UNC class of 1943 20th reunion

This coming Saturday, May 11th, “University History Lives in Wilson Library” from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. during our annual open house for Reunion Weekend.  For the past few years, materials from special collections relating to the featured classes are on display in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room, including a projection show of images running on continuous loop that I create using scans from negatives in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Photographic Laboratory Collection drawn from the 50th reunion year.  This year’s show honors the class of 1963.
While going through the negatives made during the 1963 commencement weekend, I saw images for other classes that also held their reunions . . . 1953 . . . scan it, nice bold banner . . . 1943 . . . . skip it, ordinary group shot . . . 1938 . . . 1933 . . . wait! . . . 1943?  I pulled out the 1943 negative from its envelope and grabbed a magnifying loupe.  Yep, Hugh and Julie Morton in attendance.

UNC class of 1943 in 1963
Class of 1943 reunion attendees in front of the University Faculty Club, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1 June 1963. This building is now know as Jackson Hall. Hugh and Julia Morton are second and third persons from the left in the back row. Photograph by Don Needham and Barney Young. (UNC Photo Lab Collection, 24311)

Detail of Hugh and Julia Morton
Detail from the above photograph highlighting Hugh and Julia Morton.

The Alumni Review April-May issue (which must have been a few months late) used the photograph with the caption title “Emphasis Was Placed on Low-Pressure, Family Type of Reunion for ’43.”  The event’s focus was “an enjoyable supper on June 1 at the Monogram Club dinning room.”  According the caption, by comparison, the “Pearl Harbor generation” classes of 1941, 1942, and 1943 held a joint reunion in 1962 at the Hope Valley Country Club in Durham.
An interesting biographical comment turned up in the column, “Some Notes from the ’43 Reunion”:

Hugh Morton of Wilmington, realtor, owns and operates Grandfather Mountain, known as “Carolina’s Top Scenic Attraction,” and also does some photographic work. . . .”

Some photographic work, indeed.

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