Memorabilia Moment – Page 27

Artifact of the Month: 1931 scholarship certificate

No matter what the economic climate, work-study programs have historically helped students attend UNC. Clyde Morris Roberts of Marshall, North Carolina graduated with a degree in education in 1931 after having worked as a Student Salesman with the Delineator College Scholarship Plan. The Gallery recently received some items belonging to Roberts, including the September Artifact of the Month: a 9.5″ x 5″ leather billfold embossed with the word “Delineator” on the front that contains a certificate noting Roberts’ status as a Student Salesman.

The Delineator was a women’s magazine published by the Butterick Publishing Company between 1873 and 1937. The magazine contained sewing patterns of the latest fashions as well as short stories. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, published a series of short stories known as the Animal Fairy Tales in the Delineator in 1905.

While at UNC, Roberts sold subscriptions of the Delineator to earn his tuition. The 1930-1931 University of North Carolina Catalogue lists the total cost of tuition and fees per quarter for North Carolina residents as $49.66. The above June 1931 issue of the Delineator sold for 10¢. A subscription likely cost less than $1.20. It’s unclear how much Roberts earned from selling a subscription or how the scholarship program worked.

Another item that the Gallery received from Roberts’ time at UNC is an embossed leather 25″ x 12.5″ Carolina pennant.

‘Literary, commercial, normal’ — and barely remembered

Despite its undeniable gift for self-promotion, the Whitsett Institute (1888- ?), a boarding school in Guilford County, didn’t leave a big footprint in the educational terrain. But the collection does have this pinback button and 10 campus postcards, including wish-I-knew-more images of Gov. W. W. Kitchin and a contingent of Cuban students.

Idle thought: Were postcard inscriptions — “Hello! Maud, how are you these fine days. Say why didn’t you let me know Miss Angle was going to be visiting, didn’t know it until after she left…. Guess it is as dry a time around there as usual” — simply predigital tweets?

So how often do you happen onto “a verbal concision that can rise to a high level of eloquence”?

Camp Catawba Remembered

A recent posting on church assemblies in the mountains has led some readers to reflect back on their own summer camp experiences. It also sparked Asheville journalist Jon Elliston to bring Camp Catawba to our attention. Elliston (with the help of illustrator Phil Blank) recently penned a short history of Camp Catawba for the Asheville news weekly, Mountain Xpress. The Blowing Rock camp for boys was started in 1944 by Vera Lachmann, a poet, classics scholar and refugee from Nazi-era Germany. In addition to offering such traditional activities as hiking, swimming, horseback riding and volleyball, ~~Lachmann provided lessons in the classics~~ Lachmann shared her love of the classics with campers. Campers read The Illiad and The Odyssey She retold The Iliad and The Odyssey in her words and guided campers as they staged performances of works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Moliere. Tui St. George Tucker, Lachmann’s companion and a composer, directed the camp’s music program, which included an orchestra, choir and private music lessons.

While rich in culture, Camp Catawba perpetually lacked cash. It limped along financially until 1970 when Lachmann and Tucker hosted their last group of boys. Lachmann died in 1985 and left the camp to Tucker, who moved to the camp full time and continued to compose music. Tucker eventually sold the camp to the National Park Service, but she remained on the property until her death in 2004.

Campers, many of whom hailed from the New York City area, shared their memories of life at Camp Catawba in a 1973 book. We found the pamphlet below in our collections. Lachmann’s forbiddance of comic books (see p. 6) makes us wonder how she’d feel about having her camp memorialized in the comic-book style.

Elliston and the Mountain Xpress have created links to other Camp Catawba-related items from collections elsewhere.

When textiles thrived, so did textile league baseball

Textile league baseball was once huge in the Carolinas, and in 1937 the team representing Asheboro’s Acme-McCrary hosiery mill made it all the way to the national championship tourney in Wichita, Kansas.

Here and here are some colorful recollections of the team — hat tip to randolphhistory.wordpress.com — including photos of not only players but also a surviving (and obviously game-worn) uniform.

Interestingly, the eagle on this pinback button isn’t the one on the uniform sleeve patch, which mimics the one symbolizing FDR’s National Recovery Act.

Yelling ‘Firestarter’ in a crowded theater would be hard

It bombed at the box office, but this 1984 sci-fi thriller marked the beginning of Wilmington’s lively movie industry.

Pictured: Pinback button depicting 9-year-old Drew Barrymore, probably worn by staff in moviehouses or video rental stores.

Andy Barker, Mayor of Love Valley, Rides into Sunset

We just received word that Andy Barker, the founder and long-time mayor of Love Valley, died on Thursday. Love Valley is the Iredell County town designed to look like the Old West, a place that draws thousands of horse lovers each year. A quick search in our stacks didn’t yield any photos of Love Valley (although I’m sure we have some). But we did discover a program from a 1970 outdoor concert held in the town. The headline act was the Allman Brothers and the show is said to have drawn quite a crowd.(A quick update: I was working so quickly that I forgot that Lew Powell recently wrote a post about the Love Valley concert.

PGA championships: once in a N.C. lifetime?

On this day in 1974: Lee Trevino squeezes out a one-stroke victory over Jack Nicklaus to win the PGA title at Tanglewood Country Club in Clemmons.

North Carolina hosted its only other PGA championship in 1936 at Pinehurst No. 2. The next one: Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte in 2017.

All aboard the Popeye bandwagon

By 1930s standards, this pinback button represents quite an ambitious effort at cross-promotion by the Charlotte News and the Carolina Theatre, not to mention Paramount Pictures and King Features.

Popeye first appeared in newspapers in 1929, on screen in 1933, on fried chicken franchises in 1972 (although the chain claimed it had taken its name from Gene Hackman’s character in “The French Connection”).

A ship is launched, a ship is lost

“At 19.58 hours on 30 Jul, 1942, the unescorted Cranford was hit by one torpedo

from U-155 about 250 miles east-southeast of Barbados, as she was proceeding on

a nonevasive course at 8.6 knots because of a lack of fuel and daylight conditions.

“The torpedo struck on the starboard side between #2 and #3 holds. Her cargo

caused the ship to sink bow first within three minutes. The complement of nine

officers, 27 men and 11 armed guards (the ship was armed with one 3in, four .50cal

and two .30cal guns) left the ship in one lifeboat and two rafts, but most men

had to jump overboard. Six officers (among them the master), three crewmen and

two armed guards died.

“U-155 surfaced, questioned the survivors and asked them if they could do anything

for them. Two injured survivors were treated on board the U-boat, and water,

supplies and directions to land were given before U-155 left. Several hours after the

sinking the survivors were picked up by the Spanish steam tanker Castillo Alemenara

and landed at Curaçao on 3 August.”

— From a U.S. Navy account (uboat.net) of the torpedoing of the

S.S. Cranford, a merchant ship carrying chrome ore and cotton to the U.S.

I’m struck by the U-boat crew’s polite treatment of survivors — do

Miscellany readers know if this was typical?

Pictured: Pinback button distributed at launching of S.S. Cranford

Don’t let candidate remain anonymous

This pinback button, now on display at the Charlotte Museum of History, suffers what may be generously described as “condition issues.”

“In the late 1960s,” explains curator Leslie Kesler, “archaeologists excavated large areas on the grounds of the 1774 Hezekiah Alexander House in Mecklenburg County. They dug this button out of the earthen cellar floor — along with other artifacts ranging from shotgun shells to animal teeth to eighteenth-century pottery sherds. We’d love to be able to figure out who this fellow is, to satisfy our curiosity and also give us a clue about which generation of the house’s resident supported his candidacy.”

The words beneath the candidate’s photo seem to be “For Congress” — does anyone recognize him?