“Grandfather is protected for good, over and done, period.”
–Crae Morton

North Carolina is buzzing with this news today, so we would be remiss not to mention here on A View to Hugh the announced sale of Grandfather Mountain to the state of North Carolina.  The Asheville Citizen-Times provides additional details on the deal, and Grandfather Mountain has also put out a news release.

It is extremely gratifying to know that as we work here at UNC to preserve and ensure access to Morton’s “mountain” of photographs, the same will be done for his “other” Mountain, in perpetuity. Hugh Morton would be proud.

Two of Hugh Morton’s most famous portraits popped up in NC newspapers today. The first is in a News & Observer column by Jim Jenkins, entitled “Walk the line to Grandfather’s top,” about Johnny Cash’s visit to Grandfather in June of 1974 to perform at “Singing on the Mountain.” Jim (with the help of Hugh’s grandson Jack Morton) recounts the events surrounding Morton’s portrait of the Man in Black holding aloft a tattered American flag. (Hugh also tells the story of Cash’s visit on pages 126-129 of Making a Difference in North Carolina). The online version of Jenkins’ column doesn’t include the photo, so here it is (uncropped):

The second is a reference in Wilmington’s Star News to Andy Griffith’s 1953 monologue, “What is was, was football,” the popular comedy routine that is generally credited with launching Griffith’s mainstream career. Morton’s photo of Griffith performing the monologue at halftime at UNC’s Kenan Stadium (below) has been widely published, including on page 130 of Hugh Morton’s North Carolina.

(Note: the Star News website doesn’t seem to be loading at the time of this posting).

I don’t follow or play golf myself, but I did hear the news this weekend that the United States won its first Ryder Cup since 1999. That reminded me of some Hugh Morton images from the 1951 Ryder Cup, played in Pinehurst, N.C. (which the U.S. also won).

I have a list of the team members (below), but can anyone help me attach names to faces in these images? I know a few of them, and could probably fill the rest in a bit of research, but I thought I’d test the golf knowledge of our readership.

Team United States (list from Wikipedia): Sam Snead (Captain), Clayton Heafner, Ed Oliver, Ben Hogan, Jack Burke, Jr., Henry Ransom, Lloyd Mangrum, Jimmy Demaret, Skip Alexander

My brother forwarded me an announcement from the Watauga Democrat that one of Grandfather Mountain’s bears, Elizabeth, had to be euthanized on Wednesday due to increasing pain from arthritis.

Sorting through Hugh Morton’s photos, Elizabeth the bear cub always sticks in my head, not only because of her fantastic name but also because she and her brother Walter had a fantastic story. Brought to Grandfather from Ohio as cubs, they were unexpectedly adopted and nursed by Mildred, in a year when she had no other cubs (according to Laurie Mitchell Jakobsen’s book The Animals of Grandfather Mountain). All three are shown above, on “adoption day,” April 14, 1984.

It’s perhaps a funny coincidence that Elizabeth the bear and I were both named after Queen Elizabeth I (and Walter, I suspect, after Sir Walter Raleigh). And it seems we had even more in common—in the Watauga Democrat article, habitat staff said that Elizabeth “loved to eat and was sweet and laid back.” The former part of that statement definitely applies to me (and the latter as well, I’d like to think)!

Well, I’m feeling pretty good about life (work life, anyway), which is why I’m sharing these happy “flowers and sunshine” images. I have just about wrapped up the second “pass” through the Morton negatives and transparencies — and it now looks like only a third and final pass will be required to get this stuff reasonably well organized, properly housed, and accessible. Mind you, there are still the slides and motion picture film to contend with! (I guess that’s why this is a multi-year processing project).

The transparencies, such as those in this post, were much simpler to plow through than the negatives—not only because they’re easier to look at (being positives), but because their numbers are much more manageable.

So, how exactly WILL the Morton collection be accessible, you ask? One of the ways is through an online archival “finding aid.”  What is a finding aid, you may then wonder? Extremely valid question. Here’s how the Society of American Archivists defines it:

Finding Aid: n. ~ 1. A tool that facilitates discovery of information within a collection of records. – 2. A description of records that gives the repository physical and intellectual control over the materials and that assists users to gain access to and understand the materials.

Finding aids (and archival collections) are typically organized into groups of like material called “series.” The following links will lead you to two examples for collections in the UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries: Preliminary Inventory of the Don Sturkey Photographic Negatives (for a photographic collection) and Inventory of the Terry Sanford Papers (for a manuscript collection).

The Morton finding aid, however, will look pretty different from both of these. For one thing, it will be much, much, MUCH longer (remember, half a million items!). For another, there’s a strong likelihood that the Morton finding aid will be presented in series by subject, rather than by date or format.

So, this means that instead of having series names like “Pre-1960 Material,” as in the Terry Sanford example, or “Negatives,” as in the Don Sturkey example, the Morton finding aid will be arranged into groupings called, for instance, “Sports,” “Grandfather Mountain,” “Nature/Scenic,” and “North Carolina.” Within those series would be listed groupings (or “sub-series”) of images that reflect that subject, regardless of their format.

Further explanation, as well as a discussion of the difficulties of arranging and describing a photographic collection in this manner (and believe me, there are plenty!), will have to wait for a future blog post.

“In North Carolina, the toll: 19 people killed; 15,000 homes or other buildings completely destroyed or with major damages; 39,000 homes or other buildings with minor damage. Total property losses: $125 million.”

This quotation comes from page 15 of the book Making a Difference in North Carolina, co-written by Hugh Morton and Edward L. Rankin. Though most of the pages are filled with intimate portraits of politicians and other influential individuals who operated on the state as well as national level, one chapter is devoted to Hurricane Hazel (arguably just as influential a figure as the others in the book).

Hazel visited the Coastal Carolinas as a Category 4 hurricane in the middle of October of 1954 after striking Haiti with deadly results. As we in the Carolinas are just coming out of the zone of influence of another H-named storm and, as a nation, are about to be assaulted by an actual hurricane, it seems appropriate to post some pictures that Hugh Morton took during the 1954 hurricane season. All of these pictures are from Carolina Beach, NC.

Let’s begin with an award-winning photo:

Some more pictures that were really interesting and are in need of identification are ones that appear to be the wrecked remnants of a boardwalk.

I was able to identify one of the stores, the Ocean Plaza Bathhouse (that appears in the background of the picture, but gets more prominence in other ones in the series), a somewhat well-known institution of the time at Carolina Beach. Does this place still exist? Or did a hurricane and/or a decline in interest towards bath houses contribute to its closing? And how about the rest of the Carolina Beach boardwalk?

This whale, probably a familiar symbol to those who visited and lived in Carolina Beach, seems to be faring better than some of the other structures. The woman standing to the left seems to be weathering the storm in her own right, but I wonder what she was doing out in the storm? Perhaps she was a local politician, a member of the chamber of commerce, or a friend of Hugh Morton.  I suppose everyone has their reasons for facing a storm; I suppose it still happens today.

If you are one of those individuals, until the hurricane season is over, be safe!

–David

Grandfather Mountain’s Mile High Swinging Bridge was dedicated 56 years ago on September 2, 1952 by then-Governor William B. Umstead (pictured above at the ceremony at center, with his daughter, WBT Radio announcer Grady Cole on the left, and Hugh Morton on the right).

The bridge was one of several projects Morton took on during the early years of his oversight of Grandfather, designed to turn it into (according to the slogan he coined) “Carolina’s TOP scenic attraction.”

An Oct. 1, 1978 article about Morton from the Greensboro Daily News recounts the following:

The swinging bridge was one of two options when Morton decided to get visitors from the gift shop-museum parking lot to the rocky overlook. “We had to have some way to get them across, and we could either have a stationary bridge or a swinging bridge,” he said. “We decided the swinging bridge would be more fun, and would make a good conversation piece.” Some 30 percent of women visitors, and a smaller percentage of males, however, think it best not to cross the bridge.

Crossing the bridge is one thing (speaking as a “woman visitor” who has done it, in 95-mph winds, even!); building it is entirely another, as you can see in the picture below. This is NOT a job I would have taken on.

The Mile High Swinging Bridge proved not just a promotional boon for Morton, but a photographic one as well. He took many beautiful images of the bridge over the years—enveloped in mist, framed by vivid fall leaves or blooming rhododendrons, encased in rime ice. I find the (cropped) image below particularly “striking.”