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UNC Class Of 1959
by Charly Mann
The highest starting salary for UNC graduates in 1959 went to those with an MBA degree. Their average salary was $437 a month. Today (2010) they average $7850 a month. The next best degree to have was in Math, Physics, or Chemistry. Graduates with these degrees had a medium starting salary of $424. Accounting and Finance majors averaged $340 a month, those in Journalism $321, and Radio and Television $306. Graduates in any major who got a job in the insurance industry had starting salaries around $356 a month, while those who found jobs as a sales representative averaged $307 a month.
UNC students in front of Memorial Hall in the fall of 1958
The total enrollment at UNC for the 1958-1959 school year was just under 7300 students. Of those 1100 were freshman. There were seventeen Negros, as blacks were then then called, attending the university and only one was an undergraduate. Two black women and fourteen black men were enrolled in UNC graduate schools.
The UNC German Club sponsored two large dances for UNC students during the Fall 1958 and Spring 1959 semesters. They were held in Woollen Gym where the UNC basketball games were also played. (It is hard to imagine huge dances being held on the floor of the Dean Smith Center today.) Even though the new rock n' roll music was already very popular among young people, the music at these dances was from an era almost two decades earlier called Big Band music. The band shown above the photo of dancers is the Woody Herman Orchestra, and they played at the first German dance of the year.
There was a discrimination problem at UNC in 1959, but it was not a black and white problem, since most blacks were not even allowed to enroll in UNC at that time. The issue was against Jews. Beginning in the early 1950s all applicants to UNC had to state their religious preference in their admission form. The office of Student Affairs then made a list of UNC freshman and placed a letter J by the name of each Jewish student. In 1959 21 of the 24 UNC fraternities did not allow Jewish members. This list was given to all the fraternities so that they would not make the mistake of asking a Jewish student to pledge. Many of the campus fraternities had rules in their bylaws against accepting non-Christian or non-white members.
UNC Seniors Class of 1959
Top row from left to right:
Emily Louise Stafford, Ronald Stalling, Susan Stanford
Margaret Rose Starnes, Larry Adams Stephenson, Harold Edward Stessel
James Timothy Stevens, Catherine Jean Stewart, Julia Ann Stokes
Richard Gabriel Stone Jr., Robert T. Story, Isabella Blanton Strait
Student housing was a problem that year. In the beginning of the fall semester thirty students had to sleep in the basement of Cobb Dorm, and even students on the UNC football team, who usually received preferential housing, did not get permanent rooms until October. The University asked residents of Chapel Hill to rent rooms in their houses to relieve the shortage of space. The most severe problem was for married students who were then housed in Victory Village south of UNC Memorial Hospital. Victory Village only had about 125 units available, and there were at least four times that number of married students. While there were other apartmenst avialable to rent in Chapel Hill , most notably in Glen Lennox, the rent on Victory Village apartments was much less and the units were furnished.
On the left is, the then unknown by most Chapel Hillian’s, 1959 UNC assistant basketball coach Dean Smith. On the right is Danny Lotz who was captain of the 1959 basketball team which was ranked #1 during the season, but lost in the early round of the NCAA championship tournament to an unheralded and much shorter Navy team.
There was a major breakthrough for the sexes at UNC in early 1959. For the first time coeds were allowed to visit the social rooms in most men's dormitories on the weekends.
1959 UNC coed Dede Devere dressed in the fashion for women on campus
Comments:
Jill Griffin
9:44 AM Wed 1/13/2010
Thank you for Chapel Hill Memories. It is almost as good as really being there.
Molly Fields
2:01 PM Tue 1/12/2010
I graduated from UNC in 1964. In those days a Coed dorm was one that was reserved for women.Today there are many dorms at UNC called Coed dorms, and it now means that both women and men live there. I am not sure this is really progress.
Check out our other website:
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
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.
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Your site is unspeakably warming and soul-inspiring. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I am a '74 undergrad and '76 M.A. grad of my beloved UNC. I now live in the Boston area (for the past 23 years) and continue to 'wow' my friends and colleagues here with luscious stories of UNC - her rigor, her soul, and her ethics, be it in academic or in athletic endeavors. I have explained to my northern colleagues numerous times what a Tar Heel is (this after asking what the hell my sweatshirt or baseball cap REALLY means) - and each time makes me prouder and prouder of dear, wonderful UNC - even moreso after all these years. I wish I had something to contribute to your site, other than my thankful words. I don't. So may I thank all the others who have contributed so that I can visit it often, remember her more, and grow older each day with more humility and gratitude in my heart.