That’s where FDR’s girlfriend crashed her car
Today I walked the annual Zeta Franklin 5k for the fourth and final time. My best friend is in Zeta and every year I sign and struggle my way through 3.1 miles (I am not a runner). But this year was slightly different. Coming off a marathon of a weekend – my senior formal and the Final Four game – I was not really feeling up to running. I bumped into a friend at the starting line, and that’s where I was introduced to her great uncle, Cliff.
My friend and I politely introduced ourselves to Cliff and commented on his vintage-looking UNC jacket, just making conversation. He told us that his jacket was from his time at UNC – undergraduate class of 1968, School of Pharmacy class of 1970. I thought that was pretty cool, and assumed that was where our conversation would end, until he pointed to PlayMakers theatre and asked, “Do you know why that building is facing that direction and not towards the road?” And that’s when I knew that Cliff is not just some ordinary alum.
Cliff, my friend and I walked the entire 5k together. A true Tar Heel born and bred, Cliff has lived in Chapel Hill for over 60 years. He came to UNC in 1964 with his high school sweetheart girlfriend and soon to be wife. When graduation came, the U.S. was deep in the Vietnam War, so to avoid the draft, Cliff applied to the pharmacy school, and after that, the law school. The second was to no avail, so he joined the army for two years working as a pharmacist in hospitals all over. Then, he came back to Chapel Hill where he has lived since, and now gives alumni tours to visiting ex-Tar Heels. I was lucky enough to get a special addition version of the tour.
The Franklin 5k weaves around campus and a couple surrounding neighborhoods, and Cliff had facts about all it. He knows (by name) every resident of the Gimghoul neighborhood, as well as those who lived there before (and whose grandmother's clothes he borrowed to dress up as a drag queen one Halloween). He told us stories about the way things were when he was a student, and how the buildings and landscapes have changed. He gestured to Fetzer gym, and told us how that used to be a metal gym, built during World War II, where they played every sport with no heating or air conditioning. He pointed out the window of his old dorm and that of famous writer Thomas Wolfe. When we walked past the Carolina Inn, he looked at the low stone wall and said, “That right there is where FDR’s girlfriend crashed her car when she came for a visit. I’ve seen the letter she wrote to him confessing it.”
And then he told us the most astonishing fact of all. He said, “When I was here, the student population was only 7% women.” Wow. He went on to tell us that women were only accepted to Carolina if they were in the medical field, specifically the nursing or medical technology track. They were required to wear skirts and pantyhose, no pants, at all times and had to be back in their dorms by 11 p.m. every night. It blew my mind – that was only 50 years ago on this very campus where I sit right now! It’s crazy to think how much this place has changed since then.
My favorite part of UNC is that it stays with you. You aren’t a Tar Heel for 4 years, you are a Tar Heel forever. Cliff is proof of this. Today I got to look through the window into a 1964 UNC for just less than an hour, but it was enough to make me feel so much more connected to this place and the people that have loved it here before us. And while I'll likely never see him again and don't even know his last name, today I was truly inspired by his memories. Thank you, Cliff, for sharing your stories with me.
Photo credit: Google images
