While going through the negatives made during the 1963 commencement weekend, I saw images for other classes that also held their reunions . . . 1953 . . . scan it, nice bold banner . . . 1943 . . . . skip it, ordinary group shot . . . 1938 . . . 1933 . . . wait! . . . 1943?  I pulled out the 1943 negative from its envelope and grabbed a magnifying loupe.  Yep, Hugh and Julie Morton in attendance.

Class of 1943 reunion attendees in front of the University Faculty Club, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1 June 1963. This building is now know as Jackson Hall. Hugh and Julia Morton are second and third persons from the left in the back row. Photograph by Don Needham and Barney Young. (UNC Photo Lab Collection, 24311)

Detail from the above photograph highlighting Hugh and Julia Morton.

The Alumni Review April-May issue (which must have been a few months late) used the photograph with the caption title “Emphasis Was Placed on Low-Pressure, Family Type of Reunion for ’43.”  The event’s focus was “an enjoyable supper on June 1 at the Monogram Club dinning room.”  According the caption, by comparison, the “Pearl Harbor generation” classes of 1941, 1942, and 1943 held a joint reunion in 1962 at the Hope Valley Country Club in Durham.

An interesting biographical comment turned up in the column, “Some Notes from the ’43 Reunion”:

Hugh Morton of Wilmington, realtor, owns and operates Grandfather Mountain, known as “Carolina’s Top Scenic Attraction,” and also does some photographic work. . . .”

Some photographic work, indeed.

On October 12, 2009, Asheville’s Citizen-Times columnist Keith Jarrett wrote about his first reaction to that year’s North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame ballot and its several western North Carolina candidates. After listing a half-dozen or so athletes, he said:

Another local nominee is included in the category of contributor, and in the spirit of full disclosure my vote is both a personal and professional choice.

Hugh Morton was a friend, and just about everyone who ever met this warm, caring man could say the same.  His fame came from his work at converting Grandfather Mountain into a High Country and NC treasure and his lifelong efforts as a conservationist.

But Hugh was also a great photographer, and for decades he would climb into his car and make the drive from his home in Linville to Chapel Hill and capture his beloved Tar Heels on film. . . .

His nature and animal photos were also brilliant, but his collection of work in sports photography is a catalog of the history of the ACC, and especially North Carolina.

If he is not a Hall of Famer, they should close the doors.

Hugh Morton mentored several generations of sports photographers and as part of that mentoring process he strongly advocated good sportsmanship within the Atlantic Coast Conference.  He always said “pull for your team, not against your opponent.”  He also sponsored “family outings” at Grandfather Mountain for conference schools for over 45 years.

So, almost four years after Jarrett wrote his column, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame fans can breathe easier.  The doors will remain open . . . Hugh Morton will take his rightful place in the hall on Thursday night, May 2, 2013 at Raleigh’s Convention Center as part of the organization’s fiftieth induction ceremony.  Hugh’s grandson Jack Morton will represent the Morton family.  [Editor's note: here's an article, "My Grandfather and his Camera" written by Jack Morton in 2003 that recalls the day depicted in the photograph below—" . . . it was the first time that I had ever taken photos alongside him."]

Photographer Hugh Morton (right) with grandson Jack Morton (also a photographer) on sidelines during the UNC-Chapel Hill versus Duke University football game in Wallace Wade Stadium, Durham, N. C., November 23, 1996.

Also as part of the class of 2013 is longtime Morton friend, the late Bob Quincy.  World War II bomber pilot and sports writer for both The Charlotte News and The Charlotte Observer, Quincy also spent four years as sports information director at UNC.  His books Choo Choo: The Charlie Justice Story (1958) and They Made the Bell Tower Chime (1973) are filled with Hugh Morton images.

Bob Quincy, Julian Scheer, and Charlie Justice with copy of CHOO CHOO: THE CHARLIE JUSTICE STORY, circa September 1958.

On Thursday evening, Hugh and Bob will join their dear friends Choo Choo, Bones, and Peahead, . . . Francis, Arnie, Dale, and Jake along with 291 other sports legends in the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

NPR’s Carl Kasell and North Carolina Collection Photographic Archivist Stephen Fletcher examine photographs in the Wilson Library Grand Reading Room, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Photograph by Mark Perry.

Last Tuesday was a fun day at the office.  In the morning, library staff gave Carl Kasell a tour of Wilson Library.  Kassel, a UNC alumnus, returned to Chapel Hill for an evening event sponsored by the library moderated by WUNC radio host Eric Hodge.  Kasell was a member of UNC’s class of 1956 (although he did not graduate, having been drafted into the United States Army after four years as a student).

Kasell’s tenure at National Public Radio began in 1975 as a part-time news announcer for Weekend Edition.  Starting in 1979 he was the voice of the network’s morning news for the next thirty years.  Since retiring from that role at NPR in 2009, Kasell became a “roving ambassador,” and continued as the judge and scorekeeper for the “Oddly Informative News Quiz” Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, which debuted in January 1998.

As you might imagine, Kasell has received several awards during his sonorous career.  In 2004 the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication inducted Kasell into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.  In 2010 the National Radio Hall of Fame inducted Kasell into its ranks.  In March 2013 the North Carolina Press Association named Kasell “North Carolinian of the Year” for 2013, and the association made a wonderful biographical video available on their YouTube site.  Despite his stature in journalism, A View to Hugh has not been able to feature Kasell because Hugh Morton hadn’t photographed him, even though he been a co-founder of WUNC radio with Morton’s long-time friend Charles Kuralt.

Or so we thought.

Andy Griffith as Sir Walter Raleigh in “The Lost Colony.”  Carl Kasell, as Wanchese, is in the lower right corner of the photograph.

We featured the above photograph a few years ago in a post about the comeback of The Lost Colony after a fire destroyed the production’s costumes and props.  Playing the role of Sir Walter Raleigh (right) is Andy Griffith.  But wait . . . wait!  Who is the fellow in the lower right corner wearing too much face paint?  None other than Carl Kasell!

As seen in the opening photograph, I showed Hugh Morton’s photograph to Mr. Kasell and he confirmed that that indeed was he in the corner.  The reference to too much face paint came from a story Kasell told during Tuesday evening’s event, when Andy Griffith told Kasell he had been a bit heavy handed in the makeup room before dress rehearsal.  Kasell confided that Griffith later helped him with a more appropriate application of face paint, and that Griffith was “a big, big help” during that season. (Kasell’s high school drama teacher was Clifton Britton, not Griffith as is often incorrectly stated on numerous web pages.)

We don’t know if Morton made the above photograph before or after that cosmetic lesson, but we now know the year Morton made the photograph: Kasell said it was 1952 after he had graduated from high school, and 1952 is the only year Kasell’s name appears in the official program.  And because we know what Kasell’s costume looked like, we can now identify other Morton photographs of Kasell.

Lillian Prince as Queen Elizabeth and Carl Kasell as Wanchese in “The Lost Colony,” 1952.

Kasell played the role of “Wanchese, an Indian chief.”  I believe as he looked at Morton’s photograph he dredged up from his memory a couple of his lines: “Mish-wi aga, Wingina” and “Wanchese no more chief.  Wanchese now king.”

Wanchese confronted by the character “Old Tom” holding his arquebus. “Get out of here, ye knavish rogues! Scat!”  Is this also Carl Kasell?  If so, Frederick Young played the part of Old Tom Harris in 1952.

If you couldn’t make the evening with Carl Kasell, you can watch a video recording of the event, which includes Kasell’s recollections from his performance in The Lost Colony while Morton’s photograph is projected on the screen.  Below is an image from a color transparency from the Morton collection not previously scanned.

This photograph is remarkably similar to the one that appears on the cover of the 1953 “The Lost Colony” souvenir program (see below).

Cover of the 1953 edition of “The Lost Colony” Souvenir Program.

But least we think that the similarity between the two photographs means that Hugh Morton made the eventual 1953 cover photograph, too, here is a photograph published on page 35 of the 1952 souvenir program:

Lillian Prince and Carl Kasell pose during the 1952 annual press photographers day.

The cover photograph could have been made by any of the photographers above. . . . But wait . . . wait, don’t tell me!  Is that Hugh Morton (center right) among the press photographers?!

The University Library (now Wilson Library), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Morton probably made this photograph with infrared film. It appears (cropped vertically) on cover of the April 1947 issue of THE ALUMNI REVIEW. Morton presented the Alumni Office with six photographs of campus in autumn of 1946, or the image may date from early 1947.

The photograph above dates from Morton’s post World War II days, but naturally he photographed The University Library as a student, too.  The Daily Tar Heel published the  two following photographs on September 26, 1941 to illustrate an article about remodeling and changes in the library.  The top image depicts the reserve and general reading room (what is now the Pleasants Family Assembly Room).

The photograph below shows the new browsing room and Bull’s Head Bookshop, at the time just moved from the first floor to the second.

Charles E. Rush, University Librarian, made the changes because, “he felt the [undergraduate] students were either too timid or too rushed to get books on their fields other than those assigned.”  In the interest of comfort, Rush permitted students to smoke in the east end of the room, with ashtrays placed on the ends of the tables.  You can see an ashtray on the table in the top photograph.

University Librarian Charles E. Rush (right) with two unidentified men in The University Library. The index on far right is dated 1940. Rush became university librarian in May 1941.

A January 2012, A View to Hugh blog post on the UNC Information Center for Civilian Morale during World War II features a photograph made in the lobby of the library, which also includes Rush who had had begun his appointment at UNC merely half a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

More photographs of Wilson Library can be seen in the online collection.

Wednesday afternoon was one of those times, like so many others in this line of work, where what you end up working on isn’t even on your radar when you step off the bus and head to the office.  Here’s what happened . . . .

Around 2:30 a new staff member in the the library’s Digital Production Center received a phone call from Yahoo! Sports requesting Hugh Morton photographs.  He asked me who should take the call, and I recommended he transfer the call to Keith Longiotti in our Research and Instructional Services Department.  Keith handles most of the image requests for the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.

Shortly after the call I saw an email that I had received before the phone call, but hadn’t seen because I had been away from my desk.  The email was from an associate producer at Yahoo! Sports, and had its beginnings on Tuesday with a referral from The Daily Tar Heel to the journalism school’s librarian Stephanie Brown.

Yahoo! Sports has been producing a series called “Memorable Moments: March Madness.”  Their last episode was to feature the 1982 NCAA men’s basketball championship game between UNC and Georgetown.  They requested photographs or footage from the game, mentioning that they had seen some Hugh Morton photographs in the online collection of Morton images, but nothing from the closing moments of the game.  The producer wrote,

I’m looking for any photos AFTER Michael Jordan’s go-ahead jumper with :17 left in the game.  Specifically Georgetown’s Fred Brown throwing the ball away to James Worthy during the subsequent play.  Anything of Worthy and/or Brown from the final moments (before the steal, during the steal, after the steal, huddles, shooting free throws, etc.) would be outstanding.

Stephanie replied that the Park Library did not hold such materials, and that she should talk to me about the Hugh Morton collection.  I wrote the associate producer immediately after I finished reading her email, telling her that I had read her email shortly after the telephone call.

If you are a regular reader of A View to Hugh, then you know only 8,000 of the 250,000 items in the Morton collection are online.  I told the associate producer that I would look in the remainder of the collection to see if I could locate any images that were not online.  The catch?  They needed images that day, or early Thursday at the latest.  (Luckily their offices are on the west coast so that gave me an additional three hours to work on the request.)  They had seen Morton’s photograph of the team huddle shown above, but not in the online collection.  Did we have it?  Did we have anything else?

Given their tight deadline and the proximity to closing time, we could have settled for the images they already seen and requested.  Keith sent them scans of the images they’d seen so they could get started.  I couldn’t fathom, however, that Hugh Morton would not have photographed the pivotal closing moments unless he had been on the opposite end of the court.  That, coupled with an opportunity to give the Morton collection some national or even international exposure was too good to pass up.  I jumped on it.

First I checked for scans saved on our image server, but not used in the online collection.  (Yes, there are thousands of them!)  To do that, I had to review all the prints, negatives, and slides from the games, because the scan’s file names are written on the storage enclosures.  The huddle scene above was previously scanned, but not included online.

But look at what else I found that wasn’t scanned:

After watching the closing moments of the game on YouTube, I was convinced the scene above was James Worthy driving the basketball down court after stealing Fred Brown’s errant pass.  The steal and drive happened right in front of Morton.  He snapped the camera shutter just a moment before Worthy was intentionally fouled by Georgetown’s Eric Smith (#32).  Eric “Sleepy” Floyd (#21) is on the left.  Both Floyd and Worthy are from Gastonia, North Carolina and were good friends.  The turnover happened so unexpectedly on the other end of the court, and so quickly that it may have caught Morton off guard because Worthy is out of focus.  The result, however, means that Morton captured the dismay on Floyd’s face, and the expressions on the bench and cheerleaders are more visible.

(By the way, if you watch the CBS broadcast, you can see Hugh Morton pop into the frame about 25 seconds after the end of the game.  This may be when Dean Smith told Morton, “Stick with me.”)

Below, Morton photographed Worthy taking one of his free throws with only two seconds remaining on the clock.

A staff member of the Digital Production Center helped me make the scans of the two 35mm slides.  (I couldn’t do it because they just starting using new software.)  We had the slides finished before 6:00.  I continued to dig Thursday morning, taking advantage of the time zones difference, but didn’t find additional images that fit the hole they needed to fill.  We delivered the scans by their deadline, and Yahoo! Sports was thrilled.

We received the link to the story, “Michael Jordan’s gutsy shot leads to North Carolina title” this morning.  The downside of our efforts is that Yahoo! Sports doesn’t credit their sources after the episodes in “Memorable Moments: March Madness,” so you won’t see Morton or the photographic archives credited.  The upside is that seven Hugh Morton photographs appear in the episode (one of Worthy during the East Regional final game against Villanova in Raleigh, and six from the championship game), and the library did receive a respectable commercial use fee to help support the work that we do with the collections.  The team huddle photograph also opens a one-minute piece, “Memorable Moments: The huddle before Michael Jordan’s shot.“  Another of Morton’s images appears in a second short, “Memorable Moments: James Worthy remembers UNC vs. Georgetown.”

A remaining mystery emerged from this reference request.  I didn’t find a photograph of Michael Jordon’s game winning shot, which occurred near the very spot of the Worthy photograph above.  Did Morton photograph that memorable moment, too?  If so, I didn’t find it.  Yet.

Wake Forest men’s basketball Head Coach Bones McKinney on bench/sidelines. Possibly during a UNC-Chapel Hill versus Wake Forest University basketball game.

“I don’t remember exactly when everyone started calling me Bones, but with a name like Horace Albert, the sooner the better, right?”

—Bones McKinney from Bones: Honk Your Horn if You Love Basketball (1988)

His resume is like no other.  It goes something like this:

• High School All-Star Basketball at Durham High
• Varsity basketball at North Carolina State
• United States Army, Fort Bragg (basketball coach and player)
• Varsity basketball at University of North Carolina
• Basketball Association of America, Washington Capitols
• National Basketball Association, Boston Celtics
• Ordained Baptist minister
• Head coach, Wake Forest
• Head coach, American Basketball Association, Carolina Cougars
• TV commentator and analyst, Raycom
• Newspaper columnist
• Author
• Humorist and motivational after-dinner speaker

Folks born on New Year’s Day are special people.

For Horace Albert (Bones) McKinney, born in Lowlands, North Carolina on January 1, 1919, that specialty was his love for the game of basketball.  When he was five years old, the McKinney family moved to Durham and that’s where young Horace began playing his favorite game—starting at Watts Street Grammar School, then to Central Junior High, the YMCA, and finally to Durham High where, under Head Coach Paul Sykes, he led the team to two South Atlantic Prep Tournaments, two Duke-Durham Tournaments, three state championships, and the Interscholastic Basketball Tournament in Glens Falls, New York . . . all the while racking up sixty-nine straight wins.

McKinney graduated a little late from Durham High in the spring of 1940, then headed over to Raleigh for a college career at North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State).  A year of freshman ball was followed by a sophomore year when he led the Southern Conference in scoring with 200 points and was an all conference selection. On Christmas Day, 1941, Bones McKinney married the love of his life, Edna Ruth Stell.

Group portrait of UNC-Chapel Hill men’s basketball team after their loss to Oklahoma A&M in the 1946 NCAA championship at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY. Among those pictured are head coach Ben Carnevale (back row, second from left) and Horace “Bones” McKinney (back row, second from right).

A week after the 1942 season ended, on April 2, 1942, he joined the Army.  At Fort Bragg, Bones played, coached, and led the team to wins in the Southeastern Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Tournament in Savannah and the Southern AAU in Raleigh.  While at Fort Bragg, he became good friends with Ben Carnevale the head coach at UNC and on January 9, 1945, Bones McKinney became a Tar Heel—but the UNC basketball team was called the White Phantoms in those days. The highlight of the 1946 season, which was his only season at UNC, was a NCAA national championship game against Oklahoma A&M at Madison Square Garden.  The 43–40 loss was difficult for Bones as evidenced by Hugh Morton’s photograph of the award ceremony following the game.

“In 1946, before the NCAA national championship became known as the Final Four, UNC lost in the championship game, 43 to 40 to Oklahoma A&M. The game was played in the old Madison Square Garden before 18,479 spectators. UNC head basketball coach and Navy lieutenant Ben Carnevale (shaking hands), who had responsibilities as the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill as well, accepted the runner-up trophy. Carolina’s Horace ‘Bones’ McKinney (far left) was not pleased at being runner up.” Presenting the award is Harold G. Olsen, who was serving his final year as the NCAA basketball tournament chairman. (Identification obtained from book ON TOBACCO ROAD.)

By the end of the ‘46 season, the McKinney family had grown to three and Bones realized that he needed a paying job to support the family, so he left UNC and went to work for Hanes Hosiery.  It was while there that an unbelievable phone call came.  On the other end of the line was Red Auerbach, who was going to form the “Basketball Association of America”—and he wanted Bones to play for him.  Just when it looked like basketball was over for Bones McKinney, along came an opportunity to play for pay: $6,750 for a season with a $500 advance.  He would play for the Washington Capitols for five seasons, making all pro and led the team to the Eastern Division championship his first season, 1946-47. He led the team into the playoffs each year from 1946 through 1950.

On January 9, 1951 the Washington Capitols folded, and McKinney was sent to the Boston Celtics as a player-coach.  While there he made some NBA history.  He recruited and signed Earl Lloyd, the first African American player in the NBA.  Following the ’52 season, McKinney left pro basketball and enrolled in the Southeastern Theological Seminary at Wake Forest.  While in class on November 8, 1952, Wake Forest Head Basketball Coach Murray Greason walked in and asked Dr. Bill Strickland if he could speak with student McKinney.  Greason needed an assistant coach and offered Bones the job, a job that would last until March 26, 1957 when he took over the head coaching position at Wake.

In February of 1960, a writer for the magazine Life came to Winston-Salem to do a McKinney feature story.  It wasn’t the first time he had made the big time.  There is an action shot by Hugh Morton contemporary Hy Peskin on the front cover of Collier’s dated January 15, 1949.  Life published another article, titled “Basketball’s Incredible Mr. Bones” in its February 22, 1960 issue, which featured the following:

People go to Wake Forest basketball games to see a winning team perform.  For the same price, they get Bones McKinney, the coach with his own private volcano.  Once the game starts, the bench can’t hold him.  The climactic moment arrives when Mr. Bones erupts dramatically from the sideline, looking like a dead ringer for Ichabod Crane.

In 1961 and 1962, McKinney led the Deacons to Atlantic Coast Conference championships, with the ’62 team playing in the NCAA Final Four.  Following the ’64-’65 season, Wake Forest made a coaching change and Bones McKinney took a job with the North Carolina Board of Corrections, but soon after the ’65-’66 basketball season started, he got a call from ACC TV producer Castleman D. Chesley.  It seems that Bones’ good friend Charlie Harville had recommended him as a possible broadcaster with the ACC network.  Bones was eager to get back into basketball, so on January 8, 1966 at the UNC vs. Duke game in Chapel Hill, Bones McKinney became a TV basketball commentator and analyst, working with play-by-play man Jim Thacker, and stat man Charlie Harville.  At first, McKinney didn’t think he was very good as a broadcaster, but when he was invited back, he figured he must be OK.

Then in early 1969 . . . another phone call and another basketball opportunity.  On January 2, 1969, Southern Sports Corporation purchased the Houston Mavericks, a team in the American Basketball Association.  President Jim Gardner was planning to move the team to North Carolina and he wanted Bones as his head coach.  Gardner and McKinney struck a deal and Bones McKinney became to first head coach of the newly formed Carolina Cougars, leading them that year to the ABA playoffs.

One of my favorite Bones McKinney stories came during that ’69-‘70 season. During a hotly contested game, Bones yelled out at an official following a questionable call.

“Hey, you’re either blind or you’re a crook.”
“And you’re out of the game,” yelled back the ref.
“Why?” asked Bones defiantly.
“Because you called me a crook,” replied the official.
“Did not,” yelled Bones, looking back over his shoulder as he departed, “I gave you a choice.”

While still coaching the Carolina Cougars, McKinney was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 1970.

Seated are (L to R) Bones McKinney, Billy Packer, and Jim Thacker, with Castleman Chesley (standing) behind the scenes at UNC-Chapel Hill versus Marquette basketball NCAA finals in Atlanta, Georgia.

The 4th Annual ABA All-Star Game was played in the Greensboro Coliseum on January 23, 1971 and CBS-TV carried the game nationwide, with play-by-play by Don Criqui and Pat Summerall and color commentary by Bones McKinney.

On November 18, 1979 during halftime of the Washington Redskins vs. Dallas Cowboys game in RFK Stadium, McKinney was inducted into the Washington Hall of Stars.  In 1985 his longtime friend Charlie Justice joined him in the DC Hall.  McKinney continued to coach all-star games, and was in high demand as an after-dinner speaker during the 1980s and early ‘90s.

When the Greensboro News and Record arrived on Saturday morning May 17, 1997, the front page headline read, “Legendary Wake Coach Dies at 78.”  Staff writer Jim Schlosser related the story of McKinney’s death at 5:05 PM on Friday, May 16th at Wake Medical Rehab Center following a stroke two weeks earlier.  On Sunday, I went out to WFMY-TV and put together a video piece for Monday’s “Good Morning Show.”  As I was putting the piece together, I kept thinking about a Bones McKinney quote that I had read years before in his 1988 book.  The quote was part of the short section about his broadcasting career.  It went like this: “I soon found out that if your director ain’t no good, you ain’t no good.”  He went on to talk about the magnificent Raycom directors, Norman Prevatte from WBTV in Charlotte, John Young from WUNC-TV, and Frank Slingland from WRC-TV in Washington, DC.

During my time in broadcasting, I never had the honor of directing a Bones McKinney game or a Bones McKinney broadcast.  However, I worked several Carolina Cougar games in 1972 after Bones had moved on.  But in 1969, WFMY-TV produced the Carolina Cougar coach’s show.  It was called, of course, “The Bones McKinney Show.”  Veteran WFMY Producer/Director George Leh was director and Woody Durham was producer along with Bones. The show was usually taped on Thursday afternoons for weekend playback.  On this particular Thursday, Leh was not available to direct so production manager Jack Forehand asked me to direct the show. For twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds on Thursday afternoon, March 5, 1969, I knew I was part of something very special.

UNC basketball team in huddle during the North Carolina versus Michigan basketball game at 1993 NCAA finals in New Orleans.

It’s that time of year again when hundreds of thousands of college basketball fans huddle secretively with their notes on “bracketology.”  The NCAA basketball championship tournaments broke onto the stage this week and, once again, the UNC men’s and women’s teams find themselves in the mix.  Always hard-earned, NCAA tournament appearances are nonetheless commonplace for UNC’s basketball teams.

Readers of A View to Hugh know that Hugh Morton had a great love for UNC men’s basketball, photographing games regularly as far back as his days as a student in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  As the basketball teams head into their championship runs, Morton collection volunteer Jack Hilliard takes a look back at the men Tar Heels’ 1993 trip to “The Final Four” twenty years ago, when Carolina won its fourth national championship under legendary head coach Dean Smith.

It was one year ago today that library staff members learned of the untimely passing of our colleague, Bill Richards. In 1982, Bill was the Chief Photographer for the Chapel Hill Newspaper.  In 1988, he began working as a photographer and graphic designer in the UNC Office of Sports information.  He began working in the Library Photographic Service  in 1998, but continued working for Sports information into the 2000s. This post is dedicated to Bill who, like Hugh Morton, was an avid UNC basketball fan.

UNC student fans during the 1993 NCAA championship at New Orleans, Louisiana.

Eleven seasons had come and gone since Dean Smith’s basketball Tar Heels had won the 1982 NCAA championship in the Louisiana Superdome.  But in early April 1993 his team was poised and ready for another run at the big game in “The Big Easy.”

Most UNC fans agree that Smith’s 1992-93 team was one of his best. When all was said and done, their record was 34–4, with 26 wins in the regular season and 8 wins in the post season.  The one post season loss came in the ACC Tournament final, a two-pointer to Georgia Tech.  Following that disappointment, it was on to NCAA March Madness and a number one seed in the East, starting in Winston-Salem.  A twenty-point win over East Carolina and a forty-five-point win against Rhode Island put the Heels in the “Sweet 16” at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.  Then came a six-point win over Arkansas and a seven-point overtime victory versus Cincinnati . . . and it was on to the Crescent City and another Final-Four for Coach Smith (his ninth).

The 1993 Final Four was unique.  Three number one seeds and one number two seed would be playing for the championship: North Carolina, Michigan, and Kentucky along with number two seed Kansas.  The first national semi-final on Saturday, April 3rd would match Dean Smith’s UNC Tar Heels and Roy Williams’ Kansas Jayhawks.  Needless to say, there was plenty of ink and airtime about this rivalry.  Two years earlier, Kansas had beaten Carolina in the national semi-final 79 to 73.  Dean Smith played at Kansas in the early 1950s.  Roy Williams played and coached at Carolina in ‘70s and ‘80s, and one of Williams’ assistants was Matt Doherty who played for Smith during the 1982 NCAA championship season.  If the truth be known, Smith and Williams probably would rather be playing someone else in the semi-final game but they didn’t set the brackets.

Row Williams, Dean Smith, and Bill Guthridge prior to the 1993 NCAA tournament semifinal in New Orleans, Louisiana. Cropped by the editor; the full-frame image (click to see photograph without cropping) includes Kansas assistant coach and former UNC player Matt Doherty.  A slightly wider crop, also without Doherty, appears in the book Return to the Top: The Inside Story of Carolina’s 1993 NCAA Championship.

During the warm-up for the game, photographer Hugh Morton got a classic shot, one that he would include in all his future slides shows.  The image shows Smith, Williams, Doherty, and then UNC assistant Bill Guthridge, current and future Carolina coaches from 1961 to the present.

A crowd of 64,151 watched as Kansas took an early 3–2 lead, but Brian Reese hit a driving layup to put Carolina up by a score of 4–3. The Heels would retain a lead the rest of the way.  Kansas kept it close; Carolina led by only four at halftime, 40–36.  In the second half when George Lynch hit a layup at the 17:01 mark, the Tar Heel lead was seven, 48 to 41; but one minute later, Kansas had cut that lead to two at 48 to 46.

Donald Williams’ twenty-one foot three ball made the score 63–55 with 9:35 to play.  But five minutes later, Carolina’s lead was once again down to four, 67–63 and Coach Smith called a time-out to change his lineup.  In the final 2:36, Donald Williams scored seven points as the Heels finally pulled away for a 78–68 win.  Eric Montross and Donald Williams accounted for forty-eight Carolina points.

Coach Williams, in his post-game news conference, said, “I’ll be pulling like the dickens for Carolina Monday night.”

Later that day, Michigan defeated Kentucky to set up a UNC vs. Michigan national final.  It would be only the second time two number one seeds had met for the championship.  (The other time was Carolina and Georgetown in 1982).

Once again there was lots of media coverage, focusing on a Rainbow Classic game between Michigan and Carolina, which Michigan wound up as the 79–78 winner back on December 29, 1992.

Monday, April 5th was a long day for me.  I did my usual morning show shift at WFMY-TV, and then returned in the evening for a “NCAA Countdown” special program just before CBS’ live coverage of the game.  By the time I got home, the game was well underway and Carolina trailed 23–13.  But three-and-a-half minutes later, the Tar Heels had tied the score at 25.  George Lynch, Eric Montross, and Derrick Phelps kept Carolina in front going into the halftime break.

Halfway through the second half, the Wolverines caught the Heels, tying the score at 56.  Chris Webber’s alley-oop at the 8:35 mark gave Michigan a 60–58 lead.  Five minutes later, Derrick Phelps’ fast break layup put Carolina back on top 68–67.  An Eric Montross dunk at the 1:03 mark pushed the UNC lead to 72-67.  Then Ray Jackson’s 18-foot jumper brought Michigan within three at 72–69.  Following a Michigan timeout, Chris Webber’s follow up shot made the score 72–71.  Then with twenty seconds remaining in the game Michigan’s Rob Pelinka fouled Carolina’s Pat Sullivan, who hit one of two foul shots.  Chris Webber got the rebound . . . seemed to travel, then took the ball the length of the court into the corner in front of his bench.  At this point, Carolina had fouls to give, so Lynch and Phelps set up a vicious trap.  Webber picked up his dribble.  With nowhere to go, only eleven seconds left in the game, and the Michigan coaches shouting “NO,” Webber called a timeout—a timeout he didn’t have.  Donald Williams calmly stepped to the line and hit the two technical foul shots, raising the score to 75–71.  Williams would hit two more foul shots following a Ray Jackson miscue, thus giving Dean Smith his 774th win and his 2nd NCAA Championship.  Final score:  Carolina 77, Michigan 71.

Victorious UNC men’s basketball team after the 1993 NCAA championship game.

As the CBS cameras focused on the team celebration, a celebration of another kind began back in rainy Chapel Hill as 25,000 fans stormed Franklin Street—light blue paint in hand. As the bell from University Methodist Church rang out, a Tar Heel fan was heard to say:
“Dick Vitale, you picked the wrong winner tonight, baby.”  The headline in Tuesday’s Gastonia Gazette read: DEJA BLUE.

About 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 6, 1993, a crowd started gathering in the Smith Center on the UNC campus. The crowd would eventually grow to be about 20,000 strong by the time the team bus pulled into the parking lot at 4:47.  As the Marching Tar Heels played the fight song, Pat Sullivan and Senior Matt Wenstrom, with NCAA trophy in hand, led the victorious Tar Heels into the arena.  Each team member was introduced by the “Voice of the Tar Heels” Woody Durham, and each spoke briefly.  Said Eric Montross:  “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”

Missing from the festivities was the man who had orchestrated the “Season of Dreams.”  Head coach Dean Smith wanted the celebration to be about his players, so he had scheduled a recruiting trip to Pennsylvania for Tuesday, April 6, 1993.

For those wanting to read more about UNC’s 1992-1993 season, see the book Return to the Top: The Inside Story of Carolina’s 1993 NCAA Championship.  The book contains an ample serving of Hugh Morton photographs made throughout that season.  You may see additional images of the UNC versus Kansas game and the 1993 championship game versus Michigan as part of the more than 8,000 Hugh Morton photographs online (A mere sampling of the 250,00 images in the entire collection!)

MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR HOLOCAUST — The costliest fire in Wilmington’s history—the Great Fire of Sunday, Feb. 21, 1886, devastated an estimated $1 million in property—was variously estimated last night to have consumed, in flames and smoke, from $10 to $30 millions worth of property.  The fire started at 8:55 A.M. By 10 A.M., when this picture was made from a plane, smoke billowed thousands of feet into the air and could be seen from at least 25 miles away. The ship in the foreground is the Norwegian freighter Max Manus, which was towed from the docks when the fire started. . . . Photo by Morton. (As captioned in the Wilmington Morning Star, 10 March 1953, page 1.)

The headline for this post is the headline that accompanied a photographic essay of the event by the staff photographer(s) in the same issue of the Wilmington Morning Star.  The photograph above was on the front page of the March 10th issue.  It’s presented above as cropped for the newspaper, and below without cropping.  (The stain in the upper right portion of the frame does not seem to be in the published version.)

According to the caption in the Wilmington Morning Star, Morton made these fire scenes approximately one hour after the fire began.  The image below made the front page, top center, of the same day of the fire in that afternoon’s Wilmington News.  The paper’s headline spanned the full page: “ADVANCE OF DOCK FIRE HALTED.”

FREIGHTER SAVED — A tug pulls the Norwegian freighter Max Manus from a flaming dock at the Wilmington Terminal Co. Smoke was visible for 20 miles. Photo by H. Morton. (As captioned in the Wilmington News, 9 March 1953.)

The microfilm for the two newspapers doesn’t capture the quality of the photographs very well, so these are my visual interpretations of the images; the crops are as close as I could estimate to those used by the newspapers.  Here’s the above photograph without cropping.

A sampling of other images made by Morton follow.  I have not had an opportunity to check other newspapers to see if any of the images shown here may also have been published.  Some of the negatives have pre-exposed numbers on one edge, giving you a clue to the order in which Morton photographed the event.  Other negatives, however, are not numbered, so it may be that he had more than one camera with a different lens and/or film combinations. (Remember he shot color transparencies, too.)

This photograph gives a good perspective on the fire and its proximity to downtown Wilmington.

I wondered as I worked with these photographs what made Morton take to the air.  Did his military photography experience speak to his sense of the best perspective for the story?  Did Morton recognize that the local newspapers’ staff photographers would flock to “ground zero” and so knew that his aerial views would be unique?  Maybe both?

The last photograph (below) is a bit of a puzzler.  It is a 3×4-inch negative—all the others are 4×5—and there is no sign of fire.  The negative envelope is labeled “Fire, Waterfront” but I suspect the negative is much earlier—perhaps prior to WWII, as Morton tended to use the 4×5 format after the war, and the 3×4 format before.  That’s not to say, however, that he didn’t use the smaller format after the war.  Maybe someone with expertise on the Wilmington waterfront can explore this image and provide an accurate or estimated date.  The bridge on the far right may also assist in dating the negative.

Wilmington waterfront, date unknown.

UNC men’s basketball team Head Coach Dean Smith cutting down net at UNC vs. Michigan NCAA championship win at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, 5 April 1993.

We’re celebrating another birthday here at A View to Hugh: today is legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith’s 82nd.

This morning’s Daily Tar Heel features a front-page story using two Hugh Morton photographs (unfortunately Morton is not credited): the one above following the 1993 NCAA championship nearly twenty years ago, and the one below after winning the 1967 ACC championship game.  As of 10:15 a.m., there’s no online version of the story, but there is an online readable version of the print edition.

UNC-Chapel Hill men’s basketball team celebrating their win over Duke University after the 1967 ACC tournament championship game played in Greensboro, NC. Among those pictured are Head Coach Dean Smith (front row, third from left) and ACC tournament MVP Larry Miller (front row, fourth from left).

Hugh Morton visited the Grand Canyon in late January, 1987.

Today marks the 94th anniversary of the establishment of Grand Canyon National Park.  A week ago, coincidentally, marked what would have been Hugh Morton’s 92nd birthday.

Morton visited the Grand Canyon in late January 1987, based upon the dates of “01-26-1987″ and “01-30-1987″ printed with a matrix dot printer on the plastic mounts of two rolls of 35mm slides.

Or did he?

Let’s use this scenic photograph, and the little we know about it, as an exercise in a way to use the Morton finding aid—with an added caveat on how to use calendar dates provided in the finding aid as starting points that need confirmation rather than exactitudes.

Searching the Morton collection inventory for “January 1987″ using a Web browser’s “Find” function reveals several matches.  Cutting and pasting the subjects into a new list ordered by date gives us a glimpse into Morton’s photographic activities for that month:

• “Grand Canyon,” January 1987 (35mm slides, no exact dates)
• “UNC-Maryland,” (UNC-Jacksonville University basketball), January 1987 (35mm color slides; no exact dates)
• “Bulls-Celtics” (Mascot, cheerleaders. Jordan, Bird), January 1987 (35mm slides)

• Gary Everhardt, George Olson, Roy Taylor and Cotton Robinson: “Western North Carolina Tomorrow,” 12 January 1987 (black-and-white negatives)

• “Good Snow, Doc Watson,” (sunset, people in creek), 14 January 1987 (35mm color slides)
• Gorilla, 15 January 1987 (35mm slides)
• “Dean Smith” (Press conference), 15 January 1987 (35mm slides)

• Kuralt, Charles “North Carolina is My Home”: Chapel Hill, 23 January 1987 (black-and-white negatives)

• Michael Jordan, Chicago, 27 January 1987 (black-and-white negatives)

• “UNC-Clemson, Clemson, Kenny Smith scores 41,” 28 January 1987 (black-and-white negatives)

• “Mildred in Snow,” 29 January 1987 (black-and-white negatives)

The lines above, extracted from the topically arranged finding aid, form a chronological list.  Looking closely, you can see that Hugh Morton would not likely have been at the Grand Canyon on the 26th and the 30th if he was in Chicago on the 27th . . . and Mildred the Bear probably didn’t take a trip to Arizona!  Also, with a bit of checking you find that the basketball game between UNC and Jacksonville was played on December 13th—a month earlier!  What’s going on here?

For those readers who have only photographed with digital cameras, the following may seem a bit strange, but it is true.  Unlike your camera’s EXIF data that records the exact time—to the second—that you make an exposure in camera, the date provided on a 35mm slide mount records the date the photography lab processed the film.  So what is going on in line two of the list?  I haven’t gone to the slides to verify this, but Morton likely didn’t finish shooting an entire roll of film at the UNC–Jacksonville game, so he finished the roll during the game against Maryland on January 8th.

Not all slide mounts have dates, but there may have been a postmark on the box indicating when it left the lab.  Dates provided for negatives, on the other hand, are mostly those that Hugh Morton wrote on negative sleeves and envelopes; some, however, were determined by staff who either discovered or easily obtained dates for events.  A good take away from this exercise is to be sure you understand what the dates represent, and verify them if it is important to your research or project.

Understanding what machine printed dates represent is good information to keep in mind if you are looking at old family photographs and see dates that don’t make sense on snapshot borders or the backs of prints.  A family group portrait made with everyone standing next to a snowman at Uncle Charlie’s birthday in January that has a “July 1956″ date stamped on the photograph may mean that Aunt Esther didn’t take the camera out of the hall closet for several months.

The above list of Morton’s January 1987 subjects presents a revealing insight to the range and depth of Hugh Morton’s photographic career in microcosm.  That’s an pretty impressive cast of characters and locations for one month—figuratively as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.

You may have discerned in the list that there are some other date conflicts, incomplete dates, or things that make you go “Hmmmmm.”  If the spirit moves you, have fun trying to clarify them, then leave a comment with your conclusions.  You might even be able to find out when Morton went to the Grand Canyon.  If anyone recognizes Morton’s exactly location when he made the photograph, we might even be able to use shadow casting to date the image.  That would make for another interesting post.

Now if we only knew why Hugh Morton went to the Grand Canyon . . . .