Touch of Gray - March / April 2004

The Remarkable Career of Billy Aycock at UNC
Are You Being Helped?

The Remarkable Career of Billy Aycock at UNC
   Bill Aycock retired to Carolina Meadows in 1991 after a distinguished career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was Chancellor from 1957 through 1964 and Kenan Professor of Law until 1985.

   Bill, a cousin of North Carolina Governor Charles Brantley Aycock, was born in Lucama, NC in 1915 and grew up in Selma, NC. Finishing high school in the depths of the depression, Bill went to North Carolina State where he was President of the student body and received his degree in Education in 1936. He followed that with an M.A. in History at UNC-CH in 1937.

   Bill was determined to be a lawyer but to make enough money to go to law school he worked for two years in Greensboro as a History teacher and assistant football coach - doing graduate work at Duke and Harvard during the summers. He served as Chief of Project Planning for the National Youth Administration where he met his wife, Grace Mewborn.

   As a reserve officer he was called up after Pearl Harbor. Bill served with distinction in the infantry and was a battalion commander in General Patton's Third Army, 87th Division. He returned home as a lieutenant colonel with the Silver Star for combat bravery in Europe.

   Among the married veterans of World War Two housed in Victory Village near the site of the then new UNC Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill were Bill and Ida Friday, who became lifelong friends. Another young couple there was Terry and Margaret Rose Sanford. All three young men were students in the Law School and all destined to make their mark in North Carolina University life.

   Upon graduation, Bill was immediately named to the Law School faculty. "That was what I always wanted to be - a teacher - rather than go into legal practice," Bill noted.

   In 1951, with war clouds gathering on the Indian sub-continent, Frank P. Graham, UNC President and former United States Senator, chose the young law professor to accompany him on his United Nations missions to India and Pakistan.

   In the North Carolina Collection in the University of North Carolina Library in Chapel Hill there is a photograph of newly elected President John F. Kennedy on his visit to UNC on University Day, October 12, 1961. To Kennedy's right are Terry Sanford, the young North Carolina Governor (who was also chairman of the University trustees) and UNC President Bill Friday. On Kennedy's left is Bill Aycock, Chancellor of UNC-CH. To Bill Aycock's recollection, Kennedy's visit to Chapel Hill was his first public appearance on a college campus after his election.

   Bill Friday named Aycock Chancellor in Chapel Hill in 1957. His years as Chancellor were busy ones, a time of rapid growth of the professional schools and of the student body. Enrollments rose from 7,000 in 1957 to 11,000 in 1963. Under Bill's direction, the computer age began at UNC with a Sperry-Rand two million dollar plus computer.

   Bill was a leader in the fight to repeal the Speaker Ban Law, passed at the height of the Communist scare, a law that prohibited the University from inviting radicals to speak on campus.

   As UNC, the first State University in the nation, prepared to celebrate its Bicentennial in 1995, Bill spoke to the Carolina Meadows Men's Group about its history and told this little story which he has since often repeated at Alumni meetings. When he was Chancellor, he often received letters from parents asking him to take care of their freshman sons and, make sure they studied hard and got plenty of sleep and rest and did not spend too much time in town. One such mother's letter had a postscript, "My son has never been away from home before - except for four years in the United States Navy,"

   The Old Davie Poplar on the UNC campus, set among the oaks by the Old Well, is a, Chapel Hill landmark. Tradition has it that the Revolutionary war general, William R. Davie, commonly accepted as the father of the University, stopped in its shade for lunch in 1792 and was so impressed with the view of the rolling hills that he decided it was the perfect setting for the school.

   Do you know that Carolina Meadows has its very own Davie Poplar clone among the oaks by our Old Well near our main entrance? Here is how it happened. One of Bill's successors as Chancellor, Paul Hardin - now a member of the Board of Directors of Carolina Meadows - arranged during the University's Bicentennial to have seedlings grown from Old Davie's seed presented to school children from each of North Carolina's one hundred counties. In honor of his service to the University, Bill - now retired to Carolina Meadows - was also presented with one of the seedlings. Bill made arrangements to have the little seedling planted by our entranceway. He watched it over the years and carefully watered it regularly till it took root. It is now an impressive twelve-foot tree able to hold its own among the oaks.

   In his retirement Bill maintains many close links with UNC, particularly with the Law School and the Law Alumni Association. He assisted Dean Judith Wegner and others in the preparation of the History of the Law School (1945-1995). This volume was dedicated to him. His son, William P. Aycock, II, is an attorney practicing in Greensboro and is also counsel to the Alumni Association in Chapel Hill. Bill's wife, Grace, who died in 1996, was a graduate of the Graduate School of Social Work at UNC. Grace found the apartment then under construction at Carolina Meadows to which they eventually moved. Their daughter, Nancy, is currently on the staff of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at UNC/CH.

   On Bill's living room wall is a picture of UNC's Medical Family Practice Building, now named the William B. Aycock Building in his honor. Also nearby is a framed photo of Bill with his longtime friend Dean Smith. To basketball fans Bill Aycock is best remembered as the man who hired Dean Smith as UNC's head basketball coach. Bill was impressed at the 30-year old assistant to legendary coach Frank McGuire and named Smith head coach in 1961, despite considerable opposition from faculty and staff who wanted to institute a national search for a more seasoned leader. "I certainly made a good choice," Bill comments.

   Many of Bill's colleagues at UNC as well as his former students now live at Carolina Meadows. But he enjoys meeting others too. "What I enjoy most about Carolina Meadows is the quality and diversity of the people." He confided. "There is a cosmopolitan atmosphere here, with new-found friends and neighbors who have lived all over the country."

   Bill has always had something of a green thumb and in season cultivates a bountiful crop of tomatoes in pots outside the porch of his sunlit ground floor apartment, and is glad to share them with his neighbors. It is only a few steps around the building to the sixth fairway of our golf course. Bill enjoys his golf game and you will find him out most Saturdays competing in the regular weekly tournaments. Who knows? He may join CM's hole-in-one club one of these days. -- Des Reilly, Resident

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Are You Being Helped?
    Being part of the community one lives in might serve as a motto for residents of Carolina Meadows, even though the sense of who should be helped and how the helping should be done has evolved - in large part due to a greater awareness of the needs of our neighbors but also in light of the physical capabilities of its aging residents. We've expanded our efforts from working as volunteers to a wide range of fund-raising projects and participation in community activities. Finding new ways to help is an ongoing and rewarding process.

   I invited a few neighbors over to discuss volunteering. Perhaps because of her work at the United Nations for UNICEF, Helaine Plaut brought the broadest perspective. She pointed out, "Volunteering - this spirit of cooperation and volunteering is uniquely American. In other countries they don't participate in creating the fabric of the community as we do - it's more the 'Lady Bountiful' approach. Carolina Meadows residents have traditionally been very generous. Many people have had volunteer experiences all their lives and their efforts now are really a continuation. For me, volunteering is an obligation to participate in the community and try to make some kind of impact in an area of community need where I feel comfortable."

   Residents who serve as volunteers are probably all motivated to some degree by a sense of "responsibility." Vicki Badrow's devotion to Chatham Habitat for Humanity provides a good example of those who want to "give something back to the community." Badrow and her late husband Ned began their commitment back in 1991 when she learned at a church meeting in Pittsboro that Habitat needed volunteers. Badrow remembers, "It had always been Ned's dream to build houses for Habitat and the two of us were off and running." He built houses and, later on, built and painted benches and other items; they both worked in the Habitat store. Badrow continues to this day and, in addition, coordinates donations of residents' household items for Carolina Meadows. One of her rewards has been the development of many friendships with Habitat volunteers. In a related way, Margaret Evans (who teams up with her husband Allen at the CORA [Chatham OutReach Alliance] Food Pantry says, "We want to show that Carolina Meadows is a giver, not a taker. Besides, volunteering is a great way to get to know the larger community."

   Bob Moore puts the meaning of social responsibility and the definition of volunteering another way: "As far as I'm concerned volunteering to do something you love to do is volunteering. The trick is to find the needs that exist that can be helped by finding people who love to do that. Getting things organized was one of the major contributions that I made in my working career as a chemical engineer and I enjoyed that." Moore is now completing his second three-year period on the Board of the Chatham County United Way; what attracted him to serve was the problem-solving involving people and systems and procedures. He says, "It's not quite right to say that I wanted to make use of my career skills; it was a little bit more that I missed the opportunity of getting involved in those kinds of problems. I think many men are basically problem solvers and they're not really happy unless they have a problem to solve. Of course, this is true of our generation; things are changing."

   Other residents mention their choice of volunteering as based on career experience. For example, Jack Parry can point to his knowledge as an electrical engineer as part of his decision to be on a team that installs electrical wiring for homes built by Chatham Habitat for Humanity; and Esther Bovarnick and I - as former librarians - feel right at home as we shelve books, set aside some to be discarded, or check publishers' catalogs against library holdings at a local middle school library (and, thereby, help relieve the librarian to work with the teachers). Margaret Fallers, who knows about education through her career as a teacher and university administrator, puts her reasons for tutoring in local public schools quite simply: "It's helping the educational process of the school to have somebody there to help a teacher do what he or she does best. A lot of really good teaching goes on in smaller groups. Any school, any school can use a devoted volunteer; the fewer kids you're interacting with the more everybody learns, including the teacher. Anybody who likes teaching kids can find a place where they're valuable in a school. But you only want people in the schools who like being in schools, who like kids, who like teachers, who respect public schools."

   Fallers also points to the way individuals can be attracted to volunteering for a specific agency because of its inspirational leader. "If I had an extra minute," she ways, "I'd volunteer to work with Kim Caraganis (director of Chatham County Together!, an agency that carries out a number of activities in support of at risk children) simply because she is so charismatic."

   Beyond being motivated, volunteers need to meet some requirements. All agencies insist volunteers go through training programs - from as brief as a few hours to as much as several days - to familiarize them with agency policies and the technical details of their assignments (and we are aware that art museums often require docents to commit to ongoing training). Far more demands are placed on those appointed to the boards of the United Way and other agencies. Chosen for their expertise in finance, community organizations, and the like, these volunteers are expected throughout the years of their tenure to stay abreast of existing and potential agency programs by reading materials distributed prior to board meetings, carrying out assignments, and - in some cases - attending seminars in board management. Experience is always valued and may be required as in the case of tutoring students in mathematics and the sciences. Further demands are rare and typically pertain to practical matters, such as being able to drive or else arrange to car pool. Volunteers in the CORA Food Pantry find they should work in pairs to have enough stamina to fill customer needs while unpacking donated food and restocking shelves.

   There is a consensus among my neighbors that determining the results of volunteer work is not a straightforward matter. It's easy to quantify the results of volunteer work in terms of the number of books shelved, students tutored, Habitat houses built, or the amount of food distributed. Measuring the impact on recipients is often more complex. Has it turned their lives around? Made them happier? Healthier? There have been times, Fallers remembers, when a student's grades improved so dramatically that she believes some credit was due to her tutoring. Far more often, we cannot be certain where our volunteering leads, we can only know it gives the recipients a better chance.

   It's natural for me to view the generosity of Carolina Meadows from my vantage point as chair of its Community Outreach Volunteers Committee. Looking back to the origins of the COVC in 1999, Plaut remembers being asked to organize a committee of residents to "do 'something' that would increase Carolina Meadows' presence in Chatham County in a positive way." At the time, many residents were already volunteering in Chapel Hill, but very few realized that we lived in a rural community known as Chatham County. It took almost no time for Plaut's ingenious group to draw up a plan. The strategy was kicked off by the committee's first Volunteers Fair, which featured many of the nonprofit agencies in Chatham County. The original purpose of that first Fair in the spring of 2000 was to educate Carolina Meadows residents in the many needs of its rural community and motivate them to participate; the focus, in short, was volunteering for Chatham County agencies. Since then it has become clear that our Annual Fairs serve more purposes than soliciting volunteer workers; the Fairs are fostering networking and cooperative ties between the agencies themselves and are stimulating a far broader range of support activities for the agencies on the part of residents of Carolina Meadows. Led in large part by the COVC, residents now help agencies in a variety of fundraising projects, carry out food drives, and host an annual summer camp - all in addition to the more traditional volunteer work.

   The CORA Food Pantry may well be the most popular social service agency among residents at Carolina Meadows. This all volunteer organization attracts more individual residents than any other agency; they come to work at its Pantry in Pittsboro inspired by the clear and increasing need on the part of many Chatham County residents, by the efficiency and skills of CORA's President, Roxane Gwyn, and, in part, because their commitment in time - however small - is warmly welcomed. On top of this volunteer effort, Carolina Meadows runs extremely successful food drives for CORA every year. Esther Bovarnick, who has organized the most recent drives says, "People like drives here. When you say we're having a drive, everybody gets all excited and they pitch in. I don't have trouble getting people to help collecting the food, transporting it, and assisting in stocking shelves. And if residents can't get to the supermarket to buy the food they will be very generous in turning over money instead. You get a lot of cooperation. Residents like a short-term push."

   In recent years the COVC has noted that such short-term events as the CORA Food Drives are becoming more and more appropriate outlets for the generosity of those less able to meet the physical demands of direct volunteering. For this reason the committee has expanded its efforts to organize the residents in the support of fundraising efforts of community agencies. Chatham County Together! is one of the most frequent recipients of our fundraising efforts; this year residents have attended their dinners, held a School Supplies Drive, purchased their lobsters, and - at our upcoming Outreach Fair - will launch the raffle for a quilt donated by the Quilt and Needle Group of Carolina Meadows. During the holiday season, residents also joined Carolina Meadows, Inc. staff in its Drive for Needy Elderly on behalf of the Council on Aging.

   Volunteering at Carolina Meadows continues to be - in its largest sense - an expanding activity as the closing discussion of those neighbors I invited over will illustrate. The subject of the moment was civic responsibilities. Speaking of residents at Carolina Meadows, Jack Parry noted, "We vote very heavily. We've created the situation where we have our own polling station. We participate in political activities by inviting the candidates here to speak to us. We are working in some of the political activities within the County. It's something that has to grow, but we do have a definite place in the community."

   Fallers: "Political or social force is a citizen's responsibility - to be interested in the School Board, the Compact Community Ordinance, the water supply. This is citizenship participation."

   Parry: "But there are gaps. We help in the schools, but far fewer people pay attention to what is happening to the school system. It would help to have more go to Board meetings or work on school bond issues."

   Bovarnick: "It isn't brought to our attention."

   Parry: "We should find more ways to bring community people from outside into Carolina Meadows."

   Bovarnick: "Maybe we ought to get some School Board people here at our next Community Outreach Fair." (A good idea that was acted on immediately.)

   And I thought to myself: Here it is again - the next small step toward better service to the residents and to the larger community we live in. Are you being helped? -- Joan Blewett, Resident

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