DAPHNE ATHAS ’ 43
DAN SEARS ’ 74
Athas in her writing
room at home. She is
seeking a publisher
for what she terms a
“social memoir” of
Chapel Hill and
Carrboro between
World War II and the
1960s. Some of the
personality profiles
that form the backbone of the book
were published in
Spectator magazine
of Raleigh and The
Leader of Research
Triangle Park.
freedom. Everybody has been good to me. I
knew what I was getting into.”
“I think she preferred to make her own
rules,” Gingher said. “Think of the committee work she’s avoided to free up her
time for creative pursuits.”
As a free spirit who rubbed elbows in
bohemian Chapel Hill and expatriated for
the 1950s, Athas often is presumed to have
been an active radical. She once had to
head off a student-planned flag burning in
her classroom. In profiles written for Triangle periodicals, she has sung of the exploits
of, among others, Ab Abernethy, the Intimate Bookshop founder who was dragged
before a senate committee investigating
communists; the communist activist Junius
Scales ’ 47; the controversial African-Ameri-can author Richard Wright.
“We were lefties. I never signed anything,
let’s put it that way.” She appreciated what
certain people were doing for Chapel Hill,
and what the town meant in the larger context, but really she was happy just to observe,
a writer-not-a-fighter. The Iraq war got the
better of her, and she went to Raleigh to
march, but she insists that was the only time.
Students have been her business, and she
maintains a long list of active clients.
When Alane Mason ’ 86 was a fledgling,
a writing professor asked her, “Why do you
act like writing is like whistling under your
breath, and any old tune will do?” Mason,
now a senior editor at W.W. Norton and
founder of the Web site wordswithoutbor-
ders.com, said she was a teenager just starting to enjoy the pleasure of writing, and
she thought “whistling under her breath”
was exactly what she ought to be doing.
Athas agreed.
“I think those who’ve found that kindred spirit in Daphne have that for life,”
said Mason, who corresponds with her
teacher regularly. “She inspires such adulation from those who understand her. And
not everybody understands her. I think her
deep sense of the value of writing and
reading as goods in themselves continually
reminds me why I do what I do. She takes
such enormous and contagious pleasure in
the teaching of grammar.”
“She represents the best of a golden age
in Chapel Hill — when Chapel Hill really
was more of a cranky idiosyncratic village,”
said Will Blythe ’ 79, former literary editor
for Esquire and now a freelance writer,
who also grew up in Chapel Hill.
Ben Greene ’09, a drama major and
creative writing minor, wasn’t sure at first
who the woman sitting in on 47W was.
Now they are close friends who vie for
space on gramorama.blogspot.com.
“It’s sort of an unparalleled experience
in college becoming friends with this
woman who’s had such a different experience from me,” Greene said. “One of the
things that appeals to me most about her is
her curiosity. She has the same curiosity
she had when she was with her boyfriend
in college. She’s gentle with our generation. But she definitely notices we aren’t as
well read, we don’t read for pleasure, aren’t
as curious. She sees disappointing directions, but she finds treasures. She’s
absolutely not an absolutist.”
Very unique
Josh Sharp ’09 is dressed in a 7-year-
old’s pajamas. His work in 47W has rated
‘I think those who’ve found that kindred spirit in Daphne have that for life.
She inspires such adulation from those who understand her. And not everybody
understands her. I think her deep sense of the value of writing and reading as
goods in themselves continually reminds me why I do what I do. She takes
such enormous and contagious pleasure in the teaching of grammar.’
Alane Mason ’ 86
