by Charly Mann

From 1944 to 1972 a true celebrity lived in Chapel Hill at 315 Rosemary Street in perhaps the most elegant house in town . Her name was Betty Smith and she was one of the most acclaimed novelists of the twentieth century. She came to Chapel Hill in 1936 as a poor struggling playwright and author with two daughters to support. She first lived with her two children in a one room apartment on Hillsborough Street. They were so destitute that she once tried to get a $3 loan from the Bank of Chapel Hill so they would not starve. (The bank did not lend her the money.)

The Betty Smith House of Chapel Hill in its prime

When Smith first arrived in Chapel Hill in 1936 she was 39 had endured a hard and harsh life growing up in poverty in a cold tenement building in Brooklyn and an unhappy marriage. The one thing that had sustained her was her love for words and writing. She recalled that that one of the first words she learned was cat and had immediately associated the word with a real moving creature. From a very early age she spent almost all her free time writing, and would even copy entire books she loved word for word. At 12 she sent a poem to a newspaper that was published. When she was 14 she began writing letters to herself and enjoyed reading them as much as writing them. Smith loved Chapel Hill from the moment set foot in town. As she and her daughter were walking from the bus station to their rooming house her daughter asker her "Mama, how long are we going to stay here?" and she replied "Forever."

Betty Smith in Chapel Hill 1955 at her typewriter. She wrote an average of ten pages for her novels every day.

Betty Smith's first novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published in August of 1943 to almost instant critical and popular acclaim. Like all three of her subsequent books it is highly autobiographical.  The main character Francie Nolan is based on Smith as a young girl. Francie loves to read and write, but lives a lonely life and feels like a nearby tree that is ready to bloom and enjoy the world. Francie sustains herself through her strength and dreams, and has been an inspiration to young girls and women for seven decades.

Entry to Betty Smith house at 315 Rosemary Street Chapel Hill. The double doors are original to the house.

Soon after moving to Chapel Hill Betty Smith and a friend walked by a magnificent house on Rosemary Street and Betty said, "I wonder what you have to do to own a house like that?" And her friend replied, "Be born there." Betty Smith said to her companion, "One day I'll own that house." Less than a year after the publication of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Smith became wealthy. The movie rights alone to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from Twentieth-Century Fox gave her $55,000. On September 1st, 1944 she bought the house she admired for $15,000. In those days it was called the Mangum Mansion, and when Smith moved in it was in poor condition. It was originally owned by one of the first professors of the University and was built in 1829, making it one of the oldest houses in Chapel Hill.

The parlor of the Betty Smith in Chapel Hill.

She totally renovated the house for a cost of $37,000 from a Southern Victorian to the Williamsburg that it is today. She had the front porch removed from the house, the outside of the first floor bricked, and added the stone walls around the property. She moved into the house in April of 1945 and lived there until she died in 1972. Smith always loved trees and it was the array of shade trees that especially enticed her to want the house. In August 1943 she was given a 14 inch tree in a small flowerpot which she called her pet tree. The first thing she did after moving in was plant that tree in her backyard. By 1955 that tree had reached the height of the roof of her two story house. I spent my earliest years less than a block from her house and recall the chinaberry, elms, oaks, azaleas, and crepe myrtles around her house, as well as a beautiful flagstone walk around a garden that was meticulously maintained. I remember that in the 1950s she had at least one cat, and that the yard always seemed to have lots of squirrels and birds. In later years she had an English sheepdog called Noname.

Betty Smith in 1966 tending to her garden under the trees she so loved.

Smith was a very private person who walked with her head down, but the success of her novel and the movie based on it made her house a tourist attraction and Smith celebrity. For the rest of her life every move she made was watched, and she received hundreds of fan letters and requests for appearances every week. In 1966 Chapel Hill honored its reluctant celebrity with the premiere of Joy in the Morning starring Richard Chamberlain and Julie Harris. Chapel Hill mayor Sandy McClamroch declared the day Betty Smith Day and Franklin Street was renamed Betty Smith Boulevard. The profits for the premiere were given to the Chapel Hill Public Library.

Dining Room of the Betty Smith house in Chapel Hill.

Betty Smith for the first forty-seven years of her life lived hand to mouth, and the last twenty eight was very wealthy. I was in her house only once, and remember it being beautifully furnished. It was filled with mementoes including editions of her books in many languages, her original manuscripts, boxes with clippings of reviews of her books, and lots of trays of unopened letters which she said she always tried to answer. On the mantle was a gold trophy that she said was given to her by one the Presidents, but she could not remember which one. My most indelible memory of Betty Smith is seeing her driving around town in her black Cadillac convertible. It was the only time I ever saw her smile.

Front entry to Betty Smith House 1969.

The Chapel Hill Preservation Society was founded to prevent Betty Smith's house from being used for commercial development. The house and garden had deteriorated during the last five years of Betty Smith's life.They renovated the house and cleaned up the garden, and  sold it as a private residence in 1973.

Front entry to Betty Smith house in Chapel Hill 2010.

I heard Betty Smith speak once to aspiring writers when I was very young at the Methodist Church. I recall one of her insights into writing characters was to remember that no person is born bad, but that evil grows inside some people for various reasons. She said the same is true with intolerance, saying no one is born intolerant, but grows into this over time because of the prejudices of the community one lives in. Her greatest fear for civilization was that it would not be destroyed by the atom bomb, as most people felt then, but by intolerance. 

Ric Carter was Chapel Hill's best counterculture photographer in the 1970s. He came to Chapel Hill from Gates County in 1967 as a 17 year old freshman, and got his first serious camera in 1969, a Yaschica Mat twin-lens reflex. As a student at UNC he learned to develop his own film, and was soon combining his love for music with his passion for photography to document the bands and concerts in the area.

The Byrds at Carmichael Auditorium, UNC Chapel Hill 1971.
Left to right: Clarence White, Roger McGuinn, Gene Parsons, and Skip Battin

Ric Carter, The Chapel Hill photographer whose images have kept our musical memories alive

Frank Zappa fronting his Petit Wazoo Band in Charlotte, November 1972

Carter was also a writer and photographer for the legendary Protean Radish, a newspaper associated with the Southern Student Organizing Committee. Ric has continued his career in photography and journalism throughout his life. He was the photography editor for the Washington Daily News where he was part of the 1990 Community Service Pulitzer Prize winning staff. He is currently the editor of The North Carolina Mason, journal of the Freemasons fraternity in North Carolina.

The J. Giles Band at UNC's Jubilee 1971. Peter Wolf vocals and Danny Klein bass.

In 1971 Duke University had Joe College weekend about the same time UNC had Jubilee. This is Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. Other performers that year were The Beach Boys, Nils Lofgrin with Grin, and The New Riders of the Purple Sage 

 
Tom Rush at UNC's 1971 Jubilee

What is special about Carter's photography is his vision. If you look at his photographs in this article and look at a more extensive collection at http://cartersxrd.net/Site/Performances/Performances.html you will see his a amazing eye for composition. He knows how to emphasize his subject and eliminate anything that is not important to the picture. There are no distractions in his pictures only an image that captures the artist in performance at that moment.

These are photos of members of South Wing performing at Carmichael Auditorium in Chapel Hill on August 8, 1972. South Wing featured Ed Ibarguen and Scott Madry, and many consider them Chapel Hill's best band of the 1970s. South Wing may have gotten their name from the psychiatric ward at UNC Memorial Hospital where many young Chapel Hillians were involuntarily commited because of drugs, depression, and anti-social behavior.

The Blazers of Chapel Hill 1971
Left to right: Sherman Tate, Joey Earth, Ronny Taylor, and Rodney Underwood

Duane Allman shortly before he died, with the Allman Brothers at UNC's Chapel Hill Jubilee in May 1971

by Charly Mann

Today, May 26 2010, Art Linkletter, one of the kindest and most gracious individuals I ever met died at 97. In 1957, at the age of seven, I was fortunate enough to be one of the children he talked to on his very popular CBS television show, Art Linkletter's House Party.

I remember the interview process to be selected to appear on the show was quite a challenge. It seemed to me they were looking for kids who were either quite charming or very funny. I did not think I was charming, but thought I could ad-lib funny responses to questions that would make people laugh. A woman interviewed me for an hour asking me several dozen off the wall questions that I knew were similar to what Art Linkletter would ask the kids on his program. I tried my best to come up with answers that an adult audience would find amusing, and was selected to be one of the children on his show on July 19, 1957.

My invitation to appear on Art Linkletter's CBS televsion show HOUSE PARTY on July 19, 1957

On the day of the show I went to make-up, and then was led out into a bright studio in the CBS building in downtown Los Angles next to the Farmer's Market. I had no hint of what Mr. Linkletter might ask me, but knew I better be able to think quickly of an amusing response. You can listen to my conversation with Art Linkletter here to see if you think I did a good job. Years later Linkletter repackaged many of what he considered the funniest responses to his questions in a television program called Kid's Say The Darndest Things in which my appearance was featured. I was most happy getting to say I was from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and then latter finding out that most of my friends had actually seen me on national television.

Charly Mann and a "Police Officer" in Disneyland several hours after he finished appearing on the Art Linkletter House Party television program

Art Linkletter was one of the last surviving adults I looked up to when I was young, and now he is gone. There was so much to admire in him. He never swore or said anything negative about anyone in public. Even in the segregated 1950s, he had black children on his show, and he knew how to make entertaining television that was not only wholesome, but could be enjoyed by everyone. The world has lost a true gentleman.

One funny part of this story was that after the show I was loaded up with gifts for being a guest on the program. My mother parked in the reserved loading area for CBS personnel as I made several trips back and forth to carry items out to her car. Behind her in a Mercedes convertible was a very upset Liberace who was waiting to unload some items for the taping of his television show later that day. By my third trip Liberace had began honking his horn at my mother and his face had turned red. Years later I would learn that was the start of very bad day for him. He was about to give a deposition in his $25 million libel suit against Confidential magazine saying he was a homosexual, and that evening, two men broke into his home in Sherman Oaks and beat his mother. 

In 1957 no one in the entertainment business would admit to being gay, and the fact that Liberace was "outed" could have ended his career if it proved to be true. Liberace actually won his lawsuit in 1958 proving he was not a homosexual, even though today it is widely known that he was.

by Charly Mann

While Chapel Hill is proud of the athletic glory of past UNC sporting teams, famed musicians who once called the town home, and its magnificent setting and beauty, it is the large number of great minds that have inhabited the town that make it so extraordinary. While these individuals have not received the wide spread adulation and celebrity status of other residents, Chapel Hill Memories will try to rectify this oversight by occasionally profiling some of these people.

Growing up in Chapel Hill I was privileged to meet and get to know a wide array of distinguished professors, university administrators, writers and playwrights. One of these individuals was the greatly admired UNC professor of philosophy Maynard Adams. He and his family lived near me when I was young, and he first attracted my attention by hand digging with a pick ax, shovel, and wheel barrel a large bomb shelter under his house on Old Mill Road in 1962. As I grew older and got to read some of his books, as well as letters he would often write to my father, I gained an appreciation this man's intellect.

Maynard Adams in 1962, the year he built a  bomb shelter under his house

The following was written by Maynard Adams in 1996 (Adams lived from 1919 to 2003) 

Death simply terminates one's life, but death on the horizon takes on meaning; it forces one to try to wrap up one's life and bring it to a fuller and richer completion. My pending death, although frightening, especially when first confronted, has become an important part of my life. It keeps my life in clearer focus. Every day becomes more precious and I hope more fully lived. My consciousness has been raised and my love deepened; the world has taken on a new splendor. While all of this makes life more attractive and whets my appetite for more time, it makes death a source of meaning that redeems it somewhat.

Of course the devil is in the dying, and the wrenching and tearing of the lives closely woven with one's own.  There are blessings to be found even in the dying and the loss of a loved one, if we are open to them.

The following is a condensed version of a 13 page typed memoir Maynard Adams wrote in 1994 that I found stuck in one of my files.

I grew up on a family farm in Halifax County in south/central Virginia. My early life revolved around the farm, the local Baptist church, and the school. Both the church and the school drew me like magnets, for to me they were gateways to a higher reality and a wider world. My family and most of my neighbors had only a limited education, but they were religious people and had a profound respect for education. We had daily family Bible reading and prayer in my home. My father always said a good education was something you would never lose and nobody could take it away from you. By the time I was twelve years old I was committed to being a Baptist minister and planned to attend the University of Richmond as a ministerial student upon graduation from high school.

Even in high school I began to feel a tension between the simple orthodox religion of my home and church and my studies in school. By the end of my first year at the University of Richmond, my intellectual cramps were severe. I turned to philosophy in trying find a way to deal with them. In the fall of my sophomore year I wrote my mother that I was engrossed with certain philosophy books that I had to force myself to do the assignments in my courses and to go to bed at night. At that point I had not taken a philosophy course, but I went on to major in philosophy with the hope of resolving the tension between my religion and the culture dominant in my education. During this time, although deeply troubled, I worked in several churches in the Richmond area. In fact, I was pastor of two churches during my last two years of college. I expected to find a solution to my intellectual problems that would allow me to continue as a minister.

Maynard Adams in 1951 shortly after starting his career as a philosophy professor at the University of North Carolina 

Upon graduating from Richmond I chose Colgate Rochester Divinity School because I understood that it offered an approach that would reconcile Christianity and modern ways of thought; and I began that summer a M.A. program in philosophy and literature at the University of Richmond, which I hoped to complete in summer sessions while enrolled at Rochester. At Rochester I took to my studies eagerly, doing far more work in each course than was expected. The longest paper I wrote was over 500 pages in a course, and most of my papers ranged from 50 to 100 pages. I did this amount of work because of the hunger I had for understanding the subject matter. After receiving an M.A. from Rochester, I enrolled in Harvard University in 1944 to do more graduate work in philosophy. At Harvard I received another M. A. and a Ph D.

I became a modern naturalist, but I remained troubled about how and why the classical framework of thought that defined a value-and meaning-saturated world had been transformed into our modern scientific perspective that presents us with a purely factual world devoid of inherent structures of value and meaning. I have carried on a running philosophical critique of modern naturalism while I developed and argued for a full-fledged humanistic view of the culture and the world. The great revolution in Western civilization was occasioned; I contend, by a shift in our culture-generating stance toward the world. The classical stance was the humanistic perspective, which was defined by such questions as: Who are we? What does reality require of us? What is it that we ought to become and ought to do? and How can we understand the world and ourselves in a way that will further the human enterprise conceived in these terms?

2009 book Maynard Adams : Southern Philosopher of Civilization by Glenn Blackburn on the philosophy of Maynard Adams  (1919 - 2003)

On the other hand, modern Western civilization is defined by such questions as: How can we get what we want? How can we impose our will on the world and exploit it for our purposes? and How can we understand the world in a way that will give us manipulatory power over our environment? This shift led to the progressive elimination of humanistic concepts (especially the concepts of meaning and value). This, I contend, is what gave rise to subjectivistic theories of the humanistic dimension of the culture, including the language of lived experience, morality, politics, and religion. Furthermore it is what pushes contemporary thinkers towards the total cultural subjectivism that is proclaimed by the self- labeled postmodernists.

Although I tried for ten years to find a way of integrating the culture and of developing a unified worldview on naturalistic terms, I was forced to conclude that the culture and the world can be made whole again only within the humanistic perspective and in humanistic categories. My four major books taken together make this case against modern scientific naturalism and for a realistic humanism. They are Ethical Naturalism and the Modern Worldview (1960, 1973, 1985), Philosophy and the Modern Mind: A Philosophical Critique of Modern Western Civilization (1975, 1985) , The Metaphysics of Self and World: Toward a Humanistic Philosophy (1991), and Religion and Cultural Freedom (1993).

The other books I have published along the way are The Fundamentals of General Logic (1954), Logic Problems (1954), (with others) The Language of Value (1957), Commonsense Realism (1966), and The Idea of America (1977). In addition, I have published about 100 articles and reviews in professional journals, encyclopedias, and books; and I have written newspaper columns for many years on topics of public interest from an ethical or philosophical point of view. In addition, I produced and participated in twelve educational films; and I produced and participated in six one-hour television programs on The Idea of America.

Book by Chapel Hill philosopher and professor Maynard Adams

My primary work has been teaching and participating in the life of the universities where I have taught. I was a graduate assistant in philosophy at Harvard from 1944 to 1946 and a teaching fellow and freshman adviser in 1946 to 47. I was an assistant professor of philosophy at Ohio University in 1947-48, but I moved on to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1948, where I remained on the faculty for forty- two years, retiring in 1990. I have been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, the State University of New York at Albany, and the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. I have lectured widely in universities and in public forums.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been a good place for me to do my work. I always wanted my career to be in my native South. And The University has been good to me. I moved smoothly through the academic ranks, becoming a full professor in 1958, and was elected to a coveted Kenan professorship in 1971. I was chairman of my department from 1960 to 1965: director of the Curriculum on Peace, War, and Defense 1970-72, and chairman of The University faculty 1976-79. I served on numerous hoards and committees through the years.

I have been active in professional organizations. I help found and was president of the North Carolina Philosophical Society; I was president of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology; and I served on the executive committee and was chairman of the program committee of the American Philosophical Association. In addition to having helped establish and having served as director of the Curriculum on Peace, War, and Defense: I helped establish and was director of the Free World Institute in The University in the early 1950s to conduct a state-wide program to counter the McCarthy-like mentality in the Cold War. I was one of the co-founders (with a group of business and institutional leaders) , and served as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Tanglewood Center for the Study of Human Values in the 1970s. I proposed and was instrumental in establishing the Program in the Humanities and Human Values in The University in 1979; and I had a guiding role in the development and running of it for more than ten years. It is a program of weekend and week-long seminars for people from all across the region. I worked for eight years with, and was chairman of, the North Carolina Humanities Council. In the 1980s, I was chairman of the Governor's Taskforce on Science, Technology, and Human Values. And I have worked with local churches and schools in various capacities. In connection with the civil rights movement in the 1960s, I proposed and was chairman of Chapel Hill Community Action, Inc., which was one of the first such organizations in the nation. It was expanded into The Orange Economic Opportunity Commission, Inc. , and then into the Joint Orange/Chatham Community Action, Inc., which I chaired in its early years. It is still a functioning institution

1963 lecture by UNC philosophy professor Maynard Adams entitled Where is Religion in Philosophy?

My work with students, The University, the profession, the community, and the state has been most gratifying. The problems I have taken on in my philosophical writing and teaching are so large and so deeply situated in our culture that it is difficult to know whether I have had any effect, except with my own students and some others who may study my written work. But I have had some good students, both undergraduate and graduate. I have former Ph.D. students who are professors and administrators in universities all across the United States and a few in Canada and other countries. I am encouraged by the thought that one can never know what fruit one's ideas may hear.

While I hesitate to mention honors I have received, this memoir would be incomplete if I left them out. Perhaps the one that I have cherished most was election to the Kenan Distinguished Professorship in 1971. That same year I received The Thomas Jefferson Award from the McConnell Foundation, an Outstanding Educator of America Award for "'contributions to higher education and service to the community" from a national foundation, and the undergraduates at UNC-CH made me an honorary member of the Golden Fleece, their highest honorary society. In 1976, my book Philosophy and the Modern Mind was selected for inclusion in a series of "Contemporary Classics" for translation into several languages and distribution in many parts of the world by the U.S. State Department. In 1985, my book Ethical Naturalism and the Modern Worldview was selected for republication in a series of "classic works in their field" by the Greenwood Press: A division of Congressional Information Service, Inc. In 1988 I was given The North Carolina Adult Education Association's Special Award in recognition of "outstanding contributions to continuing education in North Carolina." In 1989, Wake Forest University gave me the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Also in 1989, I was presented with a volume of essays on my work by sixteen philosophers from around the country, edited by one of me former students on the faculty at Williams College; it is entitled Mind, Value and Culture: Essays in Honor of E. M. Adams. In 1992, the University of Richmond gave me the honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. Also in 1992, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill established an endowed distinguished professorship that bears my name. All of this was totally unexpected in each case and all the more gratifying for that reason.

The Philosopher of Chapel Hill, Maynard Adams

My Dad, William Robert Mann who was a UNC professor of mathematics, and Maynard Adams were great friends and loved talking about philosophy and religion. Later in life they would go on long hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains and engage in stimulating conversation along the trail. Fortunately many of their conversations have been preserved in writing, and the Wilson Library even has several audio recordings of their conversations in their archives.

The following is a letter my father wrote to Maynard when my father was 78.

Fall of 1998

Dear Maynard,

Since our lunch this past Monday I have been reading alternatively your Society Fit for Human Beings and Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense. I find much to admire in the former, and much to ponder in the latter.

The Age of Science, which dominated our youth, was a peak of intellectual achievement. The cloud of post modernism which is now sitting over us creates a pit of anti-intellectual darkness. We are in a state of free fall from the sublime to the ridiculous. Today underneath the glitter of scientific brilliance is a gestating growth of the most muddleheaded irrationality to be found in history. The nonsense spreading under the name of post modernism is not a blight rising from the swamps of illiteracy, but it is descending upon us from the highest levels of educational snobbery.

How can an age of such brilliance decline so quickly into irrational darkness? I think Chesterton answered that question when he said; "When men stop believing in God, they will believe in anything."

Bob Mann

Maynard Adams inscription to my Dad, Bob Mann, in his book A Society Fit for Human Beings

by Charly Mann

Most mothers I knew growing up in Chapel Hill had three or more children. In addition to being great mothers and wives, almost every mother was involved in several volunteer activities as PTA mothers, club scout den mothers, brownies leaders, organizers of fund raising activities, and more.

For every mother in Chapel Hill, her children were the priority of her life, and she did everything possible to make sure they had a happy and stimulating childhood. Expectations of what a mother should be and do were probably never higher than during my childhood in the 1950s and 60s. I do not believe that any mother of that era had what we now call personal time; they were just too busy.

This page is dedicated to all the mothers of Chapel Hill, and is open to all current and former Chapel Hill residents to post a photograph and a brief recollection about their mother. Send information to chmemories@gmail.com

from Bob Jurgensen:

Paquita Mignon Morton, my mother met and married my father, Robert Fine in 1941. They had three children: Robin (deceased), Robert (now living in Virginia) and Debbie, who lives in Sanford. She was known by most family and friends as simply "Kiki."

My mom worked as a journalist and columnist for several newspapers, including the News & Observer as state desk editor, a columnist and society editor ("Town and Gown") for the Chapel Hill Newspaper from the 1960's to the early 1990's, winning countless state and national writing awards. Her work spanned nearly 40 years.

After enduring a difficult divorce, she became a single mom raising three children. She often worked two or more jobs, to make ends meet. During that period of time, she was independent, never asking for help from anyone.

In the mid 1960's mom met and married Kai Jurgensen, a professor of drama at UNC. She moved from Glen Lennox apartments to Whitehead Circle. Kai passed away in the early 1970's, and mom lived alone near Eastgate for many years. With no car, she often walked up Strowd's Hill to the west end of Chapel Hill, where the newspaper office was located. Only if it was bad weather would she "waste" money on a taxi to get back and forth!

Mom met and married a retired Ernst & Young partner, Robert (Bob) Shafer in the 1980's and lived comfortably with Bob for many “fun and fascinating” years, traveling and exploring places she never thought she would see. Then Bob passed away from a stroke.

Alone, mom lived a number of years after Bob’s death. Then she was diagnosed with cancer, requiring 11 months of treatment before she passed away in her home in 2003.

Now, as I recall my visits to mom, I remember that everywhere we went -- be it McDonald's, the Carolina Inn or the Ram's Head Club -- she was greeted by a steady stream of people from every direction. In 2004, an office at the School of Journalism at UNC, was named in her honor, the result of a fund raising effort.

Having been an integral part of Chapel Hill life, my Mother was, and is, missed by many.

from Robert Humphreys:

My Mother was Nancy Leigh Humphreys and she lived to the age of 97 with reasonably good health and mental capacity. She smoked until about the age of 93 and never had cancer or any other related problems and drove until she was 91. In 1956, I was the age of 8 and we lived in a rental house on Patterson Place, just a block and a half South of Franklin Street. Mother worked alongside my Dad in building Chapel Hill Cleaners, a business they started in 1947 on West Franklin Street. In retrospect, They built that business from the ground up, although in those times, it was my Father that got the credit. But Mother was an integral part of its foundation and operation. She went to work every day and in later years ran the Laundromat that they opened on East Franklin Street in '57. But she did get off early everyday about 3:00 PM so she could come home to take care of her 3 children and cook a full dinner Every evening. Her work didn't end then as she also did alterations and sewing for the cleaners, many times at night! She did many of the alterations for the ROTC on campus and for the 5 men's shops that were on East Franklin Street and used the remnants of shortened pants legs to make pants and shorts for my brother and me. She worked hard and took us all to University Baptist Church on Sundays; well, all but my Dad. She was known for her generosity and kindness to everyone around her. The only bad thing I can say about her is that on the night of the UNC Basketball Championship game in 1957, she and my Dad took my brother and sister to Franklin Street to celebrate the win and left me at home asleep in my bed!

 From Ruth Vickers:

My mom, Bessie Bland Hundley, born 1894 and 42 years old when I was born, had the most beautiful white hair at a young age. She bore 5 children, lived to bury 4 of them, as well as her husband, Chris. Working in Venable's (Carrboro) cotton mill at age 12, she still managed enough schooling to become a well-read, musical, educated lady. President of Carrboro Schools PTA, Sunday School leader, contributor to folk song collector, Richard Chase's accumulation of old time songs and poems. She lived to be 91 years of age.

From Dianne Rolwing:

Dorothea S. Thompson was known throughout the garden world for introducing the silica-gel process for drying flowers. This process, described in the magazine, American Home (1960), was a sensational success, and the magazine commented that they were "literally swamped with inquiries" following publication of the story. She was also the author of the book, Creative Decorations with Dried Flowers. She was Registrar of UNC School of Nursing for 20 years.

I have very fond memories of my mom. She was always a very hard worker and did without many things so she could provide for her family. She grew up in Wilmington, NC so we spent most of our many vacations at the coast.

She was always helping the poor. We had a maid who was very poor. One Thanksgiving, she made a huge dinner for her and her family. When we took the meal to her, we saw that she was living in a deplorable state with no running water, no electricity, newspaper stuck in the walls to keep the cold air out and dirt floors. When we took her home, she would never let us drive her to her house. She always said that her driveway was in bad shape and we might get stuck so we let her out at the top of her long driveway. Our whole family was so overwhelmed with sadness that my mom immediately made some phone calls and got her quickly into a brand new public housing apartment. She went around our house and collected lamps, etc., made some phone calls to round up things she would need to make her apt. a home. Daisy, as she was called, cried and told my mom that her apartment was the most beautiful home she had ever seen.

 by Charly Mann

Since I was six years old I have hiked up and down the unmarked trail from Greenwood Road to Gimghoul Castle thousands of times on my way to and from various locations in Chapel Hill. Long before I was born another man often walked through these woods. His name was Horace Williams, and he was a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina from 1890 until the time of his death in 1940. Even though I never knew him I often felt his spirit on my path.

Horace Williams (1858 to 1940). He was the gadfly of Chapel Hill and a UNC philosophy professor from 1890 to 1940. His house is now home to the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.

Williams was an unusual man who believed a teacher's job was to help a student find himself. His favorite subject was Socrates, and he taught students about him by making his classroom a pure Platonic experience. Williams believed everything had meaning. He once said "There is no abstract knowledge." He would never allow his students to make assumptions or speak in abstractions. He was by all accounts as much a gadfly in Chapel Hill as Socrates had been in Athens. It was even said by some who knew him well that he not only practiced Socrates, he was Socrates.

This followings recounts one of my walks on this trail when I was accompanied by the spirit of this man.

Entrance of the trail from Greenwood Road up to Gimghoul Castle. Much of this land was owned by Chapel Hill novelist Betty Smith.

Horace Williams: Excuse me young man; I understand you are interested in me.
Charly Mann: What – where did you come from – do I know you?
Horace Williams: Were you not recently visiting my house?
Charly Mann: Yeah – oh I get it... you must be an actor the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill hired for their open house.
Horace Williams: No my friend, I am Socrates.
Charly Mann: Look buddy... cool... whatever you say. Now I want to get back to my walk.
Horace Williams: So you do not think I am Socrates?
Charly Mann: Look, you can be whoever you want to be, but just so you know Socrates died over 2500 years ago after drinking hemlock.
Horace Williams: Yes, my soul did leave my body, but my presence is alive as long as people like you think about my ideas.

Charly Mann on side of trail leading up to Gimghoul Castle.

Charly Mann: Okay – I'll play along for a while. You can be Socrates, and I'll ask you some questions. Why don't you walk along with me? I'll slow my pace down on account of your age.
Horace Williams: I will enjoy walking with you, but let us walk faster. Fast walking does for the body what thinking does for the mind.
Charly Mann: Hey that's a good line. So here is a question I would ask the real Socrates. Can one find happiness in life?
Horace Williams: Life is not for making you happy, but for perfecting your character. To strengthen oneself requires great challenges. Does your life give you those?
Charly Mann: Yes, I know from experience that life is a series of great challenges.
Horace Williams: That is very good. Life should be a psychological gymnasium that gives you opportunities to work on yourself.
Charly Mann: Out of curiosity Sir, I always thought Socrates spoke in Greek. You seem to have mastered English quite well since the time of your death.
Horace Williams: Ah yes, there is only one language to know if one is fortunate to spend time in the company of the Divine, and that has been English for almost 200 years.

The enchanted trail up to Gimghoul Castle has been the site of many strange occurrences.

Charly Mann: Okay so why is that?
Horace Williams: God has a small group of souls that she spends much of her time with. When we gather it always includes someone you may have heard of named Jane Austen, who sits on the Supreme's left side. Being in God's presence is the most blissful experience one can imagine, but even the Divine seems overwhelmed when Jane reads to us.
Charly Mann: I see, and would I know anyone else in this select group?
Horace Williams: Yes there are only two others, Marcus Aurelius and George Washington.
Charly Mann: A rather small group considering all the souls who must reside in heaven.
Horace Williams: Yes we are all fortunate to have escaped the cycle of birth and death and gain eternal life, but much of heaven is reflected in your own world. Each soul is an individual that has its own interests.  Everyone is in a constant state of joy and peace of mind, but few even in heaven have much desire to learn more. For the most part they are all intoxicated by the serenity of their eternal existence and seek nothing more.
Charly Mann: I must say that sounds wonderful.
Horace Williams: It is not enough for me, and those who are closest to God. The real health of the soul comes from continuous growth. My gift has been to provoke and even annoy others to come to know themselves, for only in this way can we ever really be close to God. Jane Austen, for example, has written hundreds of books since she came to us, each much better than the previous. On the other hand, most of the great writers, philosophers, composers, and artists you know from your world simply ceased creating and growing when they settled in heaven, being satisfied with perpetual bliss.
Charly Mann: So let's get back to earth for a moment, I have long had an interest in how to best find contentment in this world.
Horace Williams: Almost all of one's discontentment on earth stems from an inability to sit quietly with oneself.
Charly Mann: You mean like meditation?

Gimghoul Castle has been the home of the UNC secret society, the Order of the Gimghoul, since 1926.

Horace Williams: No, meditation usually means emptying your mind. Your mind is meant for thinking and learning.
Charly Mann: And what types of things should I be doing then?
Horace Williams: The best way to use time is by improving yourself through other men's writings so that you can come easily to what others have labored hard to know.
Charly Mann: Alright, but there are many responsibilities and distractions one encounters each day which make it difficult to find much time for this kind of self-improvement.
Horace Williams: Nonsense. You should focus on excellence and learning whether you are at work or at play. There should be no distinction between the two.
Charly Mann: There are so many bad things in this world. Can I do anything to improve it, or should I leave that for God?
Horace Williams: God has sent help to this world, and it is you and every other person who inhabits this earth.
Charly Mann: But the problems seem immense. I really don't think someone like me can make much of an impact.
Horace Williams: The problem with you and almost everyone else on this planet is that they think like you. They refuse to aim too high in their ambition because they are afraid they will miss their goal, so instead, they aim too low and they reach it.

Battle Seat is at the top of the trail to Gimghoul Castle. For most of the 19th century this was a favorite spot  for UNC students to relax and enjoy an incredible view of Durham an Raleigh. Today trees block most of that view. The seat was built at the same time as the castle in 1926. Many of the rocks used in it were placed near this spot many decades earlier by former UNC President Kemp Plummer Battle (1831 - 1919) who was a friend of Horace Williams.

At this point we reached Battle Seat at the top of the trail. Horace Williams sat down and I continued on my walk.