The Chapel Hill Swim Club
by George Steel, with George Coxhead, Jr and Peter Barnes

The Chapel Hill Swim Club 50+ Anniversary

When was the Chapel Hill Swim Club formed? Photographs show the Chapel Hill Swim Club team as early as 1953.

The Chapel Hill Swim Club, June 16, 1953.
Roland Giduz photographic collection, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library

The Chapel Hill Swim Club, August 9, 1955
Roland Giduz photographic collection, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library

1961 – Chapel Hill Swim Club Re-organized, Re-energized Under New Leadership

In 1961 the parents of Chapel Hill re-organized and re-energized the Chapel Hill Swim Club under the leadership of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Clark of Chapel Hill, parents of 3 children on the team, Laura, Toolie, and Anne.

Dr. Clark was the board leader for most of those early years after the team was re-organized, although others also served. A key contributor was Martha McKee, whose son, Ken, and daughter, Kathy, were on the team. Ken was a high school All-American at Pine Crest (FL) and a college all-American at the University of Washington. Ken was probably the best swimmer to come out of the Chapel Hill Swim Club in the early years. Kathy has coached for 30 years -- most recently, in Charlotte.

The Chapel Hill YMCA Swim Club (CHYSC) traces its history to the CHSC. The CHYSC web site states that the CHYSC was originally formed in 1961 as the Chapel Hill Swim Club, “in coordination with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as part of an effort to provide a competitive swimming opportunity for young people in the greater Chapel Hill area.” On the back of the new CHYSC t-shirts is printed “Celebrating 50 Years of Swimming in Chapel Hill.”

Courtesy CHYST

For many Chapel Hill kids, the CHSC was a major part of their lives - indeed, perhaps the most important part of their lives! -- during the 1960s.

Making the Team

In the 1950s and into the mid1960s, the University provided free swim lessons to the boys and girls of Chapel Hill. Advanced swimmers were invited to CHSC try-outs conducted by UNC swim Coach Pat Earey in April and May. Then the big day came and you might start swimming with the CHSC “Junior team.”

I (GS) made the Junior team when I was 10 (1960). Occasionally, the Junior team practiced in a lake or swimming hole located outside of town. George Coxhead thinks it may have been the lake at Camp New Hope, the Presbyterian Church campground about 5 miles out on old highway 86. The Junior team would meet at the Woollen and then car pool out to the lake. The object was to build up our endurance. The challenge to the young swimmers was to swim all the way across the lake and back. Well, believing I one of the few who hadn’t accomplished this feat yet, one day when we were about to get out of the water and go home for the day, I decided that now was the time for me to take off and swim across that lake. The coach sent a couple of boys to pull me in, but I was determined to keep going. The coach called the boys back when he saw that I would almost rather drown than quit.

The Chapel Hill Swim Club (Junior team), August 8, 1960
Front row, left: Max Scroggs. 2nd row, 3rd from right: Jimmy Blaine, George Steel, coach Charlie Jones
Roland Giduz photographic collection, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library

Pool Passes

The University provided the CHSC its Bowman Gray and Kessing (Navy) pools at Woollen Gym for practice. However, unlike the free swim lessons sponsored by the University in the 1950s and 1960s, you had to buy a pool pass. To be eligible for a pool pass, your parent had to work at UNC in some capacity. My Mother had a staff job in the Southern Historical Collection in UNC’s Wilson Library. If your parent did not have a permanent job at UNC, some parents worked temporary jobs, for instance, at Student Registration in Woollen Gym, and so were eligible to buy a pool pass. Each year we worried that the University was going to tighten up eligibility requirements for a pool pass.

At first, then, Chapel Hill Swim Club membership was limited to kids with a parent who worked for UNC. As there were no other pools, not to mention swim teams in Chapel Hill at the time, this seems a shame for kids who could not get passes. We who were able to participate feel very fortunate.

Later, in 1968, the CHSC began renting space at the Chapel Hill Tennis Club, and thereby opened up eligibility for membership. In 1978, the team began renting space at the new Chapel Hill YMCA. In 1986, the CHSC officially merged with the YMCA and became the Chapel Hill YMCA Swim Club.

Coach Pat Earey

Coach Earey was the UNC men’s swimming team coach for 17 years from 1957-1974. He was instrumental in the success of the Chapel Hill Swim Club. He was a key supporter of the team and helped in every way. Coach Earey arranged for some parents to work temp jobs at UNC Student Registration in Woollen Gym so that their children could be eligible for pool passes.

Coach Earey often coached the early morning practice, or he would bring in an assistant coach from the UNC swim team. There was Pepper Tice in 1960-1961, Bob Bilbro who coached in 1962-1963 (Lou Perlmutt called him Bill Bobro), and Mike Lawler in 1964. Other coaches were Chuck Wrye, Mike Koontz in 1967, and Frank Comfort in 1968.

Coach Earey's sons, Mike and Tom, swam when they were young, before turning to other sports. Mike was one of the team's best swimmers at ages 8-10 and 11-12, primarily as a backstroker. Mike later played basketball for Coach Dean Smith at UNC.

As far back as Junior team days, my (GS) strongest stroke was backstroke. And even though I was a year older than Mike, I never could beat him, whether in practice or in a meet. He was my chief rival on the team. I tried and tried; but I always came in second to Mike. When I turned 13 and moved into the 13-14 age group, Mike was 12 and in the 11-12 age group, and so I didn't have to compete against him that year. I knew though, that when he turned 13, I would go back to being second best. I was secretly relieved (forgive me, Lord) that he took up basketball instead.

UNC Swim Teams of the mid-1960s

UNC had powerful swim teams then. Under Coach Pat Earey, UNC won ACC titles in 1963 and 1964 with swimmers like Thompson Mann, 1964 Tokyo Olympics Gold Medalist and World Record Holder; Harrison Merrill, three-time All-America and seven individual ACC titles; Phil Riker, 1964 Olympic team member, six-time All-America and1966 NCAA winner of the 100-yard butterfly; and Pete Worthen, 1963 All-America. Beginning in 1965, Coach Earey permitted the best of the older CHSC swimmers to train with the UNC swimmers who stayed in Chapel Hill during the summer. All-America Jim Edwards -- who missed the 1964 Olympic team by 0.1 seconds in the 200 meter freestyle -- came to Chapel Hill in summer 1965 and was the best swimmer in the pool. For the young CHSC swimmers, it was magical to practice with Jim and the other UNC stars. I was thrilled when Thompson Mann showed me his backstroke technique and backstroke flip-turns.

Thompson Mann	Phil Riker	Harrison Merrill

Peter Barnes remembers that Coach Earey coordinated a "swim show" in the Navy (outdoor) pool as part of the UNC graduation each year. There was a reception around the deck of the pool, and many of us on the swimming team would "perform" silly strokes, such as swimming one armed freestyle. This was a small way for us to say thank you back to Coach Earey, as well as to have fun.

From Peter and all of us, the CHSC could never thank Coach Earey enough; his kindness and the countless thousands of hours he contributed were vital to the team. Coach Earey continued to provide tremendous support even though his own sons moved on to other activities.

That voice you heard for so many years over the public address system announcing UNC football and basketball games was Coach Earey’s.

Coach Earey died in January, 2005 at age 82. 

AAU Swimmers

CHSC team members were card-carrying Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) swimmers. Your AAU membership and card may have cost you $0.50 annually. We carried our AAU card in our wallet until it wore out. Now, USA Swimming is the governing body of the sport. The Amateur Sports Act of 1978 removed the AAU from any governance role, and enabled the chartering of a national governing body for each sport, such as USA Swimming, or the United States Figure Skating Association.

Practice

With about 50 swimmers, the CHSC practiced in the Navy pool mornings at 6am or 8am, depending on what else might be going on. In the summer of 1964, we practiced after the Olympic hopefuls. The Navy pool was not heated. Everyone shivered in the early morning chill.

After morning practice, some of us rushed off to teach in the University-sponsored free swim lesson program. Or, we might go for something to eat at the Pine Room and be back for the “12-to-1” free swim. The team practiced again around 6pm.

The 1963 Chapel Hill Swim Club Team
(Left to right)
5th row: Ken Wilson, Robbie Hawkins, Cap Gentry, Ross Scroggs, Pete Sommerfeld, Louis Perlmutt, Bill Ritchie, George Adkins (Steel), Toolie Clark, Peter Barnes, Jack Spitznagel, Johnny Lindahl, Doug Wilson.
4th row: Chellie Martin, Jean Spitznagel, Anne Clark, Becky Fuller, Rebecca (Boo-ki) Whitaker, Linda Lindahl, Julianne Tenney, Laura Clark, Margaret Holman, Janet Kirkman, Kathy McKee, Anne Coxhead
3rd row: Henry Morrow, George Coxhead, Rob Ritchie, Bruce Calhoun, Eddie Barker, Cliff Kreps, Steve Bowden, Larry Lindahl, David Gentry, Dick Wilson
2nd row: Coach Bob Bilbro, (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), Peggy Spitznagel, Coach Chuck Wrye
1st row: Rick Parish, Dale Evert, (unkn), Arturo Reyes, Ken McKee, (unkn), David Kirkman, Fred Geer
Courtesy George Coxhead Jr.

The 1960s Swim Seasons

The Chapel Hill Swim Club was a summer team in those days; now most club teams are year-round. The first summer meet each year was the Raleigh Swim Association (RSA), short course yards meet.

Then followed the Eastern Invitational around the end of June at Lindley Park in Greensboro, hosted by the Greensboro Swimming Association (GSA). This was a huge meet, extending over 2 or 3 days. The meet attracted hundreds of swimmers from Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. In 2010, GSA hosted its 55th annual Eastern Regional.

Peter Barnes remembers that the finals of the Greensboro meet were televised beginning in the early 1960s, which was very novel. Pilot Life sponsored the meet and the TV broadcast. It was the first time most of us were on TV -- and people in Chapel Hill could see us, if they were not able to travel to Greensboro (and if Channel 2 reception was decent). The TV element made Greensboro even more special as a swim meet.

Then there was the Carolina AAU Swimming championship in High Point, NC, mid-July, in that big High Point pool.

We finished up with the Carolina Junior Olympics Long Course meet at Revolution Park pool in Charlotte, around the middle of August.

There were also meets in Shelby, Salisbury, Spartanburg, and even Columbia.
The CHSC had some great relays in those days, in all the age groups. Our boys team was usually battling for 1st, 2nd or 3rd at each meet with Johnston Memorial YMCA (JMY) of Charlotte, and Greensboro Swim Association (GSA). However, JMY was the State’s dominant team in the 1960s with Franke Ann Bell as Coach.

June, 1962 Chapel Hill Weekly newspaper article
Courtesy George Coxhead Jr.

Laura Clark

Laura Clark was one of the club's top athletes, as the above article relates. Laura won the Most Valuable Swimmer award in 1962, when she was 14.

The General Greene Motel

Below is an old-fashioned picture post card image of the General Greene Motel. The CHSC stayed overnight there in the mid-1960s during many of the Greensboro and High Point swim meets.

General Greene Motel, Greensboro, N.C.
On super highway U. S. 70 and 29 (3 miles southwest junction 220 and 421). 60 modern sound-proof air-conditioned rooms with free T.V. and phones. Combination tub and shower, wall-to-wall carpet. Conference room or apartment. Swimming pool. Howard Johnson's adjoins.

It was at the General Greene where my (GS) Mother, who was chaperoning one year, discovered me and a female team member (name withheld to protect the innocent) "in bed" one afternoon after trials. Actually, we were sitting on the bed together, against the backboard, while other swimmers were also in the room, watching TV. Boy, was she (my mother) fuming. Made us get up.

The 1966 Chapel Hill Swim Club Team
(Left to right)
Back (5th) row: Doug Wilson, Peter Barnes, Cap Gentry, George Steel, Pete Sommerfeld, Johnny Lindahl, David Taylor, (unkn), Larry Lindahl, Dick Wilson, Henry Morrow
4th row: (unkn), Becky Fuller, Julianne Tenney, Kris Gentry, Marilyn Morris, Jean Spitznagel, Anne Geer, Peggy Spitznagel, Anne Coxhead, Margaret Warden.
3rd row: (unkn), George Coxhead, Tim Denny, (unkn), (unkn), Kathy McKee, Janet Kirkman, Linda Lindahl, (unkn), Fred Geer.
2nd row: Ken McKee, (unkn), Eddie Barker, David Kirkman, Dale Evert, David Gentry, Steve Bowden, Rick Parish, (unkn)
1st row: [younger] Bowden, (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), (unkn), Janie Coxhead, [younger] Lindahl, (unkn)
Courtesy George Coxhead, Jr

1968 Chapel Hill Swim Club Team
Courtesy George Coxhead, Jr

How It All Began

In the 1950s and 1960s, the University opened up its pools and facilities at Woollen Gym and provided free swim lessons to hundreds of Chapel Hill kids. There you find the beginning of what is now huge in Chapel Hill. In 1961, parents worked in cooperation with the University to re-organize the Chapel Hill Swim Club for the advanced boys and girls. Some great coaches became involved. The University let the CHSC use the Bowman Gray and Navy pools for practice at the cost of a pool pass.

Today, swimming facilities and programs are abundant in Chapel Hill. There are as many as 7 swim clubs. Swim lessons, lap swimming, water aerobics, competitive swimming, scuba training or just relaxation are all available.

And so, at a certain point in time, a great University and the parents and children of the town, came together and began a swim program that hundreds of kids enjoyed and benefitted from, and taught many of us a love of swimming that has lasted a lifetime.

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by Charly Mann

Chapel Hill has produced many great singer-songwriters, but David Massengill is probably the best authentic troubadour to originate from our town. For the last forty years he has followed the classic troubadour tradition by composing songs in a wide variety of voices and styles that range from romantic, political, historical, lighthearted, deeply philosophical, to the nearly obscene.

From left to right Charly (Charles) Mann, Bill Ray, Peter Schmuck (Soule), David Massengill, and Tommy Thompson. This is a 1971 photo from an advertisement for the Record and Tape Center I designed. We are mirroring the pose of the promotional poster the Rolling Stones did for their album Sticky Fingers in 1971. I still have the Stones poster in excellent condition (It is 40" by 30"). Bill Ray went on to manage Sam Goody's in Raleigh,and died almost ten years ago. I believe Peter now lives in Arizona. Tommy Thompson married  Amy Langenderfer, who had the best stomach in Chapel Hill. At the time this photo was taken Tommy was dating Madonna Bentz.

I first met David in 1970 when we worked together at the Record and Tape Center on West Franklin Street. He had expansive and eclectic tastes in music, friends, and ideas, and was the least materialistic and serene person I had then known. While a student at UNC he wrote his first truly landmark song, The Eunuch’s Lament, which I think is still the funniest and cleverest song ever written. When he finally recorded it years later, Peter Tork of the Monkees played banjo on the recording.

David Massengill, America's greatest troubadour

David left Chapel Hill to follow in the footsteps of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan and move to New York City’s Greenwich Village to become an iconic American songwriter whose songs have been recorded by a wide array of artists including Joan Baez,Tom Russell, Chad Mitchell, and Lucy Kaplansky.

David Massengilll is also the author and illustrator of several small romantic childlike books that are especially enjoyable for adults 

Massengill’s songwriting roots come from American and British folk, as well as the craftsmanship of Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Cole Porter and George Gershwin, yet his style is totally unique and many of his most endearing songs have been painstaking crafted over many years. One common characteristic of most great artists is their lack of commercial success and public awareness during their lifetime, and Massengill is no exception to that rule. Even though he has been critically hailed, his more than half a dozen solo recordings have largely gone unnoticed by the general public.Many of his best known songs including My Name Joe and Riders of the Orphan Train are poignant tales that pass on knowledge of people, social injustice, and the experience of being human to other people. All of his music brings out insights about humanity. What makes David most unique is that he is also a great storyteller and infuses his live performances and many of his songs with myths, fairy tales, and family history. His storytelling is so powerful that it not only entertains an audience, but motivates them.

Legendary folk singer Jack Hardy and David on the left shortly after they as performed a concert at her home of my daughter (in the center) in Oklahoma last year. Together Jack and David are known as the Folk Brothers.

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by Charly Mann

From 1962 to 1971 hitchhiking was my prime mode of getting to school and work. Ordinary people would stop and pick me up without a second thought for their personal safety. I usually began my journey about 7:00 AM near the intersection of 15-501 (Fordham Boulevard) and Morgan Creek Road, and my destination was usually somewhere in downtown Durham where I attended part of junior high and high school and subsequently managed a record store. My daily roundtrip was 60 miles and it usually required three rides in each direction to complete.

Have thumb will travel. When I was thirteen a friend and I hitchhiked all the way to Nashville during a bitterly cold and snowy January weekend.

I found hitchhiking to be usually an exhilarating experience, as I never knew the kind of person who would pick me up next, but almost all were fascinating to talk to. I always figured that the main reason people gave me a ride was because they wanted someone fun and interesting to talk to, so I worked hard at being an engaging passenger. I knew it was almost always going to be my job to start the conversation and making small talk like discussing the weather had its limits. Instead I always began by thanking the driver for picking me up and then selected a topic that I thought they would enjoy. I found the more stimulating the conversation the more likely it was that the driver would take me all the way to my destination, or at least to a better drop off point to get the next ride.

My favorite topic of conversation was to ascertain my companion's philosophy of life, usually beginning with me asking either what they thought the purpose or meaning of life was. This may surprise many people today, but the generation of people who picked me up usually seemed excited to expound on their beliefs. I usually took notes in my journal on what they said on these topics, and what follows is a sampling of their responses.

We are here to live, become mature and make this world a better place for all people to enjoy.

Every person has a potential to do something really good and meaningful. It is our purpose to live up to that.

We are here to do good. We should aspire to do something that is worthwhile and that will make the world a better place than we found it.

Life is a gift from God and we should not waste it.

Your life is meant to be lived to its fullest and it is just one chapter in your existence.

Life does not have meaning – only words do. 

We are here to make our lives exciting by being forever curious.

Staying alive is the meaning of life.

Life is worth living if our works and deeds are remembered and continued by others.

We are here to ask questions and not to accept easy answers. Answers often change, but questions do not.

We are here to be good companions to one or more other souls.

From the early 1920's through the 1960's many students hitchhiked to Chapel Hill from across the state.

Life just exists.

We are here to change the word with small acts of kindness.

We are here to kill time, drink beer, and laugh until we die.

The purpose of our life is to give meaning to our lives. Life without meaning means we are indifferent, which means we are dead without knowing it.

We are here to be gentle, cheerful, and persistent.

Our purpose in life is to make our hearts sensitive, and our minds alert, refined and brilliant.

Our minds are not equipped to know if life has purpose or meaning, yet we can sense there is much more than we can comprehend.

To know and to serve God.

The purpose of life is to develop intelligence and spirituality which is the only way to attain depth.

We are here to live and die. That's it.

This is a line of hitchhiking UNC students on a Friday afternoon in the late 1950s at the intersection of South and Raleigh Road. There were also usually groups of students on Franklin Street near the President's house and on Country Club Road across from the Forest Theater with their thumbs out at the same time.  

Only a life lived for others is worth living.

It is to realize our lives and each day we live is a miracle.

If there is a purpose I don't care.

The question my friend is, "Are we here?"

Life is a shit sandwich, and everyday we have to take another bite.

Our existence is not an accident. All creatures possess a spark of the creator. We are meant to treat every person and animal with love and respect. Our purpose is to worship, nourish, and love life not destroy it.

I live my life based on Blaise Pascal's wager that God may or may not exist, but by betting that he does we can win eternal life, and if we lose nothing is lost.

Me, me, me..... i, i, i.

You may share your own view on the meaning of life as a comment to this article below.

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by Charly Mann

There have been many great games in UNC's glorious basketball history, but the most memorable one for me was the 1968 NCAA championship game played against the most dominant team of all time, the Lew Alcindor-led (later to change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) UCLA Bruins. The UNC Tar Heel team featured All-American senior Larry Miller and UNC's first black player, sophomore guard Charlie Scott, who was unquestionably the best player in the ACC that year.

Sophomore Charlie Scott scores an incredible basket. (In those days freshmen could not play on the varsity team)

It is remarkable to recall that while in 1967 Chapel Hill and UNC were considered the most liberal and progressive town and university in the South, the community still had a strong current of racial turmoil. Even though UNC had admitted its first black undergraduate in 1955, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed segregation in schools and universities, Charlie Scott was that year the first black varsity athlete in the school's history.

Charlie Scott against four Duke defenders dribbles down the court for a layout in 1968. Even though Scott continued to be the best player in the ACC for his entire three years at Carolina, he never was awarded ACC player of the year. It was always given to a white player.  

The 1968 UNC team united as one to reach the national championship and create a new racial mold not only for UNC, but for the entire ACC in subsequent years. Because of this team, skin color would quickly lose significance in college athletics in Chapel Hill and the rest of the South. Much of this credit goes to two brave and highly talented men, UNC Coach Dean Smith and Charlie Scott. Smith had played basketball and coached at the University of Kansas which had integrated their basketball program twelve years earlier, and he had long wanted to break the color barrier at Carolina. Scott, like Jackie Robinson, had the athletic ability, charisma, and courage to transcend the racial divide in Chapel Hill and UNC. His white team mates tried to make Scott as comfortable as they could, but Scott has said he could not hang out with whites socially during his time in Chapel Hill, and he had to endure great loneliness. It was Dean Smith who he was closest to, and even today he refers to Smith as his "father".

The great 1968 UNC basketball team after winning the ACC championship. To the right of Charlie Scott is Larry Miller who wore jersey #44. Directly over the trophy is center Rusty Clark who was a Morehead scholar and went on to a distiguished career as a surgeon.

The national championship game was played on the evening of Saturday, March 23 1968, and was not broadcast on a major network (In 1969 NBC televised the first NCAA final game). The final four was played in Los Angles which gave UCLA a definite home court advantage, but was not even shown on local television in that area. I was a senior in high school that year and was living near Los Angeles. I desperately wanted to see my Tar Heels prevail over the heavily favorite Bruins, but in order to see the game I had to pay $20 for tickets for me and my girlfriend, Linda Hunter, to watch a closed-circuit telecast in black and white at the Anaheim Convention Center. I had my hopes up since UNC had soundly beaten Ohio State 80 – 66 in the semi-finals the night before. Instead UNC was crushed in one of the worst mismatches in NCAA history by what Dean Smith called "the greatest college basketball team ever assembled". In truth it was one man, the 7 foot two Lew Alcindor who scored 34 points and took away at least 10 UNC points by blocking 5 shots headed right into the basket. The final score was 78 to 55.

In 1968 being number 2 was something all my fellow Tar Heels and I could be proud of. We had fielded our best team ever and had finally broken the color barrier. Not only that, I knew we would return to the NCAA finals, and we did the very next year in 1969. In the following years more black players joined the UNC basketball team and the Tar Heels became even better making 14 more final four appearances and capturing the national championship four times, in 1982, 1993, 2005, and 2009. UNC has also now tied UCLA for the most final four NCAA tournament appearances at 18.

College basketball's most dominant big man, Lew Alcindor, blocks a Charlie Scott shot in the 1968 UNC - UCLA national championship game 

Televised highlights of the 1968 UNC – UCLA National Championship Basketball Game

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by Charly Mann

Almost everyone I know has gone to at least one of their high school reunions. If you are my age and have recently attended one of these events the first thing you noticed is how old everyone has become. You will also see that most of the men are balding and fat, and surprisingly most of the women are in good shape and still fairly attractive. Many of the men I have run into seem uncomfortable and have insipid conversations about sports, investments, and their careers, while the women for the most part are outgoing and talk about their families and current interests and usually ask me about mine.

While I always love to see or hear from old friends from my childhood and high school days, I wish there were a way we could have reunions with friends from each year of our adult lives. As we change careers, work our way up the corporate ladder, or move, we lose touch with so many wonderful people. I think that while the friends we had in high school and college were nice, the friends we make in the real world are usually more similar to us and therefore more interesting to reconnect with.

Me with "lost"  Chapel Hill friends. From left to right: Harry Clements, Charly Mann, and Lizanne Fisher from 1979. At the time Harry was the owner of the Paradise Records chain. Before that he had been CFO of the Record Bar. Today he is a partner in the Childress Kline commercial real estate development and management company. 

I often wonder why I have lost track of so many of the friends I made in the last 40 years. Was it that they all stopped liking me, or did I lose interest in them? It turns out that most of our "lost" friendships have nothing to do with this. Instead, they are the fallout of a natural limit uncovered by recent anthropologist research which found that human beings can only handle a maximum of 150 relationships at a time. Beyond that number, the critical neocortex part of our brain begins to malfunction. As a , we naturally drop some old friends as new ones come into our lives.

I would like to pay tribute to a handful of my former Chapel Hill friends who were purged from my friendship database.

A smiling Lizanne Fisher making her dinner at my house in the summer of 1979

Lizanne Fisher was a real estate agent for J.P. Goforth in Chapel Hill in 1979. I had a large house off Whitfield Road at that time and a mutual friend, Harry Clements, told me what a fascinating person Lizanne was and that she needed a place to stay. I let her have a room which I believe was rent free. In return I had the pleasure of befriending one of the most ebullient and delightful people I have ever known. She later left Chapel Hill and became a highly successful real estate agent in Washington, D.C.

Betsy Moore and her always present smile in my den in Chapel Hill in 1985

Betsy Moore and I were good buddies for more than five years in the 1980s. She would often come over to my house where we would play tennis, and I would regularly watch her favorite show, Cheers, with her at her apartment on Thursday evening. We also had lunch together on a regular basis and sometimes went on day-long driving trips to places like Southern Pines and Pinehurst. Betsy was the sweetest person I ever knew and also the cutest. The last I heard she had become a pastry chef and moved to Virginia.

Christi Owens of Chapel Hill in 1983 at 18 years old

After working more than a decade in the music and video business I decided to try teaching and got a programming degree and was hired as a Professor of Computer Programming at Durham Technical College in 1982. I loved being a teacher, and many of my favorite students were also from Chapel Hill including Christi Owens. Christi came from an illustrious Chapel Hill family. Her father developed Estes Hills and other neighborhoods in town, and her mother, Patsy, and her friend Anna Darden ran an avant-garde upscale women's clothing store between Chapel Hill and Durham. They lived in a large house on Rosemary Street near where it intersects with Boundary.

Christi loved The Wizard of Oz, and I had a friend of mine make a chocolate red slipper birthday cake for her in 1984

Christi was the first student to give me an apple, and we soon became good friends. She often came over to my house after school where at 3 p.m. she would religiously watch her favorite show, General Hospital, then featuring the wedding of Luke and Laura as well as staring a young and beautiful Demi Moore. Christi was passionate about The Police and Every Breath You Take seemed to often be playing when we were together.

Lori Stephens and Charly Mann at Temptatons Bakery in Durham in 1982. They were located across from Brightleaf Square and had the best chocolate truffles in America. 

Lori Stephens was an enormous ball of energy with a fondness for the outrageous. Her father was a gynecologist in Durham, and she grew up in Hope Valley. In 1978 and 79 I was dating her best friend, Laura Kreps (who grew up on Oakwood Drive in Chapel Hill and whose mother was then Secretary of Commerce in the Carter administration). Lori and I became good friends and she stayed in one of the rooms in my house for awhile. She and I had several wonderful trips together; one to Southern California, and another to New York City. On our return flight from our New York trip Lori may have had a little too much to drink. In those days rolling stairs were brought up to an airplane when it landed at Raleigh-Durham Airport. My tipsy friend fell from the top of the stairs all the way to the ground, but was so relaxed at the time that she got up laughing and without a bruise.

Angela Cason in Chapel Hill shortly after graduating from Yale

Angela Cason moved to Chapel Hill in 1984 after graduating from Yale with a degree in English to work for her sister Lee White's advertising and design company. Angela was an extremely brilliant and curious person, and after just a few hours of conversation could penetrate into the soul of another person. She gave me a copy of her favorite book, The Phantom Tollbooth, that I still occasionally read sections from. A few of my favorite passages from it are: "So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible," and "What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do."

Angela is today the CEO and President of Cason Nightingale, an advertising and marketing company located in New York City.

I am fortunate to have a marvelously eclectic collection of former Chapel Hill friends – some were artists, some business people, several were lawyers and doctors, many were musicians, two were philosophers, and quite a few were bohemians, yet each was an individual with a warm heart and a gentle spirit.

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by Charly Mann 

Jim Heavner more than any other person created the character and spirit of modern Chapel Hill through his relentless drive of promoting the town and elevating UNC football and basketball to national prominence through his conglomeration of media companies including WCHL, The Tar Heel Sports Network, and The Village Advocate.

James Allen Heavner first came to Chapel Hill as a freshman in the fall of 1957 to major in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures. Since he was a young boy growing up in Kings Mountain he had been determined to have a career in radio or television and probably thought he would become a reporter. In high school while his classmates pursued sports as an extra-curricular activity Jim became a reporter for newspapers in Kings Mountain, Shelby, and Charlotte. He also was a dee-jay for the Kings Mountain radio station.

Jim Heavner during his two years at UNC, as a freshman and sophomore in 1958 and 1959. During those years he was also working in television in Durham and as a deejay at WCHL. 

From the moment Jim entered Carolina it was clear that was not going to wait until he graduated to start his career. I first remember seeing Heavner on WTVD when I was about 9, in about 1959, hosting a short-lived television bowling show. The next year I saw him working at the then relatively new radio station WCHL which was owned by Sandy McClamroch, and "managed" by now legendary Charlotte radio personality, Ty Boyd. I had been going to WCHL on a regular basis since I was 8 in the afternoons to get promotional copies of rock 'n roll 45s that the station was given but did not play. (WCHL's format was strictly easy listening throughout the 1950s and 60s.) I vividly remember the easy going Boyd introducing me to Heavner who I recognized from his television show, and being impressed that a "TV star" was working at WCHL. I was also struck by how intense and focused this young man was compared to anyone I had ever met before. By 1960 Heavner had dropped out of UNC and was working full-time for very little money at WCHL. (In those days most WCHL employees were UNC students and received minimum wage, but it proved to be the launching pad of many illustrious broadcast careers including NPR's Carl Kasell, CBS's Charles Kuralt, and Jim Lampley.)

Disc Jockey lineup at WCHL in 1956 when the great Ty Boyd was the station manager and morning host, and future NPR newscaster Carl Kasell also had a show. 

1961 was the most important year in Jim's life. Ty Boyd left Chapel Hill to take a job in Charlotte and Sandy McClamroch made the then 21-year-old Heavner WCHL's manager. That same year McClamroch began serving the first of 8 years as mayor of Chapel Hill. This meant the station owner would be far too busy governing Chapel Hill during its most tumultuous decade to watch over his young station manager. With Jim at the helm the station rapidly became the voice of Chapel Hill. Almost immediately WCHL supplanted the Chapel Hill Weekly as the best source of up-to-date local news and sports. Jim also became active in almost every important community organization, especially the Junior Chamber of Commerce which was made up of almost every merchant in town. Heavner was a master promoter and helped create events and contests that significantly helped every business in town. My favorites were "treasure hunts" the station sponsored in which cleverly ambiguous clues were given each week about where a treasure could be found. Hundreds of Chapel Hillians became amateur sleuths trying to discover the location.

Even though Heavner still did a radio show every day and managed the entire staff of the station, it was not unusual for me to see him in the afternoon in some store on Franklin Street, Eastgate, or Glen Lennox talking to the owner about their next ad campaign for the station. His energy and enthusiasm seemed boundless when he was selling ads or promoting the community.

I began paying closer attention to Heavner in the 60s when I was a teenager. I noticed he was always incredibly charming and loquacious to people he was interested in, but seemed to have little interest in people my age or even college students unless they were basketball or football players. This was the greatest decade of rock and roll music, yet Jim seemed to disdain it as much as most people in my parent's generation even though he was in his early 20s. His station adamantly refused to play the music that everyone in my baby-boom generation was listening to, instead featuring music that my friends and I called "music for the elderly". Looking back at this today I realize that he was catering to the musical tastes of his sponsors; men and women who had grown up in the 1930s and 1940s and loved big band and easy listening music.

Jim's hard work paid off and by 1970 he had become co-owner of WCHL with McClamroch. Sandy McClamroch was an incredible man, but in most ways the opposite of Heavner. I often spent time at the McClamroch home at the corner of Stagecoach and Greenwood Road in Greenwood in the 1950s, and was always impressed at how relaxed and quiet Mr. McClamroch was. On the other hand every time I saw Jim he was dominating the conversation and was so zealous. In the early 1970s several people I knew who worked for Jim told me how driven and goal-oriented he was, and how he expected the same of his employees.

In the 1970s Heavner began to amass a highly profitable and influential media empire in Chapel Hill. Under the direction of former WCHL sales manager Roger Jennings, the Village Advocate advertiser was launched, which was delivered free to every residence in Chapel Hill. It was enormously successful from the beginning. Before this, merchants only had the Chapel Hill Weekly or Daily Tar Heel for their display advertising. Ads in both these publications were expensive in relation to the traffic they generated, and at best only reached 30% of the town's population. The s of placing an ad in the Village Advocate were tremendous and much more cost effective. I managed two downtown records stores in the early 70s, and found that a front page ad in the advocate would usually at least double my weekly revenues.

This is one of many front page ads I placed in the Village Advocate. This is from October 1972. The photo was taken in front of the downtown Chapel Hill Post Office. I am standing with the cowboy hat on the far right.

In 1975 Heavner launched The Tar Heels Sports Network which broadcast UNC football and basketball games throughout North Carolina and parts of Virginia and South Carolina. Heavner, who truly loves Carolina sports, did the color commentary while Woody Durham did the play by play of the games. The next year Heavner bought the Chapel Hill home of former North Carolina Governor and Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges that included a beautiful indoor swimming pool.

Jim Heavner on the far left with two of the greatest basketball coaches in North Carolina history; Jim Valvano and Frank McGuire. The "Voice of the Tar Heels", Woody Durham, is on the far right.

In 1978 Heavner bought out Sandy McClamroch and took control of what was now called Village Companies. The same year he also started Chapel Hill's cable company; Village Cable. Since then Jim's drive and ambition have not abated and his empire has expanded into various media enterprises throughout the country. In 1988 a heart attack set him back only enough for him to give over more control to subordinates who were then charged with running their parts of the company with the dedication and expectations of their leader.

Over the last few decades Heavner's company has sold off some of its assets like the Tar Heel Sports Network in 2000 and the cable company in 1986. In 1997 he sold WCHL to a company in Raleigh which moved the station's studio to Durham and abandoned WCHL's long tradition of focusing on the community and local news. Fortunately, Jim bought back WCHL in 2002 and it has returned to Chapel Hill and its community-centric format.

Jim Heavner has long been active in supporting Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina. He has donated funds to build the James A. Heavner mini-theater at Kenan Stadium which shows films of UNC's footballs past glories. He also spearheaded the $18 million fundraising efforts to transform UNC's Memorial Hall into the world class performing arts center it is today. Along the way Jim has made a lot of friends, but has also alienated many others.  I only know Heavner from afar and have always greatly admired his hard work, dedication to detail, and all he has done to make Chapel Hill a better place to live. A very successful friend of mine once told me that he never would have achieved very much without "pissing a lot of people off," and I suspect both Jim's high expectations and strong personality are what turn some people off to him.

This is Jim Heavner's house at the far end of Gimghoul Road. For more than 40 years the Roman Catholic Church; St. Thomas Moore, stood at this location. Several people have told me they think the house looks like a hotel. 

I believe Jim's genius was figuring out that the people of Chapel Hill were more interested in what was happening in their community than the world at large, and that he used WCHL, The Tar Heel Sports Network, and The Village Advocate to make Chapel Hill a cohesive community by making us aware of what was happening in our town. WCHL's Ron Stutts morning show, which focuses on the daily life of Chapel Hillians, is the personification of Jim's vision.

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