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?

Jimmy Carter campaign hat

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.

If you had a cause, DNC vendors had a button

From vendors, a sampling of pinback buttons from the Democratic National Convention. The Occupiers didn’t achieve much success in the streets, but their designer showed considerable talent.

Speaking of unproductive protests, here’s my own.

 

‘Tweet-tweet’ went the mountains’ money machine

On this day in 1957: A coal-burning, narrow-gauge engine that once hauled iron ore from an Avery County mine to a Tennessee smelter returns from retirement as the centerpiece of a Blowing Rock amusement park.

The East Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad began doing business in the late 1800s. Locals dubbed the ET & WNC the “Eat Taters and Wear No Clothes” railroad, then the “Tweetsie,” after the “tweet-tweet” of its whistle.

After competition from trucking shut down the line in 1950, actor Gene Autry purchased Engine No. 12 for an attraction that never materialized. Autry then sold it to entrepreneur Grover Robbins Jr., who laid three miles of track around Roundhouse Mountain and brought the Tweetsie back home in a 50-mile motorcade that shut down whole towns along the way.

Tweetsie Railroad will prove to be a popular and financial success for many decades, helping to finance such real-estate developments as Hound Ears and Beech Mountain.

Pictured: Pinback button and personalized marshal’s badge from Tweetsie Railroad.

 

Beech Mountain’s Yellow Brick Road too seldom traveled

On this day in 1970: The Land of Oz, a theme park based on “The Wizard of Oz,” opens atop Beech Mountain.

The park, imaginatively conceived by Charlotte artist Jack Pentes, proves too low-tech, too small and too remote — and the weather is often dreary. Attendance is 250,000 the first year but only 60,000 in 1980, when the park closes.

A residential development will eventually supplant the abandoned Oz. Artifacts such as the Yellow Brick Road and mechanical pig wind up in Boone’s Appalachian Cultural Museum  — until the museum, too, closes in  2006.

Pictured: Pinback buttons from Land of Oz.

 

Remembering UNC’s War Dead

Postcard of Memorial Hall, UNC-Chapel Hill
Memorial Hall was the University of North Carolina’s first monument to graduates killed in war. Occupied in 1885, the building honored the University’s Civil War dead as well as David Lowry Swain, who served as the University’s president from 1835-1868, and others who served the University. Memorial Hall was the first building erected on campus after the Civil War. It served as an auditorium, chapel and gymnasium. The walls featured marble tablets listing the names of war dead and others who served the University. A total of 287 UNC graduates died during the Civil War.

By the 1920s Memorial Hall’s interior wood trusses had decayed, leading University officials to declare the building unsafe. Its Victorian Gothic architectural style was also considered outdated. Consequently, the building was demolished in 1930 and a new one, in the Colonial Revival style, constructed in its place. The marble tablets were moved to the new building, and both the tablets and the building remain today. There’s more on Memorial Hall and other campus buildings in the North Carolina Collection Gallery’s exhibit A Dialogue Between Old & New: Notable Buildings on the UNC campus.

A total of 716 UNC alumni have died in military actions that span from the War of 1812 through Vietnam, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. Their names are included on The Carolina Alumni Memorial in Memory of Those Lost in Military Service, which sits between Memorial and Phillips halls. The UNC General Alumni Association has created an online database with the names and biographies of the war dead.

North Carolina Symphony celebrates eighty years of making music

The North Carolina Symphony played its first concert at Hill Hall in Chapel Hill on May 14, 1932. Lamar Stringfield conducted 48 musicians hailing from 11 communities throughout the state. The N.C. Symphony garnered state support in 1943 when the N.C. General Assembly passed the “horn tooter” bill, which provided $2000 yearly from 1943-1945.

Artifact of the Month: Autographed Roanoke Colony first day cover

Sir Walter Raleigh first day cover

Look closely at the autographs on this first day cover and you’re sure to recognize some familiar names. Yes, that does say Jesse Helms, right alongside Terry Sanford and Jim Martin. And that’s Rufus Edmisten and Jim Hunt near the top. The scribble in the middle is John Edwards.

The cover, our April Artifact of the Month, was issued in 1984 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first English colony at Roanoke Island. The cachet (the artwork on the envelope) depicts an English ship next to a drawing of Sir Walter Raleigh, who sponsored the Roanoke Colony.

If you look even more closely, you’ll see that the autographs have dates spanning from 1984 to 2007. The donor of this item carried the cover with him to events and had it autographed by prominent North Carolinians when the opportunity arose. Descriptions of those events are included in the label below, which is framed with the cover.

First day cover label

It took more than twenty years to create, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more purely Tar Heel artifact.

Artifact of the Month: 1930s UNC banner

From now through the end of May, visitors to the NCC Gallery can view the exhibit “A Dialogue Between Old and New: Notable Buildings on the UNC Campus.” A quick stroll through the exhibit reveals how much architectural styles have changed since 1793 — but also how much student life has changed in that time:

  • A 1905 photo of nude male students in the campus pool speaks of a time when women’s access to campus facilities was restricted.
  • A 1930s picture of undergrads playing billiards in Graham Memorial Student Union recalls an era when jackets and ties were typical student attire.
  • And in a photo dated 1970, students lounge barefoot in a dorm room under a poster advocating peace — an image so perfectly of its time that it almost looks staged.

One thing that hasn’t changed with the decades is a spirit of UNC pride in the student body. In that spirit, our Artifact of the Month is a Carolina banner that belonged to John DeWitt Foust, Jr. of the class of 1938.

blue Carolina banner

The banner is made of felt with an interlocking “NC” logo in the lower left. A leather seal in the upper right bears the school’s Latin motto “Lux libertas.” The banner likely hung on the wall in Vance Hall dormitory, where Foust lived for his first year or two at UNC.

yearbook page

As this page from the 1938 Yackety Yack shows, John DeWitt Foust — or J.D., as he was called — earned an Engineering degree. He graduated in the last class before the Engineering department was moved to NC State. After graduating, he worked as a mechanical engineer with Newman Machine Company in Greensboro, which later became Newman-Whitney. In 1944 he married Margaret Langston, who later graduated from UNC-Greensboro. They lived in Greensboro until J.D.’s death in 1988.

This banner was donated by J.D. Foust’s son in memory of J.D. and the NCC Gallery is pleased to preserve and share it. We invite other alumni and their relatives to contact the Gallery if they’re seeking a good home for their UNC memorabilia.

Durham put him ‘In a Sentimental Mood’

“We had played a big dance in a tobacco warehouse, and afterwards a friend of mine, an executive in the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company [treasurer Edward Merrick], threw a party for us [at the N.C. Mutual Building in Durham].

“I was playing piano when another one of our friends had some trouble with two chicks. To pacify them, I composed this there and then, with one chick standing on each side of the piano.”

— Duke Ellington, as quoted by Stanley Dance in his liner notes to “The Ellington Era, 1927-1940, Vol. 2″

According to jazzstandards.com, ” ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ enjoyed a wave of popularity in the 1930s…. [It] was the theme song for no less than nine radio shows.”

Pictured: celluloid watch fob with image of N.C. Mutual Building.

 

Winston-Salem’s little ‘puddle jumper’ that could

On this day in 1948: Piedmont Airlines, headquartered in Winston-Salem, inaugurates passenger service with a DC-3 flight from Wilmington to Charlotte to Cincinnati.

Over the next four decades Piedmont will grow from what competitors dismiss as a “puddle jumper” to the nation’s eighth largest airline. In 1987 Piedmont is bought by Washington-based USAir [later US Airways] for $1.6 billion.

Pictured: Pinback button promoting Piedmont’s new flights from Charlotte to London Gatwick in 1987; plastic badge for child passengers; pinback button promoting Piedmont’s in-state Florida shuttle service, circa 1985.