Chapel Hill Memories is for anyone who wants to relive and help preserve memories of Chapel Hill. We welcome your recollections of any subject related to Chapel Hill and The University Of North Carolina in written, photo, audio, and video form. We have the ability to scan and transfer photos, audio, and video if you do not. We do not charge for this, and will return your materials within a week.
Send your memories, ideas, photos, and questions to CHMemories@gmail.com.
If you need to mail us something let us know, and we will send you our mailing address.
Loudon Wainwright III, Born in Chapel Hill
by Charly Mann
There are many well known individuals who spent part of their lives living in Chapel Hill, but very few notable people who were actually born there. Perhaps the most talented of these people is Loudon Wainwright III, who was born on September 5, 1946 in Chapel Hill, exactly nine months after his father returned from serving in World War II. Wainwright left Chapel Hill soon after he was born and grew up in a wealthy and privileged family in Beverly Hills and Westchester County, NY.
Loudon Wainwright III, born in Chapel Hill, NC 9/5/1946
Wainwright's name is not exactly a household word. He is best known for the 1973 novelty song Dead Skunk, yet he is a highly respected serious songwriter and actor. He is also the father of three of today's most highly regarded singer-songwriters, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Lucy Roche. In forty years since his signing to Atlantic Records in 1969, Wainwright has released more than thirty albums, each one usually better than the last. He is also recognized for his movie and TV roles including his appearances on the M*A*S*H television series as the singing surgeon Captain Calvin Spaulding, as well as a big band singer in the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator.
Loudon Wainwright III with his son superstar Rufus Wainwright
Wainwright's Chapel Hill and North Carolina roots have regularly surfaced throughout his remarkable career. In the 1980s he starred in the Broadway version of Pump Boys and Dinettes, the county rock musical which was written in Chapel Hill by Jim Wann, John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, and John Schimmel. He also delighted the many Americans who disliked North Carolina's conservative senator Jesse Helms with the irreverent song Jesse Don't Like It. (You can hear this song in the selections at the top of this article.) On August 18th of this year (2009) Wainwright released the greatest work of his career, a double album tribute to the legendary North Carolina country singer and banjo player Charlie Poole (1892-1931) called High, Wide, & Handsome. The album is simply exceptional and with the help of family members Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Sloan Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and the Roches, he performs an array of great songs with arrangements that range from Gospel, Dixieland, old time country, to traditional parlor songs.
Loudon Wainwright's current album High Wide and Lonesome is a tribute to North Carolina country singer and banjo player Charlie Poole
Comments:
Phil O'Connell
5:23 PM Thu 9/3/2009
Wainwright inspires me in so many ways. Most of all because he proves one can really get better with age. He is truly a late-bloomer. His own songs are often so great and personal that they would make me uncomfortable to listen to if they also were not so humorous.
Gloria Kent
9:04 AM Thu 9/3/2009
I grew up in Chapel Hill in the early 1960s, and now live outside of Boston. I have been a fan of Loudon Wainwright for more than two decades, and am glad to find out we both have the same "hometown"
Fred Court
8:28 PM Wed 9/2/2009
You just ruined my evening. I was searching for information on the Jubilee at UNC, and have been reading your site for the last three hours. This is better than reliving my past in Chapel Hill - many of your pieces actually help explain it.
The Jesse Helms song here is wonderful. Over the decades he was on the scene I went from hating him to finally respecting him, but not agreeing with him very much.
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.
Chapel Hill Memories is too good to be true. I have several ideas for articles you need to do, and have some rare photos of downtown from the 1940's and 50's you can use.
Keep up the great work!