1981 was the year that IBM introduced the personal computer. It cost $5000. Dynasty was the top television show in the United States, and the most popular songs were Superfreak by Rick James and Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes. Included in Chapel Hill High School's Class of 1981 was the distinguished group seen below joined together for an impromptu mini-reunion at Bailey's Pub and Grille. 

Ladies left to right: Angie Jones Smith, Michelle Council Brooks (Class of 1982), Letitia Jones Davison. Gents: Richard Sanders, Danny Williams, and David Brooks.

by Charly Mann

In 1969 Hector's restaurant opened at the corner of Henderson and Franklin Street, across from the Chapel Hill Post Office. It served a unique variety of high quality fast food at great prices and was huge success the first few years it was open. Lines of people waiting to order often stretched far out their doors.

Less than forty years ago dogs ran free in downtown Chapel Hill and Hector's was the most popular fast food restaurant in town. This photo was taken at Harry's and the downtown Post Office and a Hector's sign is in the distance.

The people who owned Hector's were Greek, as well as many of the people who worked there. It was originally owned and managed by Pete Galifinakis. Though many refer to it as a Greek restaurant, it was actually more American. They had by far the best hot dogs, fries, and cheeseburgers ever served in Chapel Hill. They were also open 24 hours a day during most of their existence (the only Franklin Street business to do so during most of the 1970s).

In their early years Hector's could do no wrong. The restaurant was well-managed, service was great, prices were incredible, it was clean, and most of the food was amazing. It seemed that their concept was so good that a chain of Hector's could have been launched that would have been as successful as Subway or Starbucks. Alas Hector's stumbled, and quality and cleanliness declined by the mid-seventies. At the same time an array of sub and sandwich shops, as well as other all day eateries sprang up downtown. Hector's eventually got back in its groove in the late 1980s and a new generation of UNC students became enamored by its food and charm. Gyros and Souvlaki became the most poplular fare among their customers. They also gained a reputation for their great Greek grilled cheese wraps and extra sweet iced tea.

The best of all possible worlds - late Spring on the lawn at McCorkle Place on the UNC campus with two of Chapel Hill's all time favorite restaurants, Hector's and the Dairy Bar, behind.  

About ten years ago Hector's moved from its original location at 201 E Franklin St. to the basement below Zogs Pool Hall on Henderson Street. A few years later Hector's closed, and the restaurant that had been famous since 1969 was no more. Hector's still has a rabid and loyal following who decry its passing as much as others bemoan the loss of the Ram's Head Rathskeller. Now that the Varsity Theater has been resurrected, perhaps the town of Chapel Hill will help some entrepreneurs bring back both of these landmarks.

Hector's sign and those of competing businesses on Franklin street 1973
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HECTOR'S RULES!  famous since 1969

1. Unless you are sleeping with the help, no free food.
2. No, the napkin holders are not yours to keep.
3. The tip jar is your friend.
4. No one here is actually called "Hector".
5. Do not hurl objects from the windows.
6. Do not hurl.
7. The Bathroom sinks and stalls are not removable.
8. The Gyro is seasoned lamb, not human thigh.
9. You breaks in line, we breaks you face.
10. 30 minutes in line is more than enough time to decide what you want.
11. Everything is better on pita.
12. Tradziki sauce (sod-zee-kee) - the white stuff - is good on absolutely everything!
13. No Coke ... Pepsi, Pepsi.
14. This is not a fat free restaurant.
15. If the employees look like they've been here all night, it's because they have been.
16. Only the best take it ALL THE WAY!
17. Regular is for the average, large is for the thirsty, and medium just plain doesn't exist.
18. Pitas, although not smooth in texture, still make excellent Frisbees.
19. Thou shall not steal someone else's food.
20. Why take TIME OUT for SUBS when HECTOR'S RULES!

by Charly Mann

It is said that the greatest generation of Americans were born in the 1920s. They endured the hardships of the Great Depression, died and suffered the horrors of the Second World War, and then created the prosperity that made the United States the dominant and wealthiest country in the world. The generation that came after them was born between 1933 and 1945. They are called the Silent Generation.

UNC students from the Silent Generation having a great time at a slumber party in 1956

I was seven when the UNC Class of 1956, which was part of the Silent Generation, graduated. 1956 is the first year of my life I have a clear memory of. These men and women are all now at least 75 years old. In 1956 I thought of someone who was 60, like my grandmother, was old, and surely believed someone who was 75 was ancient.

Love was often in the air among UNC students in 1956

Today many members of the UNC Class of 1956 are still with us, and I now reflect on what their legacy is to us. During their days as students in Chapel Hill they were serenely uninvolved in social issues or politics. Their focus was on getting the education necessary to secure a good job and often finding a compatible spouse. This was a great time to be alive. The economy was robust and there were no wars that Americans had to fight and die in. Poverty and racial inequality were part of the American landscape, but these UNC students who came from largely middle and upper class families were largely unaware of these issues. These problems simply were not discussed very often by the mainstream media, and certainly were not subjects of the movies, television, or music they were watching and listening to. As a result this generation was the last group of Americans to accept, almost without question, traditional American values.

These are UNC students in 1956 enjoying Hogan's Lake in Chapel Hill. This was an extremely popular spot for students and other Chapel Hillians to enjoy in the Spring, Summer, and Fall. Students enjoyed drinking beer and getting close to their sweetheart here. There were even cows that roamed freely around the lake.

Humans do not grow old chronologically. We grow unevenly. Even at 75 we can be mature in some areas and childish in others. While dementia is more likely to come to us than wisdom as we age, I now know several members of this class who often inspire me. Each one of them has a remarkable strength of character and a purpose to their life.

A romantic moon on a cold winter night over UNC's Wilson Library in 1956

While almost all the members of the Greatest Generation are no longer with us, the Silent Generation are still around in large numbers. They knew the generation that preceded them better than any of us. They also were the guardians of the entire Baby Boom generation. They are the bridge between these powerful and influential groups. They have seen the limitations and hypocrisies of both, and many of them have synthesized that knowledge into a common sense and wisdom that is valuable for all of us to know.

UNC Class of 1956 Senior Photos
First Row: Mary Ruth Morse Silliphant, Daniel Shiver Sylvia Jr., Margaret Joan Sinclair, Second Row: Jane Kirksey Sink, John Frederic Sipp, Oren Scott Skinner, Third Row: Karey Lyerly Sledge, Clyde Smith Jr., Miriam Marcia Smith, Fourth Row: Sherwood H. Smith Jr., Wilbur Ritchie Smith Jr., Raymond Fletcher Snipes

by Charly Mann

Bruce Strowd and friend Ernest Hutchins on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill in 1903. The Methodist Church now stands where the house behind them is.

Bruce Strowd was born on August 18, 1891 in a large house on what is today Davie Circle. The house was called Plum Nelly because it was "Plum out of Chapel Hill and Nelly to Durham". Today this area is considered part of central Chapel Hill and is located less than a mile from the center of town. As you drive up Franklin Street from Estes Drive almost all the land you pass was at the time part of the Strowd estate which consisted of about 1200 acres. The hill you go up towards downtown has been known as Strowd Hill for more than a century. It was not until 1950 that this area became part of Chapel Hill.

This is a photo of Plum Nelly, The Strowd House on Davie Circle, from 1985. It use to be one of the grandest houses in Chapel Hill.

This is a photo of Plum Nelly from 1978.

William F. Strowd was Bruce Strowd's grandfather, a U.S. Congressman, and one of the largest landowners in the area in the late 19th century.

Bruce's family was one of the most prominent in Chapel Hill at the beginning of the 20th century. His grandfather W.F. Strowd (Dec. 7, 1832 - Dec. 12, 1911) had been a two term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1895 to 1899, and was largely responsible for the building of a railroad to Chapel Hill. His father R. L. "Bob" Strowd was Vice President of the Bank of Chapel Hill, and had been the Chapel Hill postmaster, and a local merchant. A building that he built on Franklin Street is still standing and is called the Strowd Building. Sutton's Drug Store is now one of the tenants there.

Both Pickard and Strowd were involved in many Chapel Hill businesses. At the time of this ad in 1907, Mr Pickard also had a livery stable and a hotel. In the 1950s through the 1970s Leadbetter Pickard Stationery Store was a leading business downtown, first on Henderson Street and then in the center of Franklin Street.

 
R.L. Strowd was a leading Chapel Hill merchant all of his life. This is a 1909 ad. His son Bruce established the first car dealership in town.

R.L. Strowd was a banker during most of his career in Chapel Hill. His house, "Plum Nelly", was one of the largest in town. This ad is from 1931.

From an early age Bruce had a fascination with internal combustion engines and automobiles. In 1903 the Dean of the School of Pharmacy, Vernon Howell, brought the first automobile to Chapel Hill. This new contraption fascinated Bruce and by the time he was sixteen in 1907 he built his own rudimentary automobile using parts from a sewing machine, wheelbarrow and a boat motor. It only went about five miles an hour and made a terrible racket that scared the horses in town when he drove it down Franklin Street. It had a smokestack that billowed out a cloud of smoke as it roared by it went "chooka, chooka, chooka, pow, pow, pow, pow." Chapel Hill soon banned him from driving the thing in town saying it was too noisy and unsightly.

Drawing of early automobile built by Bruce Strowd in1907 called the Strowdmobile

Bruce worked hard from an early age and was employed at Carr Mill in Carrboro for most of his teenage years. In 1911 he left Chapel Hill to learn more about cars by working in a car manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. In 1914 he returned to Chapel Hill and opened the first auto repair shop, in what is now Porthole Alley behind the Carolina Coffee Shop. The location had been a livery stable, and horses were still the primary mode of transportation in town. He was the only person in town who could work on cars. There were then thirteen cars in Chapel Hill. Bruce also got the rights to sell Ford Motors cars which people could special order from his shop.

This is Bruce Strowd's Garage and first Ford Dealership in 1914. It was behind where the Carolina Coffee Shop is today. Before this the building had been a popular livery  stable for many decades.

The Strowd Ford Dealership in about 1946. This was the largest retail space in Chapel Hill with over 20,000 square feet. In later years the Zoom-Zoom, Logos Books, Copytron, and even a short-lived 5 and 10 cent store would occupy some of this space. In 1970, when I was twenty, I ran a music management company from an upstairs office here. 

His car business grew slowly, specializing in used cars for much of the depression era 1930s. Eventually he opened the first modern car dealership in Chapel Hill at the corner of Columbia and Franklin Street.

Bruce Strowd in October 1937 with 1914 Ford 

This is the auction for the sale of the huge farm that the Strowd family  owned in Chatham County. It was almost 3,000 acres. It was never a very profitable farm. The R.L. Strowd  family  owned 1200 acres that are now part of central Chapel Hill. The auction occurred on May 22, 1928. Land and real estate prices plummeted in Chapel Hill a few years later during the Great Depression.

Bruce was an outgoing and gregarious man and in 1937 the Chapel Hill Kiwanis Club named him Chapel Hill's "Most Valuable Citizen" for that year. He was an avid Tarheel basketball fan long before the team attracted much local attention.

This is Johnson Strowd Ward furniture store on West Franklin Street in 1965. It was the only furniture store in town in those days and also sold televisions. One of the owners was Gene Strowd

Bruce Strowd retired in 1953 and sold his Ford Dealership to Crowell Little. He died in 1955.

Well into the late 1940s Strowd Motors sold more used cars than new ones. These are prices for some of their used cars in 1937.

This is the corner of Franklin and Columbia Street in Chapel Hill in 1925 soon after the building was built and Strowd Motor Company moved in to sell Ford cars and ESSO gas. If you look closely you can see a pump at the corner of the two streets. 

Thanks to Susan Prothro Worley for the Strowd House photos

This is William Strowd of Chapel Hill who graduated from Medical School at UNC in 1909

On the right is Annie Strowd's UNC graduation picture and information from her 1923 yearbook . In those days there were less than 200 students in the senior class, and everybody knew everyone else. For years graduating seniors merited not only a description about themselves, but height and weight were always given in the class yearbook. Age was given for men, but not for women. Only about 6% of the class was female.

  
Mae Braxton Strowd was Frank Strowd's daughter. This is her graduation photo from UNC in 1933. When she was a little girl she had a pet turkey named "Billy Sunday" that she would often walk with up and down Franklin Street.

by Charly Mann

Dr. Isaac "Ike" Taylor was one of the most driven men ever to live in Chapel Hill. He came here at 18 in 1938 as a freshman at UNC and left in 1971 after serving as Dean of the UNC School of Medicine. Ike was born and brought up in the small town of Morganton at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His grandfather, Dr. Isaac Montrose Taylor, moved to Morganton in the 1870s to take a job at the Western Insane Asylum (now called Broughton Hospital). He quickly became one of the most respected men in the town. In 1901 he set up a small private hospital called Broadoaks to treat the mentally ill.

Dean Isaac M Taylor of the University of North Carolina Medical School in his office from 1966.

Ike's father, Alexander Taylor, married Theodosia Haynes in 1920. She was from a well-to-do Massachusetts family, a state that has been connected to Ike and his family ever since. Theodosia gave birth to Ike in June of 1921. She had her then 64 year old father-in-law deliver the baby. Somehow she got a uterine infection during childbirth and died two weeks later. Dr. Taylor blamed himself for Theodosia's death and died in grief two months later. The double tragedy of his wife and father's deaths turned Ike's father into an alcoholic. He was incapable of caring for and raising Ike. Sarah Taylor Vernon, Alexander's sister, who had been Theodosia's roommate in College, raised him.

This is a picture of Ike Taylor at UNC in 1941.

Ike was a smart and driven youth who was determined to become a physician like his namesake, yet the tragic nature of his birth and upbringing, an only child without a father or mother, gave him a morose personality. As a student at UNC from 1938 to 1942, Ike displayed an intensity rarely seen in Chapel Hill. He not only focused at excelling in his academic pursuits, but also found the time to be an officer in an array of student organizations and as well as compete on the track team.

After Taylor received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina he went to Harvard Medical School and received his M.D. in 1945. In 1946 he came back to Morganton for a short stint as a resident physician. During that time Gertrude "Trudy" Woodward, a Massachusetts native who Ike had met while at Harvard, came down from Boston by train to visit him. They were engaged to be married and planned to have a formal wedding in Boston, but after meeting her at the train station in Salisbury Ike convinced her they could not wait and should instead get married then and there. They were married by a judge at the Salisbury City Hall, and then drove to Morganton to enjoy their first night as newlyweds.

Isaac M. Taylor's UNC senior picture

As you can see Ike Taylor had his time very full with memberships in three fraternities and many other UNC organizations. He was also taking a challenging course load and received "A" s in all of his classes.

Ike returned to Boston in the fall of 1946 for a one year internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He followed that with a year as an assistant resident in medicine for the hospital, and in 1948 became the senior resident in medicine. Also in 1948 he was hired by Harvard University as an assistant medical advisor. By the end of 1948 Harvard named him a research fellow in medical science. For the next two years he held this position at Harvard while serving as a clinical fellow in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1951 Dr. Taylor became the chief medical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Taylor had a bright future ahead of him at Harvard and Massachusetts General, yet he gave it all up to return to his native state. He began his career at the University of North Carolina on January 1, 1952 as an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. He was a standout from the start as a professor of medicine at UNC, and In 1954 he was named a Markle Scholar, the highest honor awarded to promising new teachers in academic medicine.

Isaac "Ike" Taylor in his UNC track team outfit 1942

Starting in 1955 Dr. Taylor took a two year leave of absence from UNC to fulfill his Military Service from which he had been exempted during college and medical school. He served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, setting up a medical dispensary in McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic. He had been offered an assignment at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside of Washington, D.C., but instead volunteered for service at the South Pole even though it would keep him isolated from the world and his young family. (He then had five children ranging in age from three to eight.) Those who knew him well say that after his return from military service he remained distant from his family for the rest of his life. The only real time he spent with his family was on summer vacations at Martha's Vineyard.

Isaac and Trudy Taylor's young family circa 1954. Left to right, Alex, James, Kate, Livingston, and Hugh Taylor

Upon his return to the UNC medical school his rise through its ranks was meteoric. In 1958 he was promoted to associate professor and then became a full professor in 1964. Also in that year at the age of only 43 he succeeded Dr. W. Reece Berryhill on Septenber 1st as Dean of the UNC School of Medicine. Ike Taylor simply excelled as a medical administrator, doctor, and researcher. During his years as dean he spent countless hours in his third floor office at UNC Memorial Hospital. People I have spoken to who knew him in those years describe him as tall and lean with rugged features and always having an intimidatingly serious countenance. He was also usually well tanned and in great physical condition, which was probably attributable to his primary means of relaxing: sailing and fishing.

Taylor enjoyed the challenge of being the Dean primarily because he wanted to implement ideas he had formulated since graduating from Harvard. He initiated a series of programs designed to make the UNC Medical School one of the best in the nation. He first wanted established doctors in the state to be made aware of all the new medical procedures and technologies being taught at the medical school. To that end, he made sure that a major function of the school became offering continuing education for practicing physicians. He also introduced the Second Chance program that allowed medical students who had flunked a course to repeat it. He believed this would ensure that almost every student who entered UNC's medical school would get an MD degree.

This is a picture of Dr, Isaac Taylor from 1964, the year he became Dean of the UNC Medical School.

Dean Taylor ensured only the best students got into his medical school. He believed that an applicant's personality was the key ingredient for success as a medical student. The trait he thought most important was being "motivated to do hard work." During Taylor's tenure the medical program averaged 350 applicants a year. Of those only 70 were admitted. Only 5% of the medical students enrolled at UNC flunked or dropped out while he was dean.

Politically Dr. Taylor was very liberal, to the left of almost every major politician of his era. He was an early advocate of socialized medicine and said in 1964 that "medical care must be made available to all". He served on many boards and became an outspoken advocate for improving the nation's health care system. He was a fellow of the NC Coastal Plains Heart Association, and a member of N.C. State Board of Mental Health. In 1965 U.S. Surgeon General Luther L. Terry appointed him to serve as a member of the National Advisory Research Resources Committee of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Isaac Taylor stepped down as Dean of the Medical School in September of 1971 and was replaced by Dr. Christopher C. Fordham III. He died in November of 1996 at the age of 75 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston where he had worked for several years before coming to Chapel Hill.

On February 9th, 2009 Trudy Taylor, ex-wife of former UNC Medical School Dean Isaac Taylor will be interviewed by the current Dean of the UNC School of Medicine William L. Roper. Later that day at 5:00 PM Dr. Taylor's only daughter, Kate, will appear at the UNC Student Union for a screening of Kate Taylor: Tunes from the Tipi and Other Songs from Home. After the screening, Kate, who is also the sister of musicians James and Livingston Taylor, will perform some songs and answer questions about the film. The film includes a history of the Taylor family in Chapel Hill. The event is free.

On February 12th Kate Taylor will be performing at Marsh Woodwinds in Raleigh at 8:00 PM.