October 2012 – Page 2 – NC Miscellany

The UNC-Duke game that was all charity and no football

Here’s a story you’re not likely to hear as the announcers rattle on during Saturday’s UNC-Duke football game. Among the schools’ past 98 meetings on the gridiron, there have been only two games that ended with both teams scoreless – in 1930 and in 1931.

Fans’ (or at least two reporters’) displeasure with the 0-0 finish to the 1930 game resulted in the playing of a second game. But no players turned out. The game was a radio drama of sorts–a 30-minute broadcast aired on WPTF 2 1/2 weeks after the real game was played. The play-by-play was provided by H.K. Carpenter, the radio station’s manager.

The first UNC-Duke meeting in 1930 happened at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill on December 6. Rain had fallen the previous evening and about an hour before kickoff a downpour erupted. In a column in the News and Observer the following day, Carl Goerch, later the publisher of The State magazine, described the day:

Eighteen thousand or more darned fools from all over North Carolina drove varied distances to Chapel Hill todqy in order that they might get their feet and other parts of their anatomy wet while watching a couple of score young men wallow around in the mud in what purported to be a football game. Despite the fact that Duke players presented a much muddier appearance than did Carolina, the score was 0-0. Whereupon the same eighteen thousand or more darned fools went back to their respective home to to tell their respective relatives and friends what a glorious time they had.

Anthony J. McKevlin, sports editor for the News and Observer, wrote that players “turned into mobile mud-casts of humans as they sloshed, slushed, slid, skidded, dove, swam, and whatnot through a layout which made this usually beautiful plant look like Kenan Memorial Swimming Pool.” Duke came the closest to scoring, at one point moving the ball to Carolina’s 2-yard line. But even without crossing the goal line, Duke, in a sense, ended the game victorious. The Blue Devil’s claimed the title of Big Five champions, having won two games and tied two others in matchups with in-state rivals (UNC, Davidson, Wake Forest and N.C. State). UNC and Wake Forest tied for second in the Big Five, with records of 2 wins and 1 loss.

The tie score fueled calls the following day for a rematch between the two teams, with proceeds from ticket sales directed to aid the state’s growing population of unemployed. Proponents of the idea suggested the second game take place the following Saturday or on New Year’s Day. Athletic officials from both schools met and rejected a second game, pointing out that Southern Conference rules prohibited post-season games. Additionally, “the University of North Carolina faculty is committed by a faculty resolution against post-season games and that the sentiment here is that for academic reasons there should be no game after Thanksgiving,” according to an account in the December 9 News and Observer. Exams were slated to begin at UNC on December 18 and “the players and students generally are all set for intensive concentration on their work during the closing days of the fall quarter.” The paper added that President Frank Porter Graham “took full responsibility” for the school’s decision and that the President’s office reported “but few telegrams and telephone calls endorsing the proposed game.”

With university officials’ refusal to hold a second Duke-UNC game, McKevlin and Goerch used the pages of the News and Observer to promote a fantasy matchup–the “Duke-Carolina Charity Football Game–ALL CHARITY and No Football.” Fans were encouraged to send $2 to the News and Observer to attend the December 23rd game, which was scheduled for broadcast on Raleigh’s WPTF Radio. In exchange for their $2 contribution, fans were sent a souvenir ticket (see the image above). Proceeds from ticket sales were turned over to Annie Kizer Bost, the head of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare. Bost, in turn, directed the money to the Salvation Army or another charitable organization in the home county of the ticket buyer.

Goerch and McKevlin wrote playful pieces promoting the fantasy game, describing team workouts and listing ticket buyers. On the first day of ticket sales, buyers included Josephus Daniels, Frank Daniels and Governor O. Max Gardner. Goerch, a resident of Washington, N.C., sought to stir up interest in the eastern part of the state. “I was over in Greenville yesterday and thought maybe I’d hear some talk about the sale of tickets over there,” he wrote. “But it seems that the folks in Pitt County had other things to think about. Two of their banks busted right square in their faces. That seems to eliminate Greenville as a competitor of Washington in the sale of tickets.”

On game day Goerch continued to gin up ticket sales, issuing a call for North Carolina Baptists, of which he counted himself a member, to send in their $2. Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist ministers had contributed to the appeal, he wrote. “I’m still hoping that at least one Baptist will come to the front before the sale of tickets is called off. Any kind of Baptist will do, Missionary, Primitive or Free Will.”

At 6:15 pm on December 23, H.K. Carpenter took to the airwaves, reading a script prepared by McKevlin and Stanley Wohl, a Greensboro resident, football fanatic and one-time member of the North Carolina Securities Commission.

“They’re rushing the start,” Carpenter said. “Captain Nash of Carolina won the toss and chose to receive. Captain Davis of Duke selects the west goal for defending. The Tar Heels are out in orange jerseys, and Duke has the usual white garb. They’re lining up. Kid Brewer with kick off for Duke. There goes the kick-off–it’s deliberately short and travels only to Carolina’s 45…”

And so it went for the next 1/2 hour. At game’s end the score was again tied. This time both teams had made it on the board. The 33-33 finish seemed to leave most everyone happy. Although a final tally of ticket sales does not appear in the News and Observer, on game day McKevlin and Goerch’s efforts had yielded $646 for charity.

McCrory v. Dalton: The Yearbook Photos, Take Two

As the election season heats up, not even a simple post about yearbook photos can avoid accusations of partisanship. In the interest of fair representation for both of our state’s major party gubernatorial candidates, here are both the freshman and senior yearbook photos of Walton Dalton (top) and Pat McCrory (bottom). The placement of the photos was determined by coin toss.

The Dalton photos are from the UNC-Chapel Hill Yackety Yack from 1968 and 1971. The McCrory photos are from the Catawba College Sayakini, from 1975 and 1978.

These and many more yearbooks can be found in the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection.

Artifact of the month: “Jimmy in 76” toboggan

The 2012 presidential election is so complicated: convoluted electoral equations, Super PACs, televised debates with real-time feedback from undecided voters. Remember when a voter could express his or her support with nothing more than a smiling peanut?

Our October Artifact of the Month is a green toboggan supporting Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. The words “Jimmy in 76” are knitted into the cap and a patch bearing a toothy peanut is sewn onto the front.

The hat, which was donated by Patrick S. Wooten and Andrew M. Sugg, originally belonged to James R. Sugg of New Bern, North Carolina. Jim Sugg was the Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party from 1972 to 1976. Mr. Wooten writes, “I think it is safe to say that Jim was a vital part of the effort that resulted in Jimmy Carter winning in North Carolina, and ultimately being sworn in as president.”

Jimmy Carter was a proud son of the South, and this 1976 electoral map shows how strongly geography played into the election. (Note the one rogue elector in Washington state who, despite pledging to vote for Ford, cast a vote for Ronald Reagan.)

Certainly, it would be a mistake to portray 1976 as a simpler time politically, especially given the effects of Watergate on public perceptions of the presidency. All the same, it’s refreshing to look back on a time when something as wholesome and whimsical as the peanut — and something as iconically Southern — could symbolize a presidential candidate’s entire campaign.

We’re pleased and grateful to add this toboggan to our collection of political memorabilia.

‘A native North Carolinian,’ uncharitably viewed

On this day in 1865: Sidney Andrews, Southern correspondent for the Boston Daily Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune during the early days of Reconstruction, sums up his observations of North Carolina:

“Spindling of legs, round of shoulders, sunken of chest, lank of body, stooping of posture, narrow of face, retreating of forehead, thin of nose, small of chin, large of mouth — this is the native North Carolinian as one sees him outside the cities and large towns.

“There is insipidity in his face, indecision in his step, and inefficiency in his whole bearing. His house has two rooms and a loft, and is meanly furnished – one, and possibly two, beds, three or four chairs, half a dozen stools, a cheap pine table, an old spinning-wheel, a water-bucket and drinking gourd, two tin washbasins, half a dozen tin platters, a few cooking utensils, and a dozen odd pieces of crockery. Paint and whitewash and wall-paper and window-curtains are to him needless luxuries.

“His wife is leaner, more round-shouldered, more sunken of chest, and more pinched of face than her husband. He ‘chaws’ and she ‘dips.’ The children of these two are large-eyed, tow-headed urchins, alike ignorant of the decencies and the possibilities of life. In this house there is often neither book nor newspaper; and, what is infinitely worse, no longing for either. The day begins at sunrise and ends at dark; its duties are alike devoid of dignity and mental or moral compensation. The man has a small farm, and once owned six or eight Negroes.

“How the family now lives, the propping hands of the Negroes being taken away, is a mystery, even if one remembers the simple cheapness of mere animal life.”

Hamlet fire records pried from labor department

“A Temple University professor wants to hear what survivors of a 1991 fire at Hamlet’s Imperial Foods plant said to labor department investigators.

“But Bryant Simon’s request to look at witness accounts has been pending at the N.C. Department of Labor for nearly a year and a half.

“ ‘There’s no other way to get this information if you’re a historian,’ Simon said. ‘Hamlet was 21 years ago, and there’s virtually no records available.’

“Simon plans a book about the culture of cheapness that surrounded the plant – the fast-food chicken tenders the workers were making, the low pay they received and the shortcuts taken around labor laws. The voices of the surviving workers that spoke to the N.C. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators are key, Simon said.

“ ‘The forces that are shaping our own lives blow up in Hamlet,’ said Simon, who was attending graduate school in 1991 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘It’s an early indicator of the world we’re living in now that’s build around the idea of cheap.’

“Simon contacted N.C. Policy Watch about his public records impasse. When Policy Watch inquired in early October, the agency said it will begin transcribing the numerous hand-written statements of witnesses.

“Many of the statements need to be transcribed in line with a state law that requires the labor department to mask the identity (and handwriting) of witnesses to workplace safety issues.

“He’s glad to finally be getting the information he needs, but said the experience has left him wondering what encounters other scholars will have.”

— From “NC open records delay stymies historian” in NC Policy Watch

Yearbook Photos of North Carolina Gubernatorial Candidates

Having a hard time deciding who to vote for for Governor? If the various campaign ads and claims have you confused, here’s a much less contentious way of looking at the candidates.

Both Walter Dalton and Pat McCrory show up in the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection available on DigitalNC.org. Dalton was a 1971 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, while McCrory graduated from Catawba College in 1978.

The Dalton photo is from the 1971 Yackety Yack, the McCrory from the 1975 edition of the Sayakini.

‘Mom and dad’s research park’ vs. Meatpacking District

“A half century ago, Research Triangle Park was considered the cutting edge workplace…. But over the last decade, the park’s shine began to wear off….

“Says Bob Geolas, president of the non-profit foundation that runs the park: ‘There is a recognition that young tech workers don’t want to work at mom and dad’s research park…they want a different kind of work-life experience.’

“Geolas may not be able to make Research Triangle Park into the next Meatpacking District — it’ll never have the kind of exposed-brick post-industrial loft spaces now sought after by new businesses and entrepreneurs. But if he does it right, it’ll be much more affordable than New York City, and just urbane enough to make the difference for the kind of people who might found the next Apple or Facebook….

“Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, those companies’ future employees will be paying twice as much to sit in traffic that just gets worse year after year, wondering if they shouldn’t have moved to North Carolina instead.”

— From “Dinosaur Makeover: Can Research Triangle Park Pull Itself Out of the 1950s?” by Lydia DePillis (Oct. 12, The New Republic)

What Jim Thorpe won in Stockholm he lost in Rocky Mount

On this day in 1982: In Lausanne, Switzerland, the International Olympic Committee restores two gold medals won by the late Jim Thorpe.

Thorpe, an American Indian voted the greatest athlete of the first half of the century, won medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 games at Stockholm. A few months later, however, a newspaper revealed that Thorpe had been paid $2 a game to play semipro baseball with the Rocky Mount Railroaders. The practice was common among collegians at the time, but the IOC declared Thorpe a professional, wiped out his records and reclaimed his medals. Almost three decades after his death a campaign led by his descendants persuades the IOC to reverse its decision.

Key question in ’96 election: Who’s ‘middle class’?

The current wrangling over the “99 percent” and the “47 percent” brings to mind a similar issue that helped to oust a North Carolina congressman in 1996. This is from Jack Betts’ blog post on the 2010 death of former Raleigh police chief and U.S. Rep. Fred Heineman:
“In 1995, then-Rep. Heineman was quoted in a newspaper story for remarks that set the tone for 1996. In that 1995 story, he said, ‘When I see a first-class individual who makes $80,000 a year, he’s lower middle class. When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000, that’s middle class. When I see anyone above that, that’s upper middle class.’

“Heineman’s income at the time was about $183,000, including his congressional salary of $133,000 and [Raleigh] police pension of about $50,000. The statement made Heineman look arrogant as well as out of touch in a state where many families were struggling to rise above the poverty level, let alone dream about making $80,000 a year.

“And in the 1996 campaign, [David] Price’s campaign took advantage with a funny but biting ad now known in political lore as ‘Earth to Fred.’ It played on the far-out character of Heineman’s remarks and included such lines as ‘Earth to Fred. Come in Congressman’ and ‘Fred Heineman, he’s out of touch with average families here. Way out.’

“As I wrote at the time 15 years ago, ‘Egad. The chief got elected to Congress barely a year ago and has been in Washington only 10 months. That’s mighty quick to lose touch with so many constituents who make considerably less than Heineman’s salary but who thought they were in the middle class. The fact is that per capita N.C. income is $18,760; median family income is about $28,424. Less than 8 percent of N.C. families had incomes of $75,000 or over. Perhaps 1 percent have incomes as high as the chief.’ ”

An earlier Romney visit to the Carolinas

As Asheville readies for a visit by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, it seems fitting to recall another Romney’s visit to the Carolinas some 35 years ago. George Romney, Mitt’s father, was governor of Michigan when he toured South Carolina’s Williamsburg County on September 27, 1967. The senior Romney was several months shy of announcing his run for the Oval Office. In fact, according to an account of his visit in The Charlotte Observer, he denied a published report that he planned to seek the Republican nomination, telling reporters “I haven’t decided yet.” Observer reporter Jack Bass reported that Romney was seeking to understand why blacks were migrating north. “Everywhere the reply was–lack of jobs,” Bass wrote.

In Williamsburg County, at the time South Carolina’s poorest county, Romney visited with 84-year-old “sharecropper” Joe Chandler (pictured above) and his relatives. Five of Chandler’s seven children had followed a familiar route for blacks of Williamsburg County and had moved north to Rochester, N.Y.

Romney’s visit was captured on film by Don Sturkey, a 36-year-old photographer for the Observer. Sturkey shot eight rolls of film that day as he followed Romney on his tours of Florence-Darlington Technical Education Center, a renovated downtown shopping mall, Williamsburg Memorial Hospital and Baxter Laboratory, the county’s major employer. The images below are the cropped photo as it appeared in the Observer and the uncropped original.

Don Sturkey photograph of George Romney visit with Chandler family — Copyright Don Sturkey, 1967

Don Sturkey photo of George Romney visit with Chandler family - uncropped — Copyright Don Sturkey, 1967