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Page 2 in 1899, taught a year in my na tive Halifax County, taught a year in Catawba College, and came back to the University in 1901 ns Librarian. Counting his ten-year stay in Chicago as ncv er-the-less spiritual presence in Chapel Hill; he has been in Chap el Hill ever since 1901. As I write these words he is in North Carolina Memorial Hospital hav ing a bout -with some ailment. But in moments of respite there I have no doubt that he is up to his life-long work; i.e., thinking up something constructive for the University and putting it in a memorandum where it counts. Later on, if he and we are for tunate, he will organize it, and energize it. I speak from -ex perience; for He has energized me many helpful limes. Energiz ing is his favorite word. I mention his bout with ail ments because his spiritual con quest of a serious illness in our time and his discipline of him self have been the secret of his productivity. He was put out of action by sickness for a long time. When he had recuperated his doctor told him, “You have two choices. You can play or you can work. You can't do both.” Dr. Wilson -chose work. But the necessity of taking it quietly con firmed him in the wisdom of thinking things out first, then memorandizing, organizing, and energizing his thoughts of Uni versity development. When I first saw Dr? Wilson he was all activity on the tennis court where Alderman Dormi tory now stands. He was holding up his part in a fast game of ten nis with Ed Graham, Pat Win ston, and Billy Dey. These four along with Archibald Henderson and Dr. Venable formed a facul ty group of crack tennis players who regularly beat the student varsity. There may have been others than these, but these are the ones I saw. In his new regi men Dr. Wilson had to give up tennis. His only exercise as far as I could observe has been walk-’ ing to work, to church, and to innumerable meetings. My next view of him was at the Methodist Church where he was then Superintendent of the Sunday School. But Dr. Wilson in a life-long service, matched Graham Memorial presents the ... Travel-Adventure Series 3rd SEASON A colorful, exciting film trip around the world, nar rated in person by the men who shot the film! Feb. 11. NEIL DOUGLAS Gold Against the Sky—Mexico Feb. 23, STANTON WATERMAN 3,000 Years Glider the Sea Mar. 4, CHARLES PERRY WEIMER Cavalcade of South America Mar. 18, CARL von HOFFM AN From Cairo to Capetown All performances 8:00 P.M. Carroll Hall, UNC Series Ticket $2.50 at the door or in advance at Graham Memorial, P. O. Box 30, Chapel Hill. Individual Programs SI.OO adm. at the door. s^——■——» I Remember your loved ones on Valentine’s Day. We B have the most delightful Valentines and delicious B Valentine candy. Select early for best choicee. B I IFREE DELIVERY » PHONE || I "***" »«•*.»... ... .. ” FrPPF* »P|l |l. gv< /C A For the best in Esso Service, TRADE WITH C%%~\ (XCe/vl Atayliv ) NORWOOD BROTHERS ESSO SERVICENTERS .FJ No. 1 )•% v\. f rank!in SI. Dial 9-42-;j771 Road Service by Radio-Dispajehed Vehicles No. 2 Chapel Hill Durham Klvd. Cal! 189-9171 \\s .O..AM * 4 AM * MMJMMOAM 0 M *.O ,»-+*.*.* *jn * ft. «.«.*j» •> Aa* .* a rs.« *A « *.* #*# *******+*«* *.AjT: —^———.——————— l^ ————————————— —Chancellor House’s Reminiscences— (Continued from Page 1) only by his friend Clyde Eubanks, has done everything a layman can do in a church. I don't think anybody here has served ~ the churches longer than these two colleagues. I remark in this con nection that each of the Chapel Hill churches developed first in the buildings of the University by cooperation of campus and village. One of the special fea tures of the Methodist Sunday School was a men's Bible class taught in my time by Dean Stacy and then Bully Bernard. I have enjoyed the .privilege of teach ing this class for thirty-six years. It is now a class of men, wom en, and children. Dr. Eubanks is in his nineties. He has never been long interrupted by sick ness. But sick or well, these two partners of town and gown have worked in religion. Manifestly they not only give strength to all church enterprises, but they also gain strength from them. They were leaders in build ing the present University Meth odist Church. This was an enorm ous task, especially in Depression days. It was finished by the gen erosity of James A. Gray. Mr. Gray’s action is a sample of both alumni and general con ference support of Chapel Hill churches, because each of them has about the largest student congregation of any of the church es elsewhere in the several de nominations of North Carolina. The work of Drs. Wilson and Eu banks- and Mr. Gray is matched by town, gown, alumni, and gen eral conference in each of the other Chapel Hill churches. There is a Quaker strain in Dr. Wilson and a kindred spirit in Dr. Eu banks. They leave religious con troversy to one side, move on quietly, cheerfully, and constant ly on the simple, obvious things that transcend old and new pre judices and manipulations. I have accented religion in the makeup of Dr. Wilson because it is from religion that he draws his personal and institutional pow er. We students did not need to see Dr, Wilson in Ife Library. That building is now Hill Hall of Mu sic. It was given to the Uni versity by Andrew Carnegie. Dr. Wilson planned it and directed the present Library, named in his honor the Louis Round Wilson Library. Librarians over the State and nation saw and heard ,Div „.W.'i Ison constantly. His achievements in Librarianship as well as in other fields have been brilliantly recorded by A. C. Howell in his book, “The Kenan Professorships.” It is sufficient to say that his professional achievements run from the con solidation of the old. Phi and Di Libraries to the present Library of over a million volumes and manuscripts also running into tremendous figures. In education for librarians his work extends from our simple beginnings here to our present status as a Grad uate School. It also embraces the peak of library training and publication in Chicago. As to library organizations, boards, and commissions he has run the gamut from village to nation, ft takes no glory from his stu dents and colleagues to name Dr. Wilson as Pope of American Libraries. Or it may suit his Methodist, temperament to call him simply Presiding Bishop. We did not need to see Dr. Wilson in the Library because our needs were beautifully cared for by Miss Nan Strudwick and oth er assistants. Miss Strudwick, now the widow of Frank Nash, former Attorney General of North Carolina, sat at a desk in the main lobby. She looked like a Jine cameo framed in flow ers. Her refined care of our needs left Dr. Wilson quiet in his sanctum. There he not only ran libraries, but memorandized. or ganized, and energized the de velopment of the whole Universi ty . We saw the manifestations of his rhythm: “The Alumni Re view,” "Studies in Philology.” “Extension Bulletins.” We saw the dramatic beginning of the High School Debating Union, the High School Athletic Associa tion, and just as we were leav ing for war, the “Alumni Loyal ty Fund.” Ralph Rankin was Dr. Wilson's able assistant in all these extra-library beginnings. Dr. Wilson launched Ralph on a fif ty-year career of University Ex tension from which he retired in 1962. Beyond our time lay the great educational campaign of 1921, the full powered Extension Divi sion, the University of N. C. Press, the Consolidation, the Ses quicentennial and its eighteen volumes of publication, also fun damental works on libraries and education. Dr. Howell brings the full record down to Dr. Wilson's present career as editor and his torian. Only those who sat in with him on the entire process can ap preciate the infinite detail and eternal follow-through Dr. Wil son directed. How did he relax? He never played as we call play in our conventions of recreation. The answer is that he stayed relaxed in spirit and played in his neigh borhood. On his Rosemary Street block lived his old friends, the Wagstaffs. the Bransons, the Stacys, the Henrys, the Lasleys, the Knights, the Kochs, and oth ers who came and went. 1 don't know their habits, but 1 do know their joyous congeniality. They did not have to do anything to enjoy life. They were already enjoying it. ' Across the street lived their individualistic, controversial.-can tankerous neighbor, Horace Wil liams. He put the iron into their souls and kept them from get ting soft. He was their polar op posite in approach. But in the long perspective they all reveal ed the same underlying faith in life and dedication to the Uni versity, variety in unity. TO BE CONTINUED Graveside Services For Andrews Infant Graveside services were con ducted Thursday afternoon at the Antioch Baptist Church for Nancy Elizabeth Andrews, one day-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Billy Andrews of Rt. 1, Chapel Hill. The infant died Wednesday morning in Duke Hospital. Surviving are the parents; one brother, Ronald Andrews of the home; the maternal grandpar ents, Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Dixon of Carrboro; and the paternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. T. P. Andrews of Rt. 1, Chapel Hill. Friendly Service in CARRBORO THE CHAPEL HILL WEEKLY —A Talk With Thomas H. Collins— (Continued from Page 1) Tribune. Along about this time 1 sat down and began to size this thing up. i had chosen this pro fession. and I could see that it didn't make you rich, so I had to get some satisfaction to make up tor it. I looked around to see where I could get the most satis faction, and I decided that the Chicago Daily News was where 1 could get the most satisfaction. It was an afternoon paper, and a six-day paper, so the work didn't break you in half. You have to do a tremendous amount of work to put out a Sunday pap er. “So I went out there in 1942 and started as a copy readers on the rim. 1 retired as executive editor. The column started in 1948. You may remember, about that time everybody was going wild over teenagers, they'd just discovered teenagers, and we had teenagers running out of our neck. The merchants were all hipped on teenagers, and every body. Well we began to wonder if we should be paying this much attention to a six or seven-year age group like this. I was fea ture editor at the time, and we decided we'd start a column for old people, sixty-five or older, there were about ten or eleven million of them then, and there are about sixteen or seventeen million of them now. It was call ed The Golden Years, I coined the name. I started writing it just for the Daily News, but we began to get mail to the column that was abnormal. Nowadays people don't write letters to the editor the way they used to, not with radio and television. But we were getting this abnormal amount of mail, from old peo ple. tiie column attracted a great deal of attention, not because it was so particularly good, but be cause these people had time to write letters. They were re tired, they had time, so they sat down and wrote letters. Well, a syndicate in New York heard about the column and all the mail we were getting, they pick ed it up and syndicated it. It went pretty well. It's in about 130 papers now, the good papers. I was getting two thousand let ters a month. “Well, it was a weekly column am I talking too much? It was a weekly column, and pretty soon a lot of other people started to get into the business too. Well I thought I knew more about it than anybody else, and the syndi cate thought so too, General Fea tures Incorporated in New York, they thought so too, so f; started to write a daily ciiumn in addi tion to the weekly, called Senior Frtrum, taking my mother's name as a byline, my mother was a Hightower. There’s an interesting story in connection with that. My wife writes too, and her name is Beulah When she started writing her column she didn’t want to use the name Beulah, and we have three boys named Kent, Todd, and Paul, they’re coined names, no family names, they’re going to have to write ’em all their life, so keep ’em short. Well, she made a name out of their three initials, K, T, and P. Katy P. Collins. But the syndicate didn't think the P. ought to be in there, so she made it just Katy Collins, and Paul got left out. So when I needed a by line I used Paul. Paul Hightow er. “So I started this other column too, and it went, it’s in about 74, 75 papers. Well, the mail started to stack up almost to the ceiling, so I had to move it all out and do the column at home. We worked out a complicated office arrangement at-'home, because I didn't want to spend my eve nings away from my lady up in a writing room, but there was the career side, too. I was feature editor, and then they moved me up to assistant city editor, then assistant news editor, then assist ant managing editor, then man aging editor, and then two years before I retired they made me executive editor. You don't goof around with this kind of a job, mister, it’s your life. I had to keep the two separate, so we had an office arrangement at home Would you like to see our office downstairs? We can talk better down there. "Hope you don’t mind walk ing across the basement. The people who owned this house be fore had an apartment they rent ed down here, and we turned it into an office ... watch tele vision there ... we write in here.” Mr. and Mrs. Collins' office has three desks, two typewriters, two swivel chairs, filing cabi nets, a shelf full of books, and a wall covered with framed me mentos, most of them newspaper clippings. One long, narrow frame contains Time Magazine’s story which appeared when Mr. Collins brought out his first book based on the Golden Years col umn. (His second appeared just recently. > “That Time story cost me twenty thousand dollars," he said. “You see down here, it says when ever I come home Mrs. Collins brings me a bourbon in a peanut butter jar you know, those Skippy peanut butter jars, they're the best thing for a drink. Well, Mrs. Collins had an aunt who owned a lot of rich black farm land, and she just couldn't be lieve that ner nieces or children or anybody they would marry would smoke or anything we never smoked in front of her and certainly not drink. When she saw that in Time she never said a word, but there went twenty thousand dollars right out the window. Os course I made more than twenty thousand from increased sales of the book, any way, but there it went, cost me twenty thousand. “Well, I put in twenty years at the paper, and after they made me executive editor, 1 knew we had it made. I could be free, I could.do whatever I wanted to, and go wherever I wanted to, and we started looking around the country for a place to live. You just don't go at this lightly. This is an important decision. You've got to go someplace and put the roots down, and then that's it. I thought at first Ud like to try the Rio Grande valley in Tgxas, so we went down there for Three weeks to size it up. It’s pretty country, you’re in the pink grape fruit region, you’ve got a river, you’re right near Mexico so you’ve got cheap labor. But I wouldn’t have it. Too many Mex icans, too much poverty. And it’s too inaccessible. You have to take a jumper plane to Houston and then take a plane from there, it might take you two days to get to Chicago if you wanted to see your family or something. “Then we tried the northwest, and that’s pretty country, but they have rainy seasons out there that are too depressing. It just gets yo-u down. We looked down around Florida. It took less than five minutes to decide we didn’t want to live in St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg has always taken my column too, they were my first customer. We liked the Hagerstown, Maryland, country, just north of Washington, that’s Eisenhower country up there, you know, cosmopolitan, New York and Washington right handy. ‘■But then we tried Chapel Hill. I didn’t know anybody here, my wife didn’t know anybody here, but I made six trips down here sizing the place up, and we liked it. I flew down to look for some real estate, and then I went back and put the family in the car and we drove down here and looked at it. I remember one thing that sold us most was, we were parked up on Franklin Street in front of The Hub, and we left the three boys in the car while we went around to talk to some real estate man, and when we came back some fellow named Turner was out there talking to the boys, tell ing them what a great place Chapel Hill was. I’d never seen him, didn’t know him, but there he was, from Georgia himself. You know when you're moving three boys, all their friends were up north, they went to school there, they were born there, that’s all they ever knew. You tell ’em they re going to move nine hundred miles away just be cause mother and dad say it’s a good place to live, they don't buy it right away. But that fel low had them halfway sold on Chapel Hill, and that helped sell me. “It’s a university town, for one thing, and you get serious, dedicated people in a university town. There’s the atmosphere. It’s friendly, you can walk down Franklin Street and tell. Anoth er thing is, it has a gentility. There’s so much violence in the South, people have their sheen of civilization, and you can stand it, you can stand to watch a cou ple of guys carve each other up, but you don’t like it. But here, we’ve only lived here a month, but 1 bet we have neighbors around here who don’t like to kill rabbits. The people here just don’t like violence and killing. Th er y save cats from trees, that kind of thing. And there’s the economic end. People here don’t care so much about the dollar. That’s one of the things about this country, we think of everything in terms of the almighty buck, but here you don’t see a lot of Cadillacs parked around. You see people in cute little cars, trying to dis tinguish themselves with their cars, but the first time I" went up to the campus I wore a pinch collar and a Capper and Capper suit Capper and Capper, that’s the best men’s store in Chicago, all the busine'ss men who have made, it wear Capper and Capper suits —1 wore q Capper, and I felt out of place. People don’t care about flashy clothes'around here. So we came, and I expect some day they'll bury Mrs. Col lins and I under one of those oak trees out there, and maybe our boys will live their lives here too. “I sit. out on this patio here and look at the trees, and I think, I've got this freedom, I can do anything I want. I’m be holden to no Qian, what am I going to do? Most people retire at 65. 1 retired at 51. I'm lucky. What am I going to do? Should I breed dogs? Be a farmer? •Build a better moustrap? I’m going to write books. Fiction. I’ll write another book from my Golden Years material eventual ly. My wife just signed a con tract to write a book. But I’m not going to sign any contracts. I’m going to write a book, if they’ll print it, fine, if they won’t, well all right. “The problems people write to me about are mostly about money. People retire, they're on a pension or social security, they know they're going to have to live on two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and they get frightened. They've been getting eight, ten thousand a year, now they're on a pension. They don't know how they can do it. The' thing is, they can do it. It's all right. They just don't know they can. The more money they make before retirement, the more scared they are to retire. A man and his wife, just the two of them, can live very comfortably on two hundred and fifty dollars a month. People don’t know very much about money and financing, budgeting, but they can figure it out for themselves at the dining table in one evening. They can figure we’re going to spend a third Os what we have to eat well, and so much for this, so much for that, we ll take a little better care of these clothes than we have been, and we’ll be all right. They won’t drive a fine car, but does that matter? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make any difference whether you wear a hundred and twenty-five-dol iar suit or a fifty-dollar suit, just so it looks decent. They can live in a trailer, or a small house, as befits their circumstances, and they’ll be fine. People just don't realize this. ”1 made two tours to find out how people were living, down in Florida. I went down the west coast and up the east coast, just talking to retired people. They do all right. Most of them are in favor of Kennedy’s medical care for the aged, though they don’t like to say so for fear of offending their family doctor. If you could have a secret vote of fifteen million people over 65, I’m sure almost all of them would vote for medicare, if they could be sure their family doctor would n’t find out how they voted. Their doctor is next to their minister, you know. “Another problem people write to me about is their children. Every mother thinks she brought up angels. Men aren’t this way too much, but women are. They all think their children are noth ing but angels, and their children are just people, ten toes and ten fingers just like everybody else. Pop dies, and Momma’s left with what's left of the family money, and the children say, well, we know you’re going to leave it to us anyway, and we need money, so how about giving it to us? In a few years you’ll be gone, but I’ll be rich then, I need it now. Spouses make trouble, too. a daughter’s husband, or a son’s wife. The wife says, well your mother’s right over the hill there, sitting on about thirty thousand, why don’t you go over and ask her for some, we can buy us a house? There’s a difference be tween the generations, they just can’t seem to get along. Young people don’t have any respect for their parents, they don’t pay any attention to them, they move off to California and write to mother once a year at Christmastime. “When a man gets into his late thirties or early forties, he’s feel ing pressures. He’s got to suc ceed, he’s got children in school, he may have an ambitious wife who wants to join the country club, he has a mortgage on the house, he wants to keep his wife set up in the community, she wants to be known as the wife of a successful man. He hasn’t got time for his mother. She may live right over there, but he has n’t got time to pay attention to her, he’s got too much else to do. “I bet I've gotten a thousand letters from widows who have given their money to their chil dren, and then the children just take the money and go about their business and never pay any more attention to their mother. Here, these are some letters. I’ve got cartons of them back in the basement. Some people just write a nice little letter—like this one.” “Dear Mr. Collins: You are a DANDY MAN,” said the first line of the letter. “Most people write with prob lems. Look through those letters. Most of them mention jnoffey. A\ lot of them are just written" in pencil, like this, uneducated people. I don't let these things get too close to me. I’d be dead if I worried about them all. Some times I worry about them. I remember one letter I got from a man, there was some possi bility of suicide, something about a merger in his company, I wor ried about that one. That night I telephoned him. Most people, all they want is just somebody to teil them it’s all right, you know how people are. Anything that comes in with a stamp I write a letter back. Os course, at the same time I can’t get too callous about it, because these are people, they’ve got flesh and blood, just like me. You’ve got to strike a balance. Any newspaper column ist is a phychiatrist too, because you have to look at a problem objectively, state it objectively. “I get to know some of these people pretty well. Some of the best friends I have are people who write me letters. I have one friend, he was in Firestone’s ad vertising department, and then he went with BBD&O and made a real success of it. When re tirement came he started south, looking for some place to settle down. This isn’t the way you should do it. You should pick your place and then go to it. Anyway, he went down south, and he didn’t see anything he liked, and he went down to Flori da, and didn't want to stay there, and so he started back up north. One night he stopped in a little town in Georgia, I've never been there though I’d heard of it when I was a boy. Well, he met a Junior Chamber of Commerce man in the motel there, and now he runs the Chamber of Com merce in that town, and he’s real ly cutting the bushes, I hear, A promoter all his life, you see, and now he’s promoting the town. He’s really topping the bushes down there. * Beefeaters'Haven 9 #*, ■ JfflGOS •WMM* «IMI Cite PM . flito PM / SUNDAY iiSO PM » WiM PM Raleigh-Durham Hwy./787-3505 “IS a social device conceived y / by ancient peoples and devet / v / °Ped in modern times to pro ■ « aik imp tect individuals and their ||y V l|D|l|Ufl"L businesses from financial loss 111vUUrtllvL b r the elements, by disease / am * death < by Perils of the / I sea, by thieves, and from the uncertamty of liability created by their activities and their —possessions.” In an emergency an Insurance Policy may become the most valuable asset that a man ownes. OVER 30 YEARS OF SERVICE TO CHAPEL HILL. MAY WE BE OF SERVICE TO YOU, SOON. Ask About Our Low-Cost Package Insurance Don’t See Take ( wJwLr+A Us Chances / Now (oilier (obb and Associates SERVICE INSURANCE 18 OUR SURETY BUSINESS BONDS Scott Bldg. 106 Henderson St. Phone 968-4472 Sunday. February 10,1963 “I’m enrolled in the University now, and so is Mrs. Collins. Non credit. I just go over there to sit and listen to the smart guys, to find out something. I figure they know a Tot more than I do, and I dan learn something. I expect I'll be going to the Uni versity for another ten years, just to sit and listen. I’m taking a political science course now, and my wife is in conversational French. “The trouble is, I don’t know what to wear to class. I don’t want to be the only man in there with a dark suit and tie, because I don’t want to compete with the professor. But I don’t want to look like Johnny Sophomore, eith er. That would be wrong. I don’t want to be a standout. I’ll figure out something. I’ll get me some blue jeans or something. “No, I’ve never had any real trouble with my name, about it being a drink. I’ve gotten along with it all right. I went up to see this minister, Thrasher, the other day, and when I walked in the first thing he said was ‘How do you ever get along with a name like that?’ But I use Thomas Collins as a byline be cause, you know, a lot of papers don't take liquor advertising, and it wouldn’t look so good. My wife’s family are all Quakers, out in lowa, and they weren’t sure they liked me having a name like that, but it's all right. I use T. Hightower Collins when I want to be dignified, but who wants to be dignified, anyway? You don’t need to be dignified.” V 1/ 24 hour PROFESSIONAL BARBER & SHOP 1 Flat-Top « barbers !/[ I to serve you yj Next to Vine’s Veterinary %
The Chapel Hill Weekly (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 10, 1963, edition 1
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