Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2008

’ 58, whose husband, Jim Short ’ 57, hadn’t attended a single reunion until, after he’d missed his 25th, a friend called him.

“He said, ‘Not only did you miss a good time, but you were missed,’” Short said. “I haven’t missed one since. Everyone who doesn’t come is missed.”

‘It Was Where Everyone Met’

After a middle-of-the-night hail storm, Saturday laid out the clearest Carolina blue sky imaginable. Alumni entered the recently renovated Campus Y building as sunshine streamed through the double-height arched windows and puddled on heartpine floors that had lain hidden under linoleum tile for years. The visitors nibbled pastries and sipped cold drinks, socializing as they did decades before when the Y court was where everybody gathered.

Bitty Schaeffer Holton ’ 53 recalled a soda fountain being just inside the entrance. “Outside was like the Pit is now,” she said. “It was where everyone met. We’d sit on the South Building steps. It was the hub of everything.”

Her husband, Bill Holton ’ 52, remembered impromptu buck dancing, similar to square dancing, at the Y. Ken Carter ’ 68 bought his first slide rule there as a freshman, launching his career in pharmacy.

Larry Hartsell ’ 58 recalled stopping by for a soda when he had the money. He paid his way through college as one of the first student waiters at The Carolina Inn, where he could eat free when he worked.

“I’d meet friends at the Y; it was always crowded,” he said. “The student union was more like a library. People would go there to study. The Y was a place to meet friends. There was a lot of flirting going on out in the court.”

The Y was also the place to plan humanitarian service trips. Religious studies major Phyllis Krafft-Sherlock ’ 58 of Palo Alto, Calif., told of many a dinner she and others shared at the home of longtime Y director Anne Queen, planning service trips around the world. Reflecting on her return to Carolina for the reunion, Sherlock said: “The beauty of this place still knocks my socks off. The Y was not this beautiful 50 years ago, but it was very high energy.”

white Navy dress uniforms and silky pale blue gowns alike waiting their turn for a photo op. Over at Graham Memorial, nearly half of the original “Suicide 25” readied for lunch. The group of 13 N.C. public school graduates and 12 out-of-staters entering as freshmen in fall 1954 constituted Carolina’s first honors program. The men (most women weren’t then admitted to Carolina until their junior year) took advanced English, math, history and philosophy courses taught by department chairs and senior professors, said John Raper Jr. ’ 58, one of the select group.

The name came from the academic pressure on the stellar students, said John Zollicoffer ’ 58. “We got graded quasi on the curve,” he said. “People who normally would have gotten all A’s in regular courses were not getting all A’s by a long shot in this group. The competition was wonderful but intense. You were working with people who were high contributors, deep thinkers and deep readers.”

His roommate, Jim Kimzey ’ 58, remembered that as freshmen they roomed with a senior in Old East who “saw these two young freshmen come in and thought he was going to straighten us out,” Kimzey said. “By the time we got through studying, we about ran him out. He couldn’t believe how hard we worked.”

Carl Britt ’ 58 was impressed with their professors, especially when Professor Ed Cameron ’ 28, explaining the rate at which objects fall, did a vertical jump up onto the table. “His blue eyes were flashing,” Britt said. “There we were trying to scramble to get everything in our notes, and I thought, ‘That guy must have been a great high jumper when he was young.’

“In Dr. [William] Wells’ English class, we probably wrote more themes than most guys did their entire college experience. Another guy and I were both interested in medicine. We commented that we’d never have to write a theme again after we left Dr. Wells’ class. That was pretty much true. But it was a great experience.”

SARAH MCCART Y ARNESON ’ 96

Margareta Ortenblad Thompson ’ 58, with four Carolina degrees to her name, finally got to participate in a Commencement procession on Sunday with other members of her class.

‘Deep Thinkers and Deep Readers’

By lunchtime Saturday, soon-to-be grads congregated near the Old Well, starched,

‘It Really Makes an Impression’

A bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees and a doctorate of her own, a husband with two Carolina degrees and a son with another — yet Margareta Ortenblad Thompson ’ 58 never made it to a Commencement. Life always got in the way. She was either having a baby (at the student infirmary, where the total bill was $5 in 1958) or

lived too far away or had a child in a soccer game to cheer for at the same time. Marching in the procession for her 50th class reunion seemed like her last chance.

Then her husband got sick.

She spent the weekend by his bedside at UNC Hospitals as he recovered. By Sunday morning, he was no longer in critical condition.

“Here it was, just a stone’s throw away,” Thompson said of the ceremony in Kenan Stadium. “The timing was terrible, but I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a shot, and see if I can make it.”

It was just beginning to sprinkle rain when she and her classmates strode into the stadium. “We had gowns but no caps,” she said. “I thought that was on purpose. All of us have gray hair, or no hair at all. It really makes an impression.

“We just lined up in a row and marched around and received the adoration of the crowd. We waved like the conquering hero. The stadium was pretty much empty, but whoever was there was making noise.”