Dec
6
NC’s “Immortal Showboat”
December 6, 2007 | Subscribe to this post
Posted by Elizabeth Hull in Biography, Landmarks & Attractions, WWII
In honor of the recently-opened exhibit, “Showboat”: The USS North Carolina (BB 55), at the North Carolina Museum of History, and since I just happened to be “passing” through this particular batch of negatives, I decided to highlight a few of my favorite Morton images related to the USS North Carolina.
Morton was enlisted in 1960 by his good friend and then-governor Luther Hodges to spearhead the ultimately successful campaign to preserve the battleship as a memorial to World War II veterans. The article “Saving Our Ship” on the USS North Carolina Memorial Web site provides background on the campaign and Morton’s leadership, noting in particular that “Morton’s drive to control the administrative costs of undertaking such a large campaign led to savings such as using his young son on campaign posters rather than paying for a model.” The image below must be a mock-up of one of those posters. [The boy in the image below is not one of Morton's sons, but there are images in the collection showing Jim Morton holding a model of the USS NC that were possibly used on campaign posters.]
This last image depicts John Weaver working on two busts for the USS NC Museum (likenesses of FDR, Chester Nimitz, MacArthur, and Truman were made—not sure which two these are). [Correction: This is not John Weaver, but a Linville artist named Coffey, and these heads were not created for the USS NC. Just goes to show that an archivist can't always trust the contextual information that comes with a document! Thanks to Julia Morton for clarifying.]
One last note: as I was just proofreading the contents of this post, I happened to notice today’s date: December 6. Tomorrow is the 66th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Crazy coincidence strikes again on “A View to Hugh!”
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Links
- ArchivesNext - Blog examining archives and technology
- Biographical Conversations with . . . Hugh Morton - An episode from the UNC TV program featuring a one-on-one conversation with Hugh Morton
- Grandfather Mountain - Scenic attraction and nature preserve in Linville, NC owned by Morton from 1952 until his death in 2006
- Morton Biography from Grandfather Mountain website
- NC Collection Photographic Archives
- NC Miscellany Blog - Blog of the North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, UNC-CH
- Southern Short Course in News Photography - America’s longest running photojournalism seminar, of which Morton was a founder
- UNC Libraries
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The young boy in the poster in this photo is not one of Hugh’s children. We do not remember who he was.
The sculptor in the third photo is Mr. (John West?) Coffey of Linville. Hugh was so impressed with Mr. Coffey because he worked in concrete.
These sculptures were not created for the Battleship. He did these in the late 1940s, long before the idea of bring the Battleship back to NC was ever considered. You can find an article about these in a back issue of Our State magazine.
Mr. Coffey was considered a very fine primative artist. The Art Editor of Life Magazine saw his work on a visit to Linville and purchased one of his cats. The cat flew back to NYC on her lap.
may I ask who were Jack Coffeys parents if from Linville NC
Actually, we’ve established that this artist’s name is Ed Coffey. I found a caption for a photo similar to the one above that reads as follows: “Ed Coffey of Linville, like most mountain folks, is handy with his hands. He’s a tomb-stone maker and stone mason, makes statues of concrete in his spare time. The above busts of you know who complete his heroes, he’ll work on the others now, John L. Lewis and Uncle Joe Stalin heading the list.”