Memorabilia Moment – Page 29

After Worth Bagley: ‘No North and no South’

“As if orchestrated from on high to bring white Northerners and white Southerners together, the first soldier killed in the Spanish-American War was a white Southerner, Worth Bagley of North Carolina.

“Newspapers North and South vied with one another to describe the sectional symbolism of Bagley’s death. The New York Tribune announced the common theme: ‘The South furnishes the first sacrifice of this war. There is no North and no South after that…. We are all Worth Bagley’s countrymen.’ ”

— From “Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906” by Edward L. Ayers (1995)

Pictured: badge from 1935 state convention of United Spanish War Veterans.

Miss North Carolina 1933: First but forgotten?

As Jack noted in his comments on Margaret “Mug” Richardson, the archives yield scant information on early Miss North Carolinas.

According to contemporary news accounts, the first Miss North Carolina was crowned at Wrightsville Beach in 1933, and later she is pictured in a lineup of contestants in Atlantic City. But Leola Councilman of Sanford is inexplicably ignored in both Miss North Carolina and Miss America pageant histories.

I had hoped this badge and photo from the collection could be traced to an appearance by Miss Councilman at the 1933 national convention of the American Legion, held in conjunction with the Century of Progress world’s fair. Alas, no, says Donna Hay of Encino, Calif., who has done remarkably detailed research on the often chaotic 1933 competition. The Chicago exposition rolled out “lots of state beauty queens throughout its year of operation [that] had nothing to do with the Miss America pageant.”

So who is that off-brand Miss North Carolina riding regally past the crowds along Chicago’s waterfront? Her name is remembered even less than Leola Councilman’s.

For a lovingly amused look at North Carolina’s state pageant culture, see Frank Deford’s “There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America” (1971).

Extraterrestrial community had ally in NC native

“The Rev. Kirby Hensley, who ordained millions around the world through a mail-order ministry based in Modesto, Calif., died [March 19, 1999] of cancer. He was 87.

“Rev. Hensley’s Universal Life Church was viewed as something of a lark by many who sent him $5 for ministerial licenses, but it was an intensely serious matter for the Internal Revenue Service, [which] spent years challenging his tax exemption.

“His church had no doctrine other than ‘Do that which is right,’ and its patriarch thumbed his nose at organized religion and government tax collectors. His philosophy: ‘I always stand for freedom, food and sex. That’s all there is. It sets people free.’

“Rev. Hensley started his ministry in 1962 in his garage. By the early 1990s it claimed 16 million members, but he continued to live in a modest home and to work as a carpenter.

“In 1968 he ran for president under the label of the Universal Party. One of his issues: civil treatment for visitors from other worlds.

“Rev. Hensley was born July 23, 1911, in Low Gap, N.C., in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He had preached in Southern Baptist churches by the time he was 20. He and his family moved to Stanislaus County [Calif.] in 1959.”

— From the Modesto Bee (March 20, 1999)

The Universal Life Church survived the death of its founder and now claims “Over 20 million ministers ordained worldwide!”

I suspect “Low Gap” is in fact the Lowgap community in Surry County. (Would you have guessed the Gazetteer lists no fewer than 11 topographic Low Gaps? But no High Gaps?)

Sir Walter and His Lewd Friends

The varied portraits of Sir Walter Raleigh has been on our minds recently. Earlier this month we played host to Raleigh-scholar Mark Nichols, co-author of the recently published Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend. Nichol’s talk inspired a few of us to wonder how Raleigh has been depicted over time.

The Elizabethan courtier has shilled for tobacco, sold cars and appeared on book covers. Of course, Raleigh has also served–mostly with distinction–as a subject for a few artists.

Francis Vandeveer Kughler placed Raleigh at the center of one of his murals at the School of Government on the UNC campus. Dean Cornwell, a renowned illustrator of the mid 20th century, also depicted Raleigh. Twice.

As part of the New Deal efforts to create jobs for artists, the federal government commissioned Cornwell to create murals for the U.S. Post Office in Morganton. And, in 1938, the artist completed Sir Walter Raleigh and First Landing on North Carolina Shore. The murals covered the walls over the door to the postmaster’s office. Sadly, Cornwell’s works were destroyed during renovations of the post office in 1963.

Cornwell’s work in Morganton followed on the heels of a project in New York City in 1937. Publisher William Randolph Hearst hired the artist to create murals for the Raleigh Room, a restaurant in the Hearst-financed Warwick Hotel. Cornwell painted scenes of Raleigh receiving his charter from Elizabeth I in 1584 and Raleigh landing at Roanoke Island (clearly a case of artistic license). The murals were not quite complete when Hearst and Cornwell quarreled, most likely over the artist’s pay. Angered, Cornwell changed his paintings to include a man urinating on Elizabeth I, another man urinating on Sir Walter Raleigh and a Native American with his bare backside facing the viewer.

After the dispute was resolved, Cornwell altered one of the objectionable images, but he kept the others as they were. His decision prompted management to keep parts of the murals covered for 40 years. In 2004 the restaurant was remodeled and re-opened under a new name. Murals on 54 gives prominent play to Cornwell’s works. The restaurant’s promotional literature mentions the dispute between Hearst and Cornwell and the recent remodeling. But it’s unclear whether the work in 2004 included giving the murals a G-rating. It’s hard to tell from the photos. Perhaps an NC Miscellany field trip to New York City is in order.

Douglass: ‘The race has lost its ablest advocate’

“Virtually forgotten today, Joseph C. Price was once internationally celebrated…. W. E. B. Du Bois, who as a college student heard Price lecture in Boston’s Tremont Temple, pronounced him ‘the acknowledged orator of his day.’…. After Price’s untimely death at the age of 39, Frederick Douglass lamented that ‘the race has lost its ablest advocate.’…

“In 1881… a speaking tour of Britain… raised the $11,000 necessary to found Zion Wesley College (later Livingstone) in Salisbury, North Carolina. He served as president until his death of Bright’s disease in 1893….

— From “Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900,” edited by Philip S. Foner and Robert J. Branham (1998)

“Du Bois and others felt that it was the leadership vacuum created by Price’s death into which Booker T. Washington moved, and that had he lived the influence and reputation of Price and of Livingstone College would have been as great as or greater than that achieved by Washington and Tuskegee.”

— From “Dictionary of North Carolina Biography,” edited by William S. Powell (Price entry by John Inscoe)

Price was significantly less accommodationist than Washington, as suggested by this incisive observation in 1890: “The Confederacy surrendered its sword at Appomattox, but did not there surrender its convictions.”

Pictured: A pinback button marking Livingstone’s first 25 years. “A Price Builder”? Maybe a donor.

Gov. Goat Gland Brinkley — how’s that sound?

Harry McKown has dusted off (careful, Harry, with that detached cover) a surviving ephemeron from Dr. John Brinkley’s medical practice. Here’s one in the collection from his political career.

After losing both his medical and broadcast licenses, Brinkley conducted significant write-in campaigns for governor of Kansas in 1930, ’32 and ’34. This homemade pinback surrounds his image, snipped from a palm card, with felt petals symbolizing the Sunflower State.

Here also, courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society, are a laugh out loud (excuse me, I meant LOL) campaign piece and two even stranger mementos of his yachting career.

However, Eileen’s efforts to secure Wayne’s release turn out to have been in vain, as Wayne was murdered by Arnold early in the kidnapping. Eileen’s ordeal takes place over the course of a week, while Wayne is only held for a day before he is killed. The time discrepancy is only revealed towards the end of the movie, and until then it seems that Wayne and Eileen’s experiences are occurring simultaneously.

Wrong about TB, right about Chimney Rock

“[Some] TB reformers offered stereotypical explanations for variations in susceptibility. A North Carolina sanatorium superintendent, Lucius Morse, writing in the Journal of the Outdoor Life [February 1919], noted that ‘primitive people’ in their natural state did not have tuberculosis and that once they were exposed to it by contact with Westerners, they often succumbed quickly. He attributed higher rates among American Indians and African Americans to their relative lack of exposure. In contrast, the Jews, ‘a people who for 2,000 years have been city dwellers,’ enjoyed a ‘well-known circumstance of racial immunity.’ ”

— From “The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life” (1998) by Nancy Tomes

Fortunately Lucius Morse’s legacy transcends his speculation about TB. This from chimneyrockpark.com:

“Born in 1871 in Missouri, Dr. Morse was a practicing physician when diagnosed with tuberculosis. Advised to seek a more healthful climate, he made his way to Western North Carolina. He loved to wander, often riding horseback down to Chimney Rock. He paid a man 25 cents to take him by donkey to the top.

Surrounded by panoramic vistas, he conceived his dream here, not only of the Park but also of Lake Lure and the town of the same name.”

Pictured: Recent promotional button

‘I’ll take the heel — um, on second thought….’

The Mickey Mouse watch made a memorable, Macy’s-jamming debut in 1933, but it wasn’t the only Depression-era consumer product calling on the mouse’s clout. Pinback buttons such as this one promoted dozens of bread and milk brands (as well as “undies,” “hose,” radios, peanut butter and dental hygiene). This postcard suggests how kids played the Globe Trotters game.

Hard to imagine Tar Heel Bread holding any appeal beyond North Carolina. Does anyone know who baked it — or maybe even ate it?

R.I.P., Buddy Lewis: Big bat, bad glove, long life

John “Buddy” Lewis, onetime Washington Senators slugger, died last week in his native Gastonia.

At 94 Lewis was the 11th oldest living major league baseball player — and the only one whose career had begun before 1936. (Second-oldest: 98-year-old Clarence “Ace” Parker, Duke’s two-sport star.)

Lewis’s chronic weakness was fielding. Before the Senators exiled him from third base to right field, he committed a jaw-dropping 140 errors over four seasons. But at the plate he was a menace from the get-go — at the age of 24 only Ty Cobb had recorded more career hits.

World War II cost Lewis nearly four seasons of his prime. He flew more than 350 cargo missions “over the hump” in India.

After the war he came back strong — starting in the 1947 All-Star game alongside Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio — but retired after the ’49 season to concentrate on his Gastonia Ford dealership.

He seems also to have been the last remaining player to witness Lou Gehrig’s “luckiest man on the face of the earth” farewell speech in 1939.

Depicted: This cheaply made tab-style button from the collection was a candy or gum premium, circa mid 1930s. It’s probably coincidence that the odd, open-mouthed image of Buddy Lewis suggests he’s desperately searching the sky for a pop fly, but….

And here are his baseball cards from 1939 and 1940 and 1941.

One star (story) among many

This poster (or, at least, a facsimile of it) is one of the many items in our recently opened exhibit “From Di-Phis to Loreleis: A History of Student Organizations at UNC.” And, like many of the items on display in the North Carolina Collection Gallery, there’s an interesting story that goes with it.

The 1897 Commencement Concert marked the debut of “Hail to the Brightest Star,” with lyrics by Glee Club tenor William Starr Myers. The composition would later take its name from the first few lyrics, “Hark the sound,” and, with a few minor changes, become the UNC alma mater. Myers set his lyrics to a popular college tune at the time, “Amici.” The young poet and singer, who would go on to teach political science at Princeton and serve as a speech writer for Herbert Hoover, wrote “Hark the sound of loyal voices. But in the decades that followed those loyal voices became Tar Heel voices. No one is quite sure when that happened. And there’s many a UNC grad who would point out that loyalty to “N.C.U.” (as Myers refers to UNC in a later verse) comes the day an individual first steps foot on campus.

Some have suggested that Myers’ classmate Francis Anthony Gudger wrote one of the verses and that Gudger debuted the song as a soloist. Gudger’s authorship is possible. Myers, Gudger and several others reportedly spent some time at their 50th class reunion in 1947 discussing who penned each verse. But Myers’ diary seems to cast doubt on the song’s debut as a solo. In an entry dated June 2, 1897, Myers wrote “The Glee Club sang a song–‘Hail to the Brightest Star’–the words of which I wrote, the tune being the old college song ‘Amici.’ “

As this first page from the Commencement Concert program reveals (you’ll need to click on the image), the June 2 show featured a mix of musical genres and performance ensembles. The 1897 yearbook, The Hellenian, records that the pairing of the Mandolin and Glee clubs in a concert meant that the Glee Club “could do its part better, while at the same time greater variety and interest were given to the concerts.” In an apparent nod to contemporary music, the Mandolin Club treated concertgoers to a string rendition of John Philip Sousa’s “El Capitan March,” written just a year before, in 1896.

The exhibit “From Di-Phis to Loreleis: A History of Student Organizations at UNC” is on display through May 31 in the North Carolina Collection Gallery.