Reunions
‘It’s Something Stronger Than You Are’
Homecoming/RAMpage keeps Tar Heels moving as alumni rediscover Carolina
As Homecoming/RAMpage 2008
weekend activities unfolded on a
Friday morning, the sun took the
chill off a crisp autumn day under a
Carolina blue sky. GAA President
Doug Dibbert ’ 70, introducing
Chancellor Holden Thorp ’ 86, owned
up to his duties for the next two days.
“I’m responsible for the weather,”
Dibbert quipped, “and the chancellor’s responsible for the game.”
“The basketball game,” Thorp clarified, with the football team set to
play Georgia Tech the next day a
few hours before the evening tip-off
against UNC-Pembroke.
Many of the alumni breakfasting
on bagels, danish, coffee and juice at
the renovated Campus Y building had tickets to one or both match-ups. But they had
a very full day in a very full weekend
before then.
Three leaders of the Lake Norman
Carolina Club — Kristy Temple ’ 90, Gale
Howard ’ 86 and Marty Rasnake ’ 76 —
came to hone their leadership skills and
planned to hear Sylvester Taylor ’ 79, a
speaker for the Center for Creative
Leadership and member of the GAA Board
of Directors, later that day. They also were
drawn to “the light-blue blood friendships
you make,” Howard said.
Rae Clark ’ 84 (PhD) and her husband,
Jerry ’ 66, leader of the Tampa Bay club,
chatted with Thorp about higher education.
(Rae Clark works for a university in Florida.)
Sohelia Thorne ’02 of Charlotte admitted
using any excuse she can to come back to
Carolina. The conference for club leaders
coinciding with Homecoming/RAMpage
weekend prompted Thorne and Dr. Brad
Picot ’02, leader of the Black Alumni Club
of Charlotte Metro, to return to pick up
new ideas to “get the support of the
University to make things happen,” said
Picot, who also earned his dentistry degree
from UNC in 2006. “We got to meet the
chancellor. You can’t beat that.”
Thorp had nothing but good news for
the breakfast crowd. Admission applications
were up 15 percent, and he felt like a CEO
PHOTOS B Y SARAH MCCART Y ARNESON ’ 96
Douglass ’ 83 from Atlanta, back
to campus for his 25th reunion.
“I was here eight years; I’ve
still got a lot of blue in my
blood,” said Douglass, who also
earned his medical degree from
UNC in 1987. “These are
exciting times, with a new
chancellor and the football team
doing so great. We have high
aspirations of winning the
national championship in basketball. This is a good time to reaffirm being a Tar Heel.”
One of the first stops was the
renovated Memorial Hall,
The tailgate party near the Bell Tower Saturday morning gave alumni a chance to catch
up with friends and get ready for the football game against Georgia Tech. where the group entered
through the “performers only”
door and was led downstairs to a suite of
dressing rooms that weren’t there before the
renovation in 2005. In fact, the entire base-
ment didn’t exist until one was excavated
during the three-year, $18 million overhaul.
Tour-goers rested briefly in the new, cushy
blue seats of the theater to gather strength
for the two-and-a-half-hour hike around
campus.
announcing a sales spike, he said.
“My job is to make sure it’s easy to love
Carolina,” he said. “We’re doing all we can to
protect the value and integrity of your
degree.”
Edith Miletto ’00 perhaps traveled the
farthest to return to Carolina. Originally
from Goldsboro, she has been living in
Switzerland for the past seven years. As she
hustled across campus to make the 8: 30
breakfast, she was reminded of all the
mornings she hurried to class.
“When you spend four years of your life
here, it becomes a part of you. It’s like a big
family,” she said. “It’s something stronger
than you are. It gives you chill bumps to
sing the fight song.”
And when Dibbert led the crowd in
Hark the Sound as the chancellor left, everyone in the room, even the young children
of alumni, knew the words.
But walking into a renovated classroom
in Hanes Hall swept most in the crowd off
their feet. The sunlight streamed through
the tall windows and splashed the freshly
painted walls of the airy room. Gone were
the cramped, straight-back wooden chairs,
replaced by models with deep cushions
and a little give when occupants leaned
back.
Out and About
After breakfast, David Brown ’ 75, Carolina
Alumni Review senior associate editor, led a
couple dozen alumni on an insider’s tour of
campus to show what had changed since
they had been students. The tour stretched
from central campus landmarks, such as
Playmakers, the War Memorial and Caudill
Laboratories, to Morrison and Craige
dorms on the expanded South Campus.
Much had changed for Dr. Adrian
“It was not like this when I was here,”
said Tyrone Everett ’ 92 (MSW) of Raleigh,
who brought some of his family on the
tour, including sister Albeda Everett Murphy
’ 90. “These I could fall asleep in.”
At Caudill Laboratories, one of UNC’s
most popular instructors, chemistry
Professor Valerie Ashby ’ 88, showed off
rooms of high-tech equipment and the
high level of research that even undergraduates are doing. But in the heart of science
territory, Ashby told tour participants that
Carolina is great because it offers topflight
education in many disciplines. She said that
breadth offers opportunities for students to
