by Charly Mann

I have previously discussed the history of Dr Kluttz and his general merchandise store that was dominant business on Franklin Street from 1883 to 1923, but there was much more to this man than this. The most important thing in his life was his wife, Ora Jane, who he married in 1890. She was a beautiful red head from Goldsboro who was born on March 27, 1868. Dr Kluttz grew up outside of Salisbury and was born on July 7, 1857. Together they were the most respected, well liked, prosperous, and generous couple in Chapel Hill for half a century.

When they first married, Dr Kluttz was working hard to get his store established, but he always seemed to have time for other interests. One reason for this was Ernest Thompson, a black man, who was the de-facto manager of Kluttz's store. He was so competent that most townspeople and students joked that Dr Kluttz was the only person in town who did not work. A popular poem in town in those days went:

Ernest runs the business,
Doc Chews cigar butts
Everybody works in this town,
But A.A. Kluttz

Actually, Dr Kluttz did more before most people got up than the average Chapel Hill citizen did in a day. He was always up by three or four in the morning to work in his vast vegetable and flower garden. He and his wife had purchased the Sam Phillips house and law office across from the University President's house at 407 East Franklin Street in 1894 for $2,800. Dr Kluttz and his wife thoroughly enjoyed this property and got the maximum use out of it.

407 East Franklin Street soon after Dr and Mrs Kluttz bought the house in 1894 

What Dr Kluttz's called his garden was actually a small farm extending back to Rosemary Street. In it he grew a variety of vegetables including tomatoes, radishes, squash, cucumbers, cabbage, green beans, and a wide variety of flowers. He owned a dairy cow that often grazed where Spencer dorm is today which provided the sweetest cream in Chapel Hill. He also grew several types of corn including a variety called County Gentlemen which he was renowned for. It was a sweet white corn that had just been introduced in 1890 and had irregular rows of very deep and narrow kernels. Almost all his guests and boarders recalled its wonderful flavor and texture. His garden was large enough to provide fresh vegetables almost all year for the meals of the Kluttz's, their boarders and the many people they entertained. It also supplied an almost year round supply of fresh cut flowers for their house, and for the Presbyterian Church each Sunday, which he and Ora attended for more than thirty years.

Ora Kluttz was just as amazing as her husband. In 1897 the Kluttzs took over the running of the Central Hotel, which is where the Battle-Vance-Pettigrew building stands today across from the downtown post office. Since Dr Kluttz had his store and "farm" to attend to, it was Mrs Kluttz who really managed the place. The hotel was then dilapidated and catered mainly to students who could not find accommodations in a dormitory. A few years later Mrs Kluttz took her knowledge of hotel management to the next level by turning the Kluttz's home into the finest boarding house in Chapel Hill.

The Central Hotel on Franklin Steet across from what is now the Post Office. It was torn down in 1912 and replaced with the Battle-Vance-Pettigrew building.

Ora Kluttz was a highly refined and dignified woman, and she ran her boarding house like an elite country club. Only a select few were allowed to stay at the Kluttz's, and those who did enjoyed the best rooms, finest meals, and the most stimulating companionship in Chapel Hill. The rooms were rented exclusively to bachelor professors or single professional women who Mrs. Kluttz deemed worthy of her establishment. It was considered a great honor to be allowed to room at the Kluttz's.

Mrs. Kluttz was an imposing presence, and had an aristocratic style that made many who met her feel they were in the presence of royalty. Indeed she was often referred to as the Queen of Chapel Hill. She wore her hair in a pompadour and her manners and taste were impeccable. She loved to entertain and had the finest cook and staff in Chapel Hill to help her provide sumptuous feasts for her guests. She was particularly well known for her stag dinner parties, where eligible bachelor professors would be introduced to ladies she deemed worthy of their attention. Many love affairs began at these soirees.

The Adam and Ora Kluttz boarding house

The greatest love of Ora Kluttz's life was for her husband. They were perfectly matched and totally complimented one another. At their house Mrs. Kluttz did most of the talking, though Dr Kluttz often had the last word. While she always behaved and conversed in an elegant style, Dr Kluttz loved to find humor in almost everything. For example when they had a new guest to dinner he would pass them a plate of biscuits or deserts and startle them by saying "take a lot, take two, take damn near all of them." When a man he didn't care for came calling for one of the female boarders he would say, "Come in! Tell me all you know, it won't take you long." One boarder recalls that a rather large lodger was piling his plate rather high at dinner when Dr Kluttz turned to him and said, "here just take another plate." Mrs. Kluttz always seemed to enjoy her husband's wit. Throughout their life together they always called each other "Bay" which was short for "Baby".

Sam Phillips law office (far left) at northeast corner of Hillsborough and East Franklin Street 1920. Next door is the Kluttz house.

After dinner Dr Kluttz enjoyed sitting on the swinging chair on his front porch and exchanging greetings with every person who walked by his house. When it was cold he enjoyed sitting next to the fire in his living room. There was a steady stream of visitors to the Kluttz's every evening. Almost everyone in town, including all the other merchants and professors at UNC enjoyed sitting in the Kluttz's parlor and discussing a wide range of topics. Among the regular visitors was the esteemed UNC botanist William C. Coker, who landscaped most of the UNC campus and downtown Chapel Hill, and M.C.S. Noble, Dean of the UNC School of Education.

Sam Phillips law office in 2009.  (401 East Franklin Street)

The Kluttz house was built in 1856 by Samuel Field Phillips. The small stucco building next to it on the corner of Franklin and Hillsborough, which the Kluttz's also owned, was originally Phillips law office. and was constructed in 1843. After Mrs. Kluttz died their home was left to her niece Sudie Coenen. Since 1978 the house has been the Tri Delta (Delta Delta Delta) Sorority.

The Kluttz house today at 407 East Franklin Street which is now the Tri Delta sorority

By 1916, the Klutzes were the wealthiest family in Chapel Hill, primarily due to good real estate investments. They owned several downtown buildings including those that in later years housed the Varsity Theater, Jeff's Confectionery, Lacock's Shoe Store, Max Snipes Barber Shop, and the N.C. Cafeteria. They also owned four other downtown houses. After Dr Kluttz died Mrs. Kluttz became the town's leading advocate for improving the local public schools and urged for an increase of the school tax on property. Since she was the town's single largest taxpayer this affected her more than anyone else in town. She was also a generous contributor to the Playmaker's Theater.

 Dr Kluttz died in 1926, while Mrs. Kluttz lived on another 21 years until May 31, 1947. They are buried next to one another at the Chapel Hill cemetery.

by Charly Mann

For me the most greatest man ever to live in Chapel Hill was Adam Alexander Kluttz (1857- 1926). He came to Chapel Hill in 1878 as a young man to take the two year medical school preparatory course at UNC, and then went to the New York School of Physicians and Surgeons (now Columbia University) to get his medical degree. He did not practice medicine for long, and instead came back to Chapel Hill to open A.A. Kluttz, Chapel Hill's first general merchandise store, in 1883. Even though he never practiced medicine he was known from the time he opened his store until his death as Dr. Kluttz. There was no person better loved and respected in Chapel Hill history than Dr. Kluttz.

This is the first ad for A.A. Kluttz General Merchandise  from 1893. This is the first year Chapel Hill had a newspaper, and it was published once a week from September through May.

When he opened his store, Chapel Hill was barely a village. It was a secluded community that few people except for students had a reason to make their way to, and the roads into town were barely accessible even by horse. In 1883 downtown Franklin Street had only half a dozen wooden structures. The only source of water was from wells, and homes were lighted by oil lamps.

Dr Kluttz helping a young boy at his candy counter at A.A. Kluttz in the center of Franklin Street Chapel Hill

Dr Kluttz's store provided Chapel Hillians with virtually everything they including needed candy, magazines, tobacco, stationery, food, clothing, shoes, school books, Christmas cards, umbrellas and patent medicines. (For those unfamiliar with patent medicine these were highly popular remedies of questionable effectiveness that were heavily hyped as cure all for all kinds of ills , and often contained alcohol, cocaine, or some other kind of opiate.)  You would enter Kluttz's through a screen door and find a dimly lit store.

Dr. Kluttz had a drug store in Chapel Hill next to his store in the 1890s that sold medically approved drugs and the then very popular patent medicines

Inside Kluttz's everything was jumbled together. The aisles were all cluttered and made up of heavy tables and counters stacked so high with merchandise that children and medium sized adults could not see over them. To the left side of the entrance was a candy case filled with boxes of Lowney's chocolate that came in boxes decorated with pictures of beautiful women, along with trays of gumdrops, jelly beans, caramels, marshmallows, sour balls, licorice sticks, and peppermints. Further back on the left hand aisle were shelves of used textbooks, followed by tables with college supplies including notebooks, pencils, pens, ink, tablets. On the other side of this row were hundreds of boxes of men's shoes. On the right hand side of the store were a couple of rows of food , including cheese, crackers, sardines, pickles, potted ham, corned beef, and by 1900, Coca-Cola which was an instant hit in Chapel Hill. The middle part of the store was jam-packed with all types of goods including clothing, and bags that overflowed into the aisles containing textiles and yarn. Everyone in Chapel Hill knew that if you hunted long enough at A.A. Kluttz you would find what you were looking for.

This is an A.A. Kluttz ad from 1900. The copy says it all; everything anyone wanted could be found at Kluttz's in Chapel Hill.

Dr Kluttz was a tall man with a handlebar mustache who cared far more about people than money. Even though he was the dominant merchant in town for forty years he prided himself in being the friend of everyone who lived in Chapel Hill. The store was always profitable, but he was not a good businessman. He had much more passion for growing flowers and vegetable gardening. He sold most of his goods on credit and trusted everyone in town. Often poor residents were unable to pay their bills, but he never cut anyone off from getting their necessities. He also employed many students as clerks, and many stole money from the store, but that did not seem to bother " Doc" either. Even though he had no children, he especially loved his youngest customers, and was known to add extra candy to their bags when they came in to purchase something at the candy counter. By 1910 people considered him an old timer and attributed his kindness, love of people, and lackadaisical business practices to being a man of the 1880s and 90s generation. By this time his hair was white and he often preferred staying in the back of his store playing checkers, or talking to a friend, than helping customers. When a customer would walk in the store he would say to the friend he was talking to; " ssh, don't make any noise maybe they will go away." In his heyday Dr Kluttz would enjoy greeting all his customers. After 12PM his greeting was always the same, "good evening", since in those days there was no expression for "afternoon".

   
A.A. Kluttz was the first Chapel Hill merchant to offer muiscal concerts to attract customers to his store. This is from 1907. In the 1930s the downtown cafeteria often had a full jazz orchestra in the evenings. In 1971 I started having concets at my record store on West Franklin Street with artists that included Larry Reynolds and Cindy Gooch.

In  1916 Kluttz built a new two story brick building to replace the wooden store he had operated out of since 1883. It was the grandest building on Franklin Street and sat at the center of the commercial block. Even in that year the town did not have many businesses. Where Four Corners is now was a small wooden building that housed the post office. Next to it was Eubank's Drug Store, then Strowd's Meat Market, McCauley's dry goods store, the Bank of Chapel Hill, and then Kluttz's new store. Above his store were several apartments which he rented to students. Kluttz's store was directly across the street from where the Carolina Coffee Shop is today. In those days it was where Tank Hunter's Livery stable was located. Next to the stable, in a small wooden building, was Gooch's, the town's first restaurant. Directly to the west of Kluttz's was a small store that sold eyeglasses and did photographic portraits that was run by Willie B Sorrell. Next door was the Herndon Hardware store. The last business on the block was a blacksmith shop.

Dr. Kluttz replaced his wooded building with a much larger two story brick buildi n in 1916 that stood in the center of Franklin Street in Chapel Hill until about 1971

Dr. Kluttz retired from business in 1923, but he remained a fixture in town until his death in 1926. In 1912 he bought one of the first cars in Chapel Hill, a Cadillac, and loved to take trips with his wife, Ora Jane, around the state.

This is a rare photo of Dr. Kluttz from 1924. He retired from his business the previous year. He is in the front row second from the left. Cornelia Spencer Love another Chapel Hill legend is first female in the front row right. She was a boarder at the Kluttz home from 1918 to 1929.

No person ever loved Chapel Hill as much as Adam Kluttz. His final words are probably the most prophetic and significant in Chapel Hill's history. On the afternoon he lay dying at his house at 407 East Franklin Street in 1926, his friend and minister of the Presbyterian church Reverend Moss sat next to his bedside to comfort him. It was an especially cold and icy December 20th. Dr Kluttz looked up from his bed and asked Reverend Moss if he thought he would go to heaven. The Reverend quickly responded by saying, "Yes, Dr Kluttz, I think you will." Slowly and deliberately Dr Kluttz then asked, " What do you think heaven is like?" The Reverend Moss, after a long pause said, " Dr Kluttz I believe heaven must be a lot like Chapel Hill in the spring." Dr Kluttz then spoke his final words, " That's good." Since that time Chapel Hill has been known as The Southern Part of Heaven.

by Charly Mann

The first television set in Chapel Hill was installed at the Martin Ivey Cafe on Main Street in Carrboro on September 27, 1949. The TV was a Philco and Chapel Hillians were amazed that much of the programming could be seen the same second it was happening. The biggest attraction in the restaurant was Tuesday night when the Arthur Godfrey Show was on. Televisions became commercially available in Chapel Hill during the summer of 1949 at Ogburn's Furniture store, but only a handful were sold. At that time only one station in Charlotte was broadcasting television in North Carolina, so the reception in Chapel Hill was exceptionally poor. By late September of that year WFMY in Greensboro began broadcasting television with a very weak signal, which meant that with a large antenna you could get a clear picture some of the time.

First store to sell televisions in Chapel Hill Ogburn Furniture, and their first ad for this new product, September 1950.

When people did watch television it was a family event. People only had one set which was in their living room, and it was most often used on Sunday night for no more than an hour. People did not eat meals or anything else in front of it. Once or twice a year, especially on New Year's day our fathers would get together with some of their friends and share a couple of beers while they watched one or more of the four bowl games then played every year – the Orange, Rose, Cotton, and Sugar Bowl.

Families ate dinner in a dinning room or area in the kitchen in Chapel Hill in the 1950's that did not contain a TV.

The main difference between life in Chapel Hill in the 1950s and 60s and now is time. In those days almost everyone had plenty of time, and now hardly anyone does. It was not that time moved slowly then, or we had less to do, it is simply we used time much better then.

Today the average person in Chapel Hill will spend almost 14 years of their life watching television. In the 1950s and 60s the quality of the programming for the most part was better than today, but we only occasionally watched it. I do not recall a single show that my family watched on a regular basis, except for the national news which was then only 15 minutes on CBS, and hosted by Douglas Edwards. Even in 1969, when I was 19 and owned a very small portable b/w television, the only time I recall using it was when a group of people came over to my apartment to watch the first landing of a man on the moon that July.

Johnson-Strowd-Ward furniture store began selling televisions in December of 1950

When I was about seven, in 1957, I remember an older friend of my family, Minnie Garner who lived on North Street, saying she was afraid TV viewing would become an addictive habit for most people, but I could not see that ever happening. By 1959 I heard a conversation at Max Snipes' Barber Shop on Franklin Street about the ill effects of television. Max and a customer were discussing how many of the people they knew were reading less and the social circle of family and friends that once gathered to talk, read, and play games in Chapel Hill's living rooms in the evenings had become a circle of spectators.

The art of conversation has significantly declined in Chapel Hill in the last 50 years, primarily due to television. There were many great storytellers in town in the 1950s and 60s, and most adults could easily express their ideas and beliefs so that even a child like me could understand them.

Wednesday night television for Chapel Hill September 1961

We need to remember that time is more valuable than money. We are squandering it today with our three screens - television, computers, and cell phones. Time cannot be replaced and using it well is our best investment and greatest asset for happiness.

Personal Disclosure: I played a part in the decline of quality time in Chapel Hill. In 1979 I co-founded North American Video with my friend Gary Messenger. It was the first, and for at least a decade, the dominant video rental chain in the Triangle. It became a huge success under the leadership of Gary and his brilliant wife, yet I regret that my concept accelerated Chapel Hill's addiction to television and passive entertainment.

by Charly Mann

In 1936 Edward Danziger was 43 years old and a highly successful confectioner in Vienna, Austria, and was known as the "Candy King". He was also a Jew and he saw the storm clouds of Adolph Hitler in neighboring Germany. He sought a way out of Austria for himself and his family through a Quaker group in the United States. They brought the Danzigers to New York City where he quickly became one of the city's most respected candy makers.

Eleanor Roosevelt actually had dinner at Danziger's on her visits to Chapel Hill

In 1939 Dudley DeWitt Carroll, the first dean of the UNC School of Commerce (later to become the School of Business), who was also a Quaker, convinced Danziger he should relocate to either Durham or Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Danziger looked at both towns and concluded he could make more money in Durham, but that owning a business in Chapel Hill would give him more pleasure.

Edward Danziger especially loved that his restaurant was a favorite spot for UNC Chapel Hill couples to go to on a date in the 1950s

Chapel Hill's first upscale Coffee Bar, Danziger's Candy Shop established 1939

On Sept. 12, 1939 Danziger opened his new business Danziger's Candy Shop at 155 East Franklin Street in the location that had been Gooch's Restaurant. Over the years the business evolved into a restaurant and then a gift shop. By the early 1950's it had become Danziger's Old World Restaurant which was modeled on a tavern from Gudesberg, Austria where Danziger had often taken girlfriends in his youth.

Some of the favorite menu items from Danziger's Candy Shop and Restaurant Chapel Hill

He said the purpose of the restaurant was to serve good food and be a place where you could make good friends. It was also probably the first restaurant in North Carolina to have something we now call atmosphere. Much of that atmosphere came from the many photos on the wall. For the most part the pictures were of customers of the restaurant, but to have your photo hung you had to have to done some great work in your field. While many Chapel Hill businesses now display photographs of local celebrities and sports stars, Danziger's walls were covered with pictures of the best writers, professors, and poets of Chapel Hill. There were some famous people on the wall like Eleanor Roosevelt, the black opera singer Marian Anderson, and opera tenor Jan Peerce, but each of these people had actually eaten at Danziger's.

"Papa D"  Danziger in the window of his restaurant and gift shop on Franklin Steet in Chapel Hill 1955

Above the pictures were what Danziger called his wall of mottos, which the public referred to as the quotation wall. He believed the most important thing you can learn in life is a foreign language and his mottos were written in fourteen different languages. He offered 10 pounds of candy to any person who could translate all 14 quotes, but only one person, a UNC professor ever did. Among his mottos on the wall were, "the beauty of your home is not represented by the walls, but by the cooking" which was in Russian; "he who doesn't appreciate coffee, doesn't know how to live," which was in Turkish, and in Greek "recognize yourself".

Fancy dinner and a show for two at Danziger's Old World Restaurant March 1953 for $2.75

Throughout the 1950s and early 60s Chapel Hillians made a point of taking their out of town friends and relations to Danziger's Old World Restaurant so they could see what made Chapel Hill so extraordinary and unique. It was also where you went to see friends and have great food.

At this time Danziger was also probably the most loved businessman on Franklin Street and was known affectionately by almost all his customers as "Papa D." Danziger said, "I like people. I like to talk to people. I like people to talk to me." He especially loved female people. He was fond of saying; "there are half as many good men as women - and no man in history did anything worthwhile unless there was a woman behind him."

Edward "Papa" Danziger's gravestone Chapel Hill cemetery

by Dan "Arthur" Gifford

Long before snicklefritz came to mean a batch of bad marijuana or the name of a cartoon cat in modern American popular culture, it was for centuries a German term of endearment for a small boy. And it was with that word and a pinch on the cheek that "Papa" Gustav Danziger used to greet me when I would visit his Viennese Candy Kitchen and Old World Restaurant -- simply called "Danziger's" -- or the Rathskeller below it with my father.

Edward "Papa" Danziger at Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy Store Chapel Hill

The greeting was quickly followed by a slice of peanut cake or Vienna Kranz or some other central European goodie to keep me occupied while Papa, sometimes joined by his son Ted, and my father would sip coffee and converse in German. For hours it seemed they would sip coffee and speak in German, and if they happened to be joined by Werner Friedrich (always "Doctor Friedrich" to me then), my father's Swiss born comparative literature professor, it could actually be hours.

 
"Papa" Danziger caricature logo showing him reading Goethe's Faust

By then I was wandering around the store and into the kitchen where I would learn special secrets about the candy that filled Danziger's Franklin Street display window. So when my elementary pals pressed their faces on that glass after school and salivated about the mystery of white chocolate (an object of fascination then), I could tell them with authority that it wasn't really chocolate. That would take us inside for a Papa D explanation, in English, about the difference between cacao and cacao butter und a schnitzel of each. Now, Freidrich at least noticed when my antsiness was nearing critical mass and would begin quizzing me on the German pronouns, or the names of states or countries outlined on cards he always seemed to have with him or the meaning of the "Famous Quotes" painted on Danziger's wall or he'd offer a synopsis of what was being discussed even if I didn't really understood what he was talking about. Tried explaining Hegel, Kant or Goethe to a five or six year old? Freidrich gave it a good shot, though. "Vhat can you zink ov zat you vant zo badly zat you vould zell your zoul to ze devil to have it as Faust did, Arthur?" ... "Uh, Black Forest Cake?"

Inside Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy store Franklin Street Chapel Hill. For the last 35 years this has been the located of the Shrunken Head.

Yes, there's a reason Papa D's caricature in this Danziger's ad is reading Faust. He had seen poor choices made on a mass scale and was looking for answers. So was my father, and that was their main common ground so far as I can tell.

Papa was Jewish according to the Nazi's definition, saw the handwriting on the wall, and left Austria. In fact, his family had been Lutheran for two generations. He was also a philosophical man with many questions about the roots and appeal of that master race evil that replaced the residual protections of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern reigns. A mild anti-Semitism may have been part of the natural social order in both countries just as it was all over Europe, but why would millions of people sell their souls to Hitler and go along with an extermination of Jews and others who had been their friends?

 
This is the Quotation Wall inside Danziger's Old World Restaurant and Candy Store

Unlike the Japanese Imperialists he had fought who were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions and had no cultural concept of either honorable surrender or protection of civilian noncombatants, the German volk had a history of all three yet had trashed the lot of it. Why? My father wrestled with that question and many others about a people with a humanistic history descending into Nazi hell while also struggling against his warrior nature and the civilian he was trying to be.

He was already in the Army when Pearl Harbor was hit and had served in both theaters of W.W.II and then Korea. As a forward artillery observer and scout, he generally snuck around behind enemy lines and either liked it or didn't depending on the time of day and his mood. The "liked it" eventually won and he went back in the Army for for twenty five years of special combat units on the East German border and three tours in Vietnam. He was truly the proverbial man you did not want to meet in a dark alley and I noticed early on those in Chapel Hill, a town filled with war veterans, showed him that deference. But he was a hard man with a sense of honor who was troubled by the soulless Nazis and SS, as opposed to the typical Wehrmacht soldier, he had encountered. He admired the SS martial skill and ferocity, but he was also aware that many of those uniforms were filled with some of the worst degenerates humans had produced and were little better than rabid animals that needed killing for the sake of the sane.

Henry Gifford the man who "saved" the Rathskeller by installing steel beams to keep the ceiling from collapsing

In the meantime, he was attending UNC and doing construction contracting on the side. I used to hear Ted Danziger say that my father was the person who had saved the Rathskeller he had started under the candy shop by installing several steel I beams to keep the sagging ceiling nobody else had noticed from caving in. He also did some shoring of the several side rooms like "The Cave" Ted literally dug out (hauling the dirt away in the trunk of his car) sans building permits to expand the Rathskeller.

Dan "Arthur" Gifford and his father Henry Gifford in 1956 in front of their house at 738 East Franklin Street  Chapel Hill

"The Rat" was a place I especially liked visiting with my father because of its high student energy -- drinking lots of beer will do that -- and the fact that everything was said in English. That meant I could take in the "my hard times during the depression were harder than your hard times during the depression" and the "my war experience was more terrifying than your war experience" stories everybody seemed to have. Papa D would occasionally come in and shake hands but "The Rat" didn't really seem to be his scene. It wasn't mine for a few weeks either after my mother asked me what I did with my father that day. My enthusiastic reply: "I watched daddy drink tea outa the bottle at the Rat."

That's when snicklefritz learned not to rat on what he learned at "The Rat."

Inside the newly opened Rathskeller - The Rat - Amber Alley Fanklin Steet Chapel Hill 1949

by Charly Mann

James Paul Goforth was the most financially successful person in Chapel Hill in the 1980's. He created a home real estate empire that started in Chapel Hill in the 1970's and eventually spread throughout the eastern part of North Carolina. Goforth built quality homes in every price range from condos in the low $70,000's to magnificent executive estates that often sold for more than $300,000. He was Chapel Hill's greatest developer, creating more than half a dozen meticulously designed and beautiful communities. He built real neighborhoods instead of housing tracts. Goforth dedicated almost every waking hour of his day to his business. J.P. was also an honorable man who worked hard to be fair to his customers, while maintaining the highest quality standards in construction. Today, twenty years after his death, his name is still often attached to a real estate listing to denote a house of quality.

This is a Goforth Properties of Chapel Hill advertisement from 1982. Note fixed rate mortgages are 14 7/8 percent and variable rate are 12 3/8.

J.P. Goforth came to Chapel Hill in 1968 to attend UNC in the same freshman class as me. He was from a poor farm family that lived near Statesville. As an undergraduate he began working as a real estate salesman to help pay his way through school. By the time he entered UNC law school in 1973 he had already started Security Building Company, and in 1976 formed Goforth Properties to develop subdivisions. A partial list of the local neighborhoods he created are Stoneridge, Village West condos, Ironwoods, Falconbridge, Northwood, The Oaks II, Sedgefield, and Coker Hills. By the early 1980's, J.P. also owned Triangle Mill Work, Chapel Hill Grading, Boyce Supply, and Chapel Hill Electric, all of which supported the building trade. His companies employed more than 180 people.

Entrance to J.P. Goforth communities Stoneridge and Sedgefield off Whitfield Road in Chapel Hill

Real estate development and construction are extremely cyclical businesses. The 1980's was volatile period for real estate in North Carolina. Despite this, J.P. seemed to have the Midas touch and weathered the 1980 to 1983 recession better than any of his peers. Starting in 1984 J.P. began to expand his empire throughout the entire eastern half of the state, broadening his model of well-designed upscale communities into areas that were demographically different from Chapel Hill. By 1990 the United States found itself in another economic recession, this time brought on about primarily by the sudden collapse of the real estate housing bubble that started in 1984. Housing prices crashed throughout the United States, especially in the high end market that Goforth specialized in. J.P. had large investments in land that had become unviable for development, and also had a huge inventory of houses that could not be sold.

J.P. Goforth built home by his company Security Builders in Chapel Hill

Goforth's businesses were under a mound of debt, and tax officials from Orange and Durham counties were hounding him to pay property taxes on the land and houses he could not sell. J.P. was a master businessman, but because of complications from kidney surgery he was no longer able to dedicate himself fully to his business. His cash flow was now well below what he needed to pay his suppliers and employees. Almost everyone who he owed money to, including the state, agreed that Goforth was an honorable and nice person, but they all wanted their money. Goforth worked diligently liquidating assets to slowly pay off his debts, but it wasn't fast enough for District Attorney Carl Fox .

Stoneridge tudor style house in Chapel Hill built by J.P. Goforth

Goforth saw his world closing in around him. He knew that being out of work for much of the last few years had hurt his business. He also admitted that he miscalculated the severity of the real estate downturn. Several of the largest developers and home builders in the state filed for bankruptcy because of the real estate bust, but this was  anathema to J.P.'s honor. The final blow came on Friday April 13, 1990 when DA Carl Fox made a media splash announcing a call for the State Bureau of Investigation to look into Goforth's business. Fox was concerned that Goforth had been bouncing checks and not paying his real estate sales people commissions they were owed. That evening, J.P. Goforth, 49 years old, took his own life.

Another house built by J.P. Goforth and Security Builders in the heavily wooded Stoneridge neighborhood in Chapel Hill 

For J.P. Goforth suicide was not painless or a coward's way out of a problem. Like most of us, he feared death far more than what seemed like the financial collapse of his company and the ruin of his reputation. However, because some recent investors of his businesses who were worried about his health had insisted he take out a $12.5 million life insurance policy, he saw that his death was the best way for him to honor his obligations. Because of the insurance policy, after all the suits and claims were settled, his estate was able to pay off his $7.4 million in debts and still have $5 million dollars left. James Paul Goforth is buried in Statesville at the cemetery of the Hebron Baptist Church.

J.P. Goforth's Goforth Property sold primarily houses his companies built, but the Lake Forest home at the bottom right is not one of his homes.