Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2007

He Taught the Eagles to Soar

It is always easier to look back from suc- “The team had been cess and talk tough about hard work than it losing for so long that is to imagine success when you’re at the they didn’t know how to bottom of an uphill slope. In 2003, when win,” Broadway explains.

Rod Broadway ’ 78 became head coach “We had to change the for the N.C. Central University Eagles, the culture. We put in a pro-team had a long record of losing. Looking gram that started with over his team, Broadway saw a depressed basic fundamentals from bunch of players. As he puts it, “They recruiting to training. We expected to lose and did.” had to change the way

On the other hand, Broadway knew that we practice. We had to _As _head _coach _at _N.C.the Eagles were offering him a chance he change everything from ^Central ^University,Rod Broadway ’ 78 took
didn’t want to pass up. “I saw these other attitude down to effort.” _the _football _team _fromguys getting head coaching jobs, and I knew Today, nobody ques- a losing streak to two
I was qualified,” Broadway reflects. “I guess it tions whether Broadway ^CIAA ^{championships} ^—and Division I-AA.

was something I had to prove to myself.” can handle the job. In

Broadway attacked his new job with a 2004, the Eagles won combination of hard work, optimism and eight of 10 games for the smart coaching. He dug deep into a long first time in the history of NCCU. In 2005, career that began as a defensive lineman at they were CIAA champions with their first UNC from 1974 to 1977 with a 1977 10-win season. In 2006, it’s an 11-win season award for Most Outstanding Senior from and the team’s second year as CIAA champi-the Educational Foundation and All-ACC ons. In 2007, the Eagles will move up to honors, a career that included posts as an Division I-AA. Behind it all: Coach assistant coach at East Carolina, Duke, Broadway telling his team to “play hard and Florida and UNC. play to win.”

PHOTO COURTESY NCCU SPORTS INFORMATION

HEALTH CARE

Reinventing the
Wheelchair

ART HISTORY

Powerful Patchwork

Everette James Jr. ’ 59 doesn’t seem to do anything sparingly. As a radiologist, professor and chair of the radiology department at Vanderbilt University, he wrote more than 500 articles, 150 textbook chapters and 20 textbooks. James, now retired and living in Chapel Hill, has channeled that same intensity into his collection of folk art, pottery and quilts, much of which he displays at St. James Place, a museum in a Gothic-revival style, primitive Baptist church he restored in Martin County.

Soon after James began collecting quilts for St. James Place, he realized that the African-American quilts were distinct and should be exhibited separately. He created a traveling exhibit and took it to museums in North Carolina,Virginia and Georgia. At the end of the tour, the N.C. Museum of History offered to show the quilts for a full year. In 2006, James and his wife, Nancy Jane Farmer ’69, who also received her master’s and doctorate from UNC, donated these 60 quilts to

PHOTO COURTES Y FARMER-JAMES COLLECTION

Monkey Wrench Quilt, circa 1930, Person County. In the 19th century, monkey wrench quilts were placed over a fence to signal that it was time to prepare an escape.

Dr. Willis Martin ’ 70 (MD), a dermatologist, has seen a lot of disabled, obese and wheelchair-bound patients in his years of practice. He’s well aware of the problems on both sides — nurses who develop injuries from lifting patients and patients subjected to uncomfortable, humiliating and sometimes scary forms of transfer. Struggling with the problem, Martin came up with a system he has patented as the chair-a-table.

The chair-a-table is a wheelchair that can be attached to a table or bed before lifting patients to the proper height and then flattening to facilitate the transfer of the patient. The chair-a-table will help nurses who otherwise may have to lift a total of nearly two tons per shift and orderlies who lift some five tons per shift. The first prototype is now in use at the Carolina Health Care Center in Roanoke, Va., and Martin is proud to say that the staff there want the chair-a-table to become a permanent part of their equipment.

the museum, accepting its offer to house and catalog the collection permanently.

James is reluctant to single out one favorite quilt but admits that he prefers the quilts that were used to communicate information about the Underground Railroad. A monkey wrench quilt placed over a fence signaled that it was time to prepare to flee. Also among his personal favorites are improvisational quilts. The seemingly random bits of cloth form shapes that come from traditional African tribal beliefs.