Title: Dr. James C. Pleasant and Louise D. Pleasant oral history interview, April 27, 2008

Identifier: UA45.05.01.09   (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/1267)

Description: Oral history interview with East Carolina College alumnus Dr. James C. Pleasant and his wife of over 50 years, East Carolina College alumna Louise D. Pleasant (formerly Louise Ann Dickerson). Dr. Pleasant describes his early childhood in Greenville, N.C., and how his family was affected when his father, a drug store owner, was robbed and left blind. He discusses working at a grocery store to help support his family, getting a full scholarship to attend ECC in 1954, being inspired by professors to get a PhD, and working as a math and computer science teacher at East Carolina and in Tennessee. Mrs. Pleasant discusses growing up in a close-knit farm community in Roxboro, N.C. and being very homesick when she came to ECC. She discusses how she met and married her husband and had their first child before finishing her degree, the isolation she later felt staying at home with her three young children, going back to school for a music degree, and working and volunteering in several arts related jobs. Interviewer: Joyce Newman.