage in The Daliy Tar Heel, 8 November 1941, page 1. — Photomontage in The Daliy Tar Heel, 11 November 1941, page 1.

13 November 1937 marks the creation of Sadie Hawkins Day by Al Capp in his cartoon strip Li’l Abner. The notion of girls chasing guys one day a year lept quickly from newspaper page to high schools and college campuses across the country. Two years later, Life magazine covered the phenomenon in a photo essay entitled, “On Sadie Hawkins Day, Girls Chase Boys in 201 Colleges,” featuring photographs made at Texas Wesleyan University by Fort Worth Press photographer Wilburn Davis.
On Saturday, 8 November 1941, the UNC student body reveled in all-day Sadie Hawkins Day events. Al Capp and his wife came to Chapel Hill to participate in the festivities . . . and so, too, did a photographer from LIFE magazine. No surprise then that UNC student photographer Hugh Morton was also there with his camera. Thus far two Morton negatives from the day’s event have surfaced, and both are viewable online in the Morton digital collection. One of those images is the full view used for the cut-out inset of the Capps with their faces poking out from headless cartoon characters in the photomontage seen above.
The photomontage appeared on the front page of The Daily Tar Heel for 11 November along with stories of the event. The trademark “Photo by Hugh Morton” byline can be seen in the lower right corner, but since it doesn’t say “photos” in the plural it’s not clear if the others are also his photographs or if the credit referred to the entire montage. (The Capps portrait and other photographs of the day’s activities also appeared in The Alumni Review.) The photographs show some of the goings-on for the day, mostly at Emerson Field, that included an “earth shaking tug of war, and Dogpatch games.” A “Gingham Gallop,” which was a “girl-break tea dance,” with coeds having to wear gingham, cotton, or plaid and a hair ribbon capped off the celebration at Graham Memorial.
LIFE published its photographic story, “On Sadie Hawkins Day, North Carolina Co-eds Show How to Kiss Girl-shy Boys,” in its 24 November issue. On 15 November The Daily Tar Heel editors took the photographs in the 24 November issue of LIFE to task in a brief commentary entitled, LIFE Misses The Boat.” (Yes, those dates are correct!) The story and photographs, they complained, were a “hill-billy layout.”

Campus opinion has it that the article misrepresented not only the festive day itself but the University. It appeared that LIFE was seeking leg-art, used only posed pictures, none of the actual extemporaneous proceedings.
LIFE’s photographer, as a matter of fact, did not even appear at the tug of war games which developed into a good-sized mud-battle, nor at the big dance. If the magazine wanted sex, it didn’t have to travel this far south.
In fact, it quite seems that LIFE missed the boat. The article lacked the verve and spice of the event—and terming Carolina men “girl-shy” is a prodigious masterpiece of understatement.

With such criticism, with which I agree, the surprise in this story is the photographer LIFE sent for the occasion: none other then venerable W. Eugene Smith.