South Mecklenburg Girls Softball League and was
state commissioner of the N.C. All-American Softball
Association. Active in his church, he was a deacon,
trustee and Sunday school teacher. In 1995, he
moved to Lake Tillery in Stanly County.
’ 65 Evelyn Pauline Lloyd (’ 65 BSPHR) of
Hillsborough has received a certificate
of appreciation for outstanding performance and lasting contributions to the board of
directors of the Orange Rural Fire Department. Lloyd
is the owner and pharmacist of Lloyd’s Pharmacy.
T. Nathaniel Walker (’ 65 ABJO) of Greensboro has
been elected to serve as president of the board of
directors for the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame. Walker,
retired as an external relations official for R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Co., has been on the hall of fame
board since 1987 and served a prior term as president in 1989-90.
■ obituaries
Robert Ernest Brainard (’ 65), 65, of Rockingham;
Jan. 18, 2009. After attending UNC for three and a
half years, Brainard was drafted into the Army. He
served in Germany. He had a long career with
Teledyne Allvac in Monroe, an oil and gas field services
company. A. Donald Farthing Jr. (’ 65 MAT), 93, of
High Point; Jan. 25, 2009. Farthing was head of the
math department at Davidson County Community
College for 16 years. Previously, he taught high
school mathematics. In WWII, he was in the Army Air
Force, stationed in England. He was active in his
church as a deacon, elder and Sunday school
teacher. William David Fobert Jr. (’ 65 BSBA), 66,
of Greensboro; Feb. 17, 2009. Fobert retired as president and chief operating officer of a trucking company. He was past chairman and director of the N.C.
Trucking Association. He served in the Marine Corps
60s
Reserve. At UNC, he belonged to Lambda Chi Alpha.
Ronald Charles Paris (’ 65 ABJO), 65, of
Rutherfordton; Aug. 26, 2008. Paris was a journalist
and community activist. He was founding partner of
Forest City Publishing Co., This Week and The Daily
Courier. He was president and honorary lifetime
member of the N.C. Press Association, president of
Habitat for Humanity, founding member and vice
president of the McNair Foundation, vice president
and board of trustees member of Isothermal
Community College, and member of the School of
Journalism Foundation of North Carolina Inc.
Walter Lewis Smith Sr. (’ 65 MEd, ’ 77 CGREd), 77, of
Albemarle; Dec. 27, 2008. Smith was superintendent
of schools for Albemarle city schools. Previously, he
was a teacher and coach. He was selected to play in
the first East-West High School All-Star football game
in 1949 and was named to the first Five Year Honor
Squad. He attended Duke University and played on
Reston/Nixon
Asimple admission of guilt — that’s all
James Reston Jr. ’ 63 was after. Millions
of viewers and readers followed along to see if
he got it.
Reston’s role in getting disgraced former
President Richard Nixon to admit that he helped
cover up the Watergate scandal is at the core of
the recent Frost/Nixon movie. The movie, in turn,
was based on Reston’s manuscript of his experiences in 1977 during the taping of the TV show
that put Nixon before the judgment of millions
of viewers. His book, The Conviction of Richard
Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews, was published in 2007.
Reston still quivers with indignation when
he speaks about Nixon.
“The younger generation feels that Nixon is
so trivial compared with what [George W.] Bush
has done,” Reston said. “I felt a sort of a mission
to explain what he did and why it was important. It wasn’t trivial. It was a criminal conspiracy run out of the Oval Office. It was serious
business. Nixon doesn’t deserve sympathy. He
was run out of office for a very good reason.”
Hearing Nixon apologize for his transgressions had a purgative quality for Reston, even
though the former president had to be practically pushed to that position. Reston relished
his role in taking the former president to task.
“It’s immense fun when you’re arguably the
hero at the moral center of a drama,” he said.
The moral and justice issues that Reston
encountered while at UNC set the stage for a
life of seeking the truth and explaining pivotal
historical moments. Reston said that while his
college experience prepared him to be a writer,
it also cast him onto a stage where the issues
of civil rights were beginning to be played out
around the town, even manifesting itself on
Franklin Street, where blacks could not even
get into The Carolina Theatre to see Porgy and
Bess, with its all-black cast.
“When I came here, Franklin Street was 95
percent segregated,” Reston said. “When I left
in ’ 63, it was 95 percent integrated. All that ferment took place while I was in college here.”
He came to the University as a Morehead
Scholar and hung out with the likes of Walter Suleiman the Magnificent
Dellinger III ’ 63, who would become acting U.S. and Charles V and the siege
solicitor general, and Henry Mayer ’ 63, who of Vienna, which was the profile
became a distinguished literary critic and wrote high-water mark of the
All on Fire about William Lloyd Garrison and the Ottoman Empire in Europe.
abolition of slavery. Reston remembers debat- The book is a complement to Reston’s other
ing with his friends at Harry’s and at the salons studies of the medieval world, which include
that Anne Queen, director of the Campus Y, had Warriors of God, a study of the Third Crusade,
at her Mallette Street house. and Dogs of God, about the Spanish Recon-
“Anne would invite speakers after lectures, quista and expulsion of the Moors from Spain.
and we would sit Warriors of God was
around and talk to published in the spring
these great men before the Sept. 11,
deep into the night,” 2001, terrorist attacks.
Reston said. The timing contributed to
“Between the the book’s brisk sales as
activism of the time Americans sought to
and Anne’s salon, it learn more about Islamic
was a very intense and Western history.
period.” Reston’s approach to
His writing career telling the historical story
— which has brought also keeps his work pop-forth 13 books, three ular.
plays and a number “One feels a bit liber-of articles in national ated to go into medieval
magazines — was history because it gives a
nourished at UNC. He greater latitude for the
toiled on an early imagination,” he said. “All
draft of a first novel these books are not
while working part pedantic history where
time for former UNC everything but the
System President kitchen sink is thrown in.
William Friday ’ 48 I think of them as being
(LLB) after leaving historical literature. They
COURTESY JAMES RESTON JR. ’ 63
the Army in 1968. James Reston Jr. ’ 63 was a driving force behind the real read like a novel. These
He was a creative are tremendous stories.”
interviews of former president Richard Nixon by David
Frost and inspiration for the recent movie about those
writing instructor Reston hopes that a
interviews.
from 1971 to 1981 greater understanding
and worked alongside Doris Betts ’ 54 and Max between the Islamic world and the West can be
Steele ’ 46. He taught two courses and had an fostered.
office on the third floor of Bingham Hall, which “The damage of 9/11 and the Bush years is
he considered much more “Englishy” than so profound to that relationship,” he said. “How
Greenlaw. much of Bush’s damage is systemic and how
His latest book, Defenders of the Faith, to much is stylistic we will see. The possibility of
be published in May, is a study of the clash rapprochement with [President Barack] Obama
between the Islamic world and the West. The is great.”
book depicts the confrontation between — Don Evans ’ 80
