Archive for June, 2003
Posted on June 2, 2003 - by Ralph Grizzle
Roads Less Traveled
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s graduating class walked without senior Charles Bishop Kuralt in the spring of 1955. The 20-year-old, who at age 16 had enrolled with an intent to major in history, had been too busy in his role as editor of the student-run newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, to bother with attending to his studies — or even going to classes.
Where he did go after his class walked was directly to The Charlotte News, the largest evening newspaper in the Carolinas. There, he wrote front-page stories on a wide range of topics, including one story about a runaway circus elephant named Vicki who eluded capture for 11 days. “The elephant who went out like a lion came in like a lamb,” Kuralt wrote, and then went on to tell how Vicki was captured.
The young reporter dressed as a bum to get inside a rescue mission to write about what life was like for the destitute. “I was there to find out what it’s like on the other side of the green-painted plate glass windows that face the street,” he wrote, under a headline that read, “Night at the Rescue Mission: Reporter Kuralt Checks In.” He is pictured under a “Jesus Saves” sign, slim, a hat casting a shadow on the upper part of his face, a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips.
He wrote a touching story about the death of a sparrow, not normally the stuff of newspapers but an engaging story when told by such a talented writer. “She was no mere straw-and-grass sparrow. Somewhere in the Diana Drive neighborhood of Joe Ammons, she had found a fine, long length of nylon thread. With infinite skill and care, she had wound the nylon thread in her nest. It was like the frosting on the cake, or the single red cherry atop a sundae, or the bright chrome strip of an automobile.” But the story ended in tragedy: One of the sparrow’s babies strangled itself on the thread; the mother despaired and abandoned her fine nest.
Kuralt was assigned to write a story on prostitution in Charlotte, and after some investigation cheerfully reported that Charlotte had no lascivious ladies of the night. “Charles tells me there’s no prostitution in this town,” the News editor growled at reporter Julian Scheer. “Do you think that’s true?” Scheer replied that there might be a few. “Well, do you think you could find Charles one so he can do this story?” Charles found the story, all right, but felt he was a washout at hard news reporting.
He had been at the News for nearly a year when he began to pen a column in April 1956 that would pave the way for the rest of his career. “People” sent him onto the streets of Charlotte in search of stories. “Each day I would seek out some cop or kid or cab driver,” Kuralt wrote, “and tell his story in a few hundred words . . . I used to walk bravely up to panhandlers and crapshooters — the sort of people others avoided — and strike up conversation.”
On the streets, Kuralt met the likes of Israel Smith who collected junk by day and played the violin at night. He wrote that Smith had been educated at New York’s Julliard School of Music. “But there’s no money in Mozart,” the junkman told him. “There is money in piles of lamp bases, garage roofs and airplane motors,” Kuralt concluded.
He wrote about Martha Farmer finding love in a bus station, and then going to buy a new dress for a date only to be disappointed. He wrote about people, black and white, and about Civil Rights as Bob Raiford is fired from WBT for airing opinions about an attack on Nat “King”Cole in Birmingham, Alabama.
Kuralt’s talent for doing these types of stories did not go unnoticed. The Scripps-Howard newspaper syndicate awarded Kuralt its Ernie Pyle Award for the 170 “People” columns he penned in 1956. CBS sent a congratulatory note; Kuralt fired back, “If you really mean you’re impressed by this, isn’t there something you could do?” The director of news at CBS responded with a job offer, and thus began Kuralt’s 37 years at the network.
The reporter who hosted such popular programs as “Sunday Morning” and “On the Road” remained virtually unchanged from the writer who got his start at The Charlotte News. The tone, styles and reportorial substance laid down in “People” by 22-year-old Kuralt – trim, bright-eyed and as fresh as the starched white shirt he wore – differed little from that of the balding, roll-bellied reporter who at CBS collected 13 Emmys and other awards for the stories he found in places where no one else thought to look.
–
Asheville resident Ralph Grizzle is author of “Remembering Charles Kuralt” and editor of “Charles Kuralt’s People.”
Posted on June 2, 2003 - by Ralph Grizzle
Building Biltmore
In the early 1960s, Asheville’s Biltmore House was, in the accountant’s parlance, bleeding red ink. The 250-room French Renaissance Chateau, which had been opened for tourism in 1930 at the city and county’s request, was losing $250,000 a year. Profits from Biltmore Dairy were used to shore up the losses, but at the rate things were going, the house would soon milk the dairy dry.
The grandson of George Washington Vanderbilt knew that the estate could not cling to such a precarious financial precipice for long. So the young junior officer at New York’s Chase National Bank did what Asheville native Thomas Wolfe could not do: He returned home.
William Amherst Cecil, who was born and raised in the sprawling Biltmore House, returned to “see what could be done about the old family homestead,” an 8,000-acre dairy farm and country estate. With his wife and children by him, Bill Cecil began the arduous process of putting the family home on the road to self-sustainability.
He launched a vigorous marketing campaign that included offering photos of the Biltmore House to newspapers. In those fledgling days of building a business, he wore all caps — manager, promoter, ticket salesman. “The work was so diverse,”he says. “If I tired of doing one thing, I could go do another.”
He experimented with growing mushrooms and salad tomatoes for distribution. “We did anything that we could,”he says. “Even landscaping for outsiders. We couldn’t afford a full-time landscaping crew, so we tried to fill in their time doing work off the estate.”After eight years, Cecil had reversed the tide, and in 1968, the house realized a profit, $16.34. Black ink never looked so good. “It made my day,”Cecil says, adding perspective: “It certainly was better than losing half-a-million dollars.”
At last, Biltmore House was able to sustain itself without needing subsidies from the dairy farm, so in 1979, Bill and his brother George split their inheritance — George took the farm and some land; Bill held on to the house and grounds.
Nearly 1 million visitors pass through the gates today, compared with 361,000 visitors in 1979. 1998 revenues, the last year for which figures were available, exceeded $53 million, compared to 1979 revenues of $3 million. In 2001, Biltmore opened a deluxe inn on the property, and with it, created many more new jobs. Biltmore now has a payroll of more than 1,500 employees, compared with 129 in 1979.
Admission to Biltmore, $2.50 in the early 60s, is now $36. “When it was $2.50, you got to see the ground floor, the gardens, the greenhouse and the dairy barn, and that was about it,”Cecil says.
What makes Bill Cecil’s story even more interesting is that had his grandfather not died of a heart attack at age 54, the estate may never have had the chance to fulfill George Vanderbilt’s ambition for a self-sustaining estate.
Shortly before his death, Vanderbilt was lobbying the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take control of the house. The wealthy Vanderbilt had spent most of his inheritance building the house, and now the country’ new income and inheritance taxes meant that he could no longer afford the upkeep.
To stay solvent following her husband’s death, Vanderbilt’s widow deeded away all but 11,000 of 125,000 acres. Had it not been for her prudence, Biltmore would not have been what it is today.
Bill Cecil’s grandfather will be remembered for constructing a country estate of magnificent proportion, but his grandson receives credit for assuring that the estate would be around for generations to come. It is one thing to build a house but quite another to maintain it.
Cecil retired from Biltmore in 1995, during the centennial year of the house’ opening. He left the business in the care of his son, Bill Jr., who became CEO and president.
