Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
Maxine Swalin died at her home on October 8, 2009. Wife of the late Benjamin F. Swalin, long-time Director of the North Carolina Symphony, Maxine worked with her husband to rescue the Symphony from its low point in the late 1930s and build it into a nationally recognized musical institution. Her contributions to the orchestra were widely recognized, and, in 1989, she received the North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Read more about Maxine Swalin here.
We just had a post on festivals, so I thought I would share this interesting image from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives. No, this was not a fall festival (the date on the banner is June 1-6, [1936]), but an interesting and scrumptious event nonetheless.
Here’s what we know about the image: “Motorcade at the Wallace strawberry festival”; the image was made from a nitrate negative borrowed from the NC Office of Archives and History in 1978–their call number is N.53.16.2171. The image comes from the Albert Barden Collection.
The postcard above shows the Knights of Pythias Orphanage in Clayton, NC. It was built by North Carolina architect Henry Bonitz in 1909.
In 1893, Bonitz was part of the first graduating class from the recently opened College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (which would later become North Carolina State University). As such, Bonitz was one of the first trained-in-state professional architects. Bonitz was originally from Goldsboro, NC, but his family later moved to Wilmington. His office was located in Wilmington, and many of his projects were done in and around New Hanover County, but not exclusively.
You can read more about Bonitz’s life and work in his entry in NC Architects and Builders, an online biographical dictionary presented by NC State’s Libraries. Make sure to catch the anecdote about what became of his architectural drawings that were done on linen!
Your mother may have told you to eat your greens, but I bet she never told you to rhyme them. In 1984 the Collard Festival in Ayden, North Carolina, published a book of odes to collards called Leaves of Greens: The Collard Poems. The taste, the color, the texture, and the lore of collards are celebrated in verse. There are poems about cooking collards, eating collards, planting collards, and missing collards. It is not all a love feast, however. One young poet wrote:
Collards is the worst stuff
I ever swallord!
Eating Our Way Through the Carolinas by I. Chow Down.
Found in the stacks: Incredible 1980s restaurant guide featuring recommendations from travelers; also the most unique author name in our catalog: Down, I. Chow.
Restaurant recommendations are organized by region and cover 5 regions throughout North and South Carolina: Western NC, Central NC, Eastern NC, Western SC, and Eastern SC.
Local restaurants from the greater Chapel Hill area that receive mention include Allen’s Barbecue, the Carolina Coffee Shop, and K&W Cafeteria (specifically the one year University Mall).
Sorting through some of the late Noel Yancey’s terrific “As I Recall It” columns in the Spectator weekly, I happened onto this passage in a recap of the Dare Stones episode (Miscellany, Aug. 19):
“In 1973, Brenau [College] sought to give the stones to the state of North Carolina. Dr. H. G. Jones, then director of Archives and History [was asked] ‘if your department would be interested in having them, or if there is a museum in conjunction with the Lost Colony which would find these stones of interest’…
“Jones wrote the superintendent of the Fort Raleigh Historic Site suggesting that the stones would make an interesting exhibit and that both he and William S. Powell felt that ‘even though the stones appear to be apocryphal, they might well be preserved to illustrate the nuances of history.’ However, the Brenau offer fell though…”
Might it be time to reconsider repatriating the Dare Stones? The very dubiousness of their origin continues to intrigue. As Yancey quoted Paul Green: “If it is a fraud, it is a magnificent fraud. Whoever did it, they should build a monument to him.”
I graduated from UNC way back in the last century, but I still remember the commencement ceremony. Frisbees, beach balls, running and sliding on the football field, “Hi Mom” signs, etc. etc. I think that there was a speech (actually, I know that there was—I’m pretty sure that I was the only person paying attention), and I believe we were supposed to stay in line during the procession.
In light of that memory, I thought that the following document from UNC’s commencement in 1859 was very interesting.
Remember: “Canes must not be used in applauding the speakers.”
Don’t forget to read Harry McKown’s most recent contribution to “This Month in North Carolina History.” For October, Harry examines the North Carolina State Fair.
I’ve got my advanced sale tickets, and I’m ready to eat a fried Snickers bar and see some prize winning pigs. How ’bout you?
Answer: About 28,000 people.
The question: How large was the largest crowd ever to see a football game in North Carolina prior to 1948?
Or: How many people are in this photograph?
On 24 November 1927 Kenan Memorial Stadium, built specifically to handle the large crowds that amassed whenever the University of North Carolina Tar Heels faced the University of Virgina Cavaliers in Chapel Hill, was officially dedicated. Among the witnesses that day was the panoramic camera of the Wootten-Moulton Studio.
The Thanksgiving Day / Homecoming Day game, won by UNC 14-13, was not the first to be played in Kenan Memorial Stadium—that debut took place against Davidson College twelve days prior. A photograph in the student yearbook, The Yackety Yack, clearly shows empty seats. The Virginia game, however, with its anticipated larger draw, was selected to be the stadium’s dedication day. The photograph below depicts William Rand Kenan, Jr. and the parties of governors Angus Wilton McLean of North Carolina and Harry F. Byrd of Virginia during the game.
Had you been around in 1927, what was the cost of admission (if you could get a ticket)? Well, The Alumni Review ran advertisements for advance tickets that could be purchased for $2.00, which is about $25.00 today.
Want to read more about Kenan Memorial Stadium? Visit our sister blog, “A View to Hugh” for a post entitled “Majstic Kenan Stadium, Majestic Gem” written by Jack Hilliard for more on Memorial Stadium from the perspective of Hugh Morton’s camera. You may also want to read an article on the history of Kenan Stadium by Lee Pace on the Tar Heel Blue website, which features a post card from the Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Post Cards. For you analog readers, an article about the dedication day game and ceremonies is in the December 1927 issue of The Alumni Review, with the title borrowed for this post.
“Perhaps none but a gifted novelist can tell what death from the 1918 flu looked like, how the stricken person appeared in those last hours of life when the horrors of the illness are fully unfurled. One of the few who attempted this was Thomas Wolfe. [While] a student at the University of North Carolina he got a telegram summoning him home immediately. His brother, Benjamin Harrison Wolfe, was ill with the flu. He tells the thinly fictionalized story in Chapter 13 of ‘Look Homeward, Angel.’
“Wolfe came home to a deathwatch. He went upstairs to the ‘gray, shaded light’ of the room where Ben lay. And he saw, ‘in that moment of searing recognition,’ that his beloved 26-year-old brother was dying…
“Nothing could be done for Ben. No one knew how to treat the flu. There was no medicine to quell the raging fevers, no way to get oxygen into sodden lungs.”
— Condensed from “Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It” by Gina Kolata (2001).
(Is there an award given for the pairing of shortest title and longest subtitle?)