75 years ago, UNC admitted 27 women as freshmen into the newly formed School of Nursing. Those women would become the first graduating class for that department. Additionally, the state of North Carolina at the time had a designated “Women’s College,” now UNC Greensboro. Women usually had to transfer to Chapel Hill from there or other institutions as juniors. In other words, those 27 women were an experiment. Could women handle the distractions of co-educational college life at the tender ages of 18
and 19? Yes. Yes, they could. UNC would start admitting women as freshmen without regard to degree program or residency in 1963.
Mom wore that experience proudly. She never hesitated to let people know she was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, and she always felt that meant representing the University through her interactions with others and service. She nursed. She taught high school. A student of hers, 30 years prior, somehow ran into her at Ocracoke and credited her with inspiring him to a doctorate in chemistry (despite his C in her chemistry class). She impacted people.
She helped start a Meals on Wheels. She helped start a land conservancy. She helped lead her church. She modeled grace, calm, and respect for others, even when she disagreed with them. “I am,” she would tell me, “a Carolina Gal through and through, and that comes with some responsibility.”
Towards that end, she never cursed. For the most part.
I heard Mom curse three times in my life. The first was my admittance to the hospital for an operation, age 10. The nurse taking blood had me in a room long enough that Mom at some point got worried and knocked on the door. Entering the room, she saw my bruising left arm with five holes in it and my right with three. “You’re done,” she snapped. “Send him to his room and find someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.” That was the first.
The second? The bloody Montross game. That one got two “damn” and a “hell.”
The third? Gerald Henderson assaulting Psycho T. It’s the only time I heard her use the word “bullshit,” in response to Billy Packer’s lame efforts to excuse the assault. Multiple “dammits.” And she aimed a few choice words at Coach K, who she blamed rather than Henderson. She noted when it happens with multiple players over the years, it’s something inherent in the character of the coaching. With the same encyclopedic memory that she used to disarm patronizing professors skeptical of those freshmen women, she rattled off every cheap shot every Coach K player ever aimed at a UNC player.
That’s her, third from the left, upper row.
Go Heels. Go to hell, Duke. Mom would be proud.
