In the post, “Don’t Smoke Your Eye Out” I related the course of events that led to identifying Joe Clark, HBSS, who up to that point was an unidentified person in a Hugh Morton photograph, standing next to Andy Griffith as he aimed a slingshot while simultaneously holding a cigarette. The above photograph, a group portrait of the 1956 Honorary Tar Heels dinner attendees in New York City, was a key to identifying Clark (second from the right standing next to Hugh Morton). I didn’t know at the time I wrote the post that the original negative was in the collection, so I present it to you in this post. Bob Garland (on the far left holding a camera) likely made the photograph, as his name is on the negative.

This post will introduce you to the Honorary Tar Heels (HTH), a lose-knit social club formed in 1946. But first, a special treat: in a comment for “Don’s Smoke Your Eye Out,” Julia Morton mentioned a photograph of Joe Clark standing on the top of the Mile High Swinging Bridge at Grandfather Mountain. We found the negative; daring stuff!!!

The Honorary Tar Heels began in 1946. During that year, Curtis Publishing (of Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal fame) sent writer Francis X. Martinez and photographer William S. Springfield to North Carolina to work on a “red-herring” (pre-publication) edition of a magazine to be called Holiday.  Bill Sharpe, head of the Division of Advertising and News of the North Carolina Department of Conservation and Development, guided the pair from one end of North Carolina to the other.  During their three-week sojourn, Springfield took to imitating the locals—eating their food, drinking their liquor, and imitating their dialects.  After they left, Sharpe asked Governor R. Gregg Cherry to sign a “corny little proclamation” making Springfield an “Honorary Tar Heel,” to which Cherry obliged.  Springfield proudly showed his certificate around and before too long other visiting photographers and writers began requesting the appellation.

Sharpe knew Joe Massoletti, a New York City restauranteur with a cottage at Hatteras, and the two shared several mutual friends among the newly anointed HTHs.  Massoletti suggested to Sharpe that they be invited to Hatteras sometime in 1947 for a weekend of fishing.  To make it a festive event, Massoletti supplied a chef and a waiter from New York, and had food flown from New York to Manteo and then boated on the Pamlico Sound to Hatteras.  A group of thirteen HTHs, including Massoletti as host, attended the gathering that included writers and photographers from the New York Times, Life Magazine, and National Geographic.  A group portrait of those who attended, probably made by Holiday staff photographer Al DeLardi, can be found on the cover of The Honorary Tar Heels, 1946-1967: A Pictorial History.  Governor Cherry also attended, although he arrived after the photographs was shot.

Members of the budding affiliation continued to meet two or three times a year—most likely through the efforts of Sharpe as a means to maintain his media connections—at places such as Nags Head, Cataloochee Ranch, Lake Logan, Morehead City, Wrightsville, Linville, New York, Washington, and Philadelphia.

But what of Hugh Morton and Holiday, the publication that served as the unlikely catalyst for the HTH?

Martinez and Stringfield teamed up to produce “Village of Stars,” an article about the Lost Colony drama on Roanoke Island, for the fourth issue of Holiday published in June 1946.  Though not a wide-ranging essay on the state, their three-week trek may have laid the ground work for the magazine’s October 1947 issue that featured North Carolina in a lengthy article written by News and Observer editor Jonathan Daniels.  The article featured photographs by DeLardi, one of which depicted four men playing cards while two men examine a fishing rod and reel next to a fireplace inside Massoletti’s cottage and may well be members of the HTHs.  The heavily illustrated twenty-six page article also included images by several photographers, including eleven by Hugh Morton.

“Mildred the Bear, the nicest bear that has ever been…”
–Hugh Morton

Note from Elizabeth: Allow me to introduce the author of this post, our newest Morton team member, Allison Wonsick. While not “Tar Heel born,” Allison considers herself “Tar Heel bred” as a resident of Hickory, North Carolina, a UNC-CH alumna, and a current graduate student attending Appalachian State University in Boone. She is interning this summer at Wilson Library in the Photo Archives as well as in the North Carolina Collection Gallery.

When my family and I moved to Hickory in 1996, the first place we visited was Grandfather Mountain. We hiked the trails, explored the museum, saw the animal habitats, crossed the Mile High Swinging Bridge on a blustery day, and even saw snow in April (a shock in any month for a former Floridian)–but the most memorable aspect of the trip were the bears, both as residents of the mountain and as symbols of Grandfather Mountain itself.

Particularly iconic, of course, was legendary Mildred. It was clear then and now that she was special. Working with Hugh’s slide collection and family photographs, I can see the bond between Mildred and Morton (and have heard stories of picnics together with Fig Newtons and grape soda), but always wondered how the relationship began. Just how does one become friends with a bear?

Luckily, finding out more information about Mildred was not difficult. It turns out that Morton wrote her biography a few years after her arrival on the Mountain.

So here is a history of Mildred and the bears that followed in her paw prints, courtesy of Morton’s book, The Animals of Grandfather Mountain (a book published in 2001 by Laurie Mitchell Jakobsen, former zookeeper), and anecdotal tales I’ve picked up while working with the collection.

Read more

Wilson Library is becoming a very bloggy building! The latest addition, Field Trip South, comes from the Southern Folklife Collection up on the 4th floor. This blog will be a resource for readers to learn more about the holdings of the SFC, find out about those great SFC concerts and events, and to enjoy some of the sights and sounds of the collection. FTS joins a growing list of Wilson Library blogs. (Warning: I hope you have a few hours to spare if you plan on browsing the list below).

A View to Hugh — Needs no introduction, obviously!

North Carolina Miscellany — Blog of the North Carolina Collection, the state’s premier collection of published materials documenting the history, literature, and culture of the Tar Heel state. Includes regular posts discussing new and upcoming books on North Carolina topics, state history in the news, treasures from the stacks of the North Carolina Collection, and general “Tar Heelia.”

Read North Carolina Novels — A guide to fiction set in North Carolina, also hosted by the NCC.

Southern Sources — Features interesting staff finds, curiosities, old favorites, and other cool stuff from Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection.

Exciting news! A new two-year digital publishing initiative called Driving through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina has been approved for funding by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Work on the new collection begins July 1, and will be heavily based on findings and experimentation from other GIS (Geographic Information Systems)-based projects developed by UNC Libraries and their partners: Going to the Show and North Carolina Maps. (By the way, if you haven’t yet explored these collections, you simply must).

We’re especially thrilled because Driving through Time will include some of Hugh Morton’s Parkway photographs. Here’s a summary of the project provided by the Carolina Digital Library & Archives:

Driving through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina will present an innovative, visually- and spatially-based model for documenting the twentieth-century history of a seventeen-county section of the North Carolina mountains. The project will feature historic maps, photographs, postcards, government documents, and newspaper clippings, each of which will be assigned geographic coordinates so that it can be viewed on a map, enabling users to visualize and analyze the impact of the Blue Ridge Parkway on the people and landscape in western North Carolina.

Primary sources will be drawn from the collections of the UNC-Chapel Hill University Library, the Blue Ridge Parkway Headquarters, and the North Carolina State Archives. These materials are especially significant in that they document one of North Carolina’s most popular tourist attractions, but also in the way that they help to illuminate the way that the Blue Ridge Parkway transformed the communities through which it passed.  In addition to the digitized primary sources, the project will include scholarly analyses of aspects of the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, and an educational component designed for K-12 teachers and students.

Using digital technologies to open a new window on the history of the Parkway and its region is especially timely considering the approach of the Parkway’s 75th anniversary in 2010 and the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary in 2016.  This project is certain to be a valuable and popular resource for millions of tourists as well as for teachers, students, and historians, both within North Carolina and beyond.

Pappy says: “Never shoot at the bull’s eye, shoot at the center of the bull’s eye.”

—from I Remember, by Joe Clark

The photograph above (cropped) of Andy Griffith aiming a slingshot while holding a cigarette in the same hand was among the first negatives from the Morton collection that I scanned soon after the collection arrived, and it has remained one of my favorites. It just seems so funny to me to have both in your hand at the same time. I’ve used that photograph in public presentations several times and have asked most audiences if anyone knew who the fellow on the left might be. No one ever came up with his name.

Elizabeth has been egging me to write more posts, and she thought the recently enacted North Carolina law banning indoor smoking would be a good stepping off point for an entry on some of Hugh Morton’s scenic landscapes of tobacco fields. The Andy Griffith image, however, quickly popped into my head so I asked her and David if there might be some other interesting indoor smoking images in the collection. Neither could recall any, but Elizabeth pointed me to Morton’s book Making a Difference in North Carolina to see if there might be some in there.

Other than an unlit cigar, I did not find any smoking photographs. But on page 283 . . . Eureka! . . . I saw a group photograph with then Governor Luther H. Hodges, Sr. and Andy Griffith—not of them smoking, but including someone standing next to Griffith’s left side who is completely cropped out of the photograph except for his coat sleeve and the tiniest corner of his eyeglasses. That sliver immediately triggered my brain cells that are associated with the Griffith slingshot image. Looking back through the scanned negatives, David pulled up the image used for the book. Here’s an uncropped version of the group photograph:

Notice the slingshot in the hand of our mystery gentleman.

The caption for the photograph in Making a Difference describes the gathered posers as members of the Honorary Tar Heels in New York City, so off I went to the Library’s catalog. It revealed a record for a booklet in the amazingly deep North Carolina Collection—The Honorary Tar Heels 1946-1967: A Pictorial History written by Bill Sharpe. Inside the booklet is a group portrait of the attendees of their 21 January 1956 dinner in New York City, and standing next to Hugh Morton, with his armed wrapped around him, is the mystery man—identified as “Joe Clark, H.B.S.S., Detroit, Michigan.”

H.B.S.S?

“Googling” that acronym led to a web page at thefreedictionary.com that presents five possible definitions. “Hank’s Balanced Salt Solution” didn’t apply, nor did the next few, but wait . . . the last one?  Well that would be “Hill Billy Snap Shooter (Joe Clark photography book)” . . . and this mystery enters into the realm of the surreal!!! That revelation explains another photograph in the collection, shown below, with our now identified Joe Clark aiming to shoot with a camera rather than a slingshot.  That’s Hugh Morton on the right, . . . and that’s Bill Sharpe in the middle, smoking indoors in New York City.

Once again I cannot stump the North Carolina Collection, which has Clark’s 1969 book, I Remember, a collection of his poems and photographs. And there it is, on the spine and the title page, “Joe Clark HBSS.”  Luther Hodges, Sr. signed the inside front endpaper of the book in 1970, and on the next page is written “Joe Clark—the author is an old friend and an Honorary Tar Heel.”  Davis Library pitched in, too, with Clark’s earlier book, Back Home, published in 1965. The front endpaper of that book depicts Clark with a camera over his shoulder—and a slingshot in his hands. More research revealed Clark’s other books: Detroit, God’s Greatest City published in 1962, Lynchburg (1971), Tennessee Hill Folk (1973), and Up the Hollow from Lynchburg (1975). The Bentley Library at the University of Michigan has a modest collection of Clarke’s published works and a videotape interview of him featuring his son, Junebug Clark.

Another Morton collection mystery solved! Oh, one last thing . . . .  Since the group portrait in Making a Difference in North Carolina is cropped to the right of Griffith, the above uncropped version unveils a gentleman on the far right. That’s photographer Joe Costa.

As for the rest of the Honorary Tar Heels story? Well, there are more photographs in the Morton collection of this and other of the group’s events. Looks like Elizabeth won’t have to egg me on for another post!

Note from Elizabeth: Last Friday was Amber’s last day at work on the Morton project. We’d like to thank her immensely for her dogged, patient, and insanely organized work sorting through the slides, and her charming blog posts. We wish her all the best with the rest of her education!

I’ve learned a lot over the last ten months working on this collection. I’ve learned about archival procedure, making many mistakes along the way (the method for organizing the slides changed probably four or five times before I found one that worked). I have found homes for hundreds of “orphan” slides, and processed more than 72,000 slides in total. I’ve also been able to travel to amazing places: Grandfather Mountain, the Fern Grottoes of Hawaii, the McNeil River in Alaska, Galilee at Sunrise, Puerto Rican beaches, and Milford Sound in New Zealand.

I’ve probably learned the most, though, about photography. Hugh Morton was an artist, crafting amazing pictures out of everyday objects. On my two visits to Grandfather Mountain, everyone shared with me tips and tricks Hugh had taught them for taking great pictures. Now, I don’t feel I am betraying any of these secrets, because Hugh took all of the following pictures to document his process.

When I saw the Linn Cove Viaduct, I thought it was a pretty scene. But it lacked something that Hugh was able to capture. (Elizabeth touched on this in a previous post about her visit to the Mountain). I heard from two different people at Grandfather how Hugh would have helpers bring potted plants or hold branches of fall leaves to frame that perfect shot. Below, we can see how he positioned a rhododendron stem just out of frame to create the resulting beautiful picture above.

I also found slides of how he captured his amazing hummingbird pictures. I always wondered how he was in the right place at the right moment to capture that hummingbird going to that flower. Turns out it wasn’t always serendipity! The shot below shows how he set everything up on his deck at home. He would lure the hummingbirds in with a feeder, then add the bottle holding the flower. The feeder would be removed, leaving only the thistle blossom. (His camera was inside pointed out the sliding glass doors so that he wouldn’t scare the little darlings away). He could then snap as many shots as possible without having to wait all day for the right moment.

Some of my favorite shots of the bears were from when they had climbed to the top of the rock in their habitat or on a cliff by the Swinging Bridge. I thought they had done that on their own, maybe to enjoy the majestic view. Nope. Hugh would have a helper lay a trail of peanut butter up the rock for the bear to follow. Often, there would be someone just out of sight luring the bear with more treats. If you look at those pictures now, you can see that the bears are usually peering over the ledge at something.

On my last trip to the Mountain, I had to laugh when I saw a Morton postcard showing a beautiful red fox running through the snow. It was faked! I’ve seen pictures of that same fox, in that same pose, in many different settings — there’s even one of it chasing a taxidermied rabbit! And Julia Morton also shared with us that Hugh carried around moose antlers in Alaska to add scenic perspective.

So, to be a scenic photographer of Hugh’s caliber, I need helpers to stage the scene with potted plants and tree branches. I need some sort of treat to entice the models in my pictures (whether man or beast). And I need a stuffed fox. Oh, and some moose antlers.

I’m going to need a bigger camera bag.

As I pick my way through images in the disturbingly large “People, Unidentified” pile, I find myself particularly troubled by the portraits of traditional musicians who remain nameless. Maybe it’s because I’m a musician myself, or because I know that these images may document little-known players — at any rate, this is where you, dear readers, come in. What can you tell us about the people shown below?

I have a feeling the woodcarver on the left must be a well-known individual. I’ve certainly seen his work before, but I don’t know his name. As for the banjo player on the right, the only clue I can offer is that his banjo is autographed by Roni Stoneman, of Hee-Haw fame.

Here’s a very well-dressed gentleman playing a dulcimer with a turkey feather, as per Appalachian Mountain tradition . . .

And another dulcimer player, not quite so well-dressed, sitting on a split rail fence with Grandfather Mountain behind him (not visible in this shot). This man’s dulcimer is a real work of art — hand painted with birds, flowers, and the letters “N, M, P,” and with hand carved pegs also in the shape of flowers (I think these are dogwoods, the North Carolina state flower) and birds (cardinals, the North Carolina state bird).

I’m uncertain as to whether the fiddler below might be Roby Coffey, brother of previously-blogged-about “Happy John” Coffey, or Shoner Benfield, previously identified in a “Singing on the Mountain” image. I’m leaning towards Benfield. But what about the young guitar player? (Apologies for the streak partially obscuring his face).

And finally, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite images of “Happy John” and his compatriots at “Singing on the Mountain.” Is that Roby to the right of Happy John? Does anyone know these other characters?

UPDATE 6/10/09: Many, many thanks to the commenters who have identified nearly all of the individuals above: Tom Wolfe and Floyd Gragg, Shoner Benfield and Randall Calloway, Edd Presnell. Only turkey feather man remains a mystery.

Now that we know Edd Presnell’s name, we can find several resources having to do with him and his wife Nettie: 1) Nettie was featured on the poplar CD Appalachian Breakdown; you can hear brief clips of her playing on Amazon; 2) Edd was featured on UNC-TV’s Folkways program (the audio link on this page doesn’t work); 3) Both Edd and Nettie were interviewed in 1984 as part of the Southern Oral History Program (no transcript or audio available online, unfortunately).

It’s Memorial Day again on Monday, and I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight more of the remarkable images Hugh Morton brought back with him from his World War II service in the Pacific Islands, as a member of the 161st Signal Photography Corps (see my first WW2 post for background).

We recently scanned a batch of about 100 WW2 prints for inclusion in the Morton digital library we’re currently developing. These images are truly unlike anything else in the Morton collection — they include not only soldier portraits and combat scenes, but also some stunning views of Pacific Island people, culture, and scenery.

As with most of the Morton collection, I only wish we had better documentation! Details are maddeningly scarce.

Thankfully, there is ONE labeled photograph which allows us to identify some of Morton’s fellow enlistees, though where or when these were taken, I can’t say. Shown below enjoying some Schlitz, from left to right, are Henry van Baalen, Hugh Morton (with cat), (woman unidentified), “Lt. Shepherd” (sitting), Steve Leakos (standing), Pat Boyd, Eddie Seliady, and Frank Ilc (sp?). Maybe someone out there Googling for their relatives will find this and make a meaningful discovery?

Note from Elizabeth: This is the third post researched and written by volunteer Jack Hilliard. You can read the other two here and here.

On Saturday, June 5th, 1954, Hugh Morton staged yet another successful event at Grandfather Mountain. It was originally billed as “The Mile-High Kite-Flying Contest,” but high winds up on the mountain that morning prompted the contest to be moved down to McRae Meadows . . . so Bill Hackney, writing in the High Point Enterprise, renamed it the first annual “sky-high kite-flying contest.”

Youngsters 7 to 14 from all over western North Carolina were encouraged to participate. Morton had gotten three of his friends to judge the contest: Major Bill Craig, a Korean War jet ace (at right above),  Bobby Benson, young radio cowboy star (at left, in cowboy outfit), and Charlie Justice, UNC’s great all-America running back (not pictured above, although footballer Otto Graham is, at center in blue sweater). Two of the many prizes awarded at the end of the day went to Bob Lineberger from Hickory for his original kite design and to Bobby Cooke of Boone for having the smallest kite (boys possibly pictured above? Note that we’re not absolutely sure this image was taken at the 1954 event; it might have been 1955 or 1956).

As Morton was handing out those awards on that windy June afternoon, I’m sure it never crossed his mind that twenty years later, another young man (though much older than Lineberger and Cooke) would come to Grandfather Mountain seeking permission to fly his “kite” at the famous landmark. The year was 1974, and John Harris of Kitty Hawk wanted to launch his hang glider off the peak of Grandfather.

Permission was granted, so on July 13, 1974, John Harris became the first man to fly a hang glider off Grandfather Mountain. The 1500-foot flight was described in The State magazine this way:

For a few glorious moments, Harris soared free of the earth, sailing effortlessly over the valley, with nothing but the mountain winds and a single wing to keep him aloft.

Up to that time, hang gliding had been associated with the North Carolina coast. Francis Rogallo and his wife Gertrude had set out in the early 1940s, near Kitty Hawk, to see if they could design a kite or flexible wing that could be held together in controlled flight by the action of the air itself. The result, patented in 1947, was the Rogallo Wing. Rogallo would come to be called “the father of hang gliding,” and on May 7, 1987, he was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. Hugh Morton was responsible for Rogallo’s nomination.

Hugh Morton was impressed by Harris’ flight, so much so that the following year the U.S. Open Hang Gliding Tournament was staged at Grandfather. The Tournament was called the Grandfather Mountain Hang Gliding Region VI National Championship and was staged June 7th and 8th, 1975.

Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, hang gliding flourished in the North Carolina High Country. Professional pilots gave demonstrations four times daily during the summer, weather allowing; the increasing popularity of competitions inspired Morton to sponsor the International Masters of Hang Gliding Championships. (He also made several award-winning films on the topic during this time: “Masters of Hang Gliding,” “Winning At Hang Gliding,” “Hang Gliding Around The World,” and “The Hawk & John McNeely,” versions of which are included in the Morton collection here at UNC).

Over time, the gliders became much faster and higher-performance, making the small landing areas at Grandfather increasingly unsafe. Demonstration flights were suspended in 1987.

UPDATE 6/1/09: From Elizabeth: We found an image that is almost definitely from the first (1954) Kite-Flying Contest at Grandfather. See below.

This means that the uniformed man in the first image in this post is not Major Bill Craig, as we indicated, but rather Col. Dean Hess, as commenter Julia Morton suggested (and the image on this page confirms). The uniformed man with Charlie Justice, above, is likely Major Bill Craig.

When we were little, Mom was always there with a cuddle, piece of advice, or milk and cookies. Sometimes Mom was more annoying and embarrassing than helpful. She was always trying to get that stray hair back in place or the smudges off our cheeks.

Mom taught us manners and how to be polite. Little things like chewing with your mouth closed and sharing with your brother. And even if we didn’t then, we do chew with our mouths closed now.

Mom taught us to be inquisitive explorers. Everything was a new toy to play with. We would take things apart to find out exactly how they worked. Sometimes we got in trouble because we couldn’t put them back together or played with stuff we weren’t supposed to. But, Mom still loved us.

Bath time was always an adventure! It was usually a fight to get us in the tub. There was always something better to do, and our dirt was a symbol of our adventures. But once we were in, it was sometimes a struggle to get us out. Mom probably got cleaner than we did.

We can look back now and laugh at those stressful events. Like the time we were trying to get that family portrait. Mom kept yelling at us because we were making funny faces and playing rather than looking our best. There was never a picture that caught all of our good sides.

We’ve been through a lot and come out stronger than before. Nothing could come between us, even those awkward teenage years with crazy hairstyles and weird fashions. Some of those looks only a mother could love.

Mom has always been there through everything: the good, bad, sad, and disgusting. So thank you, Mom, for all that you do. You are the most important figure in our world, and we love you more than anything else.