John Blythe – Page 4 – NC Miscellany

Remembering Gov. James E. Holshouser Jr.

Former Gov. James E. Holshouser Jr., the first Republican to be elected the state’s chief executive in the 20th century, died earlier today. Holshouser was 78.

A native of Boone, Holshouser earned his undergraduate degree from Davidson College. After earning a law degree from UNC in 1960, he returned to Watauga County to practice there. In 1962 Holshouser was elected to the N.C. House, where he served four terms. When he won the governorship in 1972, at the age of 38, Holshouser became the nation’s youngest chief executive in the 20th century.

Over the course of his political career, Holshouser found himself the subject of photographer Hugh Morton.

James E. Holhouser Jr. with his father, James E. Holshouser Sr. Probably taken at Grandfather Golf and Country Club, Linville, N.C.

James E. Holshouser with Hugh Morton, possibly at an event tied to James B. Hunt's succession as Governor. — James E. Holshouser with Hugh Morton, possibly at an event tied to James B. Hunt’s succession as Governor.

Holshouser at dedication of N.C. Highway 321 near Boone, also named Holshouser Highway. Then-Governor James G. Martin is second from left.

Our State (magazine) at 80

My first recollection of The State magazine was around Christmas time 1948 when I was visiting my grandmother. She knew that Charlie Justice was my hero, so she had saved for me her copy of the December 4th issue, which featured a Hugh Morton cover picture of Justice following the ‘48 UNC vs. Duke game. I have been a fan of the magazine ever since that day.

At that time, the magazine was already 15 years old, but it was new to me and I didn’t know that there had been a previous cover with a photograph of Justice by Morton about a year before. (I was able to get that earlier issue about 5 years later when I was working on a fund-raising scrap paper drive)…

–from Jack Hilliard’s remembrances of Our State magazine. The magazine is celebrating its 80th year of publishing. Hilliard is a former director for WFMY-TV in Greensboro and a frequent blogger on the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archive’s View to Hugh blog. You can read Hilliard’s full post, complete with many cover images from Our State , here.

UNC’s Alumni Association celebrates 170 years

The Alumni Association of the University was organized on the 31st of May, 1843. The following were present, being the first members:

John D. Hawkins, Franklin, Class of 1801.
John Hill, Wilmington, Class of 1814.
Charles Manly, Raleigh, Class of 1814.
Charles Hinton, Wake County, Class of 1814.
John M. Morehead, Governor, Greensboro, Class of 1817.
William M. Green, Chapel Hill, Class of 1818.
Hugh Waddell, Hillsboro, Class of 1818.
William H. Battle, Chapel Hill, Class of 1820.
William A. Graham, Hillsboro, Class of 1824.
John W. Norwood, Hillsboro, Class of 1824.
J. DeBerniere Hooper, Chapel Hill, Class of 1831.
Cadwallader Jones, Jr., Hillsboro, Class of 1832.
Wm. H. Owen, Chapel Hill, Class of 1833.
Harrison Covington, Richmond County, Class of 1834.
Wm. W. Hooper, Chapel Hill, Class of 1836.
Benjamin I. Howze, Haywood, Class of 1836.
Ralph H. Graves, Chapel Hill, Class of 1836.
Henry K. Nash, Hillsboro, Class of 1836.
Pride Jones, Hillsboro, Class of 1837.
Alpheus Jones, Wake County, Class of 1839.
Thomas D. Meares, Wilmington, Class of 1839.
William S. Green, Danville, Va., Class of 1840.
Benjamin F. Atkins, Cumberland County, Class of 1841.
Robert R. Bridgers, Tarboro, Class of 1841.
John W. Brodnax, Rockingham County, Class of 1841.
Wm. J. Clarke, Raleigh, Class of 1841.
John D. Hawkins, Jr., Mississippi, Class of 1841.
Charles Phillips, Chapel Hill, Class of 1841.
Samuel F. Phillips, Chapel Hill, Class of 1841.
Richard J. Ashe, Hillsboro, Class of 1842.
Stephen S. Green, Chapel Hill, Class of 1842.

Governor Morehead was called to the chair. Messrs. Wm. A. Graham, John D. Hawkins, John Hill, Charles Manly, Wm. M. Green and William H. Battle were appointed a committee to report a constitution to the meeting in 1844 at Commencement. Thomas D. Meares was appointed Secretary.

From Kemp Plummer Battle’s History of the University of North Carolina. Volume I: From its Beginning to the Death of President Swain, 1789-1868. The minutes from that meeting and those from 1844, when the Alumni Association adopted a preamble and charter, are included in a bound volume among the Alumni Association records in University Archives here at Wilson. Take a look at these quick snapshots.

Celebrating the Day with the Mecklenburg March

President Taft’s visit to Charlotte on May 20, 1909 not only spawned the term “Taft rain,” it also served as occasion for debut of the “Mecklenburg March.” Our colleagues at the Charlotte & Mecklenburg public library have a 2009 recording of the march online (though it doesn’t seem to working right now). No doubt many Mecklenburgers (especially those whose roots lie near the spring where the ~~supposed~~ signers met) echo the sentiments found in the march’s only lyrics. This copy of the sheet music is from the papers of a proud Mecklenburger and staunch believer in the Meck Dec. We’re still looking for a little more information on Janie Alexander Patterson. We know that she was a “Miss” when she wrote this composition. And that she later became Janie Alexander Patterson Wagoner.

Winston-Salem Celebrates 100 Years of the Hyphen

Twin City residents this past weekend celebrated the 100th anniversary of the consolidation of Winston and Salem into one municipality. The joining of the two towns in 1913 was a long time in the making. As Frank Tursi writes in Winston-Salem: A History, in 1879 the town boards in Winston and Salem appointed a special committee to study consolidation. That group recommended uniting the towns as the City of Salem. Both town boards approved the charter and it was ratified by the General Assembly. Salem residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of consolidation. But people in Winston voted against consolidation.

When the vote was taken, Salem was the larger and more influential of the two towns. It had a long and storied history and have provided land and much of the leadership for Winston’s founding. But the days when it could control the direction its stepchild took were coming to a close. As it grew and honed its industrial muscle, Winston began to overshadow its parent. It took control of Salem’s destiny.

During the 1890s postal authorities sought to close the Salem post office and consolidate it with the Winston branch, under the name Winston. In 1891, when such a move was proposed, Salem’s mayor Henry E. Fries pleaded his town’s case in Washington, D.C. and managed to save the post office. When the postal service pushed again to close the Salem branch office in 1899, Fries managed only to wrest from authorities assurance that the consolidated branch would operate under the name Winston-Salem. According to Tursi, many had referred to the two towns in that manner for some time. “But the hyphen took on permanence when it started appearing in postmarks,” he writes.

In December 1912 Winston business and civic leaders decided to push again for consolidation. They prepared a merger plan and submitted to the General Assembly a petition with 1,705 signatures in support of the idea. State legislators agreed to the plan on January 27, 1913 and a vote on merger was scheduled for the two towns on March 18. Consolidation proponents realized that they needed to build support for their plan in Salem. They appointed Fred Fogle, the 28-year-old mayor of Salem, as the leader of their efforts in that community.

Fogle found his job difficult. He spent his time countering rumors, unsigned circulars and insinuations made against him and the leaders of Winston. Some suggested that Winston would have more representatives in town government. Proponents responded that representation would be apportioned equally based on population. Salem would become a ward and have two alderman for its 5,700 residents. Winston would be divided into three wards and have six alderman for its 17,000 population.

Recalling that period in an article published on the 50th anniversary of consolidation, Twin City Sentinel City Editor Bill East wrote:

Salemites raised the question of whether hog-raising would be permitted in the new town. Knowing that it was risking alienating many who raised them, Winston admitted frankly it would not.

Moravians hit hard at the liquor question. They said that the merger of the towns would be the forerunner of making a ‘liquor town’ out of Salem. Winston replied that it had no intention of doing so and that statewide laws covered the liquor question adequately….

Circulars were passed around saying that the community’s old Moravian traditions would be abandoned and that Winstonites would ‘contaminate the moral welfare of the people to the point of wreckage….’

At one point near the climax, the campaign got so heated that a report circulated in Salem that the new city had plans to ‘dig up’ Salem Cemetery after consolidation.

This struck Moravians on one of their tender points—their respect for the dead. Salem town officials, who favored the consolidation, found it necessary to officially deny the report. ‘Someone evidently had a nightmare,’ the denial said.

Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, compared the consolidation campaign to a courtship and impending wedding.

The bride-to-be, Miss Salem, feels that in learning, in the love of music and the arts, she is the superior of the groom, Mr. Winston.

Secretly the groom admits it, but the bride is proud of her intended’s splendid spirit…And now shortly there is to be a vote to determine whether the wedding is to take place and instead of two sets of officers, Winston-Salem shall be married for better or for worse.

The bride-to-be had stipulated that she will not give up her maiden name and lose her identity—if there is to be a wedding after all, the English hyphenated custom must prevail…after marriage the union must be called Mr. and Mrs. Winston-Salem.

On March 18, 800 Winston residents voted for consolidation and 260 voted against it. In Salem the margin was closer, with 385 in favor and 224 opposed.

Though voters had approved consolidation, the two towns didn’t officially join together until May. On May 6, Oscar B. Eaton, who had served as mayor of Winston from 1901-1911, was elected mayor of Winston-Salem. And on May 12 Eaton and eight alderman gathered in Town Hall on the site of the present day Reynolds Building to take the oath of office. “Mr. Winston” and “Miss Salem” were now officially a hyphenated union.

Carol Folt will join other important women on the Hill

Portrait of Katherine Kennedy Carmichael — Katherine Kennedy Carmichael served as Dean of Women from 1946-1972.

The expected naming of Carol Folt as the next chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill will mark the first time in the university’s 224-year history that a woman has held the top post. But Folt follows on the heels (pardon the pun) of several other women who have held significant positions with the University. Katherine “Kitty” Carmichael, pictured above, served as Dean of Women until her office was combined with Student Affairs in 1972. During Carmichael’s tenure the percentage of females in the student body increased from 16 percent to 37 percent. Author and UNC English professor recalled Carmichael’s strong example for women during the dedication of a dormitory named for the former women’s dean in 1987, noting that Carmichael was fond of saying “If God were satisfied with Adam, why did he make Eve so different?”

Women were first admitted to UNC as graduate students in 1897. In 1917, Clara S. Lingle was appointed Adviser to Women. She was succeeded in 1919 by Inez Koonce Stacy, who held the office until 1946 and during whose tenure (1942) the title of the office became Dean of Women. Stacy was married to Marvin Hendrix Stacy, who was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at UNC and served as interim president of the University upon the death of Edward Kidder Graham during the flu epidemic of 1918 (President Stacy, himself, died from the flu a year later). Inez Stacy led efforts to build the first housing for women. Spencer Dormitory opened in 1925. Three other dorms for women were built during Stacy’s tenure—Kenan, McIver and Alderman. Stacy’s job title was changed to Dean of Women in 1941, one year before her retirement.

Other female leaders at UNC have included Sallie B. Marks, appointed a professor of elementary education in 1927 and the first woman to join the regular faculty; Mary Turner Lane, who founded the Women’s Studies program; and Gillian T. Cell, the first woman to be appointed to a tenure-track position in the UNC history department and, later, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Historian Pamela Dean wrote about these women and more inWomen on the Hill, a pamphlet distributed at the dedication of Carmichael Dorm.

Connecticut lays claims to N.C. first

License plates in North Carolina may be forced to undergo redesign if new research gains ground suggesting that the Wright Brothers weren’t the first in flight. An article published last week in Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft advances a claim that Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant to Connecticut, made the first powered and controlled flight on August 14, 1901, two years prior to Orville Wright’s taking to the air at Kitty Hawk. According to Jane’s, Whitehead built an aircraft with two acetylene-fueled engines. The Condor, as his plane was named, had a 10 horsepower motor for the wheels and a 20 horsepower engine as the main source of forward flight. (unfortunately the full article is behind a paywall):

In the early hours of 14 August 1901, the Condor propelled itself along the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Whitehead, his staff and an invited guest in attendance. In the still air of dawn, the Condor’s wings were unfolded and it took off from open land at Fairfield, 15 miles from the city, and performed two demonstration sorties. The second was estimated as having covered 1 1/2 miles at a height of 50 feet, during which slight turns in both directions were demonstrated.

Historians have long known about an account of Whitehead’s flight in the Bridgeport Herald. But photographic evidence didn’t exist until recently, when a Bavarian amateur historian discovered a photograph of a 1906 exhibition on flight that included a picture of what appears to be Whitehead’s Condor in flight.

A top official at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum says he’ll wait for further evidence before changing his–and the institution’s–stance that Orville and Wilbur Wright are responsible for the first powered flight.

Perhaps Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch is showing the true skills of a politician. He told NPR that Connecticut’s license plate could read “Firster in Flight.” That seems to leave room for “First in Flight” to remain on N.C. plates.

Remembering NC Wildflower Expert C. Ritchie Bell

C. Ritchie Bell at N.C. Botanical Gardens in 1978. Photo by Hugh Morton.

The beauty and abundance of the native flowers of eastern America was impressive even to the earliest explorers and colonists, and the early reports and letters sent back to Europe often made reference to the variety of plants in the New World and to their uses. Although land was cleared for crops, trees were cut for fuel and shelter, and many plants were gathered by the settlers for food, medicine, and dye, with such vast lands and so few inhabitants, there was probably little change in the native flora for more than two centuries after colonization began…..During the past century, however, the tremendous increase in the population and the more rapid and extensive clearing of the forests and other changes of the surface of the earth by man has had a profound effect on our native vegetation. This is especially true in the case of many of the more showy species collectively known as “Wild Flowers.” Because of their delicately balanced adaptation to very specific natural environments, many wild flowers cannot grow in habitats that have been altered or disturbed, nor can they compete with the plants of the more weedy introduced species that rapidly invade the vast areas of land opened or altered by the machines of man for roads, farms, dwellings, and industrial complexes. Thus the balance continues to shift so that today many of our most attractive native plants are near extinction except within the boundaries of parks, natural areas, and gardens set aside for preservation of interesting natural habitats and their associated plant and animal species….

If given adequate light, water, and soil conditions, many of the native plants that once formed the “Natural Gardens of North Carolina” are equally as colorful and interesting, or even more so, than related horticultural varieties. The purpose of this book is to make easier the recognition of some of these flowers and thereby to stimulate a greater interest in this beautiful natural resource and accent the need for its preservation.

—from Wild Flowers of North Carolina by William S. Justice and C. Ritchie Bell. The book, first published in 1968, has served for more than four decades as one of the standard reference guides for those walking the woods of the Tar Heel state. Bell, who was instrumental in the founding of the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill and its first director, died on March 6, 2013. His longtime colleagues have assembled a web page recognizing his contributions to the understanding of North Carolina’s native flora.

The Tar Heel celebrates its 120th birthday

The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper printed its first issue on February 23, 1893. The Tar Heel‘s editors explained that the paper, issued every Thursday morning, would include “a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” The paper vowed to cover UNC sports, “all society news, personals and every subject of interest to both the students and citizens of the village.” The Tar Heel was published by the University Athletic Association. Charles Baskerville, a Mississippi native and star student at UNC, served as both head of the Athletic Association and editor-in-chief of the paper. The Tar Heel was available by subscription, charging $1.50 per session.

Baskerville and his five sub-editors seemed to realize the weightiness of their endeavor, writing:

This new venture is necessarily entered upon by the present board with no little trepidation, nevertheless with a determination, to make a success which can only be done through the indulgence and assistance of our faculty and fellow-students. Therefore we invite honest criticism and any aid in the advancement of this new project will be thoroughly appreciated.

Indeed, many a fellow student has contributed to the success and longevity of this noted form of Tar Heel Ink. Happy birthday and many thanks to each and every one of them.

The State Legislative Building Opened 50 Years Ago Today

“In late 1959, Thomas J. White, a former state representative of North Carolina and a powerful figure in the state’s political circles, was appointed chairman of the commission to build the new North Carolina State Legislative Building. The commission had already heard from a number of North Carolina architects who had expressed a strong interest in the project. Ralph B. Reeves, Jr., of Holloway & Reeves in Raleigh, one of the larger firms in the southeast at the time and one of eleven firms that made presentations to the commission for the project, had sought [Edward Durell] Stone out as a design consultant and associated architect. Stone traveled to Raleigh to meet the members of the commission in late October, and the Stone and Holloway & Reeves firms were awarded the contract for the building in early December. Almost immediately, there were objections to Stone’s selection.

Henry L. Kamphoefner, who was dean of the North Carolina State College School of Design (later the north Carolina State University College of Design), wrote in an article for the Raleigh News & Observer in early January 1960:

If the award had to leave North Carolina, why did not the building commission appoint one of the half dozen or more great men of architecture. Why not France’s Le Corbusier? Or why not Mies van der Rohe of Chicago? Or why not Walter Gropius of Boston? Or why not Richard Neutra of Los Angeles?

True, Edward Stone is a good architect, but in critical circles he does not rank with the world’s greatest men who are practicing architecture today. He appears as the man who is getting the greatest amount of current publicity because he did a building very much in the world news, the American Pavilion at the Brussels Fair, and a fine embassy for the United States at New Delhi, where he introduced an indigenous device, the grille. Since the New Delhi embassy, he has parlayed the grille into a gimmick for indiscriminate use in California, South Carolina, or where have you.

Kamphoefner’s view of ‘great men’ clearly meant ‘modern men,’ or more precisely, ‘European modern men.’ Overlaying this critique was the fact that Stone and Kamphoefner had a history of antagonism dating back many years. At a cocktail party given by Douglas Haskell, early in his tenure as editor of Architectural Forum (from 1949 to 1964), Stone, likely intoxicated, had insulted Kamphoefner by loudly announcing upon entering the room, ‘There are three things that are overrated, home cooking, home *^%!$#!, and Henry Kamphoefner.’ Haskel had added wryly, ‘Well Henry, at least you’re in good company.’ Outwardly, until Stone’s later work, Kamphoefner and Stone would have been in alignment: both of them were admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, and both were adherents of modernism. What had turned them against one another is unclear. The News & Observer article was not the last time that Kamphoefner would publicly attack Stone.”

From Edward Durell Stone: A son’s untold story of a legendary architect by Hicks Stone. Legislators moved into the Stone-designed building on Jones Street on February 6, 1963.

Working with Holloway & Reeves, Stone and his firm also designed the East Building of the North Carolina Museum of Art. The East Building opened in 1983 and was Stone’s last work before his death. The building underwent major transformation as part of a three-year project by the N.C. Museum of Art in the mid-2000s. Stone and his firm also served as architects for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and National Geographic Building in Washington, D.C. and the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art in New York City.

In Edward Durell Stone, Hicks Stone quotes his father’s colleague Ernie Jacks describing the scheme behind the Legislative Building design.

“For the State House, we produced what I still believe was a beautiful piece of intricate planning—one of those examples which the Boss referred to as an ‘inevitable plan.’ We couldn’t imagine it being arranged any other way. All the innumerable spaces seemed to fit together perfectly, both two- and three-dimensionality…I always have thought of it as an apt response to those who criticized our symmetrical designs as being ‘forced,’ and also as an illustration of Nietzche’s observation,’To welcome difficulty then to overlay it with the appearance of simplicity—that is a work of art.”