Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Sept. 29, 1983, edition 1 / Page 7
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Thursday, September 29, 1983fi"he Daily Tar Heel7 WEEKEND oolong back McKnight recalls first basketball team By KATHY HOPPER Staff Writer He's a cross between Sir Laurence Olivier and Grandpa Walton reminiscing about the old days with fun-loving gentility. Dr. Roy B. McKnight lives by a code of ethics circa 1910 that exemplifies the ideals of an honest hard-working life. He has the mischievous grin of a fraternity man and the matter-of-fact manner of the old family doctor who can get to the heart of an ail ment and administer aid. He has lived a good life; 90 years of continuous work has given him a limitless supply of tales. He can tell you about the first UNC basketball team and what University life was like in 1911. As the only surviving member of the 1910 team, he remembers a day when Carolina basketball was far from revered. "There were eight members on the team. We put up a pole behind Bynum (at that time the gym) and prac ticed there for about a week." When University of ficials wouldn't let them play in the gym, McKnight suggested a visit with then President Frances Venable. Venable ordered that the team be let in. Then goals and hoops were set up inside. The team played six to eight games a year and won about half of them. "The coach was Nat Cardinal. Ever hear of him?'' McKnight asked, laughing softly. "No one else ever did. He didn't know a basketball from a ping-pong ball. He was an Olympic track man. We coached ourselves." McKnight remembered the closeness and spirit be tween the team and its opponents. Visiting teams had no Hiltons or Holiday Inns to lodge them so they stayed with members of the home team. McKnight smiled when he recollected the nights spent talking with players from Wake Forest, Washington and Lee, and Woodbury Forest. Close bonds between competitors are not the only thing the University has grown out of. McKnight said the student-faculty bond has also weakened. "In my day faculty-student relationships were much closer than they are now. We'd drop in on them (faculty) in their homes and talk things over with them in their office. I don't think you do that kind of thing now. Classes were smaller. It was a different at mosphere on campus than it is today." One difference is the absence of once mandatory daily chapel meetings, he said. Monitors would check attendance at these meetings conducted by President Venable in Gerrard Hall. After classes McKnight said some men would hang out at the YMCA or downtown drug stores. Weekends were more special. "We'd hire a horse and buggy to go to Durham to see a show. It'd cost two of us $2.50. We saw some good shows over there," he said, smiling. The daily routines of college students have also changed. In 1910, students ate meals at boarding houses that charged about $12 a month. There were no laundromats in town so students mailed their dirty clothes home in packages. Students bathed in Bynum Gym. "People'd go around in their birthday clothes," McKnight said, then quickly added, "Of course there were no women on campus then." The town has also changed. "When I came here there wasn't a car in Orange County." His robust laughter filled the room. "Now I think every student must have at least 10. "I remember when the streets were not paved. When it rained a little they were all mud. You had to put boards on the street to get to the other side." McKnight was active on campus during his years at UNC. Every Saturay night he attended Di-Phi literary society meetings. "There was nowhere else to go," he said. He was also one of the first members of the Sigma Chi fraternity on campus. He told about some aspects of fraternity life during the early 20th century. "Haz ing was popular back then. They'd make you sing and dance a little, that was all no harm done." The fraternity remained an important part of McKnight's life. As an alumnus, he acted as head of this province and was inducted into two honorary orders of the fraternity. The Sigma Chis dedicated their house to him, and brothers often drop by bis home to visit or to help per form chores. And McKnight occasionally goes to the house for dinners and chapter meetings. He is quick to add that both of his sons were Sigma Chis. McKnight sat back in his easy chair and gazed at the pictures on the wall pictures of friends, fellow faculty members, respected professors and family. "I've tried to be a decent person all my life," he said. "I've had my regrets. By and large, I hope when the pros and cons are weighed, the pros outweigh the cons. If you live your life with that aim in mind, I think you're liable to achieve it." I AJWA"' , Z",S,, ",V' '''"' '" i' " ' M 1 : v : x . .. . ... .:. . ' "': ' '. DTHCharles Led ford Dr. Roy B McKnight Memories of this area fond for Gardiner By KATHY NORCROSS Staff Writer "One burst suddenly, at the hill-top, on the end of the straggling village street, flanked by faculty houses, and winding a mile in to the town centre and the university. The central campus sloped back and up over a broad area of rich turf, graved with magnifi cient ancient trees. A quadrangle of post Revolutionary buildings of weathered brick bounded the upper end: other newer buildings, in the modem bad manner (the Pedagogic Neo-Greeky), were scat tered around beyond the central design: beyond, there was a thickly forested wilderness. There was still a good flavor of the wilderness about the place one felt its remoteness, its isolated charm. " Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel, 1929 Frances Gardiner, a lady full of warmth and vitality, was born in Chapel Hill in 1903, lived here until 1929, moved with her husband to New Jersey, and returned 30 years later after her husband's death. She saw the town in its youth, and over the years she has watched it change and mature. 'It's hard to believe you can be close to one century and coming near to another,' Frances Gardiner. "It's hard to believe you can be close to one century and coming near to another," Gardiner said. Gardiner's father, Frances Preston Venable, lived in the Widow Puckett house across the street from where UNC President William C. Friday now lives. A bachelor, Venable came to Chapel Hill in 1881 and was the University's first professor of chemistry. Next door lived John Manning, head of the law school. His daughter became Venable's wife. All of the Venables' five children were born in the Widow Puckett house. Venable became president of the University in 1900. The family moved across Franklin Street into the house in which the Fridays now live. Gardiner remembers the moving day. The heavy furniture was carried across the street in wagons pulled by mules. "Franklin Street was just an old dirt road with high banks on either side," she said. "I remember holding onto my nurse's hand, and she had a portrait under her arm." In 1914 Venable resigned because of ill health and returned to his true love: teaching. He became head of UNC's chemistry department. "He was president because he thought it was his du ty," Gardiner said. "He was frustrated because he . wanted to be teaching young men to be chemists." When she was about 15, Gardiner entered St. Mary's preparatory school, which she attended for three years. The dating regulations there were strict, she said. Girls had to get permission from their parents so the boy's name could be put on a list. At 7 p.m. on Satur day the boys would line up and check in, then the girls went to Sneed Hall,-a study hall filled with desks and chairs. "We could date for an hour with a chaperone there the whole time," Gardiner said. "Then the guys would leave and date all the girls in Raleigh. There were a lot ,of matches made just the same." After St. Mary's, Gardiner returned to Chapel Hill this time for school. "When I was in school, they didn't have any dorms for women," she said. "They liltll W0: ; A" if ' " $ -'( v 'St mmm mm m mm m mmmmmm V 4 - V--'- J '"' , y 2', C- ,',", y " S t ' At i i '"'f ' I te" feiBsSlillsy shrift t , -'," ' ' I V' , McKnight, 90, is the oldest living member of a UNC basketball team, recalls his college days when Carolina basketball was far from revered. Battle House a part of University history " AmmSm. A' 'VM - . "'-A" ,Az unwnimmjiiiMiiiji:y-v roiiiimnni DTHLon L Thomas . Frances Gardiner, a Chapel Hill native, sits next to a picture of her father, Frances Preston Venable. Gardiner has watched Chapel Hill change and mature for most of her life. had a couple of private homes where the Ackland Museum is. Ladies would come to educate their children and run a boarding house." In contrast to a higher percentage of females than males in the student body today, when Gardiner at tended UNC there were only about 75 women. In one of her history classes there were about 100 men and two women. The men didn't always appreciate the women's presence. 'We could date for an hour with a chaperone there the whole time. Then the guys would leave and date all the girls in Raleigh. ' Frances Gardiner "The women that came here first were very studious and older. Many were teachers who wanted to come back and get a higher degree," Gardiner said. "I think the, boys are scared of all you smart girls. I think you're doing the right thing though." In spite of the difficulties, the women did establish careers, and one of Gardiner's close friends is a chemist. ' It would be hard to imagine any decade as obsessed with sports as today's, but we follow a tradition of dedicated fans. "We were just as excited about it (sports)," Gardi ner said. "The first stadium was just a wooden set of bleachers. Then they built concrete ones that was supposed to be very elegant. Virginia was the big game. If we beat Virginia that was the best. Duke crept in somehow." In 1929 Gardiner married and moved with her hus band to Moorestown, N.J., where he was a family doctor. But Chapel Hill stayed in her blood, and she returned often. "I came back once or twice a year," she said. "It's just something you can't get away from." When her husband died in 1961, she. moved back and lived in the old Venable house which her father had built shortly after resigning and where he later retired. But it was not exactly like coming home because someone had converted the home into apart ments. "The first thing of all that changed Chapel Hill and made it grow so was the building of the hospital," Gardiner said. "When I first came back, I worked as a pink lady (similar to a candy-striper). Then they built so much, I couldn't find my way around much less show anyone. It's grown in leaps and bounds." The dental school has grown too. Gardiner recalls that in her childhood, all the children had to go to Hillsborough to get their teeth fixed. They took a hack to Carrboro where at University Station they met a train. In Hillsborough they had to take another hack. A trip to the dentist lasted all day. As any university town usually does, Chapel Hill is bound to mature and grow as the country does. Change is inevitable. Gardiner never quite lost touch with Chapel Hill, and she still recognizes the gradual changes, and believes they are for the better. "When I think back to my father's day, there were so few people here. It was hard to keep up with all the changes," she said. "There's bound to be a lot of dif ferent people because of how it's expanded. I read all the different names: Chinese, Japanese. I think it's in teresting. Things are going on all over. "It's growing, but I'm interested in all the different people. A lot of people fuss and fret they cry when a tree's cut down. But actually, things have to change. We have to adapt to it and not be so critical. If you're rigid, you're pretty hopeless." By TOM CONLON Staff Writer It has been a grammar school, a law of fice and the home of a University presi dent. And its rooms have held everything from law classes to chickens. Today, it is the home of the Baptist Student Union. Located on Battle Lane across from Kenan dormitory, the Battle House has been a part of UNC history since 1843. William Horn Battle (1802-1879) bought Senlac, the property on which Battle House now stands, in 1843. A primitive grammar school stood there in the early 1800s, according to the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Historic Buildings and Landmarks of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. William Battle was a supreme court judge and a professor of law during his years at Senlac. He built eight rooms on the front of the house and later built two cottages, known as offices, on each side of the front gate. UNC's first law school classes were held here, according to William S. Powell's The First State. University. William Horn Battle lived at Senlac un til 1868 when the reconstruction govern ment caused him to move to Raleigh. From 1868 to 1876, Senlac was rented and suffered much deterioration. Stories were told of tenants felling great oaks and keep ing chickens in the former dining room. William Battle sold the house to his son, Kemp Plummer Battle, when the younger Battle became president of the University in 1876. He served in that office until 1891, from 1891 until his death in 1919, he served as a professor of history. Kemp Plummer Battle had also been active with a small group of alumni who took the lead in re-opening the University after the Civil War, Powell wrote. While there, President Battle repaired the house and added a one-story wing on each side and various outbuildings, in cluding a wellhouse, two servants' houses, a woodhouse, a cowhouse, a chicken house, a smokehouse, three or four privies, a bathhouse and a barn. These buildings still existed when he died. Upon the death of President Battle's aunt, in the fall of 1919, the household was broken up and Senlac was again rent ed. In 1922 John Manning Booker, UNC professor of English and husband of Nell Lewis Battle, President Battle's grand daughter, bought the house. Up to this time, the property included six country acres. During the Bookers' residency, roads were cut, lots sold, and the house save the front altered from its former appearance. Heirs of the Bookers main tained the house until the mid-1960s. The UNC Baptist Student Union was looking for a place to relocate in 1956, James O. Cansler, then BSU campus minister, said. Today, Cansler is associate vice chancellor and associate dean of stu dent affairs. "We looked at three possible sites for the Baptist Student Union," Cansler said. "The Battle House was one of those places. We had heard talk that the (Booker) family wanted to sell the house and property, and we felt we had a good shot at it and spoke with the heirs. "Mrs. Booker was also visited by William D. Carmichael, then president of the University," Cansler said. "He told her the University felt the need to have the property and that it would offer her more than anyone else who wanted the proper ty. We felt we couldn't compete with the University and purchased property on Rosemary Street where Chapel Hill Realty is today. "The BSU did well on Rosemary Street, but campus ministers always hoped for property that would be closer to campus and the dormitories," Cansler said. "In late 1964, the same realtor we worked with in 1956 called me up one day and said that the Battle House might again be available and asked if we were still in terested," he said. "He told us that the University was not able to purchase the house at a schedule convenient to the heirs. The heir that we spoke with in 1956 had died, and the new heir was willing to sell to us. "I went to my superiors at the Baptist State Convention and urged them to move quickly," Cansler said. "They approved, and that same year we acquired the pro perty and began an extensive renovation. The house was very dilapidated and was covered with so much bush that you couldn't see the house from the road. A small two-bedroom dwelling stood on the southwest corner of the property, which we tore down after we were unable to give it away. An old garage in the back was also torn down as it was rotting and had no his torical value." Cansler said that approximately $100,000 was spent on renovations and that nearly all of the exterior had been pre served. "We removed partitions in the back and took out a small porch where the dining room is today," he said. "We add ed the new kitchen and back porch, but everything else was kept in its original ap pearance. We got a lot of expressed appre ciation from the Chapel Hill Historical Society for our success. We also tried to save as many pf the front magnolia and walnut trees as possible." The Rev. Joe Clontz, Baptist campus minister today, came to UNC in 1971 and took over the BSU program at Battle House. "Most of the work had been done when I got here, but we did have the house insulated and added new aluminum sid ings," he said. "We also put in storm win dows and other energy-efficient equipment to make the house more comfortable with in the standards of the Chapel Hill His torical Society." Clontz said that the upper floor re mained in bedroom format since they once considered renting rooms out to interna tional students, but that the program never got underway. "We use the upstairs rooms ,for"offices and study areas, which has fit our needs well," he said. "The main floor has been decorated and carpeted to meet the needs of the campus ministry. We hold our Thursday night fellowship and wor ship services there, and have rooms avail able for Bible studies and small groups. We also provide rooms for students to come over and study or just to gather with friends." The Battle House continues to be a part of University history, as students and friends can use the house for BSU and other religious functions. Clontz1 added that a Chapel Hill food co-operative began at the Battle House and that the house was used by various groups in the community in the' early 1970s. The house today is available for retreats and special meetings by other groups on occasion, although most of the space is taken up by Baptist Student Union activities.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Sept. 29, 1983, edition 1
7
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