Sunday, May 10, 1942
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By Bucky Harward
SEVERAL TIMES last winter rumors floated about Chapel Hill that Frank Graham might be
appointed Secretary of Labor. Late one night we phoned him in Washington to confirm or deny
the rumor. - -
We phoned the Mayflower Hotel, the Wardman Park Hotel, the Shoreham Hotel, and other
leading hostelries in the city. No Frank Graham.
Finally, we rang quiet, inexpensive Hotel Washington. "I'm sorry," droned the night clerk,"
but President Graham is not here. We have only an T. Graham' from Chapel Hill, North Carolina."
Dr. Frank told us that he had not been offered the post. But that was only incidental except
for our relief. The student body and faculty and -
Board of Trustees would not trade Frank Gra
ham for any other educator in the nation. The
above incident alone should explain that.
But there are other reasons. -
-Dr. Frank is the most accessible of all the
administrative officers. A student or visitor has
a two-to-one advantage over any professor or
department head for a chat or an interview. Whenever
he can sneak from his office and heavy administrative
duties, he's much harder to. find. He might be down at
the track meet or baseball game sitting with his stu
dents,. cheering as if he were 15 instead of 55. He might
be just walking bareheaded about the campus, stopping
to chat with everyone he knows that means almost every
body from the yardmen on up.
For Frank Graham probably has more friends than
any other man in North-Carolina. He's friendly, not with
the unctuous veneer of a politician or a Dale Carnegie
disciple, but with an honest-to-God love for and .interest
in everybody he can meet and talk to. It makes no differ
ence to him whether a man is a janitor or a manufac
turing magnate. To Frank Graham, both are men indi
vidual, free, human from whom he can learn something.
His memory for names and faces is phenomenal. If
you met him five, ten, fifteen years ago and then walked
into his office tomorrow, he would grab your hand, look
steadily at you with those blue eyes of his, and with
boyish pleasure call you by your first name and ask
about his friends in your hometown. A few years ago,
an old classmate whom he had not seen in twenty-nine
years strolled in to see him. Dr. Frank immediately
called him by his first name, then rattled off his old dor
mitory and room number, ended up by reminding the
astonished alumnus that he had won the math prize his
sophomore .year.
The accusations that Frank Graham is a radical, a
Communist, a Socialist or that he deserves any of the
many other epithets that have so long been pitched at
him by his enemies in the State and South are stupid
and absurd. Frank Graham is Frank Graham. He fol
lows no set creed or ism but his own conscience in
any situation. It makes no difference whether the crisis
or problem is financial, economic, administrative or per
sonal, he always manages to translate it into ethics and
makes up his own mind regardless of what anyone
professor or President thinks.
And his ethics are profoundly and sincerely Christian.
Hardbitten, completely utilitarian businessmen and alum
ni swear by Frank Graham as the most Christlike man
they have ever known even when he takes an unshakable
stand contrary to their own, and often he does.
He isn't much to look at. If he dressed himself in
overalls instead of his dark conservative suit and let his
beard grow for a day, he'd easily pass for a Cumberland
County farmer coming into Fayetteville for Saturday
shopping. Short and slight with thinning gray hair, he
' has the plain calm features that would not attract even
the first glance in a crowd.
- He isn't a great orator either. His voice is distinct
but soft, his gestures few and simple. But if once you
hear him, you will never forget. It might be before the
State Budget Commission when the University's biennial
budget stands in grave danger. It might be before the-
Board of Trustees when some members have become
rather irate about alleged Communists on the faculty.
It might be before the student body when Dr. Frank
has been asked to talk on the Carolina honor system. He
would speak without formal preparation, without the
advantage of an impressive appearance, perhaps even
running his words and thoughts together a bit. But. you'
would listen and so would those with you whether they
number two or 2000. You would listen because for a
while you could not hear a man, but a cause that is bigger
than any Commission or Board of Trustees or student
body to the ideal of democratic living as Frank Graham
sees and knows and profoundly feels it.
Here at Chapel Hill, where 4000 students work and
play over several square miles, it is next to impossible to
attract a major part of them to hear anyone. But let the
word be announced that Dr. Frank will speak at chapel
period and those same students who the week before
passed up Nye or Leon Henderson will stand inthe aisles
and sit in the windows of old Memorial Hall to hear their
president speak for 30 minutes.
Carolina students respect Frank Graham with a vene
ration that almost approaches worship. A great deal of
that sentiment has sprung from the complete friendliness
and accessibility that he perpetually exhibits. Every Sun
day night when he is home, he and Mrs. Graham hold open
house for any students who want to drop by for an hour
or so at the white-columned home just off the campus.
Last Christmas Eve, Dr. Frank walked about the campus
asking all the students he saw those who did not have
the time or money to go home for the holidays to come
eat Christmas dinner at his home.
The faith that the student body has in Dr. Frank is
reciprocated in full. Unshakable believer in democracy,
Frank Graham always respects the considered opinion of
the student body because he believes that on important
issues it will think and do what is right. Fall before last,
complaints from a few faculty members and alumni that
Carolina's new coed cheerleaders were disgracing the Uni
versity by appearing before the stands caused adminis
trative officials to prohibit women students from cheer
leading. The student body rebelled, sent a committee of
leaders to Frank Graham's office to request that the girls
be allowed to continue. Formerly skeptical, the president
listened with respect to the arguments, ruled that the
girls were not to be discriminated against.
Frank Graham can see the student viewpoint because,
unlike many middle-aged men, he is still young enough in
spirit to remember his undergraduate days of over three
decades ago. Then he was an ideal student, not only in
the classroom but in the outside campus activities that
the Carolina student so dotes on.
Student body president, president of the YMCA, head
cheerleader, editor of the campus paper all these jobs
and more Frank Graham held when he was a student in
Chapel Hill. The valedictory prize he lost by one fiftieth
of one point.
It was while he was still a student that Frank Graham
developed his love for athletics and sportsmanship. Many
persons throughout the State and South still bristle when
his name is mentioned because they inevitably associate
it with the Graham Plan of a few' years ago. Apparently
none of the prejudiced realize that Frank Graham was not
the originator and sole backer of the plan but only one of
its propopents, that the plan itself asked mainly that col
lege athletes in the Southern Conference meet the scholas
tic standards required of other students. They would re
fuse to believe that the backer of what they consider an
insidious menace to the great god football once took dur
ing his own college days castoffs too scrawny to make the
varsity and coached them himself until they beat the first
string.
Francis Bradshaw, dean of students, still tells how he met
Frank Graham and simultaneously got an insight into
the now famous Carolina Spirit. Bradshaw was a fresh
man, Frank Graham a senior. At a baseball game one
day, the first-year man was engaged in the popular past
time of booing the opposing pitcher. Someone tapped him
lightly on the shoulder. "We don't razz pitchers around
here," a slight, undersized fellow said quietly. Bradshaw
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democracy in Shirtsleeves, g
lina does not fly so high and mighty as to forget its obligation
inaugural address, Frank Graham asserted: "The State Unive
people. The intellectual life of the University should be quick
have a common destiny in the adventure of building a nobler ci
shut up, was somewhat nettled until he learned who the
little fellow was.
But even many of the students and alumni who revere
Frank Graham have failed to appreciate his work as pre
sident of the Greater University because it has become a
much-mouthed cliche to say automatically that Carolina is
the greatest state university in the nation, that Chapel
Hill is the center of liberality in the whole South.
Nowhere in the United States is there an institution of
comparable size where the faculty and student body have
so completely and unreservedly the freedoms of thought
and expression. Responsibility for preserving those free
doms has fallen to and been admirably shouldered by
Frank Graham.
The preservation of these same freedoms is the excuse
most" frequently used when Graham's enemies want to
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