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It wasn't Choo-Choo

Submitted by tleonard on 06/05/2012 - 11:44

 

Sportswriter Frank Deford recently wrote of the trouble he had with a fictional character being a little too true to life -- or at least that's what UNC fans thought. In the early 1980s, he published the novel Everybody's All-American, about a washed-up former college football star. Deford explained that the character was drawn from many athletes in many sports, but because the story was set in Chapel Hill, readers insisted he must have based his character on UNC's All-American Charlie Choo-Choo Justice. They were not dissuaded by Deford's arguments that he had never met Justice and knew nothing about him. (Similarly, Justice insisted that he had never read the book, but that it was not based on him.)
 
In 1982, Deford was interviewed by N&O sports writer Bruce Phillips about the book and the assumed connection to Choo-Choo Justice.
 
Some people think the story is based on the exploits of Charlie (Choo Choo) Justice, a real Tar Heel legend, but Deford said it is not so.
 
"I have never met Justice and I'm surprised that anybody would identify my character with him," Deford said..."Besides, my hero comes to a tragic end and I understand Justice is doing well in life and business...
 
Deford said the idea for Everybody's All-American, to which movie rights have been sold to Warner Brothers, germinated through a long career covering sports and observing what happens to heroes going through the process of growing old and losing the limelight and the applause.
 
"The book is a composite of many, many athletes I've known," he said. "And about the lives of those around them. Then I threw in my characters and spread them from around the state, Raleigh, Charlotte, Wilson, High Point, etc. It was like putting a political ticket together.
 
"If the book doesn't do well in North Carolina, then I'm in big trouble." -- The News & Observer 8/17/1982
 
Well, when it came time to make the movie, Deford did find himself in big trouble. The university refused to allow filming on campus because officials thought it would be too disruptive to the academic schedule.
 
(Rollie Tillman Jr., vice chancellor for university relations) denied that the project had been turned down because of concern for the university's image. Racial elements are contained in the script, which begins in the 1950s, when the university was segregated. ...
 
Did Deford model the title character after UNC's gridiron legend, Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice? Was UNC concerned that the treatment of the player's life might reflect unfavorably on the university?
 
"The answer is no," Tillman said. "That wasn't addressed." -- The News & Observer 12/6/1983
 
At the time, the state was in stiff competition with South Carolina to break into the film industry, and both were being considered for the location of the Dino De Laurentis studio, which was eventually built in Wilmington. The NC Film Commission warned that UNC could jeopardize the state's chances of landing the film, which intended to shoot in about 60 locations across the state.
 
Indeed, the film's producer started looking elsewhere. 
 
"The minute we heard UNC refused to reconsider...we sent our people into South Carolina."
 
The film was eventually made in Louisiana, and immediately Deford was accused of basing his hero on LSU's All-American Billy Cannon -- another player he had never met.

Spirit of the Hermit lives on

Submitted by tleonard on 05/31/2012 - 12:17

 

This weekend, folks will gather on the 40th anniversary of the death of one of North Carolina’s most popular tourist attractions Robert Harrill, who was known as the Fort Fisher Hermit. It was said he attracted as many as 17,000 visitors a year, but many who have come to North Carolina since his death in 1972 don’t know of the hermit. In 2002, former N&O writer G.D. Gearino provided this introduction:
 
As best as can be determined, Harrill arrived in Fort Fisher in 1955, although he later claimed that he’d ridden out Hurricane Hazel, the devastating storm that hit in 1954. It’s not likely: In a letter to his sister in July 1955, he wrote, “I’m hitching down to Carolina Beach today to see how it is down there. Since I haven’t had a chance to get there in the last 28 years, I figure this might be my only chance for the next 28 years.”
 
He was 62 years old and his life until then had been largely unhappy. As a child, typhoid fever had taken his mother and two brothers. His stepmother proved to be strict and abusive. He had trouble maintaining a career. At various times he worked as a mill hand, linotypist, watch repairman and circus roustabout. For a while, he lived with his wife and children in a Model-T Ford -- which had been converted into a primitive camper -- and sold jewelry and trinkets from a table set up in whichever town they found themselves. The family eventually settled in Shelby, where Harrill’s in-laws lived. His eldest son died there from injuries received after leaping from a railroad trestle in a suicide attempt.
 
Harrill was involuntarily confined to mental hospitals at least three times in the 1930s. The diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. His wife left him, moving to Pennsylvania to work as a housekeeper. He had only sporadic contact with his remaining three children. Finally, in a grand to-hell-with-it gesture that most people only fantasize about making, Harrill walked away from his life and became a beach scavenger.
 
He was arrested for vagrancy shortly after arriving at the coast. A magistrate later agreed that Harrill’s occasional effort to help visitors find good fishing spots was a visible means of support -- or at least something close enough to it to satisfy the law -- but it was only his first encounter with authorities. Local police, state officials and U.S. Army representatives all sought to get Harrill out of the concrete ammunition bunker he’d moved into a year after arriving in Fort Fisher.
 
But the longer Harrill stayed, the harder it became to dislodge him.
 
The problem was that he’d become a tourist attraction. Hundreds of people trudged or drove across the salt marsh to visit with Harrill. ...
 
Harrill was a strange kind of hermit. He had a distinct preference for crowds over solitude. He even painted markers pointing visitors in the direction of his bunker.
 
And Harrill’s death in 1972 only added to the myth.
 
Years after he was found dead of causes that remain a mystery, Harrill is the object of the sort of reverence and regard that he rarely enjoyed while alive. He is remembered variously as an iconoclast, social activist, raconteur, philosopher, naturalist, environmentalist and media-savvy celebrity.
 
You could even call him a cult figure.
 
It’s no joke: A society formed ... to honor his memory now has hundreds of members. ... His acolytes will declare, with straight faces and in all sincerity, that Harrill was a man of such uncommon wisdom that he compares with Henry David Thoreau.
 
It’s not an accidental comparison. Thoreau, of course, renounced the comforts of civilization in 1845 to move into a tiny cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, where he contemplated life and society. In the mid-1950s, Harrill did a similar thing, although he opted for the North Carolina coast over the Massachusetts countryside, eventually becoming known as “The Fort Fisher Hermit.”...
 
Before June 3, 1972, Harrill was an odd guy who earned a minor bit of fame by calling himself a hermit. After June 3, he was a mythic figure. -- The N&O 5/26/2002
 
Harrill himself insisted he didn’t set out to be a hermit. Calling himself a “biopsychologist,” he said he intended to write a book, “my think book, on humanity.”
 
The book itself never came to be. In a 1963 article, he said, “I finished the first draft of my book, and was ready to send it off to a publisher when a storm struck and destroyed everything, including manuscript, typewriter, and a 1929 Chevrolet which I used to drive into town.”
 
He said he had rewritten the book and was storing it with a relative in Charlotte until he found the right publisher. However, in 1972, the book was lost again when one of his cats bumped against a kerosene lamp, igniting stacks of old newspapers and wooden boards stored in the bunker. “Most of the hermit’s personal belongings, including the manuscripts of a book Harrell says he is writing, were lost in the fire.”

Snake-handling loses in court

Submitted by tleonard on 05/19/2012 - 23:26

 

In 1947, the State Supreme Court ruled against the practice of snake handling in North Carolina, in an appeal brought by Durham preacher Colonel Hartman Bunn.
 
Bunn, whose given name was Colonel, was described as a “big, sturdily built man whose snake rituals at Durham’s Zion Tabernacle attracted police as well as spectators.”
 
Bunn, and a church elder, Benjamin R. Massey, were convicted in Durham Superior Court ... of handling their snakes in defiance of a Durham ordinance. The lower court ruled that snake handling endangered public safety and fined the two $50 each and cost. ...
 
A ban on snake handling, Bunn held, amounts to a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
 
He claimed also that snake handling has been practiced for 40 years in North Carolina without harm to anyone yet.
 
“On the evenings of 1 and 8 November, 1947,” the court related in its opinion, “several policemen of the City of Durham visited the Zion Tabernacle Church, situated within the corporate limits, and on each occasion found there a large gathering of men, women and children, engaged in religious services.
 
“During the services they saw the defendant, C. H. Bunn, while standing in the pulpit, take into his hands a poisonous snake of the copperhead or highland moccasin variety and hold it within view of the congregation. No one was harmed by the snakes on either occasion.”
 
But when the snakes were tested later, the court noted, two healthy rats, which were placed with them in a cage, were struck and died almost immediately. ...
 
Chief Justice (Walter P.) Stacy wrote that the case rested on “a very simple question: which is superior, the public safety or the defendants’ religious practice?”
 
The court found despite Bunn’s apt argument, that the case was simply a question of snakes or people. The people won. – The News & Observer 1/8/1949

Changing the seeds of time

Submitted by tleonard on 05/11/2012 - 14:55

 

The majesty of England's coronation of King George VI dominated the pages of The News and Observer 75 years ago this weekend, but readers also got a few on-the-scene and behind-the-scenes stories. 
 
Details surrounding this historical event, the abdication of the king's brother, Edward VIII, and George's struggle to overcome his speech impediment, were well known. 
 
But the new queen, Elizabeth (mother to the current Queen Elizabeth) had quite a story of her own. By ascending to the throne of England and Scotland, she broke the curse of Macbeth. 
 
Nine centuries ago, the witches -- Shakespeare's Three Weird Sisters -- had looked into the "seeds of time" and prophesied that no descendant of Macbeth ever would be crowned. 
 
And Queen Elizabeth is a descendant of King Macbeth, who ruled Scotland from 1040 to 1057, before William the Conqueror came to England. She is the daughter of the Earl of Strathmere, whose family seat is the famous, witch-infested Glamis Castle, where Macbeth lived and reigned after he murdered King Duncan and seized the throne. 
 
The Three Weird Sisters had prophesied, on the occasion of a visit by King Duncan to Glamis Castle, that Macbeth "shalt be King hereafter." That night, Macbeth murdered Duncan while he slept. ... 
 
Possible it is that the Three Weird sisters -- and their presence is accepted today by authorities as a historical fact -- did not mean that no descendant of Macbeth ever would rise to the throne, but Macbeth interpreted the prophecy that way and such internationally recognized authorities on Shakespeare as Dr. George Coffin Taylor of the University of North Carolina are of the opinion that the Sisters meant exactly that. 
 
The legend virtually has been overlooked by chroniclers of the coronation, but it is a fact that Macbeth, after a troublesome reign -- also predicted by the Sisters -- was killed by Malcolm, son of the murdered Duncan, and that until yesterday, no descendant of Macbeth ever had been crowned upon the famous Stone of Scone. 
 
This same Malcolm, incidentally is an ancestor of both King George and Queen Elizabeth -- their last royal ancestor in common. 
 
The occasion was of course quite exciting for the young princesses, six-year-old Margaret Rose, and 11-year-old Elizabeth as well. Elizabeth behaved in a dignified manner, but Margaret Rose had some difficulties, including a wardrobe malfunction. 
 
At the height of the ceremony in Westminster Abbey, the coronet on the head of the King's younger daughter slid down over her ears. She shoved it back on top of her head impatiently and went on trying to count the people in the Abbey. 
 
The Queen Mother, Mary, told her to stop it. 
 
The Princess scratched her ear and went on counting, her lips moving and her finger stabbing the air. ... 
 
Margaret Rose wiggled near the end of the ceremony and the Queen Mother looked daggers at her. 
 
Overnight there had been a constitutional crisis -- the issue being whether Princes Margaret Rose was old enough to have a train on her robe. Princess Elizabeth had one, but the Queen Mother ruled that Margaret Rose was too young. Margaret Rose took the matter straight to the throne of England. ... (and) won. A dressmaker was summoned and she spent the entire night sewing a train on Margaret Rose's dress.
 

Civil War dead

Submitted by tleonard on 05/11/2012 - 10:18

Don't miss the next in the State Archives Civil War Sesquicentennial lecture series Monday May 14 at 10:30. Bill Brown, Debbi Blake, Chris Meekins will present “Sacred Bodies: Caring for the Dead During and After the War.” The lecture is free and will be held in the auditorium of the Library and Archives Building in downtown Raleigh. Visit the Archives hours and parking page for parking and bus information.

Every vote counts

Submitted by tleonard on 05/04/2012 - 10:17

 

 
There are few places more exciting than the newsroom on election night. But there was even more buzz in the 1960s when the staff of News and Observer had the added task of tabulating votes for the State Board of Elections. David Cooper wrote about it leading up to the May 28, 1960 primary. 
 
Estimates on the number of votes which will be cast in today's primary election range from half a million to 700,000. After they're in, somebody will have to count 'em.
 
This business of adding up the votes from Manteo to Murphy -- from small, handmade ballot boxes to expensive, modern voting machines -- is no easy task.
 
The tabulating job will require the services of close to 10,000 people, says Raymond Maxwell, secretary of the state Board of Elections. At the hub of the counting process will be staff members at The News and Observer and a 23-man experienced band of counters recruited from offices around Capitol Hill who will make the unofficial tallies.
 
Reports will be coming in from 2,094 precincts across the State. Three officials will preside over the voting process at each precinct. Clerks and extra helpers will run up the total election work force.
 
And you may think your vote is free, but actually the tab for the election will run somewhere between $350,000 and $400,000, Maxwell said.
 
A statewide bond election last October cost $336,718.10. Counties will bear the main cost of this election, Maxwell says.
 
There are 521 voting machines in the State (70 in Wake County). The count from precincts having the machines will be in first. Herbert O'Keef, chairman of the Wake Board of Elections, figures the totals will be in about an hour after the 6:30 p.m. ballot-box closing.
 
Once the polls are closed, the precinct - by - precinct tabulations will start trickling into The News and Observer.
 
L.D. (Dinty) Moore of the State Budget Bureau heads the tabulating team which will work long into the night adding up the results from the State's 100 counties. Moore has been figuring election results at The N&O since 1936.
 
He got a good initiation into the painstaking work. Hoey and McDonald fought it out for governor in the second primary that year and "By golly, we didn't get through until daylight and then we went across the street and ate breakfast," Moore recalls.
 
His team, composed of State government employees skilled in the handling of an adding machine, is geared to give an almost instant up-to-the-minute tally of the results.
 
The Associated Press has a host of teletype machines and workers to spread the vote count across the State after figures are initially phoned in to the staff of The News and Observer.
 
"We're the court of last resort," Moore says. "When they get to us, we just add 'em up."
 
"It gets rather cumbersome about 12 o'clock when the figures are coming in so fast."
 
Moore took over as chief of the tabulating team in 1948. "I enjoy it," he says with an election-night gleam in his eye. "All the boys do."
 
Sam Ragan, executive editor of The News and Observer, recalls election nights when getting the vote from a particular precinct was not only important but difficult.
 
During one very close race, an correspondent down East was dispatched in a rowboat to get the tally from an isolated area.
 
"Another night we sent on of our reporters out in a car to get the precinct totals," Ragan said. "The car got stuck on a back road and he had to walk two miles to get the results."
 
Ragan said the first precinct and the first county to report their totals are given cash prizes. 
 
Seventy people in all will be working at The News and Observer into the night in connection with the election, he said.
 
The tallies will start rolling into the State Board of Election office next Wednesday or Thursday and the board will make the official count on June 7.
 
"Then we'll have less than three weeks to get ready for the second primary," Raymond Maxwell said. Ballots must be printed  again and sent out in readiness for the June 25 vote. -- The News & Observer 5/28/1960

Experience the Siege of Fort Macon

Submitted by tleonard on 04/26/2012 - 10:24

This past weekend was the sesquicentennial of the siege of Fort Macon. The N.C. Division of Parks & Recreation provides this description of the events:

 
Early in 1862, Union forces commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside swept through eastern North Carolina, and part of Burnside's command under Brig. Gen. John G. Parke was sent to capture Fort Macon. Parke's men captured Morehead City and Beaufort without resistance, then landed on Bogue Banks during March and April to fight to gain Fort Macon. Col. Moses J. White and 402 North Carolina Confederates in the fort refused to surrender even though the fort was hopelessly surrounded. On April 25, 1862, Parke's Union forces bombarded the fort with heavy siege guns for 11 hours, aided by the fire of four Union gunboats in the ocean offshore and floating batteries in the sound to the east.
 
While the fort easily repulsed the Union gunboat attack, the Union land batteries, utilizing new rifled cannons, hit the fort 560 times. There was such extensive damage that Col. White was forced to surrender the following morning, April 26, with the fort's Confederate garrison being paroled as prisoners of war. This battle was the second time in history new rifled cannons were used against a fort, demonstrating the obsolescence of such fortifications as a way of defense. The Union held Fort Macon for the remainder of the war, while Beaufort Harbor served as an important coaling and repair station for its navy.
 
A full two days of events, including a demonstration of night artillery bombardment, commemorated the battle. If you missed the weekend at Fort Macon, you can get a good taste of the events with this video:
 

The Last Days of the War

Submitted by tleonard on 04/24/2012 - 11:54

 

Fifty years after the dedication of Bennett Place State Historical Site, historians and history buffs will gather for a full two days of storytelling and re-enactments, commemorating those last days of the Civil War.
 
Three years after its dedication, on the 100th anniversary of the historic meeting between two generals, Ernest H. Robl relayed the story.
 
When thunder rumbles across the darkened sky, it is not difficult to visualize the scene 100 years ago: two men meeting in this simply furnished room; one coming as the victor, the other coming in defeat.
 
The date was April 26, 1865; General Joseph E. Johnston had come to surrender the last major remnant of the Confederate army to Union General William T. Sherman at the farm home of James Bennett, located outside of what is today Durham.
 
[...]
 
Unlike many other historic sites which have been absorbed into metropolitan areas, the Bennett Place site has remained isolated out in the country, though only a mile outside the Durham city limits.
 
Except for a nearby telephone line and a paved road, providing easy access, not much has changed around the site. There are no other buildings in sight, and great pains have been taken to retain the authenticity of the surroundings, imparting a particularly strong sense of history. 
 
Sherman had moved into North Carolina early in the March of 1865 with 60,000 men; Johnston, with less than 30,000 men, tried unsuccessfully to prevent Sherman from moving north to join Grant in Virginia, resulting in an encounter at Bentonville 18 miles southwest of Goldsboro, on March 19 through 21.
 
During this time Sherman exchanged messages with Grant and President Lincoln concerning terms for the surrender of the Confederacy.
 
On April 14, 1865, General Sherman received a message from General Johnston , asking for a personal conference , and at noon on the 17th the two opposing generals met at the Bennett Place, a point located midway between the army lines. The two adversaries approached the farm home simultaneously from different directions on the Hillsboro road; while still mounted, they greeted each other courteously and shook hands. 
 
Upon entering the house, Sherman showed Johnston a telegram he had received that morning, informing him of the assassination of President Lincoln. This message came directly from Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war.
 
Unable to agree on terms, the two generals attempted to work out a compromise. Sherman offered Johnston terms similar to those Grant had give Lee at Appomattox -- simple military terms -- but Johnston wanted political as well as military terms. These  terms were to include guarantees to restore the rights and privileges of the people of the South.
 
After a period of discussion both generals withdrew to confer with their aides -- Sherman to Raleigh and Johnston to Hillsboro.
 
The two generals met again the next morning with Johnston asking that Confederate Secretary of War Breckenridge be allowed to participate in the negotiations. After a brief conversation, Johnston presented a plan which he had prepared; Sherman then wrote out a list of terms which both men agreed upon.
 
[...]
 
Though a promise of general amnesty was included, Sherman hinted to Breckenridge that Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet should escape before the terms could be challenged in Washington.
 
Even though approved by Jefferson Davis, the terms agreed upon at the Bennett Place on April 18, 1865, were immediately rejected when they reached Washington. Resumption of hostilities was ordered by the cabinet.
General Grant arrived unexpectedly in Raleigh on April 24, but merely instructed Sherman to continue negotiating. Disobeying orders from Jefferson Davis, Johnston arranged for a final meeting at the Bennett house on April 26.
 
At that time General Johnston agreed to a simple military surrender: side arms, baggage and horses were to be retained by officers; other arms and public property were to be turned over to the United States. In addition to the official terms, individual men were required to promise in writing not to resume hostilities.
 
Johnston's surrender at the Bennett Place also brought about the later surrender of two smaller Confederate armies, completely ending the war.
 
[...]
 
After passing from owner to owner, the Bennett Place fell into neglect, and was almost destroyed by fire in 1921. The land and the remains of the buildings -- the main house in which the surrender and negotiations had taken place, and a cookhouse -- were donated to the State of North Carolina in 1923. -- The N&O 4/25/1965

More Trouble

Submitted by tleonard on 04/23/2012 - 15:37

Just in time for the opening of the NC Nature Research Center, the North Carolina State Archives has loaded a great set of photos of Trouble the Whale. Check them out here. You can also read Trouble's story here.

Yeggmen make off with loot

Submitted by tleonard on 04/18/2012 - 15:18

 

One hundred years ago today, the talk around Hillsborough (or Hillsboro back then) was all about the recent bank heist. The Mebane Leader reported on the work of the yeggmen, a word I'd never heard, meaning a safecracker or burglar.
 
PROFESSIONAL YEGG MEN LOOT BANK AT HILLSBORO
Vault Blown open By Powerful Explosive and all the Cash Taken— No Clue to Robbers. 
 
Hillsboro became feverish with excitement last Friday morning when it was known that some time during the night safe crackers had blown the vaults of the Bank of Orange with nitroglycerin and gotten away with something like $5,000 in cash, all they had on hand with the exception of some loose change which was left scattered over floor. The job clearly indicated the work of expert yeggmen, the doors of the large safe inside the vault also the door to the burglar chest being litterally blown to pieces so effectively had the powerful explosive used done its work. 
 
The burglars entered the bank by the front door. The tool house of the Southern Railway and a nearby blacksmith shop were drawn upon for picks, sledges and chisels but it now develops that these do not appear to have been used, the combination knobs to the doors being blown off and the nitroglycerine poured into the openings thus made. The bank was not even temporarily embarrassed by the robbery as the loss Is fully covered by insurance and a source of ready money supply was near at hand. In fact Cashier Collins and Bookkeeper Lockhart were the coolest men in the throng that gathered in the early morning to view the wreck and inquirer were informed that the bank would be open for business upon the stroke of 9 and the pay-rolls of the manufacturing plants furnished as usual. There is no definite clue as to the robbers. Three strange men with grips were seen to get off train No. 131, which arrived from Goldsboro at 8:30 but these have since been accounted for. Two umbrella menders who have been around town for some days are missing Saturday and suspicion naturally points to them but proof of their guilt is larking. The bank offers a reward of $200 for the apprehension of the guilty parties. -- The Mebane Leader 4/18/1912
 
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