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Oral History Interview
Joyner Library, East Carolina University
January 28, 1982
Janice Hardison Faulkner, Interviewee
Lu Ann Jones, Interviewer
[BEGINNING OF SIDE 1]
JF: (0:00)
This is an interview with Janice Hardison in the library office on Thursday, January the 28th [crosstalk - unintelligible] off the record, but it saves me having to put notes and then I don't have to remember did she really say this or this and I can get it straight. Let me start out with a quiz, a question here, and see what you can do with it. Tell me who said this, quote, "Golly, how I hate to leave this place. I'd just love to stay here forever." unquote.
JF: (0:34)
Golly?
LJ: (0:37)
You know who said that?
JF: (0:38)
I don't know exactly who said it. It's not a memorable statement, except it's something everybody says about leaving the place. It sounds like something Miss Hooper or Dr. Turner would have said.
LJ: (0:48)
Janice Hardison said that on December the fifth, 1952. [laughter]
JF: (0:53)
Well it reflects the influence of Miss Hooper, Dr. Turner, so I was talking like them,
LJ: (0:58)
That was good.
JF: (0:58)
Yeah. I wonder where you got that.
LJ: (0:59)
Yeah I got that,
JF: (0:59)
I'm the one supposed to be answering the questions,
LJ: (1:00)
Yeah, say where, yeah, I'll tell you where I got it, in the Teco Echo!
JF: (1:01)
Oh yeah.
LJ: (1:02)
Is that the way you pronounce it?
JF: (1:08)
Yeah.
LJ: (1:09)
Teco Echo?
JF: (1:10)
Yes.
LJ: (1:10)
You were taking a day off from your interviewing the who's who students on campus and that little
JF: (1:18)
Yeah.
LJ: (1:19)
They said you had done more than anybody else.
JF: (1:22)
I don't,
LJ: (1:22)
Of those interviews. You remember those interviews?
JF: (1:24)
Yes, I do. Yes I do.
LJ: (1:26)
Well somebody interviewed you.
JF: (1:28)
Oh.
LJ: (1:29)
And and that's where I got that.
JF: (1:30)
I'd forgotton all about that.
LJ: (1:32)
I said how prophetic! [laughter]
JF: (1:35)
Yeah.
LJ: (1:36)
In fact, I thought this is really remarkable, that somebody, that young, one, you said you want to begin work on your MA.
JF: (1:43)
Yeah.
LJ: (1:44)
Immediately. Two, you prefer to teach older people, and therefore you have ambitions to teach in the college, the university.
JF: (1:52)
Right.
LJ: (1:53)
And you also want to combine a career of writing and teaching.
JF: (1:57)
I've been able to do all those things.
LJ: (1:59)
Yeah, I was so impressed about who, how few people do those things that they say they wanted to.
JF: (2:06)
Well, behavioral analysts now say that those people who have epic goals are the ones who reach them. And I guess without knowing that I did have I always had my mindset pretty much on what I wanted to do.
LJ: (2:28)
And you did it.
JF: (2:28)
I did.
LJ: (2:28)
You didn't say anything about politics in the interview.
JF: (2:29)
No, I guess, that wasn't, [crosstalk - unintelligible] well, yes, I had thought about it, and I belonged, I think, to the campus wide YDC. Matter of fact, I think I was an officer, and I remember coming to East Carolina in 1949 I think the year that I was a senior in high school, maybe when the Vice President of the United States was visiting, and
LJ: (2:52)
Barkley was,
JF: (2:53)
Yes,
LJ: (2:53)
Yeah.
JF: (2:53)
And incidentally, his host was the YDC president, whose name was Terry Sanford. [laughter] And that was the first,
LJ: (3:05)
I got pictures of that.
JF: (3:09)
Yeah, yeah.
LJ: (3:09)
I interviewed earlier that, Kyle Connors. You kow him?
JF: (3:07)
Yeah I knew him,
LJ: (3:07)
He was,
JF: (3:07)
He was in the class ahead of me,
LJ: (3:10)
Yeah, the editor of the [crosstalk - unintelligible] younger, and he gave me a lot of pictures. Yeah, negatives that he had taken when he was here.
JF: (3:18)
Well, I was here in Wright auditorium as a high school student, during that event.
LJ: (3:28)
So you were involved early,
JF: (3:30)
Yeah.
LJ: (3:24)
Into politics [unintelligible], a certain advantage in keeping your roots in one place, and you know, being staying in a place and moving from where you know.
JF: (3:39)
Yep, it's one of the good things. And knowing what I have come to understand about economic opportunities for women, I learned sometime, I think, after we established commissions on the Status of Women, and research was done, and we were all put in pigeon holes and categories that I probably was doing better here, within 40 miles of the place I was born, than I could have done anywhere else in the United States, so hat has been great. [laughter]
LJ: (3:40)
Icing on the cake, yeah.
JF: (4:09)
Yeah, it has been, yeah.
LJ: (4:10)
[Unintelligible] Tell me about, when you were here, did you think of going anywhere else, or is this just where you grew up, coming to East Carolina?
JF: (4:24)
I don't think I, to my knowledge, I never even thought of another institution.
LJ: (4:28)
East Carolina had become the real institution of the East, I guess,
JF: (3:52)
It was,
LJ: (3:54)
When it was growing up.
JF: (4:34)
Yeah, it was the real institution for the east, and I was in a rural high school where there were only thirteen other members of my class out in Martin County, and none of them had ambitions to go to college. And the fact that I even wanted to go to college at all was in itself, looked upon with a bit of suspicion. And the reason that I looked at East Carolina was that there were two girls in my class, no, they were girl and a boy, both of whom had had sisters come here, and they were the only college girls I had ever met. And I wanted to be a college girl. And then one of my childhood friends, who was only two years older than I was, graduated from high school, and she came here, and I came, probably as a junior senior, for a weekend to visit her. And I rode the bus. Strangely enough, we didn't get just get in the car and zip on over the way people do.
LJ: (5:31)
Yeah you were at Jamesville, is that the? [crosstalk - unintelligible]
JF: (5:32)
Rural route. Yeah, yeah. I was in rural route one Jamesville. I went to a high school, which is later consolidated with the Williamston High School called the Farm Life High School, and there's an elementary school, first four or five grades there in the building where I graduated from high school, and my class was one of the early one of the 12th grade of classes to graduate from there, maybe the first one of the 12th grade I forget where, I was first or second, but I believe that we might have been the first 12th grade class to have graduated from that high school.
LJ: (6:04)
It was called Farm Life School?
JF: (6:05)
Farm Life High School.
LJ: (6:07)
That was the [unintelligible], I didn't spend that [unintelligible], 1910-1920 that it was a boarding school at one time I guess?
JF: (6:14)
You might have the Farm Life School in Vanceboro.
LJ: (6:18)
I didn't do that.
JF: (6:19)
Oh, now they boarded teachers. There was a boarding house, besides very, very grand house, as I recall, rambling thing with wide porches and two floors, and teachers who were not married lived there. And the principal of the school, his wife, occupied choice suite on the first floor. And they were kind of like house parents to unmarried teachers who lived in it. And I had interesting teachers, people who had come from to me, exotic and far places. I know now that they weren't all that far. But my music teacher, who taught public school music, was named Miss Russ, and she was from Roswell, New Mexico. And how in the world an attractive, beautiful, she was a very glamorous woman would find her way into a godforsaken place like Eastern North Carolina to work, I don't know. And my first grade teacher was named Betty Haywood, and I don't know where she came from, but it was from some foreign place, and she was a very glamorous and exotic woman, and she still is, and she married the local man and settled in the area. And I still get the chance to see her [laughter]. And I'm 50, and she must be 70 or 75 and she's still very interesting to me, very attractive.
LJ: (7:40)
That is that continuity, not many people have.
JF: (7:50)
I went to a high school reunion last summer. I graduated from high school in 1950 and I came to East Carolina in June, a week after I graduated from high school,
JF: (8:02)
And you started in summer?
JF: (8:04)
I started in summer, and I went to three summer schools. I don't know why I was so hurried to get out.
LJ: (8:11)
[Crosstalk - unintelligible] Three years.
JF: (8:08)
I finished in 10 quarters. I had finished all my degree requirements in 10 quarters, and I had nine hours on my master's. At the time I was here, there was not a restriction on the number of hours you could carry.
LJ: (8:11)
You got your money's worth.
JF: (8:11)
And I don't know why I was in a hurry, but I went to summer school to keep from having to go back home, work on the farm. I mean, that was really obvious, what I was doing, was avoiding the farm, and,
LJ: (8:34)
That's some kind of record, though for,
JF: (8:36)
Yeah, it was.
LJ: (8:37)
Before if, by having the quarters, you could go for a year, but still to take a heavy load.
JF: (8:42)
I also had a very good academic record, because we came from a rural school in which there was a high emphasis on performance. You got, there was a reward and punishment system, and your teachers admired you and encouraged you if you worked hard, and I enjoyed the attention I got because I worked hard and I came in here with a good system of study habits, is what I'm saying.
LJ: (9:11)
Which was important, [unintelligible]
JF: (9:12)
Yeah.
LJ: (9:12)
You sang didn't you, when you were growing up or?
JF: (9:14)
Yeah, well, of course, you grow up in a rural church, everybody sings, nobody pays attention that you sing in the 'key of R' which I still do sometimes, but what I did was to join the college chorus, and you could get academic credit of an hour, I think, for the performance. And then we had to have tryouts for Dr. Vornholt's college singers, and I'm an alto, and I was fortunate enough to sing with that group for a while, and there were only eight of us, I think, four men for women, who sang literally for our supper, with local functions. We would go places, I don't remember any memorable places or any memorable performances, except that I do remember that we went to civic clubs and that we wore uniform dress and that we rehearsed every Wednesday afternoon, and I had to give up whatever else I was doing for that, which I did do for two or three years. And I think it was the year I was a senior. I'm not sure. The only day of college that I missed was the day that my grandfather was buried, and that's the day they took the yearbook pictures for the college seniors, [laughter] and I wasn't in it my senior year. [laughter]
Unknown Speaker (10:00)
Now you were a freshman and then a junior to senior, or were you a, which year did you skip?
JF: (10:31)
I guess I really skipped freshman year. I don't know when I started getting hours enough to make the transfer, because I don't remember what they were like, but we were on a quarter system, and I took a regular academic load the first summer. And I don't know when I started carrying next hour, but I made all 'A's. I made, math was the only thing I didn't do well in and one Geography course, but we had three teachers because Dr. Cummins was sick, and I, usually I was in the same pattern that I'd been in the high school of performing for the adoration of the teacher. And I love Dr. Cummins, and he had appendicitis, and I didn't care about doing the work for anybody else. [laughter] And I think I might have made a B or a C on that course, but all the rest of my record, except for nine letters or 'A's, I got nine 'B's in 10 quarters, I think.
LJ: (11:29)
That's very, [unintelligible]
JF: (11:29)
And so because I was making,
LJ: (11:32)
Up here that's a little more in station now I think we have,
JF: (11:37)
They say so, I don't know. People who made 'A's were looked upon as student leaders at the time. But I can't say. I don't know whether I was doing any better work than students of mine have done since, or whether I was just more systematic and therefore rewarded better. Sometimes, if you do things on time and you write neat, [laughter] you get along just as well. So it was, I mean, college was exciting to me here, and I met some interesting people, and I like the work that I did. And for some,
LJ: (11:37)
It sounds like you got a good education.
JF: (11:43)
Oh, the best. I've never been intimidated or embarrassed by my education, nor apologetic for the fact that I came from East Carolina University.
LJ: (12:30)
That's my impression is that there are excellent teachers who really went beyond the call of duty. And the second mile or third is that, is that the way they?
JF: (12:42)
Well yes, the young folks who were here were proving themselves in order to get better jobs. And consequently, they gave everything they had to it. And some of them have risen to very high places and are in interesting places that I know about now who have done at least some stint here in the past. They've gone on to very responsible positions at exotic places like Ohio State. And then there were others who were tired of the academic rat race and looking for a way to ease out of it, who had been department chairs or who had published, and we're looking for quiet pond down on
LJ: (13:21)
Near the river.
JF: (13:22)
Yeah, near the river, or some rural place to do some work. And then in those days, there was an academic tradition, as there still is one or two places in the country of exchange professorships. And I got my best and most exciting education in the summer, when people came from other better schools to teach summer school here on a vacation.
LJ: (13:48)
That's a good point. They, I know they used to do that, and I had lost track in running, but I know early years we had Columbia professors and Dr. Wright used to bring in a lot of them who were excellent.
JF: (14:01)
I had one from, that I remember, was Mary Washington and Fredericksburg, and one from the University of Virginia. And, oh, I don't know they were all older people whom I revered, and because they were again, people from foreign ports that I didn't know anything about. And so I could learn a great deal from them.
LJ: (14:22)
And they gave you such a nice change from the steady diet [unintelligible].
JF: (14:25)
Because you didn't have your same professors in summer school. And that, I guess, is another reason that I came to summer school. And consequently, because there was not a limit on the hours you could carry, I would go to six week terms, and I would take 12 hours each six weeks. So I took 24 hours per summer.
LJ: (14:42)
Heavy.
JF: (14:42)
Well, if you love it,
LJ: (14:44)
Yeah.
JF: (14:44)
And there's nothing else to do,
JF: (14:46)
Or work on the farm. [laughter]
JF: (14:47)
Yeah, and see, the reason that there's nothing else to do was that the social restrictions were so heavy here.
LJ: (14:53)
Were they still very heavy in the 50s?
JF: (14:55)
When I came here, you could not leave the campus after six o'clock without signing out, and you could not leave the dormitory after six o'clock to go to the library without signing out. So you had to account for yourself all the time. You could not ride except with your parents, and then only on Sunday afternoon, and you were restricted to the campus so that you could only go home once every six weeks. I mean, it was like a finishing school rule, you'd say.
LJ: (15:22)
That's what I was wondering, when, before it became really coed,
JF: (15:25)
Yeah.
LJ: (15:27)
I've been impressed with his finishing school attitude.
JF: (15:30)
Yeah.
LJ: (15:30)
Plus the professionalism of the teacher program. But, and I was wondering, did that carry, it carried over into the 50s,
JF: (15:37)
Yes, we were,
LJ: (15:38)
Even with a lot of coed.
JF: (15:40)
We were already coed, not 50:50 break, but there were a lot of men. We had a basketball team, for example. We played football and all those things that were men's sports in those days. And we had a lot of people who had been in service, who were on campus. We had a number of GIs here from World War Two. So that is another interesting atmosphere for me as a rural girl, was that they were older men who were worldly and sophisticated, [laughter] and I was minoring in social studies, and most of them were majors. So I got to have classes with some of them, and I did my work, and so consequently, got to hang around the library and places with some of these guys who had been in service for years and had been everywhere. And you pick up a vibration from people who have done things you haven't done yet, and it gives you a basis for comparison. So, yeah, the finishing school atmosphere was very heavy. I was a dorm counselor my second year, one of the resident 'big sister' types.
LJ: (16:41)
Did you stay in Cotten?
JF: (16:42)
I stayed in Cotten three years because I went into the second year, I think, and I don't remember how it pyramids, but anyway, you get to be a counselor, and you have one hall, and then you get to be the dorm leader who supervises the big sisters on all the floors, so that there were six other people. And I had to live, you know and talk with and stay in touch with them, and certain minor disciplinary matters were handed over to them so that they had to oversee the freshman life of their charges and to make sure that their lights were out on time, that they emptied their waste baskets and didn't get demerits and that they wore gloves downtown and dresses to the dining room. [crosstalk - unintelligible] There was a rule on the handbook that said you had to have a hat and gloves. It was abandoned very shortly after I came here, or about the time I came. Things started to loosen up, then. We could wear, you couldn't wear shorts. You couldn't wear slacks on campus, and you couldn't wear shorts to even to the tennis lessons or to athletic events,
LJ: (17:46)
Which you could when you got there.
JF: (17:47)
Without a raincoat. You'd have to cover your legs.
LJ: (17:49)
So they didn't change that till I went there in '69.
JF: (17:52)
Yeah, yeah, well, see some of those vestiges of the finishing school atmosphere hung on a long time, [laughter] and even now, I think there are parents who think that the school becomes the parent when the child leaves the nest and comes.
LJ: (18:13)
[Unintelligible] tell me about Dr. Messick.
JF: (18:18)
Well, Dr. Messick was a very handsome and dynamic man who attracted one by his very appearance and his bearing, because he did not look rural like all the men that I had been accustomed to.
LJ: (18:29)
He looked like a scholar, gentleman.
JF: (18:30)
A city sophisticate, yeah, he really did. He looked like the men you saw in picture books when you were daydreaming. And he was here, I think, since 1947, maybe. And the reason that I remember that I became aware of him was that he was successor to Dr. Meadows. And I told you those two sisters of my two college friends who were in college, I mean, my high school friends who were in college came home in hysterics because of the things that were happening to Dr. Meadows.
LJ: (18:54)
Now, were they in support of him?
JF: (19:00)
Yes, and they were in college then, one of them was a senior.
LJ: (19:02)
I was wanting to get into this one.
JF: (19:07)
And, and they, so, I remember
LJ: (19:11)
They very much were sympathetic with Dr. Meadows.
JF: (19:14)
Yes, they were students, you see.
LJ: (19:16)
Well see the student body, apparently, was split terribly,
JF: (19:20)
Yeah.
LJ: (19:20)
And some of them very much supported him, and some of them
JF: (19:23)
Yeah.
LJ: (19:24)
Didn't. Was that over with by the time you came here? Did you, it didn't leave any friction in the faculty or any
JF: (19:36)
I didn't sense it.
LJ: (19:37)
Aftermath after that?
JF: (19:38)
I guess if I had a mentor on the faculty, I probably had two, one of them was temporary. The other one was kind of permanent. One of them was Professor Mary Green, and Miss Green was in the habit of talking freely and openly with the students, because she treated them as scholars with potential and was an inspiration to those people as she came in and so off the record, occasionally, she would make references to how unfortunate and how tragic and how misrepresented by rumor and innuendo things were. But she never betrayed any side that I picked up, so I never knew how she personally felt about it. And then Dr. Meadows' son, Leon, came here and enrolled in school.
LJ: (20:23)
Was he here when you were here too?
JF: (20:24)
Yes, he was older than I was. I think he might have been in the Air Force or away somewhere else.
LJ: (20:24)
He was here during that situation?
JF: (20:24)
Yeah, but he went away, and I think he went away to service. I'm not sure. I don't know. There was nothing mysterious about,
LJ: (20:24)
Yeah.
JF: (20:26)
His suddenly being back on campus, and he was another one of those guys who'd been away, and he was older, and I spent a lot of time playing tennis when I was in college. I liked to do it. It wasn't a thing that many girls were doing. But among the tennis partners that I did play doubles with sometimes were Howard Porter, who was a retired basketball coach, and Dr. Posey, who was chairman of the department, and Leon met us, who was the son of the deposed former president. And so I heard talk only because I knew who Leon was, and a lot of the people that I played with did, but I never picked up any I didn't know who was anybody's camp or really what the whole thing had been about. And I know that everybody looked to Dr. Meadows, I mean Dr. Messick, as somebody from the outside with quality background, who would put us on the right track again.
LJ: (21:42)
One more thing, when you were still in Jamesville, and you said your friend the older sisters, and all, did you remember anything just as being part of community? Did they get upset about the felony? Did that spill over out into the?
JF: (21:59)
They talked about it a lot.
LJ: (22:00)
It was a big,
JF: (22:01)
Yeah, oh yeah.
LJ: (22:03)
All over the area.
JF: (22:04)
Yeah, yeah it was, it was number one.
LJ: (22:08)
I'm just trying to figure out how much of an impact that had on East Carolina, about how much it was damaging.
JF: (22:18)
I can't judge it at all, because I was young when it happened, 14 or 15, and
LJ: (22:23)
You know it was daily in the News & Observer, they kept that on the front page unless the atomic bomb went off or one or some other things at the end of World War Two. But they kept that, and they kept repeating it again and again and again, you know,
JF: (22:24)
Well, it was a bigger story than,
LJ: (22:36)
Yeah, so that's,
JF: (22:38)
Pearl Harbor, you know [laughter]
LJ: (22:41)
And I wonder, what I was wondering is, did we get some kind of a complex out of that? Somewhere, we got an inferiority complex that is unjustified in the quality, you know, it's inconsistent with the quality.
JF: (22:58)
I don't think that the inferiority complex, I don't think it can be attributed to an alleged scandal. I think that the fact that we started out as a normal school for girls, and that we were predominantly teacher training, and that we outgrew our original mission, extended built upon it meant that nothing of quality could come out of so humble a place. And I think that that was the kind of judgment that was made. We had in eastern North Carolina, the good fortune to have very powerful members of the General Assembly from eastern North Carolina, rallied to our support, and they were able to attract funds and programs, and Dr. Messick, that was one of his strongsuits, and he was able to use the sitting board that somehow felt that its own credibility was besmirched by the fact that the scandal had taken place in its institution must establish itself as a creditable body, governing body, and I think that's why the push came; the effort to overcome humble origins, to serve a region that was starting to change in character and to put aside a black mark. It was a, an unfortunate but happy combination of circumstances that came to place together in the right place, the right time.
LJ: (24:41)
With Dr. Messick,
JF: (24:42)
Yes, when he
LJ: (24:43)
Came,
JF: (24:43)
Came, the climate was right for him to get the kind of support that he got to go forward. And I think it was a combination of these things,
LJ: (24:43)
That,
JF: (24:44)
And that's all and I think, I couldn't verify it all,
LJ: (24:53)
Yeah, that's what they found, that because it, it did just spurt ahead,
JF: (25:04)
Yeah.
LJ: (25:05)
When he came and established this really charismatic, wouldn't you say, leadership?
JF: (25:12)
Yeah, and mover and shaker on that board was a man named Ivan Bisset. And I had the good fortune to find out from Mr. Bisset firsthand in 1960 after I had long since graduated, gone away and returned, Mr. Bisset and I were in one another's company almost constantly for 10 days when I was fortunate enough to attend the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, and he was a delegate, I was an alternate from the first congressional district, as was Mr. John Clark, who was the County Chairman here in Greenville and a great supporter of the university and good friend of Dr. Messick's. The politically powerful, he courted and attracted. And I think that Dr. Jenkins, probably, since he had come here with Dr. Messick, learned that modus operandi from him, and also made the acquaintance of those people who were supporting Dr. Messick's ambitions for the university while he was still Dean of Student Affairs, where I first met him, and Mr. Bisset, who was old then, and Dr. Messick had long since left the university in, under a cloud himself, as you recall, [laughter] and so Mr. Bisset talked with me on a flight home from Los Angeles. When everybody was weary of convention, he started, we left Los Angeles at midnight and flew across the country. Took several hours, and he spent most of that time reminiscing about his role as a trustee the university and as a friend of Dr. Messick's, and the unfortunate circumstances under which he had left the university.
LJ: (26:55)
In the 60s.
JF: (26:58)
And so I got a kind of a little inside story that clarified a lot of things for me, because I was very distressed to see him go, I was fond of him. He had been very gracious to me. It was he who hired me in the English department, while Dr Turner, who was department chairman, was away on a European vacation. She was quite surprised somebody quit in her absence, and he knew that I was down in Wilmington. And Dr. Messick phoned me down there and offered me a job on the telephone while the department chair was away. That's kind of thing he was, you know, he ran his institution.
LJ: (27:30)
He really was on top of it all wasn't he.
JF: (27:31)
Yeah, yeah. He ran it, he did.
LJ: (27:37)
And Dr. Jenkins was, did a lot of the dirty work.
JF: (27:42)
I first met Dr. Jenkins when he was Dean of Student Affairs. And the Dean of Student Affairs ran the internal institution, everything, you know, curriculum development.
LJ: (27:47)
And he really kept up with daily,
JF: (27:55)
Oh yeah.
LJ: (27:58)
Because later, the image, Dr. Jenkins is one that he didn't but he knew somewhere along the way, everything about the university.
JF: (28:08)
I suspect that he had run it internally so long that by the time he got to be the chancellor, he was tired of the internal affairs.
LJ: (28:20)
But he still understood it very, very well.
JF: (28:21)
Oh, well sure he understood it.
LJ: (28:21)
I mean, he [crosstalk - unintelligible] operations.
JF: (28:21)
He also understood that somebody else could do it. [laughter]
LJ: (28:24)
Yeah.
JF: (28:25)
Yeah, and one of his strengths as a chancellor, probably was his willingness to delegate authority. It was also one of the things that brought criticism upon his leadership.
LJ: (28:26)
But he, it's a different thing if he delegates something and don't know what's going on.
JF: (28:36)
Yeah. Oh,
LJ: (28:37)
Or if you do, I mean, and having been in that position so long,
JF: (28:41)
Do you know where I worked with him? I saw him once a week for a long, long time?
LJ: (28:45)
You were in the Alum,
JF: (28:46)
No, on that publications board as a student.
LJ: (28:48)
Oh!
JF: (28:48)
See, I was a member of the publications board when I worked on the newspaper. And he met with that publications board every week. His students,
LJ: (28:57)
And advised them and kept,
JF: (28:58)
He knew, he knew every line that every student wrote. He knew everything. He knew who was writing, he knew who was candidate for the editorship, he knew all that stuff. And we had a YWCA and a YMCA, and he came and did Vesper services for those.
LJ: (29:15)
And you were active in there.
JF: (29:17)
Yeah, he was everywhere, all over.
LJ: (29:20)
But they had a really good relationship,
JF: (29:22)
Well, sure.
LJ: (29:23)
Working relationship, I mean, as far as where one left off and the other.
JF: (29:27)
And one of the strengths that he pulled out of the hat later, much to everybody's surprise, was among people who had worked in student organizations when he'd been dealing with Student Affairs, who now had graduated and gone on to other things, and he just simply called him up again [laughter].
LJ: (29:43)
Got them back,
JF: (29:44)
Yeah, sure.
LJ: (29:45)
Involved. And I guess Welly Morgan, he was,
JF: (29:48)
Yeah, Welly Morgan had been a student here who had been active in that.
LJ: (29:53)
And you were,
JF: (29:54)
And I bet you, if you asked him to write down a list of the folks who had helped him most, and you took that list and checked out where they were before he became the chancellor, that you'd find most of them were members of this student body that he had been working with, and you would see that some of them were on some student committee or on some student board, or were elected officers in the student government, or something that were connected to his duties as a dean.
LJ: (29:54)
And he kept up so well,
JF: (30:05)
Yeah.
LJ: (30:05)
I hadn't realized that whole [unintelligible].
JF: (30:19)
Yeah, I mean, it can be,
LJ: (30:25)
Yeah.
JF: (30:27)
It can be verified very quickly.
LJ: (30:31)
But it explains some of his great strengths and,
JF: (30:35)
Yeah, later, yeah,
LJ: (30:35)
Catching the rain so quickly.
JF: (30:37)
Yeah, when he caught the rain, there was a whole team out there, ready to help him pull his feet, because he had been interested in them when they were students.
LJ: (30:47)
And you had gotten, well, both Dr. Messick and Dr. Jenkins.
JF: (30:50)
Yes.
LJ: (30:50)
You were close with, did you want, when you said here, you wanted to teach in a college or university, were you thinking of East Carolina? I mean,
JF: (31:03)
Well, I was too naive to know whether I was thinking of my alma mater. I understand now that that is the dream of many a student and scholar to go back to,
LJ: (31:13)
Yeah.
JF: (31:13)
Alma mater. I was just thinking, I think what got me turned on to that was that the year that I was a senior, one of our faculty members died. And you remember I told you that my last quarter as an undergraduate, I was also carrying some graduate work?
LJ: (31:28)
Yeah.
JF: (31:28)
The rules were not nearly as restricted as they are now, and I think I had nine hour load, I'm not sure, of graduate work, and maybe two courses that I had to finish up. And I was in my 10th quarter in enrollment, doing my student teaching down, I think that's the only thing I was doing, except carrying graduate work, and it was worth like half of a credit. And I was working down in the, what was in the senior high school, down a little pit at the bottom of the hill here, that long since it disappeared where the high school was, and a faculty member died, and they did not have any way to dispose of the load, except to give it to graduate assistants. And there must have been two or three. We didn't even have a master's program in English. Where do you find them? I was in education with my English, and so I guess I had the best academic record among the candidates for degrees that year in my class. So they took me out of my student teaching and put me in college classroom to finish it up. You know that, again,
LJ: (32:39)
That's good, yeah.
JF: (32:39)
You know, there's no red tape then to hamper that decision, and that was so different from what I had done. And of course, my old professors, those people who were interested in my career, and there were a number of them, helped me a lot and took me into confidence about methods and about lessons at work and how to deal with this, that and the other, so that I actually taught college classes before I was ever awarded a degree here.
LJ: (33:11)
Graduate degree. That is a record!
JF: (33:14)
That's how I decided, and it probably is the reason I came to conclusion. Well, after you've done this, you don't want to go back to doing that, which is what I always thought I would do. And the reason that I guess I had chosen teaching as a career was that was the only work I had ever seen women do outside the home, because I lived in a rural countryside where women were,
LJ: (33:38)
What they did.
JF: (33:38)
Housebound, and they worked on the farm and that's all they did. They married, raised the children, helped with farm labor, did the canning, the cooking, the washing, the mending, the ironing,
LJ: (33:49)
Are you from a large family?
JF: (33:51)
No, well, my father was from a large family. It's the same thing as in close communities.
LJ: (33:55)
Yeah.
JF: (33:56)
I have one brother who's two years, two and a half years younger than I am, and he lives in Pitt County too, now. So there were two of us, but I have about 40 first cousins on my father's side. He had one of the smallest families. He was one of eight who grew to adulthood and married and raised families. And one of his sisters had married three times. She was widowed twice, and then when she married, the third time, she married a man who had families by two others. You know, it was not unusual. Lifespan wasn't long, and sometimes they would marry another spouse from the same family, which was not all that unusual.
LJ: (34:35)
Yeah, it isn't.
JF: (34:35)
So I have one set of cousins in which there are 11 or 12 that are all related. And we all went to the same church, and we lived, in some cases, on joining or near joining farms, went to the same school, and we all went to my grandfather's house every Sunday afternoon. So it was like being in a big family.
LJ: (34:57)
Yeah, [unintelligible]
JF: (34:58)
There wasn't a clearly defined distinction between sisters and cousins, or brothers and cousins, and we would swap the living in one another's households sometimes. My cousin, I am 50, my cousin Wilson, who's 54, I guess, and living in Richmond, Virginia, now, lived in our house, because every house had to have a man in it during World War Two, when my father went to live with his sister and her husband during the week and worked in the shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia, which is just a couple of hours drive up Highway 17, and so he needed to take shot, a job in the shipyard, as did my uncle Rufus and some other men in the neighborhood. There was a car load of them that would leave about three, four o'clock in the morning every Monday morning and they would drive up to Virginia, where my uncle and aunt were living there, where my Uncle Henry was employed. And I guess he was a foreman who hired him, really, and they would drive up there during the winter, and they'd live at my aunt Ruth's house, her brothers would, but her son, who didn't move up there with them, because he wanted to stay in high school, lived at our house during the week when my father was away, [laughter] and then he would go on the weekend to visit his parents, and my father would come home and spend the weekend with us. And we were kids like that. We sort of grew up together.
LJ: (36:26)
[Unintelligible]
JF: (36:27)
Yeah.
LJ: (36:28)
Did any of them come here?
JF: (36:33)
Of my cousins? None of my first cousins came here, but all of their children have been here so that for the last 20 years, I have had relatives here in school just constantly, and they've graduated and have gone into master's programs, in some cases. I have, let me think, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, in that family, 6, 7, probably about 8 cousins with masters, with advanced degrees from here in some field. Thats first of them.
LJ: (37:13)
First of your part, [laughter]
JF: (37:14)
Yeah, and I was the first one of them.
LJ: (37:15)
Now you came in '51, and you,
JF: (37:17)
June of '50, I think.
LJ: (37:19)
June of '50.
JF: (37:19)
Summer school, yeah.
LJ: (37:21)
Okay. And then you finished in '53 and did you stay here next, the next year?
JF: (37:28)
The next semester? I think that I met my degree requirements with the exams from the winter quarter, which ended in February, if I recall, that's the way we did it.
LJ: (37:39)
Yeah.
JF: (37:39)
We started the winter quarter in early December, and took a break for Christmas and came back and started it again in January, finished it, and I think that I finished my degree '53 in the winter, and I stayed the spring semester and continued to teach the course I had picked up on a fellowship from the death of a faculty member. And then I did not come back. I finished the rest of that degree. I don't know whether I ever came back and enrolled full time after that spring, I had residence requirements to meet, and I taught in Enfield two years, and I don't know whether I was even doing any work on it then, it fuzzes. And then when I went in,
LJ: (38:02)
You taught in high school?
JF: (38:04)
Yeah, I taught Enfield Graded School. Then when I went to Wilmington, I picked it up again to finish.
LJ: (38:30)
You went there and taught some,
JF: (38:31)
Yeah, I taught,
LJ: (38:31)
In a high school.
JF: (38:32)
In a junior high school one year, and then went over to what was then Wilmington Junior College, which is now University of North Carolina, Wilmington. And while I was down there. There were people down there working on degrees at East Carolina with whom I was teaching.
LJ: (38:45)
Are you sure?
JF: (38:46)
No, I'm fine here.
LJ: (38:46)
Put your feet up?
JF: (38:45)
No, I don't want to get too comfortable. [laughter] And so there were 4, 3 or 4, of us who took a Friday night and a Saturday morning class here and will, and every Friday, as soon as school was out, we would get in the car and drive to Greenville, have a three hour class, spend the night and take a three hour class Saturday morning and go back. And that's how I finished it, taking two courses per quarter until I finished up.
LJ: (39:10)
And then when did you come back here to teach?
JF: (39:17)
'57.
LJ: (39:18)
'57.
JF: (39:18)
Right upon, about the same time I finished,
LJ: (39:20)
And then you started teaching English,
JF: (39:27)
I was just, I was finishing it, when Dr. Messick called and said they had a vacancy by resignation and asked me whether I would be interested in coming in as faculty.
LJ: (39:30)
You didn't even have to think about it?
JF: (39:30)
Oh no. I told him on the telephone that I would do it. Yeah, I was teaching summer school in Wilmington when he called. And I think taking my last course or two.
LJ: (39:30)
So you came,
JF: (38:47)
Came right straight here the minute I finished. It. Never been anywhere else since.
LJ: (39:58)
And, but, you started in the English Department, then sometime you became alumni.
JF: (40:05)
Well, in 19-, let me see '60, '61, '62, Dr. Jenkins had been made the chancellor wasn't in 50,
LJ: (40:20)
'60.
JF: (40:20)
In '60. It was right about the time he became chancellor, Jim Butler was in that office, I believe. And Dr. Butler retired, and they needed to put somebody in it. And I wanted the job. I don't know why I wanted it I had been here four years, and it was there to do.
LJ: (40:45)
And you wanted to change from teaching or a,
JF: (40:48)
No, they,
LJ: (40:49)
Did you keep on teaching?
JF: (40:51)
I had been a good friend of Mrs. Garner. You remember Mrs. Garner? Or, you've heard her name, who had been the Director of Alumni Affairs over in the office, and she had kept all the records and kept track of everybody, and set the alumni teas, president's house and all that. And Mrs. Garner had been very gracious.
LJ: (41:10)
What was her name before that, maybe she had been a student here?
JF: (41:10)
I don't know. I don't know she might have or she might not have. I don't really clearly remember the circumstances under which I went into that job, but I know that he left, and that what they needed, I think, was somebody to go in and manage the office and bring the records up to date, and clean out the files and do that sort of thing because Dr. Butler's role there had been pretty largely as a public relations man who handled external contact, and I think the internal house management had been neglected since Miss Garner had left.
LJ: (41:36)
Well, did you keep on teaching part time?
JF: (41:41)
No, I was in there full-time.
LJ: (41:46)
Full-time?
JF: (41:53)
On a leave with the understanding that I could go back.
LJ: (41:59)
Now when did you leave?
JF: (42:00)
I stayed there three years, then went back into the English department. Dr. Posey was Chairman then, and he authorized the leave, and then took me back.
LJ: (42:09)
[unintelligible]
JF: (42:10)
Yeah.
LJ: (42:12)
You established, I guess, the chapters they were,
JF: (42:14)
Yeah, I did a lot of field work. And I think that,
LJ: (42:20)
Public relations in general.
JF: (42:19)
Again now that I think on it, I suppose one of the reasons that he was willing to put me there was that he knew all of those other students with whom he had worked as the vice chancellor, I mean, as the Dean of Student Affairs, and he knew they were out there, and he knew that one of them could get them assembled. [laughter] And it did indeed work out that way, because invariably, the people that I called on to set up alumni chapters were people who had been in school with me, almost without exception.
LJ: (42:20)
So it was just like visiting [laughter]
JF: (42:20)
Yeah, it was, [laughter] yeah.
LJ: (42:28)
Let me go back and ask you something about Dr. Messick. I am still trying to figure out what went wrong. Far as he is concerned, and not that I'm going to put this in the book.
JF: (42:40)
All right, you've heard lots and lots of things.
LJ: (42:44)
I've heard so many things.
JF: (42:53)
Yeah.
LJ: (42:54)
If I listed all the different stories, he couldn't have done [laughter] have been a bad person.
JF: (43:16)
Okay, well, okay, some of them claim that he was amoral, immoral, some claim that he had a drinking problem, some claim,
LJ: (43:25)
That he had a, was homosexual.
JF: (43:26)
Homosexual, I mean, you've heard all those things,
LJ: (43:28)
I've heard he was caught in a brothel at Ayden. [laughter]
JF: (43:30)
Yeah, well,
LJ: (43:30)
I've heard everything.
JF: (43:30)
You're probably about to get the closest things to the truth that you're going to hear.
LJ: (43:36)
This is what I was told.
JF: (43:38)
Let me tell you what my connection to the scene is, and what my source is, and maybe that'll establish its credibility or its incredibility, whichever. [laughter] I worked for six years as a waterfront director at a Girl Scout camp, and its overseer was Ada Gray Proctor, and the Proctor House now occupied by Dr. Young, the psychiatrist, next door to the Chancellor's House, the beautiful house over on Fifth Street, Ada Gray Proctor and Knott Proctor lived in that house, and this was still a southern rural town, and Dr. Messick's best friends were his next door neighbors,
LJ: (44:21)
The Proctors.
JF: (44:20)
As happens everywhere, for the Proctors. And of course, Dr. Carl Pace, whose son now is, gives me my glasses, whatever you call them here. I'm not sure I got the names right. He's Charles, the Pace Academy Charles, his father, Carl, was a medical doctor and they, the Paces and the Proctors and the Messicks were very good friends, they played bridge together, they went to church together, they took vacations together, all those things. It is true, according to those sources with whom I got close, because the Proctors and the Paces also were interested in the scout camp, and they hired me, on Dr. Messick's recommendation, to work at the scout camp where I worked for six summers and Dr. Pace's sister-in-law, who died just last summer, [END OF SIDE 1]
[BEGINNING OF SIDE 2]
JF: (0:02)
Who was the Messick's next door neighbor, was the camp director, and of course, she still is living here, and you can verify what I'm about to tell you,
LJ: (0:14)
Go ahead and tell me. [laughter]
JF: (0:15)
It was true that he had a drinking problem, that he was a closeted drinker. He never drank in public, and he uttered public protest against people who did.
LJ: (0:28)
Yeah, I know he was a Methodist.
JF: (0:30)
And he drank very, very infrequently, but when he did, he drank very heavily, and always in times of tremendous stress, and never in Greenville. He would go to Nags Head, or he would go down,
LJ: (0:43)
He would know this is a time I'm going to let loose,
JF: (0:45)
That's right,
LJ: (0:45)
And relax.
JF: (0:46)
And he would do that, yeah, but they said that, that so far as they knew, you know, that he believed that there was a public image he had to uphold,
LJ: (0:58)
Yeah.
JF: (0:58)
And that he was able to do that. Now, about those other dreadful stories, I don't know. I heard them too, but what Ivan Bissett told me, [laughter] and Ivan as on the Board of Trustees at the time that he quit, was that he had become very confident of his power, that he had become arrogant in his deliberations with his board of trustees, and that he had fallen into the habit when he would submit them budget requests, which they in turn, had to then see they got steered through the General Assembly, he would come in a non conciliatory or compromising attitude, and that if they crossed him, or asked him to justify or defend his budget, that he would get cross and issue ultimatums.
LJ: (1:48)
This was at the Board of Trustees,
JF: (1:49)
Board of Trustees.
LJ: (1:50)
Yeah.
JF: (1:51)
And that on more occasions than one, he said, you do this, or I will resign, or you know, you with me or are you against me, or that he would make statements like this. They were getting a little weary of it. After all, he was their employee, and not vice versa, which some chancellors don't perceive [laughter] and some vice presidents don't perceive [laughter].
LJ: (2:15)
Yeah.
JF: (2:16)
You know who is, who is to give direction to whom or who is advisory and who is otherwise. And he lost sight of the relationship at some point. You know one success gives you confidence, and you try for another, and you get a little bolder with the approach. And what he suffered was a slippage in their confidence. And whether I can trust Mr. Bissett's words, [laughter] I don't know, but I remember very vividly the story, because it was so different from all the other horror stories I'd heard about how he came to be fired.
LJ: (2:49)
Yeah.
JF: (2:52)
He had been on the front pages, maybe somebody has mentioned to you that terrible AP story about how we had the largest mass expulsion in the history of higher education, except the cheating scandal at West Point, when they raided 'Old Yellow' and when he, he was not,
LJ: (3:12)
I hadn't heard about that!
JF: (3:12)
Oh, yeah? [laughter] We have interesting things that went on in his tenure.
LJ: (3:16)
I know but I [cross talk - unintelligible]
JF: (3:18)
At one time, he held us up to public ridicule because he there were house rules that were being protested by the students, and one of them was the forbidding of good night kisses. And he attempted in the public assembly in Austin auditorium to tell them what a discrete kiss might be like. And that got picked up by AP and was a laughing stock. So he's doing foolish things [laughter].
JF: (3:42)
Towards the end of this?
JF: (3:43)
Yeah, and,
LJ: (3:45)
And now what about the mass expulsions? I hadn't come into this.
JF: (3:49)
I think that was later. I don't remember. I don't,
LJ: (3:52)
But this was during his tenure?
JF: (3:54)
I, it might, I don't know the date, I don't remember whether he was here, but I think it was before Dr. Jenkins became chancellor. There was a raid on a house where alcoholic beverages were forbidden. We were not allowed to go any place downtown, but the movies and then to sign out with dates. The rules have been somewhat liberalized, and there was a loud and noisy party over some guys that rented a house and they had hired a bartender, and beer was flowing, and the neighbors called the police, and they rounded up 92 college students in that house, mostly males, and females, most of them were signed out to go the library to study for tests. And he assembled them all in the auditorium without a hearing and expelled 92 students.
LJ: (4:38)
I've never picked this up!
JF: (4:39)
It's a matter of record.
LJ: (4:40)
Oh yeah, I understand,
JF: (4:41)
[Cross talk - unintelligible] newspapers.
LJ: (4:42)
I had thought I had read,
JF: (4:43)
The 'Old Yellow,' is the story.
LJ: (4:44)
'Old Yellow.'
JF: (4:45)
'Old Yellow.'
LJ: (4:46)
Why is it, is that the house?
JF: (4:47)
That was the house it stood down here on the corner. Well, I guess, we're privy to where it is now, but it's right up here off the corner of Cotanche Street.
LJ: (4:58)
And that would be sort of like '58, '59 or '60, you think?
JF: (5:00)
Oh, somewhere back there.
LJ: (5:03)
Probably less than '60.
JF: (5:04)
The reason that I know that it might have been about '60, I don't know whether he was still the chancellor,
LJ: (5:09)
He left in '50-
JF: (5:10)
-9, well,
LJ: (5:11)
Well and right at Christmas, of '59 Jenkins came in.
LJ: (5:14)
Well, it might have been right around, anyway, sometime in that interim. And I mark it because one of the students that I had taught in the Enfield school was now in school there, and he was, he was the host.
LJ: (5:27)
Of the party.
JF: (5:28)
So I suspect that he was still there, but it was the largest mass suspension in the history of higher education, except West Point where they expelled what, 96 for cheating or something.
LJ: (5:42)
[Unintelligible] So many suspensions!
JF: (5:43)
Yeah, and anyhow, that got in the paper. There was, we had a lot of headlines, but back to my original point
LJ: (5:50)
Yeah.
JF: (5:51)
About what Mr. Bissett said, you know, he he fostered development of the cultural arts in the community, and he wanted very much to have a really fine Department of Music, and he loved music,
LJ: (6:04)
Who is it?
JF: (6:06)
Messick.
LJ: (6:07)
Messick, yeah.
JF: (6:08)
And he had in the budget an item, and I guess these are matter of historic record too, and whether Mr. Bissett was exaggerating, but he said that Dr. Messick wanted the board of trustees to ask the legislature to buy eight grand pianos. And they said that there was no defense. And he said that if their students were to become the best performing artists, they had to have the best practice. And he got very offended and he said, you either ask them for these pianos or I will quit. And some quick tempered member of the board said, perhaps it's time you did, and his pride would not let him back down. And so he left the board with the understanding that he would write his resignation. And Mr. Bissett said that he came to his house in the middle of the night, contrite and repentant about how he behaved, and he asked him if he could save him, and he told him that he couldn't.
LJ: (7:13)
Was Bissett from here?
JF: (7:14)
He was from Grifton.
LJ: (7:15)
Oh it's not drug store Bissette,
JF: (7:16)
No he's from [unintelligible]. And he said that he knew the minute he said it he'd made a mistake, but that he was too slow to sense the temperament in the hall that evening when he was negotiating with his board or during his board meeting, and then he simply overplayed his hand once, and they would not bail him out, and that it was purely political problem when he's bored, that, he said. But see this came on the heels of all the other stories and of all the other flack. \
LJ: (7:47)
Now, had there been any stories,
JF: (7:49)
There had been stories, yeah.
LJ: (7:50)
About his drinking?
JF: (7:51)
There had been stories about his drinking, there had been stories about his sexual behavior, there had been stories about all kinds,
LJ: (7:59)
All before,
JF: (8:00)
Yes.
LJ: (8:00)
This is what I was wondering, did the stories come after he suddenly [unintelligible].
JF: (8:04)
No, they were circulating already.
LJ: (8:06)
Oh, I see.
JF: (8:07)
But Mr. Bissett said that he was such a good administrator,
LJ: (8:12)
Yeah.
JF: (8:13)
And that he'd done so much for the university that they, the board, essentially liked him, and they discredited and discounted most of them, and that he thought his demise could be attributed directly to his high handedness with his board.
LJ: (8:27)
Well that makes sense.
JF: (8:28)
Yeah, well he did, after the build up I've heard that story and some other things.
LJ: (8:34)
Well that was very shortly after the fact. That makes the most sense I've heard [unintelligible]. Well, let me ask you this. I have also heard from some, I think it might have been speculation that there were some people that wanted him out of here in politics, that he had been to cushy in the legislature.
JF: (9:03)
And this is what, this is what I think Ivan Bissett was saying that he said to the board, you know, you don't get it. You don't go ask him, I'm going to do it myself.
LJ: (9:11)
But what I mean, he said was not just in Greenville, it wouldn't happen, but in Raleigh. I mean,
JF: (9:16)
I don't know about that
LJ: (9:17)
Political I mean, the legislative,
JF: (9:20)
I would have had no real awareness of it. I couldn't tell you who his friends in the legislature were or who his enemies were.
LJ: (9:26)
But he was very adroit as a [unintelligible].
JF: (9:31)
Oh yeah.
LJ: (9:33)
It's like he was an outsider in a way, but he was just out of the state.
JF: (9:41)
He didn't come here from the outside because he'd been at Elon College.
LJ: (9:44)
He came here from Montclair, but that was just two years.
JF: (9:49)
He was up there a short time.
LJ: (9:50)
Long enough to fetch Leo. [Unintelligible] brought Leo over with him. But he knew the ropes when he came, of North Carolina.
JF: (10:01)
Oh sure, and he knew the lay of the land and he had friends here, lots of them. Well, the fact that he did have friends, and was able to make a lot of friends, I think, is established by what happened to him after he left here. You know, he was not out of the job very long at all.
LJ: (10:17)
No.
JF: (10:18)
He went, of course, the job didn't last long, but Graham Barden, the Congressman, found him a job as a research assistant of some sort. I don't know what kind of responsible job he had in Washington on Adam Clayton Powell's Committee, which was in health and education welfare, and he worked there briefly, and he worked until Graham Barden resigned the chairmanship of the committee that he hired see, and Powell was the chairman of the subcommittee that he was working for. And as soon as Barden resigned the chairmanship, announced he was coming home, was not being,
LJ: (10:58)
He wouldn't run again.
JF: (11:00)
Wouldn't run again, Adam Clayton Powell said he didn't, wouldn't, didn't want any white southern on his committee and fired him. And then that's when he went to the college in Vermont.
LJ: (11:12)
Yeah.
JF: (11:13)
No, he went to Vermont, and he met Oral Roberts while he was in Vermont. He met him in Europe, actually is the story that I understand.
LJ: (11:22)
And that's how he got [unintelligible] I talked with him in June [unintelligible]
JF: (11:34)
Didn't you find him charming?
LJ: (11:36)
So impressive! Gentleman who's 82 or 83.
JF: (11:42)
Yes, and would you guess it? No.
LJ: (11:44)
No! If he is this dynamic and charismatic and charming, now he must have been a real,
JF: (11:52)
Cannot imagine it, you can't imagine it.
LJ: (11:54)
In the '50s. And I guess he did get, I mean, could easily get overconfident with his ability,
JF: (11:57)
Well, yeah,
LJ: (11:59)
What was the magic touch.
JF: (12:04)
They finally learned to call charisma. I mean, he had an overdose of it. And I think the fact that he was able, in his retirement, to accomplish what he did for Oral Roberts,
LJ: (12:15)
Yeah.
JF: (12:15)
And now they have that John Decatur Messick,
LJ: (12:17)
Quite a building there,
JF: (12:19)
Building there, you know, that won an architectural award, it's named for him, you know, they built a monument to the man. [laughter]
LJ: (12:29)
Most people retire [unintelligible]
JF: (12:30)
Yeah, and all of that was accomplished after he left here.
LJ: (12:39)
Was, there are a lot of ugly, not gossip, hostility. Was the division among the faculty over this like there had been earlier, you remember? [unintelligible] you who were writing [unintelligible].
JF: (12:50)
I don't remember. I can't remember. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I am. I have so little guile in me that I really don't care whose side people are on much, that may be immodest to say, but it's essentially the truth.
LJ: (13:04)
Well,
JF: (13:05)
I don't take sides, and I know that most of what you hear
LJ: (13:09)
The way to survive, [laughter]
JF: (13:10)
You can't be really sure of the truth of anything,
LJ: (13:14)
Yeah, [unintelligible] wanted to have a tremendous. Was it devastating? Or did they just pick up?
JF: (13:21)
Well, I remember nothing about the manner in which his successor was chosen. [crosstalk - unintelligible] See, we're so bureaucratically structured now, with red tape and procedure and all those things, that they work so differently now that I can't recall how it was,
LJ: (13:41)
And that's,
JF: (13:41)
But it seems to me, swiftly and surely, we had another chancellor in place, and things went on or another.
LJ: (13:47)
Yeah.
JF: (13:47)
I've changed a lot, I've called him Chancellor now. I must have called Dr. Jenkins the president for 5-10, years. [laughter]
Unknown Speaker (13:57)
With that, I have heard that there was a petition that was circulated very quickly my faculty to [unintelligible].
JF: (14:07)
There was also a famous one that circulated against him. And the rumor is that the people, all the people, signed it no longer worked for the university [laughter]
LJ: (14:21)
[Unintelligible] in nine petitions.
JF: (14:23)
They too might be rumors.
LJ: (14:25)
I haven't seen either, document about it, but I had, well, I guess the fact that he was the, sort of, heir apparent.
JF: (14:34)
Well,
LJ: (14:35)
You think he was a rather obvious,
JF: (14:36)
I never had thought of it until we started to talk about it. But yeah, he was obvious, and I suspect now that his modus operandi was developed from the model that Messick had held before him and that he, he came into place knowing the power of good public relations.
LJ: (15:02)
And also the limits of power.
JF: (15:06)
Yeah, the limits of power,
LJ: (15:09)
Because he seems to me to be the most discreet, and knowing how far he could go and yeah, and then,
JF: (15:18)
When to push and when to back up. It was a very interesting era. I wish my memory were, were sure about it, but we're talking about 30 years ago, 35 years ago.
LJ: (15:35)
And a lot of fine points. I had thought also, if people, someone was interviewing me about my, you know, early college, it's funny, you remember it selectively. Some things you so have very much detail, and then other things, it kind of gets. uh, fuzzy. But you continued teaching in the English Department to,
JF: (15:53)
Yeah, until last year.
LJ: (15:56)
Until last year on leave.
JF: (16:04)
I did.
LJ: (16:04)
And been many, many things in the English Department. Freshmen, freshmen.
JF: (16:09)
Yes, survivors adapt themselves to what needs doing when they'll do it so they can keep their jobs. And the institution has changed so drastically, so dramatically. None of us are doing what we were trained to do for none of our careers turn out to be kind of work we think they are when we choose them.
LJ: (16:29)
That's what was so remarkable, though. You've set on track a lot closer, a lot more than, till recently, [laughter].
JF: (16:42)
Yeah.
LJ: (16:42)
And do you think Dr. Jenkins was the better president?
JF: (16:55)
I couldn't make a comparison, because I don't think that I have knowledge or insight enough to evaluate Dr. Messick's leadership. I know that it made a profound impression on me as he and as the institution did when I was young and impressionable, and so consequently, I have a very positive attitude about that era. I think that if history does Dr. Jenkins any injustice it will be in scaling down the enormity of his influence on higher education.
LJ: (17:27)
Jenkins?
JF: (17:27)
I think if any injustice is done him, it will be a failure to understand the dimension.
LJ: (17:35)
What do you think it is, the dimension?
JF: (17:40)
I think that like nobody else in the whole university system, he succeed in propelling forward the red-headed stepchild of the system, into a major institution. And I think that the ability with which he was able to manipulate the resources and the people, to rally them to support his ambitions for the university is little short of miraculous.
LJ: (18:13)
Given the opposition and their organization,
JF: (18:16)
Yeah, see the tensions that were developing, and the crunch for funds that we went through four or five times, and the competition for favor, the restructuring of the university system. See he didn't lose any of those steps. He kept us in the forefront, and he kept the funds flowing, and he kept the support, the political support from the institution together. That did not happen to some of the other institutions.
LJ: (18:43)
No and,
JF: (18:45)
Some of them fell by the wayside. Some suffered periods of instability or sterility, and we never did do that through all these years.
LJ: (18:56)
It's been my impression [unintelligible] that he had not just an impact on East Carolina and the remarkable development, but on higher education in North Carolina in the organization of, well, the whole consolidating the University.
JF: (19:19)
I have only One measure of that, and it's a very personal one. I have done a lot of work with the North Carolina humanities committee in the four or five years that that was a funded and active program. I did a lot of consulting workshops. I worked statewide in a couple of political campaigns, and in my travels across the state, various places, I have answered more questions about Leo Jenkins than I ever have about any other thing, including the business that I was supposed to be on. Everybody was interested in him. Some people hated him, and some people loved him, but everybody knew his name and he pointed out, and was very proud pointing out, and I think perhaps justifiably so, there's some considered even modest, that of all the chancellors in the universal system, his was the only one named, universally known, that people couldn't tell you who the chancellor at State was, or who the chancellor at Carolina was, or anywhere else, but everybody always knew who the chancellor at East Carolina University was.
LJ: (20:24)
That's true.
JF: (20:25)
And that gives you some idea of the fact, you know, he, he was a very influential leader. You can't you can't discount that. You can't deny it. No, and I don't think there's any way to denigrate or discredit it. I think that it's just there, and we have to let it stand, whether we like what he did or whether we don't like what he did. And there were a lot of people in very high positions who did not like what he was trying to do. I, as recently as yesterday, and this is 1982 January, had to sit and hear a faculty member from the med school at Duke make the most sarcastic remark about the ambitions of the med school of East Carolina. I'll tell you what she said. It was a woman, doctor, who gets government appointments, and she said they talked about the medical delivery system I was on, I'm on an ad hoc committee that is trying to arrange for the state to absorb the medical care delivery that has been funded by the federal government, which everybody, being in many meetings, doing year after. And this woman said, when somebody raised the question, how many training facilities are there, and she said, well, four private, and two public or one public, depending on who you're talking to. You know, like even now, [cross talk - unintelligible] yeah, she's sitting across the table from me, and I thought to myself, the creep.
LJ: (22:11)
Yeah, that's,
JF: (22:11)
That's the attitude that still is out there. Well, the [unintelligible], they think of that achievement as synonymous with Leo Jenkins, and they hate him as bad as they do the med school. And that, I think, sometimes, the measure of your achievement can indeed be the quality of the enemies it attracts. If I ever catch her in a dark alley, I'll tell her I didn't like it that wasn't the form.
LJ: (22:39)
Yeah [unintelligible] professional
JF: (22:38)
The thing that interests me is that she was an observer, and I was on the committee, and she's at Duke, and I'm from East Carolina, and that says something about the quality, the things that get done by the institution. I was chosen, she wasn't, and that's what was biting her.
LJ: (22:43)
Plus, they're getting fewer patients because we're getting more.
JF: (22:47)
Yeah,
LJ: (22:47)
I mean this is [unintelligible]
JF: (23:07)
Yeah, I know it is.
LJ: (23:10)
But it seems to me, and I, I just,
JF: (23:12)
She feels, that everything that comes out of this quarter of the state is unworthy.
LJ: (23:17)
And I guess that's where, in fighting Leo, they have used the university to attack him.
JF: (23:26)
They have.
LJ: (23:26)
And integrated the quality.
JF: (23:29)
Yeah, and somebody else said, who are these four people from these institutions who get together to talk, and she could remember all of the names except Bill Laupus'. And then she pretended she did not know. She says, oh, and that pediatrician. It was ugly. It was really ugly. But I've run into ugliness about his achievements, that way.
LJ: (23:54)
Because he has really,
JF: (23:55)
Yeah, and I saw him last week, and the governor had called him in to renew his agreement to work on special projects for him for another year, and he was just okay. He's past 70, you know, he would, a 50 year old man would have had no less energy and no more less enthusiasm for what he's getting ready to do now.
LJ: (24:19)
Do you think he ever was really seriously considering governorship?
JF: (24:27)
Yes!
LJ: (24:28)
You think he would?
JF: (24:30)
I think he seriously considers it, even to this day. Once you want to be governor, you never stop seriously considering it, and once you decide you want to be, every consideration is a serious one [laughter]
LJ: (24:44)
Glad I got that on tape! [laughter] Do you think, well, why didn't he run?
JF: (24:54)
There were too many other things to do, and nobody came forward and mobilized the resources for it. He doesn't know how to do it or where to start doing it. He didn't have time to sit down and weigh the difference in what he was doing as a chancellor and what he would need to be doing as a candidate. And he made a couple of false starts to get people in here to do it for him, and they never, kind of got off. He talked to people, but had he turned a candidacy over to professional analyst, political consultant, who could have identified his strengths and raised the money and managed to campaign for him, he said, Leo, you go mind your own business and run your university, I'll get you elected, he could have been elected, probably, but,
LJ: (25:43)
When?
JF: (25:44)
Let me go back over this, he wasn't strong enough. It would have depended on the field of candidates.
LJ: (25:55)
We, yeah, that's always,
JF: (25:56)
Yeah, it would have, see you don't know what.
LJ: (25:58)
It's debatable.
JF: (25:59)
Okay, if he would have, he would have handled the democratic clientele differently in '72 for example, '72 was a really good year for him.
LJ: (26:09)
Instead of [unintelligible].
JF: (26:12)
Yeah, you want me to tell you an inside about why Skipper Bowles might have lost it?Skipper will never believe it, in his heart, he must know it. Good friend of mine, female, on the political scene. Good friend, long time, said that Skipper Bowles and Leo Jenkins had to talk because, because Bowles had never come forward to, because Leo believed, and it probably was true, that he could mobilize a lot of votes by giving an endorsement.
LJ: (26:45)
Yeah.
JF: (26:46)
Or by putting the word out that this was a candidate, and he loved politics, I suppose, as much as the education that he devoted his time to. And so we arranged, finally, after nagging, she nagging Mr. Bowles and I nagging Dr. Jenkins, and each felt the other ought to come to him. You know they'd battle these lines with their pride. And finally, Bowles agreed to come to East Carolina.
LJ: (27:16)
Was this before Bowles?
JF: (27:18)
Well before he was,
LJ: (27:19)
Governor.
JF: (27:19)
After he was a nominee for the governorship, and Bowles finally came to his office by appointment, which I had helped to set up after weeks and weeks of talking, and we never knew what happened. And when I asked my friend if she got any word, she said, well, I don't know, not much. And Dr. Jenkins never betrayed any comment one way or the other. But we've learned, both of us from two separate sources long since that what Skipper Bowles told him in that office was that he didn't need to make any deals because he could get elected without him. [laughter] And so we think that a lot of people took a walk [laughter] after that. Now, you know, whether or not, of course, he'll tell you he's always supported the democratic candidates. He's always voted Democratic.
LJ: (28:11)
Well, he probably has.
JF: (28:12)
But there's a great difference in voting yourself and using your influence to help other people, to encourage other people. And Bowles lost eastern North Carolina. Now you tell me, is there a grapevine out there or not? [laughter]
LJ: (28:30)
I think so.
JF: (28:32)
There were other factors, you work for government at the top of the ticket, I mean, I know what all those were, but it's, that's more, more interesting folk history, I think [unintelligible] and see, Jenkins had considered running himself, and there had been some talk earlier on about his agreeing for an endorsement or for a concession to stay out of the race, and nobody took it seriously. He probably was sorry he hadn't gone ahead and gotten in the fray and after he was told he wasn't needed, but all I know is that our Democratic candidate got up the next morning. There was a Republican in the statehouse. Maybe, [crosstalk - unintelligible]
LJ: (29:20)
And it always, I mean, even if he didn't run, he certainly, it seems to me, used that potential to in, another, with other candidates, didn't he?
JF: (29:33)
Yeah, something I have known about him, and something that I have heard a lot of people say about him, was I believe it to be true, and in any instance where I had any first hand knowledge, it was, he has never, never used the political power that he accrued over the years in any interest except that of the university. And that's something people don't stop to think about. He never used it for himself.
LJ: (29:59)
No. That's why I never wondered [crosstalk - unintelligible] if he was going, if he was serious about the governorship, because he, he always, it seemed to me, used it,
JF: (30:09)
To get something for the university. It was a kind of, you know, let's make a deal, boys, or I'll go in and spoil your game. [laughter]
LJ: (30:19)
Or I'll get my friends to go vote for you.
JF: (30:20)
And that's the best kind of political power you can have. If your power is the equivalent of leverage against those that can grant your wish, then that's the best kind to have. And he had it, and he still got some of it.
LJ: (30:38)
He does, doesn't he
JF: (30:38)
Yeah he's still got some of it.
LJ: (30:41)
I don't know. You have to wonder how much of his power was also a part of his being the head of the university. I mean, that is, [crosstalk - unintelligible]
JF: (30:52)
Well, they
LJ: (30:52)
Harder to operate without.
JF: (30:53)
I was guilty of assuming, but I know better now, that while you have to have the right personality and the right kind of leadership quality that his power was the patronage of the position rather than of the man himself. A lot of it was. But unless you got to be personally, [crosstalk - unintelligible]
LJ: (31:17)
To be in this position,
JF: (31:18)
Yeah, you don't have it at all. I mean, it went to his successor. [laughter] So the political power did not flow to the chancellorship when he was sitting, wasn't sitting in his chair.
LJ: (31:28)
Yeah.
JF: (31:29)
So that that is not a truism,
LJ: (31:32)
No it isn't automatic. But no you get silenced.
JF: (31:36)
No, no people accused him,
LJ: (31:38)
Yep.
JF: (31:38)
Of having power by virtue of office. But I maintain that other people have been in that office without that kind of political power.
LJ: (31:45)
Yeah.
JF: (31:45)
So it can't be both ways.
LJ: (31:48)
But it does diminish if he's no longer,
JF: (31:50)
Yeah, well.
LJ: (31:51)
Other things too, age, to go with it. Can't deny it.
JF: (31:55)
Yeah.
LJ: (31:56)
People think of him in terms of 'elder.'
JF: (32:00)
Well, he's working with elders now, and his clientele of elders is politically the most powerful ones in the state, because his are the business and industry leaders and those with whom he has served on boards and commissions and for whom he has sought support for programs in the university, and he's built a tremendously powerful network of senior citizen, elderly.
LJ: (32:26)
Now?
JF: (32:26)
Now, yeah.
LJ: (32:28)
Is this is this is what his,
JF: (32:28)
That's what he's doing now.
LJ: (32:28)
Government, signing for the governor.
JF: (32:28)
Yeah, he pulled together over 500 of them for the dinner for the governor while he's a nominee. Yeah, and that's what he does. Somebody's gonna have to bargain with him again. There's just no doubt in my mind about it.
LJ: (32:50)
What would he be bargaining for now?
JF: (32:52)
The influence of that clientele.
LJ: (32:54)
Yeah, I know. But what would he get?
JF: (32:58)
The pleasure. [laughter]
LJ: (33:00)
Yeah, but I mean, he used to do it for the university, what it would do for the university, I mean what?
JF: (33:05)
Well, I think what he wants to do now to stay on the scene and stay active in retirement.
LJ: (33:10)
Still being actively involved.
JF: (33:14)
Yeah. Give me a platform from which to operate. I can deliver this too. I don't know if I'm reading him right or not, but I wouldn't count him out, not if I were going to run for office, [laughter] it'd be a mistake. I think he was counted out once, and I think we lost the governorship, and that's the only time. That's not the single factor that may be a microscopic view of the scene, but I know all the other influences that were at work in that election, but I think a good case could be made for that thesis. [crosstalk - unintelligible]
LJ: (33:53)
Sounds reasonable. Let me tell you something just a little bit from somebody I haven't gotten too much on except when I read Bob Morgan?
JF: (34:03)
Yeah?
LJ: (34:04)
Were you in school with him?
JF: (34:05)
No,
LJ: (34:06)
He was before.
JF: (34:06)
He graduated just before I did, and I knew who he was, and was aware of him, but I became acquainted with him one on one when he was chairman of the board of trustees and I was in the alumni office.
LJ: (34:30)
In the early '60s. And that's when they,
JF: (34:30)
Yeah.
LJ: (34:30)
And they have, because he seems to have been, during changes in presidency, a very significant figure.
JF: (34:35)
Well, he was our he was our most distinguished alumnus.
LJ: (34:38)
Yeah, and a chairman of the board.
JF: (34:40)
And our highest achiever, and a member of the Board of Trustees. Now, Dr. Messick got upset once in one administration, and I'm not sure, I think it was Luther Hodges who made appointments to the Board of Trustees, and the people that he put on them on the Board of Trustees, he named three on the Board of Trustees, and Dr. Messick was upset by that. And Dr. Messick was told that all three of those had won his most distinguished alumnus award.
LJ: (35:11)
Oh.
JF: (35:11)
And you know, if they're your most distinguished and they certainly all be qualified to sit on your board, and I think we were a lot more careful after that, [laughter]. It wasn't somebody that had been friendly and charitable, you know, it had to be somebody that would help the university. And Morgan was the first to agree that Cooke did have influence and did have energy, did have connections and was willing to serve the University. And I think one of the reasons that the fast friendship developed between the two in the common interest in university was that they were both such political animals. They were on the same wavelength. They agreed about how things had to be done. They didn't have to quarrel over the modus operande.
LJ: (35:53)
And they didn't want the same thing, so they didn't,
JF: (35:55)
Yeah.
LJ: (35:56)
Compete.
JF: (35:56)
They didn't compete, and they worked well together. They worked very well together. And of course, that was the day, you remember, when there were ambitions to get to nursing school and the seedlings of the germ maybe growing there about expanding, and they talked about pre dental and pre law, and they had grand, they were both dreamers for the university. They could see possibilities and potential.
LJ: (36:33)
Brought it about.
JF: (36:34)
As chairman of the library committee and I had a discussion, little bit of a dispute with a Senator, because they were using, we got an equalization allotment, as other universities did, to equalize our library holdings with those required accreditation and commensurate with the program, some of the programs and other agencies. And Wendell Smiley was the librarian, and I discovered that our equalization allotment had been spent to buy holdings for a medical school [laugher] it wasn't on the drawing board then, and we had subscribed to the medical bulletins from the University of Texas and all kinds of funny places bout subscriptions, the medical school journals and AMA and all that stuff. And when I asked him about it, they told me it's none of their business, none of my business. So they were engaged in some surreptitious activity even then.
LJ: (37:47)
Yeah.
JF: (37:47)
But see, you have to plan ahead. You have to start,
LJ: (37:50)
Yeah.
JF: (37:50)
You have to build from some foundation. They had more vision than I. I still think it wasn't quite right. [laughter]
LJ: (37:56)
What the med school?
JF: (37:57)
No, I think wasn't quite,
LJ: (37:58)
Oh, the library.
JF: (37:59)
Right, we used the library fund,
LJ: (38:01)
Yeah.
LJ: (38:01)
To start building base for a program that wasn't in place when they had been clearly funded for something else.
JF: (38:06)
Yeah.
LJ: (38:07)
I questioned whether, uppity as I was, I questioned whether it was legal. Made him furious.
LJ: (38:17)
Who was it? Jenkins?
JF: (38:18)
No, Walden.
JF: (38:19)
He knew it wasn't legal. [laughter]
JF: (38:29)
Not exactly.
LJ: (38:29)
And, tell me, your other career, when did, you were actively involved, obviously, before 1960 in politics, so you would have gotten to go to conventions.
JF: (38:39)
Only informally. I grew up on a farm. My father left, and his father before him, left an attitude in the household that God or the government took care of everything, and that since you couldn't see God because he wasn't on Earth, that the people who were in your government were the next best thing. And Congressman Bronner, who lived 13 or 14 miles down the road in Washington, would always come to my father's farm when he did politics, and they would get in the pickup truck and ride through the countryside, and he would greet all the farmers. And he didn't do this just when he was running for election. He would do it when he was in the district, which was much smaller then and easier to do that way. And I would get to ride in the pickup truck between them. And here was this man from Washington, [phone rings] who my father called Bruno. I can talk to you further again [crosstalk - unintelligible]
LJ: (39:28)
Yeah that's what I was going to say.
JF: (39:29)
If you're tired, as long as you give me a rain check.
LJ: (39:30)
I'll let you,
JF: (39:30)
Yeah,
LJ: (39:32)
Well to go, because there are a lot of other things I haven't gotten it heavily involved in this, and I've been kind of working my way up after, I would like to know where you're going, and so I can see that I shall be
JF: (39:53)
Well, I'll be in town on Monday. Would you like to talk sometime on Monday afternoon?
LJ: (39:59)
Let me see Monday. I've got department. I've got a class I have to teach on Monday. You're going to be here this Monday?
JF: (40:10)
Yeah, but I'll, there'll be other days.
LJ: (40:12)
Okay because I've got a departmental meeting to go to and I have got to teach a class,
JF: (40:20)
I'll just give you a call the next time I'm here, if you want to.
LJ: (40:31)
Okay, would you do that?
JF: (40:36)
Yeah. [Crosstalk-unintelligible] My number is on,
LJ: (40:31)
Give me a ring and then just pop in, because I'm here most all the time, but let, you know, let me know, I'll be sure and be here, because this is so valuable. You know, then there's so many people that I think know a lot more, but they are self conscious, or they don't want to say anything on record, or they just make it all sweetness and light, and it's nice, but it's not as helpful as it could be. And I appreciate so much, not only somebody you know, you know it, and you'll tell me which is such a help
JF: (41:12)
Well,
LJ: (41:12)
And I, because I want to go back on your, on the whole political thing.
JF: (41:16)
But yeah, well, I recognize the value of what you're doing, certainly, and I think that it needs to be done accurately, and I'm pleased and privileged to be part of it.
LJ: (41:24)
Well, I sure,
JF: (41:25)
I didn't think I'd ever really, [END OF SIDE 2]