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Chapel Hill and UNC during World War II
by Charly Mann
The University of North Carolina during World War II was primarily a women's college. Almost all college aged men in the United States were serving in the armed forces. Men were still everywhere on campus, but they were cadets dressed in khaki. Most were enrolled in accelerated Navy military training programs so they could be rapidly deployed to combat. In fact there were so many Navy men in training at the University that most slept four to a room if they could find accommodations in Chapel Hill. Many had to find housing in Durham.
This is the typical distribution of women to men among the University of North Carolina's 1944 graduating class
During 1942 and 1943 the town's businesses could barely handle all these new residents. There were long lines at almost every restaurant, and the cadets in training often fell asleep waiting in line to get food. There was often resentment among Chapel Hill's permanent residents about these Navy men because they were not considered students or townspeople.
Squadrons of airplanes flying over Chapel Hill were normal during World War II. Until 1942, when Airport Road was built, the road to Horace William Airport was very curvy and dangerous to drive.
The women who were Carolina's only real students had no real aspirations of getting an education where they could find a career after graduation. Most wanted nothing more than for the war to end and the men to return to civilian life. Then they expected to get married and raise their children. Over the years, I have talked to more than a dozen women who attended UNC during the war years and all of them said they found tremendous satisfaction being mothers, and that for the most part their lives had been very happy.
These women dreamed that after the war they would live happily ever after as mothers and wives, and most of them did. I wonder how many women today dream the same dream.
It is hard to imagine that there was ever a restaurant over the Carolina Theater, but during the War years every space avilable was used to sell food. Atter the war, the upstairs contained Carrington Smith's, the manager's, office, and the room for the movie projector. The restrooms were also upstairs.
This is a list of the University of North Caroina students killed or missing in action in 1943
Comments:
Roy Crisp
10:42 AM Tue 7/28/2009
I enjoyed reading the article about Chapel Hill Memories in the Chapel Hill News. You are doing a wonderful job preserving the history of our great town.
C Brodie
3:16 PM Mon 7/27/2009
It is hard to imagine Chapel Hill as a military town, and our puny airport as a Navy Flight School.
Bill Adams
10:05 AM Mon 7/27/2009
You really cover a lot of dynamics in this piece about the WAR YEARS. After reflecting a bit on this generation, I realized most of them are no longer with us.
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
I really get a kick out the hairstyles of the women during this period. The beauty parlors in town must have done a thriving business.