“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.

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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.

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.

Back when I was working on the Morton slides from 1975, I sorted over 350 he took on a trip to Alaska. This was the most daunting and stressful sets of slides I have yet to organize — it appeared that they were thrown into the air and then put back into the boxes however they were picked up. I had all those slides spread out on a big light table for over a week, and there are still quite a few 1975 Alaska “orphans.”

There were some nice scenic shots of Denali and glaciers, but mostly what I remember are endless miles of pipeline (related to Williams Brothers operations, led by Morton’s good friend John Williams, pictured below).

Recently, I came to a batch slides from October 1986 and July 1987 labeled Alaska, and I immediately got a headache. Memories of the pipeline made me think of quitting. It didn’t help when I tried to determine if Morton had photographed caribou or reindeer (for those of you who don’t know, they are the same thing).

Luckily, most of this batch has been better organized and labeled. They appear to be pictures from a trip Hugh took with wildlife artist Richard Evans Younger (top photo), the subject of a series of Morton films. We’re not certain who the cameraman is (see picture below), any ideas? There are film reels from the trip downstairs in storage, still to be cataloged; some of these are labeled “McNeil River Bears” and “Wildlife Artist: Younger Alaska.”

I think Morton must have gotten a bit spoiled by his ability to cuddle and wrestle the bears at Grandfather Mountain. I don’t think the bears in the wilds of Alaska are going to react the same as Mildred, Jane, or Punkin. But this didn’t seem to stop him from getting some amazing pictures of grizzlies at McNeil Falls.

McNeil River State Game Refuge and Sanctuary becomes quite populated in July and August–with bears, not tourists. Every year these bears migrate to the falls to stuff themselves with dog salmon. There are no roads to the sanctuary and visitors must apply months in advance for a chance in the lottery. Only about 250 people get to see this spectacle each year, with a limit of ten at a time. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, up to 72 bears have been seen here at one time. I count 14 in the picture below!

Morton was a well-traveled man. I’ve shared with you the splendors of Hawaii and Alaska. Maybe before my assistanship is finished I’ll show you Arizona, California, or Florida. Or perhaps China, Japan, the Holy Land, New Zealand and Australia, Italy, or Austria? Let me know where you would like to travel next. Cozumel is beautiful this time of year.

Last Friday, Robert W. Scott, governor of North Carolina from 1969-1973, died in Alamance County, NC. He was 79. (See this memorial post from our partner blog, NC Miscellany).

As one of Hugh Morton’s many gubernatorial friends, he was photographed throughout the years in various outfits, scenes, and positions (you’ll see). In nearly all of the photographs, he wore a smile and often traded handshakes with many of North Carolina’s most prominent citizens.

Here Scott is administering one of these handshakes and laying on that trademark smile with none other than Hugh Morton, much to the crowd’s satisfaction.

Scott, famously the son of North Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator W. Kerr Scott, was one of the younger governors to have served in North Carolina, and presented the photographers who happened to be following him with photo opportunities a less vibrant occupant of the office would not.

Hugh Morton photographed Scott often, and featured him in a chapter of his 1988 book with Ed Rankin, Making a Difference in North Carolina (pages 222-227). As Morton/Rankin write, “Scott, a husky young man with boundless energy, enjoyed traveling across North Carolina and meeting its people. . . he had the ability to mix and mingle with average people and learned a great deal from their opinions and suggestions.”

Here Scott is mixing with some local young men outside a shop in Watauga County. Notice how he is able to blend in — one might even go so far as to say that he is ‘Hangin’ Around,’ in direct violation of the sign.

The picture below of Scott and a St. Bernard is another example of Scott’s youthful exuberance. Yet, this photograph also presents a minor archival mystery: according to an obituary of Boone-area photographer George Flowers, it was Flowers who took this famous image (or a very similar one), and was allowed by Scott to use it in print “as long as everyone knew it was a gag and if it was not run on a Sunday.” This is great context, but it doesn’t explain why the negative for this picture is in the Morton collection.

The following photograph (by Hugh Morton) of Scott signing copies of the contested photograph lends credence to the notion that Morton did take the photo, or at least had a strong connection to it through Scott. Perhaps multiple photographers were on the scene at the time? Whoever took the picture(s), though, they captured and preserved for posterity the accessibility and warmth of Scott’s personal and political style.

“It is not a bad sport, legal or illegal. At a time like this when the ‘inferiority complex’ is stalking around loose seeking whom it may devour, to see a bird, stuck and stabbed until almost bloodless, rise in his might and make one more supreme effort that finishes his enemy is a useful life’s lesson.”

This stunning quote comes from Bishop Joseph B. Cheshire’s 1930 memoir titled Nonnulla: Memories, Stories, Traditions, More or Less Authentic (links to a fully-digitized version). Since I paid brief homage to turkeys in the last post, I thought I would shift over to chickens for this one, specifically gamecocks. A small cache of cockfighting images in the Morton collection piqued my interest, so I did a bit of research into the history of this illicit “sport” in North Carolina.

A pair of articles from The State magazine from 1953 (the July 11 and September 5 issues) shed some light, leading me to the Cheshire book quoted above and to another 1949 memoir by Paul B. Barringer entitled Natural Bent, both of which include fascinating accounts of and opinions about cockfighting. (Although Morton’s cockfighting photos were taken around 1953 or perhaps a few years earlier, they were not used in either of the State articles).

The sport is as old as the state itself.  From “Cockfighting: an Early Entertainment in North Carolina,” a 1965 North Carolina Historical Review article by B. W. C. Roberts, I learned that the first published mention of NC cockfighting dates from 1737, and that Sir Walter Raleigh himself “enjoyed a favorable reputation as a cocker.” I also discovered that “the owners of cocks considered them treasures and bred [them]…as if they were thoroughbred horses.”

Roberts provides us with the unpleasant detail that “steel-pointed, razor-sharp gaffs, varying in length from an inch-and-a-quarter to over three inches, were fastened to the cocks’ shanks.” And as we can see from the cropped Morton image below, the fights, or “mains,” were not just entertainment for men, but for women and children as well.

Judging from these various accounts and images, it seems that cockfighting practice changed little from the 18th century through the mid-20th. Although outlawed for quite some time, the practice has obviously continued for centuries, and remains a problem (as evidenced by Governor Easley’s 2005 signing of a bill to make cockfighting punishable as a felony).

Does anyone know the story behind these extraordinarily vivid Morton images? Where and when were they taken, and for what purpose?

I have often heard it said that turkey and football are the best parts of Thanksgiving. Hugh Morton loved to photograph both of them, so I’m sharing a few prize shots with you in honor of this week’s holiday.

The next image was identified as one of “Hugh Morton’s Favorite Ten” in the 10/1/1968 issue of The State magazine (along with this one and this one). The text that accompanied the image is included below (note that I cropped it roughly as it appeared in The State, on page 10).

Morton’s most significant sports action picture is probably this one of All-America Bill Dudley running 80 yards in Kenan Stadium at Chapel Hill in November 1941 for what some University of Virginia alumni say was the greatest individual performance ever given by a “Cavalier” athlete. The picture was taken for the “Charlotte News,” and Sports Editor Burke Davis titled it “I’m coming, Virginia.”

My name is Amber, and I’m the newest student assistant at work on the Morton collection. One of the projects I’m working on is with what we call the “Machine Prints.” In the 1990s-early 2000s, Hugh Morton sent many of his rolls of film to local drug and grocery stores to be developed.  He would then look through those negatives and decide which ones he wanted to make prints of.  Unfortunately that meant that many negatives were separated from the rest of their roll, and quite often, the prints in an envelope don’t have matching negatives (or any negatives at all!).

Morton did label most of the Machine Print envelopes, but those labels don’t always match the pictures.  The first envelope I opened was of a game in the Dean Dome, but in the middle was a random picture of Prince Charles.  (Apparently it was taken at the Biltmore Estate, where he came to learn more about preserving historic structures—see Hugh Morton’s North Carolina, page 127).

Elizabeth had already done a preliminary sort with general categories such as Basketball, Grandfather Mountain, and Nature, and I then tried to narrow them a little more.  The first one I tackled was basketball and was able to sort those by date.  However, many envelopes were simply labeled “NCAA ‘94,” and it was up to me to figure out which teams were playing.

This photo stayed with me as I was going through the many others.  I was amazed at how #15 was defying gravity.  The sheer physics of what he is doing is incomprehensible to me.  This was in a roll labeled “2/98 NC State.”  However, the visitors bench sure doesn’t look red. According to Hugh Morton’s North Carolina, this is Vince Carter and they are playing Cal Berkley (p. 199), which probably would have put it during the Nov. 22, 1997 game at the Dean Dome.  At the June “Photo ID Party,” Fred Kiger said this was Morton’s favorite sports photo he ever took.

This next picture was in an envelope labeled “Groundhog Ice Cream.”  You can see the chocolate smeared on her nose.  But, what is the back story on this?  Is this from Grandfather Mountain?  Some February 2nd tradition?  If anyone knows, please fill me in.  The curiosity is killing me.

I am currently in the middle of going through all the Grandfather Mountain pictures.  What an amazing place.  The sweeping vistas are beautiful, and that Swinging Bridge—I don’t know if I am brave enough to cross it.  I just finished with the Fall pictures and the striking reds and yellows against green grass and bright blue sky are so perfectly captured, and the pictures of bears with different families and local celebrities are a crack-up.

This has definitely made me want to visit Grandfather soon, to see the places depicted in these pictures and try to capture them with my own camera (although I know they can never be nearly as stunning). Hey, mom and dad, what are we doing for Thanksgiving?  They have golf there!

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)!

Yesterday’s NC Miscellany post alerted me to the upcoming 75th anniversary (1934-2009) of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They’ve set up an interactive website to help celebrate. I was going to upload a Hugh Morton photo to their nifty “Family Album“—until I read their Photo Release agreement, that is. (Somehow I don’t think the library would appreciate my agreeing to those terms!).

So, I’m offering an independent, A View to Hugh tribute to the GSMNP. A cropped version of the following photo appeared on the cover of the October 1, 1968 issue of The State magazine, referencing an article by Jane Corey called “Hugh Morton’s Favorite Ten.” Included below is the text that accompanied the photo in The State.

Among Hugh Morton’s 10 favorite photos—of the thousands he has made—is this shot of a mother bear and three cubs walking across a road in the Great Smokies. It is a once-in-a-lifetime picture, says Hugh, because any time bears show up on a highway, a crowd quickly forms. “I know I will never again have the chance at a shot like this without people showing.”