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Where Are They Now? Kat McKay
by Charly Mann
Almost every day Chapel Hill Memories receives one or more e-mails or comments from someone trying to track down a friend from the past. Over the course of our lives we have made many friends, and for most us the majority of these people are only a fading memory. Every time we make significant changes in our lives such as moving or changing careers we lose our connections to the people we knew before. One of the saddest realizations in life is that the majority of people we have known are no longer around.
Kat McKay Chapel Hill High School Class of 1967 Senior picture
There are more than a dozen names that people keep asking about and this has inspired me to begin a series called Where Are They Now. The first one is on Kat McKay who is someone I barely knew or thought of when growing up, but six people have asked about her in the last nine months. She was one or two grades ahead of me in school, and as far as I know we never had any friends in common. My only memories I have are a vague recollection of her mother being an impressive figure, and that her parents owned a company that made premade sandwiches. I also think she lived in one of the large houses at the beginning of Laurel Hill Road. These are just my memories from about the time I was 13 to 14, the only time we even attended the same school, so they may well be faulty. I look forward to other readers providing more information.
Kat McKay, Chapel Hill High School Sweetheart Queen
The purpose of this series is for other Chapel Hill Memories readers and hopefully the person themselves to fill in the details about where they are and what they have done with their lives. I hope this feature will reunite some old friends and help overcome the consequences of losing touch in the passage of time.
Kat McKay was the star and leading scorer of the 1967 Chapel Hill High School Kitten's basketball team
Anyone looking to reunite or find out about old friends from Chapel Hill or UNC days are welcome to use this column. Simply write up a small piece about the person, and e-mail it to chmemories@gmail.com. Please send one of more photographs of the person. Chapel Hill Memories now has more than 15,000 readers a month, so there is a good chance you will soon have more information on your old friend.
Comments:
Cynthia Clampitt
1:18 AM Thu 2/4/2010
Katherine (Kat), my cousin (Martha was my dad's sister) had two brothers, one younger, one older, both now deceased. I have lost contact with Kat, as she has moved often, but I visited her several times in Raleigh. The last visit was in 2001.
Gordon Gavin
5:01 PM Mon 1/11/2010
I noticed there is a Katherine McKay who lives in Laurenberg NC.
Here is a more complete obituary of her mother:
Martha Clampitt McKay, feminist, human rights activist, teacher, and Democratic Party advocate, died December 14, 2009. She was born on May 16, 1920 in Winchester, Massachusetts. Shortly, thereafter, her family relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she was raised. Martha’s accomplishments started at an early age. At age 11, she won a Shetland pony for designing a poster in the national Phoenix Hosiery design contest.
During the late 1930s, McKay transferred from a Florida junior college to the University of North Carolina. McKay was involved in campus politics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1939 to 1941. During these years, she was the first woman to serve on the University Party steering committee, first formed a friendship and political alliance with Terry Sanford, and wrote a column for the Daily Tar Heel. In 1941, McKay graduated with a degree in economics from UNC where she was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.
In 1941, she married Herbert Stacy McKay. She and her husband worked for the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company in Wilmington, North Carolina, during World War II. At the end of the war, they settled in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they had three children, Alex, Bryan, and Katherine. Along with being a homemaker, she became increasingly involved in political activities.
In 1959, she became involved in social issues when the gubernatorial candidate Terry Sanford asked her to chair his women’s committee as well as his steering committee. After Sanford’s election, Sanford appointed her to the Democratic National Committee. McKay was instrumental in persuading him in 1963 to establish a state Council on the Status of Women. During the mid-1960’s she traveled the South monitoring compliance with the Civil Right Act and community cooperation with the federal government’s Office of Economic Opportunity.
McKay led the way in giving Tar Heel women a clearer and more insistent voice in state politics. In 1972, she became the first chair of the North Carolina Women's Political Caucus (NCWPC) and co-chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus; in these positions she became a prominent activist, working for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Though unsuccessful in this endeavor, McKay was prominent in other actions to serve the cause of women’s rights and to solidify gains that accompanied the women’s movement. In 1976, she helped found the Women’s Forum of NC, a career mentoring and empowerment organization. After 30 years, the forum has been instrumental in preparing women to lead statewide.
For an even longer time, McKay was engaged in demonstrating to women, and their employers, the benefits of recruiting, training, and utilizing women in responsible leadership positions. Her management consulting firm, McKay and Associates (1970 – 1980), specialized in developing community profiles for corporations, training, minority economic development, and creative problem solving. She pioneered “womanagement”, the first comprehensive study of corporate women managers and their supervisors. During this same period of time (1971 – 1985), McKay was also a director of the Public Affairs Council, a group based in Washington D.C., that included a broad range of public affairs officers and she also taught at Duke’s graduate business school.
In 1979, Governor Jim Hunt appointed McKay manager of the State Personnel Office’s affirmative action program; in 1981, she became assistant secretary of the NC Department of Administration.
Leaving state government in 1985, McKay served as an organization development consultant until she joined Terry Sanford’s campaign for the US Senate in 1986; when Sanford won, she worked for him in Washington as a special assistant handling minority, seniors, and women’s issues.
After retiring in 1995, McKay moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. In 1996, Martha was presented with one of the highest civilian awards bestowed by the state of NC, the North Carolina Award for Public Service.
In 1997, McKay returned to North Carolina residing in Raleigh, Asheville, and Hendersonville.
Martha is survived by her daughter, Katherine McKay; granddaughter, Alix McKay Powell and husband Shon, and their children, Sydney, Nicolas, and Ava Powell; granddaughter, Dallas Blue Thompson; daughter-in-law, Betty Caton McKay; niece, Lisa Clampitt and her husband Frank Burbrink, and their son Hawkeye Clampitt; nephew, Bryan Clampitt; sister-in-law, Susan Clampitt; sister-in-law, Ruthanne Clampitt, nieces, Cynthia Clampitt and Darch Clampitt. She was predeceased by husband, Herbert McKay; sons, Alexander McKay and Brian McKay; and brothers, Robert Clampitt and John Clampitt.
Local
9:11 PM Sun 1/10/2010
Kat McKay's mother recently died and her obituary was in the local papers. See below:
Martha McKay /Martha Clampitt McKay, feminist, human rights activist, teacher, and Democratic Party advocate, died December 14, 2009. She was born on May 16, 1920.
Martha is survived by her daughter, Katherine McKay; granddaughter, Alix McKay Powell and husband, Shon, and their children, Sydney, Nicolas, and Ava Powell; granddaughter, Dallas Blue Thompson; daughter-in-law, Betty Caton McKay; niece, Lisa Clampitt and her husband, Frank Burbrink, and their son, Hawkeye Clampitt; nephew, Bryan Clampitt; sister-in-law, Susan Clampitt; sister-in-law, Ruthanne Clampitt, niece, Cynthia Clampitt and nephew, Darch Clampitt.
She was predeceased by husband, Herbert McKay; sons, Alexander McKay and Brian McKay; and brothers, Robert Clampitt and John Clampitt.
Services will be held at 2:00 p.m. on January 5, 2010 at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC.
Memorial contributions may be made to the charity of one’s choice. Published
Forest Hills Baby
4:41 PM Sun 1/10/2010
I was a sophmore in 1967, but remember Kat McKay, and believe she also had a sister at Chapel Hill High School a year or two younger than her.
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.
Charly,
It's hard to resist writing to you and saying how great the site is. I, myself, have written you previously about my Decatur Jones memories. You were just far enough ahead of me in school that I didn't know you but my classmates at Little Red Schoolhouse, Glenwood, GBP and CHHS were the younger siblings of your classmates, so it's 'almost like being there' when I look at your wonderful archive.
I'm sure there are LOTS of people like me who look at the site and wonder "whatever happened to": it would be great if there was some way for us to post on a wall or something. What little success I've had with looking up old friends has shown many of them to stil be in the area.
Keep up the good work. It would be great to meet you the next time I'm back in the Hill.
Alex Eyre, graduated CHHS 1974