Archive for the ‘Celebrities’ Category

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 January 2, 2002 - by Ralph Grizzle

Well Known North Carolinians And Their Heroes

How do we define our heroes? Webster’s Dictionary tells us they are mythological or legendary figures “endowed with great strength, courage or ability.” Certainly our militia, our firefighters, our policemen and others who face great danger with dauntless courage fit that definition, and you’ll meet at least one of those folks, Daniel Johnson, on the following pages.

Johnson, who lost both legs saving the life of a fellow sailor, says heroes are people who act as “symbols for us to model our lives after.” After talking with many North Carolinians for this story, we suspect Johnson’s definition is closer to the truth.

Heroes inspire us to be the best that we can be. Many of the North Carolinians you’ll meet on the following pages took inspiration from someone who they considered to be the best at what they did.

Heroes need not perform feats of heroic proportions to be admired. They do not have to rush into burning buildings or put themselves in the line of fire. They may be immortalized as heroes simply by listening, or loving, or caring.

When Morley Safer asked Charles Kuralt why he defined the people he met on the back roads as heroes, Kuralt replied, “Because they keep the spirit of the country alive.” That is the essence of heroes. By keeping the spirit alive, they embody us with irrepressible verve. In doing so, they perpetuate a new generation of heroes, endowing all of us with strength and courage – and teaching us to tap into abilities that we never knew we had.

Bob Timberlake, artist

My dad instilled his work ethic in me. He worked hard, was the salt of the earth, one of the people who made America what it is. He worked in a furniture store that my grandfather started in 1910. The furniture store had a funeral home in back, and he ran both. He enjoyed the relationships that he had with the families. It wasn’t death [to be mourned] but a family gathering, a reunion. He made lemonade out of lemons wherever possible.

Later, he started a gas company. After working all day, he and Jack [an employee] would leave the house with some sort of gas appliance – a water heater or a stove – on the truck. Dad would not come home until he had sold that gas appliance. For the first three years, he averaged selling 365 gas appliances a year. He taught me that the best salesmen in the world were the ones who were in love with what they were selling. I am in love with what I am selling. The whole idea of what I do is to bring a little joy and happiness into people’s lives. Dad set the stage for that.

Betty Rae McCain, former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

“North Carolinians are so wonderful that you can be inspired by all sorts of people. One may be a lawyer; another, a musician, an artist or a doctor. So it’s hard to single out just one. Jim Hunt, who I worked with since 1966, is one. Bill Friday, who I adore, is another. My daddy was the funniest man alive, and my mother was saintly. I miss both of them daily. And I devotedly loved Mrs. J.B. Spilman, now deceased. She was the first North Carolina Employment Security Commission Chairman, worked until she was almost 90 and was someone who persevered in the face of great tragedy, including the loss of her son in World War II. My husband makes the cut – for his long-suffering.”

William Friday, University of North Carolina President Emeritus

“My dad had four sons and a daughter, and though he had attended Chapel Hill for only one summer session, he sent all five of us through college, four of us for advanced degrees. He just drilled education into us all the time when we were growing up. One of the most memorable times was when he drove me in an A-Model Ford to Wake Forest. We walked in, and the dean said, ‘Son, do want to go to school here?’ He took my father’s word for [tuition payment].”

Friday’s father David L. Friday was chairman of his church’s Board of Deacons and Mayor of Dallas, North Carolina. He worked with the Boy Scouts and “did all the things that inspired us to be committed to public service.”

“My dad taught us lessons of tenacity, commitment, hard work and family love. So he has to be my hero.”

Charlie Daniels, Award-Winning musician, vocalist

“Jesus Christ is my big hero, and along with him Billy Graham and Pat Robertson. Billy Graham has such integrity. He is a man who has stood for what he believes in for so many years and has never wavered. There’s never been a doubt about his integrity or honesty. He’s just someone you can really look up to.”

Daniels, born in Wilmington, says he was raised in a Christian home and that though he strayed, he gradually came back to Christianity. The Charlie Daniels Band frequently has performed at the Billy Graham Crusades. Recalling the first time he met Graham, Daniels says: “I was excited about meeting him. I called him Dr. Graham. He said, ‘I’m not much of a doctor.’ He was very humble.”

Daniel Johnson, naval officer who lost legs saving sailor’s life

“I was fortunate when I was growing up that I didn’t have to look too far to find heroes. My grandfather [Eugene L. Daniel] was a chaplain during World War II. He landed in Africa with the U.S. forces and was captured during a campaign by the Germans. Though he could have avoided capture, he volunteered to stay behind with troops who were injured and could not retreat with the Americans. He set the example for me.

“I found his stories to be heroic and learned through him that heroes were important. I think of heroes as people who have lived a certain standard that a lot of us look up to. They provide visible symbols for us to model our lives after. I don’t know what life would be like without them.”

Johnson, a native of Hickory, lost both legs below the knee in 1999 after saving the life of another sailor during an accident aboard the command ship USS Blue Ridge in Korea.

Doris Betts, novelist and Alumni Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill

“Apart from my parents, I have to name the Litaker family, which bought the house where we were renting an apartment when I was about 8. They were schoolteachers, the kind of people who took – and kept – piles of National Geographics, who still had their own childhood books stored in the attic waiting for a starved reader like me, and who allowed me to learn to play their piano.”

Betts also recognizes “a long string of devoted teachers” in the Statesville public schools, “especially Mrs. Josie White who died recently, in her 90s, and was still correcting hospital workers’ grammar from her deathbed. The Rev. Mr. H. Louis Patrick, now of Charlotte, who first made it clear that believers and intellectuals were not in opposition. College writer and teachers, like Peter Taylor, Robie Macauley, Frances Gray Patton at Woman’s College in Greensboro, and Jessie Rehder and C. Hugh Holman of UNC-Chapel Hill, newspaper editor Robert Mason of Sanford and Norfolk. So many of these, after emptying themselves of many kindnesses and after setting so high a standard of performance and character, have died, but never their memory, never their influence, never my gratitude.”

Earl Scruggs, born in North Carolina, the banjo picker moved to Nashville in 1945.

“My hero was my father, who died when I was 4 years old. I remember him pickin’ a little bit, and I missed him a terribly lot after his death. He was a farmer in the Flint Hill community in Cleveland County. Like him, I farmed until I was 16, then went to work in a thread mill in Shelby. Because of my father’s early inspiration, I grew up with a banjo and guitar – I was playing before he passed away – but my favorite was always the banjo.”

Roy Ackland, host of Roy’s Folks

“Charles Kuralt was such an inspiration to me when I was younger. His genuiness is the thing I learned to appreciate most. He was not just reporting; he went beyond the story and showed genuine interest in the individual. In his travels around the country, he would never go out on our differences. He showed us to be all members of the same club – just living in different places.”

Fred Chappell, award-winning poet and novelist

“Ron McNair, the astronaut who died aboard the Challenger (1986) and who was one of the few black astronauts. He was courageous and extremely learned. I always wanted to meet him. I think of him as one of the martyrs for science. Astronauts have done so much to further our knowledge of our own world.”

Senator Jessie Helms

“My number one hero is Jesus Christ, followed by Thomas Jefferson, Douglas MacArthur, Robert E. Lee, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Jefferson understood the meaning of freedom. To him it was not just a word but a blessing. He realized it can’t be achieved or kept easily. MacArthur showed courage when others did not, and Robert E. Lee – well, my wife would kick up a fuss if I didn’t include him. If there were no Churchill, I don’t know what would have become of World War II. Thatcher was cut out of the same bolt of cloth as Churchill. She was a tough lady who understood that the socialist government, which was the alternative to hers, just wouldn’t work.”

Hugh Morton, photographer, guardian of Grandfather Mountain

“Charles Kuralt, Charlie Justice and Bill Friday come to mind. All of them were – or are – the best at what they did. Charlie Justice was unquestionably the most exciting football player we ever had in North Carolina. Bill Friday, having served as head of the university system for 30 years, did a lot for higher education in the state. Charles Kuralt was the best ever in his line of work.

“I’m a hero worshipper. If I see someone who is good at what they do – a good plumber, a good carpenter – I have admiration for them. . I never have been the best at anything, but I am inspired by people who are. Just recently I went to the 90th birthday of Luther Thomas, who lives near Burnsville. He can carve the most marvelous black-eyed Susans from one piece of wood. He doesn’t use glue or anything else. He carves a narrow stem with flowers branching out of the top.”

Jerry Bledsoe, Best-selling author

“Mark Twain, our greatest writer as far as I’m concerned. Wise, funny, true

and good. His work is as fresh today as when it was written, and I never tire

of reading it. In low times, I often pull Twain down from the shelf.”

Joe Gallison, actor, now living in Wilmington, who for 17 years played Dr. Neal Curtis on “Days of Our Lives.”

“Anton Checkov, the consummate writer who died at age 44. To be a great writer you have to understand the human experience. Checkov understood it more beautifully than any other writer, except for Shakespeare perhaps. It’s also true of actors, to the extent to which they understand humanity and themselves and have access to that, they can recognize their own potential as illuminators of the human condition.”

John Ehle, novelist

“Paul Green took a special interest in my work and was supportive of all sorts of causes that were important to me when I was in my 30s. He was very helpful and encouraging, a good advisor, and a wonderful person to sit down with and talk over a manuscript or an issue. He was very much against the death penalty. When he was living in New York City, he would invite me to use his guestroom at no charge, but he would always ask for a contribution for somebody on death row. I’d give $100. He thought money to hire the right lawyers could save anybody on death row. Writing was one thing for him, but so were certain liberal causes.”

Lee W. Kinard Jr., former TV anchor, reporter, writer and producer.

“Edward R. Murrow is a hero for me. His voice was one of the first radio voices that I adhered to when I was 9 or 10 years old. From my earliest years, radio was a real companion. My mother put me to bed so early that I had to read books from the Concord Public Library or listen to radio. I listened to Murrow on WBT radio out of Charlotte. He became the inspiration for me to get into radio. The drama of, ‘Gee, wonder what it would be like to do what he’s doing?’ ”

Linda Lavin, the star of “Alice” from 1976 through 1985 makes her home in Wilmington

“It’s not one particular person. There are many, such as the women of the last two decades who have made great positive strides for all women economically, spiritually and politically. No one woman embodies all of that for me. I learn from multitude. My philosophy is that my life hasn’t been turned around by just one person but by the inspiration of how one person connects with another and another and how the community formed from those connections informs me.”

Marijo Moore, Cherokee author, artist, poet and journalist.

“My paternal Cherokee granddaddy, Cornelius Hansford Moore. I see his faint outline in a ragged gray suit and worn fedora hat as he stands on a street corner in front of my grandmother’s tiny shotgun house. Granddaddy stood five-feet-four inches and was slight of stature. ‘Paper-sack-brown’ was how my family described his coloring. Shiny, crow-black hair and eyes, he called himself a ‘full-bloodied Cherokee.’

“When I was growing up in the 50s, it wasn’t as acceptable to be American Indian as it is now. I am sure at one time Granddaddy was extremely proud of his Indianness, but because he was constantly put down by others, this changed. Granddaddy preferred to pray down by the river or in the woods. I think these were the only two places he felt safe and at peace with the world. Because he did not attend a Christian church, he was ridiculed and, more often, ignored. I know this hurt him terribly and so he drank to hide his pain. It was during his drunkenness that he would sing in Cherokee and tell me how proud he was that I had his blood. Some people called Granddaddy crazy.

But his craziness has manifested itself in my spirit as the madness of creativity, and for this, I am grateful. The Cherokee songs he sang to me and the stars are the words that sparkle in my writings and the blood he passed on to me is the blood of survival.”

Max Lanier, former Major League pitcher and North Carolina Sports Hall of Famer

“Stan Musial was my hero. He was not only a good hitter but also a friend of mind. A down-to-earth guy.” Now living in Florida, Denton-native Lanier says Musial taught him to not let fame go to his head. “Musial would talk to anybody and go all out to help them. He was just an everyday guy who was raised in Pennsylvania where his dad worked in the coal mines.”

Pat Hingle, living in Wilmington, Hingle is one of the industry’s busiest character actors

“My father flew the coup when I was six years old, so as a child, I lived off and on with my grandfather who was a [railway] engineer. I would swell with pride when he came puffing up the Saluda Grade. He would wave to me with his red bandana and engineer’s cap. Now this was before the airplane, so a steam engineer was a very respected character. The railway ran right by Main Street, with people piling into Saluda from Charleston to get away from heat. I was this skinny kid with short pants and no shirt. The other kids would point at me and say, ‘That’s his grandfather.’ I’d strut around. It was a big deal.”

Robert Morgan, novelist

“One of my heroes is Dean A. Ward, principal of Tuxedo Elementary School when I was a student there in the 1950s, and my Sixth Grade teacher. Growing up at a time when there were no rural high schools in Henderson County, Mr. Ward had worked his way through Fruitland Institute, and entered Furman University around 1922. After graduating from Furman he earned a master’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m sure he was the first person from our community to earn an advanced degree. I have two particular memories of Mr. Ward as a teacher. When I began school in 1951, I was overwhelmed by the bleak prospect of sitting in a desk all day. I made it through the first half day, but the next day, the first full day, I broke down in grief and desolation, knowing I’d be away from home all day. The teacher took me to the principal’s office. Instead of scolding me, Mr. Ward sat me on his lap and let me play with the gold Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. He made funny faces until he had me laughing, and he said, ‘Robert, you don’t want to go home now; we couldn’t run this school without you.’ I returned to the classroom feeling my importance, and never cried again.

“In the Sixth grade I fell in love with reading, and because the Henderson County Bookmobile had begun to come to Green River Church once each month, I had access to more books than I had ever seen before. I read Jack London and James Oliver Curwood’s stories of the Yukon. I read ‘Farmer Boy’ and ‘Oliver Twist.’ I liked to read so much I often took the books to school and read them inside my spelling book. If Mr. Ward caught me reading while he lectured, he simply lifted the book out of my hands and laid it on the shelf, without pausing in his presentation. He drilled us in grammar and made us recite the parts of speech. He was a master storyteller and often entertained us with scenes from ‘The Odyssey’ and one afternoon told us the whole plot of ‘Silas Marner.’

“In the spring of 1957 the class took a day trip to The Biltmore House near Asheville. Because I didn’t have the three-dollar cost I had to stay at school while the rest of the class left on the excursion. Mr. Ward told me that instead of sitting idle all day I should write a story. Knowing I loved stories of the North he gave me a plot: a man is lost in the Canadian Rockies. How does he find his way back to civilization? I sat with the page in front of me, puzzling about how to begin a story. Finally I decided I would just put down the details about how he survives. I told how he sharpened a stick on a rock to make a spear, and how he rubbed two sticks together to start a fire, and how he caught a fish by threading a worm on a thorn. I got so caught up writing the details that before I knew it the day was over and the other students had returned. That was my first story.

“Mr. Ward taught hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people in his years at Tuxedo School. Many of us have had better lives, and been better people, because we knew him in those early years.”

Roman Gabriel, National Football League’s Most Valuable Player in 1969

“My father a Filipino guy who worked as a waiter and cook for Atlantic Coastline Railroad. They retired him at 69, but he went on to work as a short-order cook until age 90. He passed away working. He was probably first and foremost the guy I tried to pattern myself after, because of his work ethic. Dad wasn’t a sports person, but he taught me to smile and laugh and enjoy what I was doing, whether I was having a good time or not. I don’t remember ever going on the field not to ‘play’ ball.”

Tom Wicker, former New York Times columnist

A native of Hamlet, North Carolina, Wicker, who now resides in Vermont, says the person he has admired most over the years is Dr. Frank Porter Graham. “I admired him for his character, integrity and his courage.”

Wilma Dykeman, writer, historian and environmentalist

“I have many heroes. Eleanor Roosevelt, because of her political and personal commitment to justice and compassion for all people. Rachel Carson, because of her book, ‘Silent Spring,’ which brought the environment to our attention. James Stokely, my late husband, who treated everyone in the same wonderful way – by being a wonderful listener. John Hope Franklin, who overcame all the impediments of racism to make history by writing history. And Mark Twain, because he made us laugh and think at the same time.”

Posted on September 2, 2001 - by Ralph Grizzle

Dear Gentle Reader

Miss Manners Speaks Her Mind, Politely, Of Course, On Travel And Cruises

She is the doyenne of decorum, the mistress of manners, a perfect lady – born, alas, to an imperfect society. For nearly a quarter of a century, she has championed the worthy cause of civility. She is Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners, and through her widely syndicated thrice-weekly newspaper column, she wisely counsels those grappling with issues of right and proper conduct in a civilized society.

As regular readers of the Miss Manners column well know, Martin is an earnest pupil of an earnest science, etiquette. Her intent is not to elevate herself socially – as is the aim of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “Bouquet”), the snobbish wannabe depicted by Patricia Routledge in the early 1990s BBC comedy series, “Keeping Up Appearances.” Martin’s altruistic mission is to gently prod society well within the realm of common courtesy.

Nor is hers the mindless doing of some elderly, chastising Victorian prude. After all, Martin began her Miss Manners column as a young woman in 1978, two years before her mid-centennial birthday. She is now 63 and as serious about her trade as ever. In conversation, she refers to her vocation as “the business of manners,” and begins the occasional sentence with the words, “In the manners business . . .” Clearly, this is more than a hobby.

Like any devoted student, she is an astute observer.

”Every year, Miss Manners notices less difference between dressing for venturing forth to see the world and for staying at home and watching television.”

This, in response to a “Gentle Reader” who had written Miss Manners to complain of half-naked seatmates sprawled in coach class, their gaping legs spread in a come-hither manner, their sweating flesh knowing no boundaries. In response, Miss Manners proselytizes with such cunning that you find yourself involuntarily nodding your noggin in agreement, conspiring with her.

“Miss Manners doesn’t expect anyone else to remember that people actually once dressed up for travel. She is aware that when people discover that in pre-air conditioned days, the only concessions their ancestors made to summer were to lighten the color and weight of their voluminous clothing, they do not marvel at their fortitude. They marvel at their stupidity.”

As the undisputed, and undisputable, arbiter of etiquette, she can appear, at times, brusquely opinionated and unyielding. Yet, such decisiveness assures that the rules of civility will not be frittered away.

”Even she does not altogether scorn the argument of comfort. But the comfort standard should apply to the comfort of others, as well as oneself. People get uncomfortable when they have to sit close to strangers who are airing their sweating flesh.”

The fact that she proffers most of what she dispenses with humor endears you to her in such a way that you invariably find yourself punting for her team.

”They also get uncomfortable when they watch strangers approach their monuments, national symbols or houses of worship as if they were going to the beach. And in such cases, ‘uncomfortable’ is a euphemism for hopping mad.”

Unknowingly, you have taken up the righteous cause of civility yourself, scoring a victory not only for the ever-proper Miss Manners but also for all of society. I know that I will consider my attire before boarding the next plane.

Introductions Please
Born in Washington, D.C., Judith Sylvia Perlman moved about the world, because her father, a United Nations economist, was frequently transferred. In the days before she could even conceive of becoming Miss Manners, the young girl lived in various foreign capitals, which invariably acquainted her with the customs and traditions outside her homeland.

Back in the United States, she attended Wellesley College and after graduating joined the Washington Post as a reporter. Before long, she found her name climbing the masthead, first as a feature writer and, later, as a theater and drama critic.

As one of the original members of the Post’s Style and Weekend sections, she covered social events at the White House and the embassies. In 1978, she donned the mantle of Miss Manners. More than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad carry her column.

She has penned nearly a dozen books, some with titles longer than Welsh place names: “Miss Manners’ Guide to Domestic Tranquility: The Authoritative Manual For Every Civilized Household, However Harried.” Her titles, in fact, leave little ambiguity as to what one could expect to find inside. Consider these: “Miss Manner’s Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior” or “Miss Manners Rescues Civilization from Sexual Harassment, Frivolous Lawsuits, Dissing and Other Lapses in Civility.”

Her book on rearing perfect children is based on her own experience, and she confesses to having two such specimens (would you have expected otherwise?) in her Washington home, which she shares—in blissful domestic tranquility, no doubt—with Mr. Martin, a scientist and playwright.

Martin writes from her home on a variety of topics. Among her travel-related columns, Miss Manners has addressed proper attire, monograms on luggage tags, air rage, seat-kickers, seat-recliners and cruising. All are presented with such a witty dose of humor that they give readers the giggles.

”When Miss Manners read that great numbers of people had been inspired to sign up for cruises by seeing the film ‘Titanic,’ she feared that they would be disappointed with the reality. True, they might not complain if their trips turned out to be less eventful . . . The shock must come when these movie-goers attempt to book themselves into steerage and find there isn’t any. Class segregated cruise ships no longer exist, and today’s seagoing passenger has no choice but to allow themselves to be waited upon. What fun it that?”

We talked one morning with Miss Manners about that perennially favorite topic—travel. We opened the discussion with air rage. Miss Manners told us that she understands the explanations for unruly behavior aloft, which, she astutely points out, began with the decline in airline seating space and services. “Jam people into cramped quarters, frighten them, confiscate their belongings, deprive them of decent nourishment, limit their ability to tend to their bodily needs, and keep them in suspense about their immediate fate—how can you possibly expect them to be polite?” she says.

Even so, passengers should never retaliate with vehemence, she says. “Provocation in the manners business is no excuse for being rude, or in the cases of air rage, for being violent and criminal,” she tells us.

So how should one respond? With patience, of course.

Moreover, Miss Manners says that is important to lower one’s expectations about travel. “We have this notion that a schedule is written in stone,” she says. “If a plane says it will be there at a certain time, we expect it to be, but we have all learned that this often is not the case.”

If you absolutely have to be at a certain destination at a certain time, to attend a wedding, for example, travel a day early, she says.

The Rome Rule
Miss Manners says that being informed of a country’s customs and rules of behavior helps one get the most from travel, Martin says. “When you see that people in other countries have different ways of doing things, it adds immeasurably to the experience.”

Travelers abroad often adopt the Rome Rule, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” This is fine, but the Rome Rule does not always apply.

Using the gesture of the group you are among, for example, is indeed a polite response, except when it is not, Miss Manners says. A non-Catholic should not greet the Pope by kissing his ring; the only people who should curtsey or bow to sovereigns are their own subjects; do not attempt customs that are too complex for you to master, such as Japanese bowing.

“Only after these questions of morality, allegiance and competence have been settled does the turf question arise,” she says. “At last, the Rome Rule applies. Yes, visitors should do their best to speak the hosts’ language of behavior.”

The Ugly American
In Miss Manners’ view, the American abroad is no longer the proverbial ugly American. “Half a century ago, Europeans did such a good job at ridiculing Americans for admiring their history and art that many have been tiptoeing through apologetically ever since,” she says. But lately, she observes that the Europeans have moved on to ridiculing one another.

“Depending on which country you visit, you will hear complaints about Swedish tourists, English tourists, German tourists, French tourists and all varieties of Eastern European tourists. When they really get going, they also throw in Japanese tourists, Australian tourists and Argentinean tourists.”

Clearly, the dislike of American tourist has been crowded out by the disdain of others. “Anytime people come in large numbers to a country where everybody else is trying to work, they do tend to attract this sort of grumbling,” she says. “If they violate the etiquette of the country, they attract even more grumbling. But Americans are much more conscious now than many other tourists. And we are no worse, and perhaps even a little better, than the others.”

Posted on April 2, 2001 - by Ralph Grizzle

Stories That Make Us Smile

The Old North State may be geographically diverse (after all, our license plates once bore the phrase “Variety Vacationland”) and even culturally separated from one end to the other (can the folks from Murphy really claim that much in common with those in Manteo?), but our oral tradition unites and binds us. From the ridges of our majestic mountains, the High Country’s Orville and Ray Hicks engage audiences with their Appalachian antics and Jack tales while on the fringe of our Atlantic shores, Harkers Islander David Yeomans tells tales of life on Cape Lookout. We are a state of stories and of storytellers.

A good dose of humor permeates many of the stories told in our state. We North Carolinians seem to appreciate few things more than a good laugh, or at the very least a subtle smile, at the end of a well-told story. And we’ve been blessed with an abundance of folks who can tell a funny story. If space permitted, in fact, we could fill this issue (and probably a year’s worth of issues) with amusing stories spun by North Carolina’s storytellers and humorists. For now, though, we hope you’ll sit back and enjoy just a few of the stories that make us smile.

Carl Goerch

Founder of the magazine you’re holding (called The State from 1933 through 1996), Carl Goerch was born in New York state in 1891 but came to North Carolina in 1913 as a newspaper editor. Goerch’s anecdotes appeared throughout the pages of The State and in his half dozen books. Here’s a story you may remember from the magazine’s March 1, 1969, issue.

This lady in Raleigh was having a bad time at the bridge club. She trumped her partner’s ace, reneged twice and passed an informatory double. She seemed confused and uncomfortable. Finally she excused herself and went to the powder room.

When she returned, her playing picked up and she and her partner made the rubber. “What happened to you?” asked the partner. “You’re really back in the game.”

“Took off my girdle,” replied the lady calmly.

Orville Hicks

Orville Hicks was raised in Beech Mountain, one of 11 children. With no radio or television at his home, young Orville listened nightly to his mother, who told stories that had been handed down from Orville’s grandfather, the legendary Council Harmon, the earliest known teller of Jack tales in Western North Carolina.

Orville travels the state”¢the country, in fact”¢amusing audiences with his Appalachian antics. During the week and on Saturdays, he manages a container site, located on U.S. 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock. The dump and recycling station has become a virtual tourist attraction, as those who use the facility stop to listen to Orville’s tales, like the one that follows. Orville’s cousin, by the way, is Ray Hicks, one of the most famous living American traditional storytellers.

Well I had two uncles back in the mountains ‘ere. They went out and bought ‘em a horse apiece. We got the horses home and got to lookin’ at ‘em, and that one says, “How we goin’ tell these horses apart?”

That other one said, “Let’s measure and see which one’s the longest.”

They got their ruler out and measured the horse and both of ‘em was the same longness. They measured them this other way and both of them was the same tallness, and they still couldn’t tell ‘em apart. That one said, “What we gonna do?”

The other uncle said, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll take the scissors and cut a piece out of my horse’s ear.”

He got the scissors and cut a little piece out of his horse’s ear and said, “Now we can tell them apart.”

Well, that night the other horse got hung in a barbwire fence and tore a piece out of his ear. They went down ‘ere the next morning to get ‘em and they couldn’t tell ‘em apart. That one said, “What we gonna do now?”

That other one said, “I’ll cut part of mine’s tail out.” He cut about three or four inches of the horse’s tail out. He said, “Now we can tell them apart.”

But that night that horse got hung in a barbwire fence and pulled part of its tail out. They got down ‘ere lookin’ at ‘em. That one said, “What we gonna do now? How we gonna tell ‘em apart?”

That other one said, “The only thing I know to do is you take the white one and I’ll keep the black one.”

Jerry Bledsoe

Best known for his gripping chronicles of true crimes, Jerry Bledsoe’s first true-crime book, Bitter Blood, spent six months on The New York Times 1988 best-seller list, half of that as No. 1. But Bledsoe also is known for his humorous writing. You may remember him as a columnist and reporter at The Charlotte Observer and The Greensboro Daily News & Record. He also served as contributing editor of Esquire magazine from 1972 until 1975, and his work has appeared in other national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and New York magazine.

As a journalist, he twice received the National Headliner Award and also the Ernie Pyle Memorial Award. His work has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize four times. Bledsoe was born in Danville, Virginia, but grew up in Thomasville. He and his wife Linda live in Asheboro and in Carroll County, Virginia, where he does his writing.

I didn’t intend to buy ham when I went to the supermarket, but I noticed it was on sale as I was passing the deli section, and I’m a sucker for anything on sale.

“I’ll have four ounces of that ham sliced thin,” I said to the young woman who came to help me from the bakery department, where she had been negotiating the sale of a Mickey Mouse birthday cake.

“You mean you only want one slice?” she said, looking puzzled.

“No, I don’t want it sliced thick,” I said, thinking perhaps she had misunderstood me. “I want it sliced thin.”

“Still that won’t be but about one slice,” she said.

Now it was my turn to look puzzled.

“A quarter of a pound?” I said. “That would have to be a thick slice.”

“Oh, you want a quarter of a pound?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, relieved that we were now getting on the same wave length.

“Then you want 25 ounces.”

“No,” I said, again befuddled, “I just want four ounces.”

“But that won’t be but one slice,” she said.

It was clear we’d reached some sort of impasse, and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Suddenly, her face brightened, as if she’d seen a way out.

She was holding a thick red marking pencil and she placed it on the scale.

“See, that weighs five ounces right there,” she said.

“No, that weighs point zero five of a pound,” I pointed out. “Five hundredeths of a pound.”

I was trying to figure out how many ounces that came to but my mind wouldn’t calculate that fast.

“A pound is 16 ounces, right?” I said.

“No a pound is a hundred ounces. See, we have computers now,” she said, indicating the digital scale.

“Oh,” I said, flabbergasted at what computers had now wrought. “Well, I just want a quarter of a pound.”

“So you want 25 ounces.”

“I guess so.”

“Sliced thin?”

“Sliced thin.”

“I see how you’re looking at it,” she said, attempting to offer solace as she handed me the ham, but it was clear that she was only feeling sympathy for an old codger that the computer age had left behind with 16-ounce pounds.

From The Bare-bottomed Skier and Other Unlikely Tales (Down Home Press, October 1990)

Betty Ray McCain

Faison-native Betty Ray McCain was the secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. She has served as president of NC Democratic Women and became the first chairwoman of the NC Democratic Party. Once called the funniest woman in America by actor Alan Alda, McCain is a natural-born storyteller.

Hal Crowther

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, of American parents, Hal Crowther is a graduate of Williams College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was a staff writer at Time and an associate editor at Newsweek, where he was television critic and editor of the media section. In 1981, he began writing his syndicated column for Spectator magazine, where he was executive editor from 1986 to 1989.

Since 1989, his column has originated at The Independent Weekly in Durham. In 1992, it received the Baltimore Sun’s H. L. Mencken Writing Award, the first weekly column so honored. The column is syndicated to weeklies and Sunday newspapers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

Crowther also writes a column on Southern culture and literature for The Oxford American and contributes regularly to the book section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has published two collections of his essays, Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (LSU Press, 2000) and Unarmed But Dangerous (Longstreet Press, 1996). He lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and is married to novelist Lee Smith.

Not long ago, my wife and I moved into a house in Hillsborough, North Carolina, that was built before the Civil War. It’s of no special interest to historians, as far as we know. But it has an aura. It belonged to a family of undertakers, for one thing. My bedroom overlooks an eighteenth-century cemetery, where a signer of the Declaration of Independence is interred along with Confederate officers, antebellum governors, and the like. We own a decrepit red carriage house from a previous century and an ancient freestone wall halfburied under honeysuckle, and out back a brick summer kitchen, older than the house, where someone’s slaves cooked supper when Andrew Jackson was president.

Crooked trees, stripped and maimed by the hurricane, give the place an Addams Family atmosphere. A friend, only half joking, tells me I’ve come to rest where I belong-in a decommissioned mortuary with a view of the graveyard.

History has tightened its grip on me. Don’t look for me on horseback next spring, dressed for a Civil War reenactment. But those accountants brandishing bayonets don’t seem quite as silly as they used to.

History lives in the bricks and stones. For a price, established by a realtor, you can listen to those stones day and night. In the South, as so many writers have noted, they never shut up . . .

From Cathedrals of Kudzu: A Personal Landscape of the South (Louisiana State University Press, August 2000)

Sidebar: Rah, Rah Carolina!

As a journalism student at UNC, I remember picking up a newspaper on the Chapel Hill campus that parodied NC State’s student newspaper, The Technician. The bogus paper was titled The Tachnician, so that pronouncing the title would make one sound as though they had a wad of tobacco wedged in the cheek. The paper contained front-page articles about farm issues, cow milking and the like, all silly stuff but a good poke at our rival NC State. I’m sure the students at the Raleigh campus responded in kind.

Jokes and prods between university rivals represent perhaps what most distinguishes North Carolina humor from Southern humor – or even from our national humor, if there is such a thing. While many of our puns may resonate throughout the South – especially those jokes about farmers, traveling salesmen, rednecks, religion and other topics – it is our universities and the rivalries they spawn that create a humor that arguably could be claimed as distinctly North Carolinian.

Sure, every state has its share of college jokes, but the abundance of universities in our state, and their proximity to one another, provide the fodder for many a good joke. After all, most of us claim allegiance to at least one of our state universities, whether or not we are alumni. There are avid Duke fans who have yet to set foot in Durham but love leveling a joke at Carolina, State and Wake Forest.

Of course, we Chapel Hill alumni respond in kind, as in the following joke reprinted in Tar Heel Laughter (University of North Carolina Press, August 1983).

A young Chapel Hill foursome . . . were burying a pet bird that a cat had killed. One little girl was telling her mother about it all. “We put it in a box and we dug a hole under the crabapple tree,” the youngster said wistfully. “And Tommy prayed about the bird, and we covered it up then. And then we sang a song . . . ”

“What did you sing?” asked the child’s mother.

“We sang ‘Don’t Give A Damn for Duke University’ because that was the only song that all four of us knowed,” she replied.

Asheville-based writer Ralph Grizzle is a graduate of School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Posted on February 2, 2001 - by Ralph Grizzle

Travels With Cathy

“Over the years, I’ve grown very fond of travel agents, and now I find myself wondering how on earth are these poor people going to stay in business,” she says. “It seems as though the travel industry is doing everything to drive travel agents out of business.” – Cathy Guisewite

Regular readers of the comic strip “Cathy” are familiar with the strip’s sympathetic take on travel agents. But they may not know that creator Cathy Guisewite began the travel agent strips, which run periodically in the “Cathy” cartoon, because she was the “world’s worst customer.”

“When I was single, I would book 12 tentative itineraries based on meeting my hypothetical boyfriend by the time I left,” says the Los Angeles-based cartoonist. “I couldn’t commit, would change my mind, would hate to make decisions.

“And then after the travel agent had invested all this time into putting together a trip for me, I would call up and ask if I could use up all my frequent flyer miles for the hotels and plane travel. Nobody actually screamed on the other end of the phone, but I always felt it was happening once I got off.”

So Guisewite began sketching Mabel in the role of a travel agent who faced such daily adversities as fickle clients, unstable pricing, commission cuts and other assaults on the travel agent’s livelihood. “I started thinking about what that job entails,” Guisewite says. “And I guess I did those first strips because I wanted travel agents to have a little voice through me.”

And indeed many travel agents do feel they have that tiny voice through Guisewite – or at least some comic relief from their daily frustrations. Guisewite says she receives regular fan mail from travel agents. “They tell me that I am speaking for them,” Guisewite says. “Or that it was like I was standing in their office when I created a particular strip.”

Truth is, however, that Guisewite has not even set foot in a travel agency – at least not for a “very long time.” Nor does the creative source for her travel agent strips, syndicated to more than 1,400 papers worldwide, come from an industry insider or shadow travel agent (ironically, she has yet to meet her own travel agent face-to-face – but more on that later.)

Rather, what Guisewite knows about the industry comes from her own experience of dealing with agents and from research. She routinely clips newspaper articles about the industry woes. But, of course, the real genius of the strip is Guisewite’s own brilliance and her understanding of people. “She just has this innate ability of getting into people’s hearts and minds,” says her publicist at Universal Press Syndicate.

“I inherited all of my indecision skills from my mother,” Guisewite says. “So to go away for two days, I need to pack seven pairs of shoes.”

Hat Tricks

A display attached to a hat reads:

First class-$240

Business class-$140

Full coach-$90

Saver-$80

Super Saver-$75

Superduper Saver-$70

Red Eye-$60

Rock Bottom-$48

“How much is this hat?” Cathy asks.

“That depends,” replies Mabel, the sales clerk.

“Depends on what?”

“We’ve decided to sell hats the way airlines sell plane tickets. Every hat in the store has been given up to 20 different prices at any given time that change weekly, daily or sometimes minute to minute. How much you pay for your hat depends on how desperate we are to unload it versus how desperate you are to buy it. Hats purchased 21 days in advance of hat season are, of course, cheaper than last-minute hat buys, and all prices are lower if you plan to keep the hat over a Saturday night.

“Once you’re paid, any exchange of the hat will be a minimum $50 fee,” Mabel continues, “even if all we have to do is say, ‘Here’s another hat.’ ”

“I don’t care what it costs!” Cathy bursts out. “”Just sell me the hat!”

“Oops,” Mabel says. “Sorry the last of our hats were reserved while we were chatting.”

That strip was based on a real-life episode with Guisewite’s travel agent, Sheila Laituri of Pepp Travel, an ASTA member in Encinitas, California. On the phone, Laituri was searching fares for Guisewite when the two veered off subject. “I had the lower fare, but while we were talking, I lost it,” Laituri says. “I had to call her back and tell her. She was good about it. She understood, but that’s where the cartoon came from. I thought it was clever that she could take something like a classic airline reservation and make something so funny out of it.”

Guisewite sent Laituri the strip on hats, but the cartoonist has never actually set foot into Pepp Travel’s office. Nonetheless, Guisewite understands the travel agent’s plight perhaps better than those who spend “too much” time in agency offices.

“We do enjoy working with her, because she understands the industry so well,” Laituri says. “She understands about fees and would rather pay them than try to find a cheaper fare on the internet. She understands the joys, frustrations and craziness of this ever-changing business.” (As a demonstration of her gut intuition, Guisewite warned us that her agent would say nice things about her. “Don’t believe them,” Guisewite says. “We drive them crazy.”)

Nagging Mother

Born in Dayton, Ohio, on September 5, 1950, Guisewite attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She walked with a B.A. in English in 1972, then went to work as an advertising writer. Rising the ranks, she became a vice president in the advertising industry.

But all along the way, her romantic life was unfulfilling. On nights when she wished she were dating, she sketched cartoon strips and routinely sent them to her parents. Her mother nagged Guisewite to send sample strips to a few cartoon syndicates. Caving to her mother’s desires, the devoted daughter sent drawings of her “miserable love life” to Universal Press Syndicate in 1976.

“Chances are the world isn’t screaming for a new comic strip as loudly as I’m hoping,” she wrote to Universal Press Syndicate Press that year. “But I have an idea for new comic strip that the world might like a lot if someone besides my mother ever got a chance to see it. So here it is. It’s a strip about being single in a pretty unusual time. About being a woman in a pretty unusual time. Mostly, I guess, it’s a strip about just being a person at any time – the most marvelous thing that every happened to anybody.”

The letter included several sketches about a female character whose circumstances were remarkably similar to Guisewite’s (later she begged Universal Press Syndicate to let her call the strip anything but “Cathy.”)

“If you’d like to see more,” the letter continued, “I’d be happy to send some more. If you’d like to talk about my idea, I’d be very happy to talk – any day, any place. If you should think I should concentrate my spare time at vacuuming instead of drawing cartoons, I won’t be happy . . . but I guess I’d like to know that too.”

Within a week, she had signed a contract with United Press Syndicate. The first “Cathy” comic strip made its debut in a few dozen newspapers on November 22, 1976. Striking a chord primarily among single women, the strip was an immediate hit.

“Cathy” even spawned 21 books, including The Child Within Has Been Awakened but the Old Lady on the Outside Just Collapsed; Thin Thighs in Thirty Years; Wake Me Up When I’m A Size Five; and A Mouthful of Breath Mints and No One to Kiss. The newest, Shoes: Chocolate for the Feet, was released this fall.

Quarter of Century and Still Going Strong

Now in her 25th year of “Cathy,” Guisewite says she has no plans to slow down. Though she married in 1997, she says she can relate to single women, because she was single for so long. “A lot of what I write about, even if Cathy is dating, is just male-female relationship stuff, and if anything, I have a lot more fuel for that now because I’m actually with a guy, so I’m not just reading about guys in a magazine anymore. I actually know what one is like up close.”

Also unlike Cathy, Guisewite is a mother of two (a four-year-old son through the recent marriage and an eight-year-old daughter who she adopted in 1992). Motherhood has made the shift to Cathy’s mindset more difficult. Guisewite now leaves her home for a nearby office to help make the transition. “I spent the first hour this morning arranging play dates, getting the weekend set up, getting my daughter’s school pictures ordered,” she says on the day that we called, “so it’s quite different.”

She counts her lucky stars that the strip was successful. The fact that she is able to work on it daily is therapeutic, she says. “It is a great way for me to get out all of my anxieties,” she says. “Travel is a great example. With the strips I’ve done about the travel agencies, I’m trying to be empathetic about what I’ve put these people through as I make my own plans.

“But also there are a lot of frustrations that everybody deals with in travel,” she adds, “with delays, with packing, with how big the carry-on can be, with other people who carry on too much stuff, with the food on the airplane, with waiting on shuttle buses and all that stuff that everybody gets mad about. I get to get mad about it and then go home and write about it and make a living at it. So it’s a great way to voice all that frustration.”

Because of such frustrations, however, Guisewite enjoys travel less now than she did in the early days of her career. Nowadays, she travels primarily for vacations. The devoted mother seldom boards a plane for business.

And she’s the first to concede that she’s not the ideal traveler. “I like to get somewhere, but I hate to make the arrangements,” she says. “I hate to decide when I’m going and I hate to commit. I hate this system now where you have to commit weeks and weeks ahead to get a good price. It defies everything that I love, which is waiting until the last second.”

She pauses: “And of course, I can’t stand to pack.”

Too bad. Because Guisewite would be a travel agent’s dream client. Certainly, she would not ask her agent to redeem frequent-flier points for the flight and hotel.

And if you were her agent? She would know that she is lucky to have you as her agent, rather than the other way around. “Nowadays,” Guisewite says without a trace of insincerity, “I’m always groveling for mercy when I call the travel agent because I know all that they have to go through.”

Sidebar: Cathy on Cathy

In the early days of Cathy, cartoon Cathy bore a striking resemblance to her creator. Over time, however, Guisewite has turned around her own life.

Cartoon Cathy was (and still is) short and roly-poly, about 50 pounds overweight. Guisewite is 5′ 2″ but only about 100 pounds. She was 50 pounds heavier in college.

Cartoon Cathy eats an entire cheesecake to deal with her problems. Guisewite eats only half the cheesecake.

And although Guisewite has married since beginning the strip, she vows that “Cathy” never will. “I feel like that’s a voice that needs to be heard in the paper,” she says. “I know what it’s like being single and everyone around you being married. You feel as if you’re stranded alone. I would hate for Cathy to abandon those people, especially older women who still are single and need a friend.”

Posted on January 2, 2000 - by Ralph Grizzle

The Long Journey Home

In September 1994, I received a phone call. “Mr. Grizzle, it’s Charles Kuralt. You probably thought I’d died . . . .”

The consummate traveler had taken several weeks to answer the messages I had left for him. I was a reporter for a trade magazine for the American Society of Travel Agents. Kuralt was to be the keynote speaker at the Society’s annual conference. My job was to profile him for the upcoming event.

Kuralt said he had been “up in Montana doing some fishing.” He sounded jubilant. For close to an hour, we talked about his career, his North Carolina roots and travel. “Are you a fan of the West, Ralph?” I told him I was. I said I loved its rugged beauty.

“It is gorgeous,” he rumbled with delight. “I just hold my breath at the beauty. A couple of days ago, I got going just about as the sun was coming up. I was coming back from Billings, back toward western Montana. With the sun behind me, a cup of McDonald’s coffee in the cup holder of the Jeep and the NPR station on the radio, somehow or other everything really seemed right with the world.”

This was Charles Kuralt at his best, celebrating simplicity: the Montana landscape, the rising sun, a cup of coffee and the cool-mannered broadcast of National Public Radio. He was in no hurry. He had no hard deadlines. There was no place he had to be. Half an hour into the interview, I asked if he needed to go. “No,” he said, and he meant it. “I have all the time in the world right now.”

Six months earlier, Kuralt had left CBS. He had grown tired of the “chatter and commotion” of television and the burden of having to answer to an employer. Not that his employer ever knew where he was. He was, of course, on the road for much of his 37 years at CBS.

He thought it unwise to stay too close in touch with the office. “You get a long line of messages that leaves you no time to do your work the rest of the day,” he told the Greensboro News & Record in 1994. “You need a little freedom in this life. In this business, you go and go and go. You never have time to think.”

Kuralt wanted some time to think. He wanted time to take the days at his pace, to slow down and be present in life. He told me it all dawned on him at the 1993 Winter Olympics in Norway. He was enjoying his time over there, but what he really wanted to do was hang around in Scandinavia to learn more about the country and the people.

“But no, I had to leave on a certain day and get back to New York to do the ‘Sunday Morning’ program. And even that much duty, I realized, had become kind of onerous. I longed for an even greater freedom than I had. An inner voice spoke to me and said, ‘You have done this long enough, you know that? You’re not going to do anything new or better, so you’re just going to have to give up your corner office and your big paycheck and strike out and do something different.’ ”

He returned to New York, and with three years remaining on his contract, he left CBS. Then he set about doing what he loved best: roaming the country with pad and pen. He was going back to where it all started, back to the road, back home.

“I always feel like a North Carolina boy a long way from home when I’m in Thailand or Zaire.”"“Charles Kuralt in 1994 interview

Popular history will tell you that Charles Kuralt was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was born there, as the records indicate, but only because it had a hospital. At the time of his birth, Charles’ parents were living with his maternal grandparents on their 100-acre tobacco farm in Onslow County. Worried about complications from delivering the baby at home, the Kuralts drove to James Walker Memorial Hospital, a little more than an hour south. After Charles was born, the family immediately returned to the farm.

It is an important distinction, because Charles Bishop Kuralt grew up not as a city-dweller but as a farm boy who later in life began to acquire a thin veneer of city sophistication. Named for his paternal uncle, Carl (Norse for “a man of the common people”), Kuralt remained connected to his rural roots all his life. Being raised on a farm provided him with his neighborly mien and ambling Southern disposition. On television, at times, he appeared as though he were leaning on a fencepost, dispensing rural wisdom to viewers.

The farmhouse where Kuralt spent much of his childhood had no electricity. In winter, woodstoves and fireplaces worked to heat the high-ceilinged rooms. There was no plumbing. A pump with a long, cast-iron handle delivered drinking water on the porch. A gourd on a nail nearby served as a drinking dipper. There was a well in the side yard, with a bucket for watering the stock.

Life was full of simple pleasures. Charles spent his days flying kites of newspaper held rigid by flour paste, making slingshots from dogwood branches, and tickling Venus flytraps shut with a piece of straw. Evenings, his grandmother, Rena Bishop, stoked a fire to warm well water, which she poured into an old galvanized tub to wash the dust from her grandson.

After the evening meal, his grandfather spun long yarns. Charles sat spellbound by his voice.

On the front porch of their two-story farmhouse, Charles often curled up beside his grandmother on the swing and listened as she read to him from the travel books of Richard Halliburton, the short stories of O. Henry and the poems of Kipling and Poe. Her reading fueled his love of words and sensitivity to the rhythm of language. It was from her that he first heard words like “pyramid,” “igloo” and “Taj Mahal.”

Being raised under his grandparents’ tutelage gave Kuralt his formidable love of language and words. At the same time, being delivered into the Great Depression provided the boy with lessons of hardship. His parents, both recent university graduates, had emerged into a world of dim career prospects.

A native of Springfield, Massachusetts, Wallace Hamilton Kuralt graduated from UNC in 1931 with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a degree in Commerce, but found little sustaining work. Times were hard as the nation struggled to break the yoke of the Depression, and making a living often meant chasing one. The young man ventured all the way to Charleston, West Virginia, finding there a job in the advertising division of the Kroger Grocery Co.

He left behind his sweetheart, Ina Bishop, a home economics teacher in Hillsborough, North Carolina. They met on an eight-week, cross-country trip sponsored by the University of North Carolina. Wallace noticed the attractive young schoolteacher early in the trip, but it took him several days to muster the courage to approach her. He finally broke the ice by offering her a taste of a new soft drink. In later years, they joked they had Dr. Pepper to thank for bringing them together.

Wallace lasted only a matter of months in the hills of West Virginia, returning to North Carolina to marry Ina shortly before Christmas in 1931. The newlyweds made the Bishops’ tobacco farm their first home. There, Wallace tried his hand raising “truck” crops such as snap beans and cucumbers, but the cost of trucking the vegetables to market proved too great. He also tried his hand at raising grapes, but the sandy Onslow County soil was ill-suited to the vines. And at any rate, there was no market for grapes.

To eke out a living, Wallace turned to a variety of jobs, including painting Coca-Cola signs on barns and creosoting telephone poles. He “topped” tobacco for $1.50 a day and even tried to make a go at operating a farm supply store in nearby Jacksonville.

But in 1933, his fortunes changed. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration posted a job for a “social case worker” for Onslow County, one of the few specialties in demand among millions of unemployed. Kuralt later would say his father landed the job “because he could type.” No matter. After a few months, Wallace won a promotion to county director of rural rehabilitation, and soon after Charles was born, he gained an even bigger promotion, as social services case supervisor for Robeson County, 100 miles away.

The Kuralts packed their bags and moved to Lumberton, the county seat, and Wallace quickly climbed the ranks to become director of social services for a seven-county district in eastern North Carolina.

It was a time of frequent moves, but also of growing stability. Two years into the job, Wallace decided to make social work a lifelong career, and in the fall of 1937 began attending the University of North Carolina’s Graduate School of Social Work at Chapel Hill. To support the family while her husband studied, Ina found work in Stedman, a hamlet east of Fayetteville. Barely 2 years old, Charles seemed to already be fulfilling the same destiny as his forebears, shipping from one town to another.

“I come from wandering tribes, Norse and Celtic on my mother’s side it seems, nomad Bavarians on my father’s, ancestors become Scots-Irish and Slovenian by the time of their migration to America. As far as I could tell, none of them ever stayed anywhere for long.”"“Charles Kuralt, A Life on the Road

In Stedman, the Kuralts rented a three-room apartment in a house on Euclid Street. From his bedroom window, Charles could see the brick building where his mother taught home economics. On Sunday afternoons he looked out that same window to see his father walking across the street and sticking out his thumb, hitchhiking to Chapel Hill some 80 miles away for a week of attending classes in social work. It was a routine that lasted a year, hitching to Chapel Hill on Sundays and then returning home, sometimes by bus or train, after the end of Friday classes.

After a year of graduate study, Wallace found work as a field representative for the North Carolina Welfare Board. The job required another move, to Salisbury, where they lived in a brick house overlooking a highway. There, Charles gained a sibling when Ina gave birth to a second son, Wallace Jr.

The family stayed in Piedmont North Carolina only a short while before relocating to the Welfare Board’s eastern headquarters in Washington, an hour’s drive from the Bishops’ tobacco farm. His father’s new job gave Charles a taste of being on the road, as the 4-year-old often accompanied him on his travels around to local welfare offices in the county seats of eastern North Carolina. Riding along blacktop roads to places like New Bern, Swan Quarter, Harkers Island and Edenton, Wallace filled the miles and his young son’s mind with tales of North Carolina history and local lore.

Afternoons, they stopped to fish in creeks turned black by the tannin of cypress trees. At country stores and outside the county courthouses where the welfare offices were located, father and son stopped to listen to old men spin yarns. Charles would later say that traveling with his father taught him a “little more about real life” than most kids his age.

In the fall of 1939, Charles started kindergarten at St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic School across the Pamlico River. He showed early signs of being an independent thinker. He was a daring young man, once asking the school’s Sister Rosalind, “If thou shalt worship no graven images, then what are all those statues of the Virgin Mary and the Saints doing around the school?” The other nuns frowned, but Sister Rosalind smiled. Though Charles was barely 5, she promoted him to the first grade. Charles later quipped that he heard his first French words at St. Agnes. “I remember the word for piano. It is piano. I thought I could catch on to French if it continued that way.”

Living in Washington meant that the Kuralts were close enough to visit the Bishops’ farm often, and on summer nights they gathered around a battery-powered radio, its round dial glowing orange with the station call letters. News was all around. The radio was usually tuned to the nightly news broadcast on WPTF, and stacked neatly on a nearby table were the weekly Onslow County newspaper and the Raleigh News & Observer.

As the family sat listening to the news broadcast, Charles dreamed of becoming a reporter, even playing out his dream by borrowing his father’s hat and sticking a home-made “press card” in its band. At age 6, Charles Kuralt saw reporting as a romantic profession that would take him to the exotic places his grandmother had read to him about.

“A sandy road passed in front of the house and a logging path through the pinewoods behind it,” he wrote in A Life on the Road. “I always wondered where the roads went, and after I learned that the one in front went to another farm a mile away, I wondered where it went from there.”

Kuralt’s road carried him to Charlotte, where he lived until entering the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After leaving Chapel Hill, he came back to Charlotte to work for the Charlotte News, before being recruited by CBS and making his home in New York and the back roads of America.

Bill Friday was Kuralt’s dean when he was the editor of the Daily Tar Heel in Chapel Hill. And in the years that followed, it wasn’t uncommon for Friday to hear from him out of the blue. “Every once in a while, he’d call and say, ‘Well I just called to see if the dogwoods are blooming and if the flowers are up.’ He was homesick,” Friday said. “This was where his soul stayed.”

It is also where his soul came to rest. “I know you have better things to worry about, but I thought I would ask if you have any way of finding out if there are a couple of burial plots in Chapel Hill,” Kuralt wrote to his old friend on July 2, 1997, two days before his death. Then, beneath the typewritten text, he penned: “I am only now beginning to appreciate the love I have for Chapel Hill. It is a moving place the more I think about it.”

“I have been gone a long time, but now I am home.” ““ Charles Kuralt in North Carolina is My Home.

Posted on November 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

What North Carolinians Are Thankful For

Stop. Look around. As a citizen of this state, there are lots of reasons to give thanks.

As a North Carolinian, what are you thankful for? Is it the diversity of our vast stretch of state, from the mountains to the sea? Is it our moderate climate, our marked change of seasons or our towering clusters of trees that brush against Carolina blue skies?

Maybe what you’re thankful for has nothing to do with the physical aspects of our state–your gratitude goes toward good neighbors, caring communities, the strong support of the arts and the opportunities that your children or grandchildren have to attend some of the country’s best universities, without leaving their home state.

As citizens of the Old North State, we have much for which to give thanks. This month, we talk with some old friends about the reasons they’re proud to claim North Carolina as their home.

Beauty–As an artist, I am thankful for the abundance of subject matter right here in my own backyard. To use a golf analogy, people wonder how anyone could play the same golf course over and over again. But the truth is that you never hit your ball from the same spot. That’s how it is with my paintings. The seasons and atmospheres are so different that I’m never painting the same scene. Early on in my career, I wondered if I would ever grow tired of painting in this state. The answer is, No, I never will.–Bill Mangum, Artist, Greensboro

Progress–I’m grateful to live in a state that has made so much progress in the fields of technology, medicine, education, highways and social services. Our progress has just been outstanding. It’s true that the whole nation has moved ahead in many of these areas, but North Carolina lagged behind for many years. It couldn’t be helped, of course, because we were still nursing the wounds of the Civil War and the Great Depression, but we’ve truly moved forward in the last 30 years.–Carol Bessent Hayman, Poet Laureate of Beaufort and Carteret County, Beaufort

Sanctuary–Having worked for the National Park Service for 25 years, I’m grateful for the protected areas we have in North Carolina. I don’t think a lot of people realize how many of those areas we have here in this state. Even natives to the state are sometimes surprised when they look down the list of protected areas. You may even be living near one and kind of take it for granted, not realizing what it represents, until you begin to explore it. There’s great variety, whether you enjoy hiking, fishing, trail riding, car camping, backpacking or watching our wildlife. We’re very blessed with our national forests, state forests, state historic sites and national parks.–Tom Robbins, Park Ranger, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Small towns–I’m grateful to have the comfort and security of living in a quaint North Carolina town. I can still enjoy the convenience of the surrounding Piedmont Triad area, but after a hectic day at work in the city, I look forward to heading home to “K”-ville with the prospect of sitting with my husband and son on a porch surrounded by woods.–Kathleen Ingram, Trade Show Manager, RF Micro Devices (Greensboro), Kernersville

Beaches–I originally came from West Virginia, and as most kids who grew up in West Virginia, I grew up thinking the southernmost city in the state was Myrtle Beach. But then I discovered Ocracoke and knew I had to live here. Living here is like living in a little slice of heaven, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for the 16 miles of undeveloped beachfront here on this island. I’m grateful for the pace of life. It’s only 15 miles between here and Hatteras, yet it takes more than an hour to traverse those miles. That isolation could be frightening if it weren’t for the quality of people we have here.–Buffy Warner, Owner, Howard’s Pub, Ocracoke

Beacons–I’m grateful that North Carolina saw the wisdom of putting the money and effort toward saving some original history (the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Not building a replica, not tearing down and building a new building, but preserving what was there.–Cheryl Shelton Roberts, Writer, Morehead City

Goodwill–I’m grateful for our good economy. Unemployment has been down, even though minimum wages still need to come up. We’re serving as many people as we used to [through the food bank] but we’re serving more of the working poor than in the past. Here in the Triad, we are blessed with services for the needy.–Faye Ellison, Director of Food Distribution, Greensboro Urban Ministry, Greensboro

Resources–I am thankful for North Carolina’s rich diversity of its cultural, natural and historic resources, These resources offer such vast potential for rural economic development as long as we give equal attention to the protection and preservation of these assets. We truly are blessed.–Gordon Clapp, Executive Director, NC Division of Tourism, Film and Sports Development, Raleigh

Generosity–I’m thankful for R.V.’s Restaurant on the Causeway linking Roanoke Island to Nags Head. R.V. (Robert Valentine) has fed me every day of my life for the past four years. And I’m thankful for the boys at the Christmas Shop in Manteo for taking the time to teach me how to be successful in my business. Most of all, I’m thankful for God and for God being in Dare County all my life.–Lou Tillet, Florist, Wanchese

Hospitality–I’m thankful that we live in a state where so many people choose to retire to. I think that says a lot about our quality of life. We’re blessed with very little of the extremes, not only with the weather but also in what people do and enjoy. We are congenial and hospitable people, and we love to meet strangers and welcome them in. People can come here and fit in right away. I feel blessed to have been able to have lived here all my life.–Max Meeks, NC Radio Hall of Famer and host of WMFR’s “Max in the Morning” since 1947, High Point

Harvest–I’ve only been here a year, but I’m grateful for the growing season and for the beauty. I moved from Texas, where the weather can be extreme. The growing season here is shorter than in Texas but much more conducive to good gardens. I’m also grateful for the dogwood trees and the distinct change of seasons.–Susan Albert, Community Relations, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro

Neighbors–I’m thankful to live in a place where I can call the general store across the street and they’ll bring over my groceries and put them away from me (Delores is disabled by Progressive Post Polio Muscle Atrophy). We have so many small towns in this state where there are caring people. Somebody dies, the neighbors bring food, somebody’s sick, the neighbors come and sit. You tend to put in a little more effort when you’re in a place where you know you’re going to turn up your toes at the end of your life.–Delores C. Emory, Proprietor, Cutrell Inn Bed and Breakfast, Swan Quarter

People–In my line of work, I’ve had the privilege of living in 10 different cities in our state over the past 44 years. There have been beautiful people everywhere I’ve lived, kind and friendly and generous. It makes me grateful to be a North Carolinian.–Tom Cassidy, Reverend, Mt. Pisgah United Methodist Church, Greensboro

Heritage–I’m thankful for the traditions and the heritage that I still sense here. I have such a long history of my family in North Carolina that I have this sense of being here forever. I have this sense of being truly North Carolinian. It’s very powerful to me to have that sense of belonging.–Bob Timberlake, Artist, Lexington

Spirit–I’m thankful for the opportunity to work in North Carolina, and I don’t think I would have felt that way a year and half ago when I started working for World Summer Games. That was when I started traveling across the state, and I realized that there are people in this state who have great spirit for coming out to support good causes. I got a taste of North Carolina and determined that this was the place that I wanted to stay. –Todd Felts, Director of Statewide Communications for the 1999 Special Olympics World Summer Games, Raleigh

People–I travel all 100 counties in North Carolina. We have friends all over the state, and it has been really rewarding meeting the people like the decoy carvers down at Harker’s Island or the potters whose work we carry in our gallery. Making friends with all these people has been a real treasure. I enjoy the fellowship with those people. That’s what keeps me going.–”Cotton” Ketchie, Artist and Owner of Landmark Galleries, Mooresville

Posted on January 2, 1999 - by Ralph Grizzle

Charles Kuralt Remembered

A look back at where the road began.

In art, as in life, fact and fiction sometimes intermingle so that truth becomes indistinguishable from non-truth. What seems to have been, was not. What seems not to have been, was. Memories extinguish; imaginations ignite; fact and fiction are fired into a vacuous urn into which fall new truths.

Accordingly, autobiography often employs a modicum of invention. Dates become blurred, places forgotten, anecdotes altered. The writer is left to see things not as they were but as he remembers them to have been.

In his book, “A Life On The Road,” Charles Kuralt appears to have used such invention. The writer takes us on a journey back to his boyhood, back to his first extended journey, a car trip meant to take his friend, Landon Smith, and him to the Golden West.

But halfway across the country, the trip began to go awry. Kuralt, then 15, and Smith, a year older, were suffering “crises of inexperience,” the author writes. They had overestimated the car’s soundness, the distance they could travel in a day and their own immunity to homesickness. After crossing the Mississippi, Kuralt and Smith instead pointed their 1938 Chevy north and headed toward Evanston, Illinois.

There, at Northwestern University, Kuralt attended a six-week writing program for high school students while Smith, Kuralt writes, landed a job selling hot dogs to make enough money to return home alone. With Smith gone, Kuralt finished his studies, then caught the train to Gary, Indiana, where he lugged his “big Samsonite suitcase to the side of the highway and started hitchhiking home.”

Smith’s account, however, contradicts Kuralt’s. “I can’t concur with some of the events of the trip,” Smith says from his home in High Point. “But it made a good book anyway.” Smith says he did not travel home alone that summer. He and Kuralt packed their bags, got in the Chevy and drove back to Charlotte by way of Niagara Falls, New York and Washington, D.C.

“We went to a Broadway show in New York and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington,” Smith says. The two boys even ventured up into Montreal, where most of the people spoke French, Smith says, “and we had trouble getting directions.”

If, during that summer of 1950, Kuralt was struggling with Canadian French, that would mean that he could have not stuck out his thumb to hitch a ride with the elderly couple or the “kindly and demented evangelist” that he mentions in his book. It would mean that he could not have patterned his life “after that of the daft old man in the pickup, who wandered where the back roads took him.”

Whose story to believe? Smith’s or Kuralt’s? Still living in Charlotte, Ruth Pentes remembers the trip. She confirms that the two boys returned home together, not separately, as Kuralt had written.

Maybe Kuralt’s memory had eluded him. Or, to smooth the transition to the next chapter, could the writer have substituted a series of events from one time in his life for those of another? Maybe he really did hitch a ride with the daft old man, but perhaps years further down the road. We will never know why Kuralt fictionalized the ending of his book’s first chapter. The answer, whatever it may be, was buried with him in July of 1997.

The Muse That Drove Him

What is certain is that a different picture of Charles Kuralt is emerging as more and more information becomes available in his wake. For nearly 40 years, Kuralt turned his reporting abilities on others, but after his death, journalists and historians returned the spotlight. The intent wasn’t necessarily to be nosey or to uncover intimate details of his life. It seemed to be more about not wanting to let go of the man America loved.

Even so, when the Charlotte Observer broke the story about Kuralt’s 30-year extramarital relationship with Patricia Shannon, many of Kuralt’s friends cried foul. An exception was Jack Claiborne. He said that he thought Kuralt was an unhappy person and that he was pleased to learn of the relationship in Montana, because it represented a “center of happiness.”

And while some saw Kuralt’s infidelity as a contradiction of all he portrayed on television, Claiborne did not. “What seems to me a contradiction is to look at someone on television and say, ‘You know, I really know him,’ ” Claiborne says. “I think that is a mistake. People feel like they know Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, or anybody in the spotlight. They feel like they knew Andy Griffith. Well, Andy Griffith was playing a professional role and had a professional persona that he projected. Charles was the same way.”

Indeed, Kuralt’s persona was a screen between his private thoughts and the rest of the world, says former colleague Bill Moyers, who worked with Kuralt at CBS during the 1980s. “It wasn’t a deceptive screen,” Moyers adds. “It’s just that he was a very private person despite being a very public man.”

It was not the Observer’s intention to muckrake, says Paige Williams, the 32-year-old reporter who helped break the story. All along, she says she asked herself, Why is this a story? What do we get out of it? What is the purpose of this story? “The answer was just to understand human nature,” she says. “With someone like Charles Kuralt, someone who is watched and beloved, someone who is such a well-known face, and in many ways was a teacher, we have to be able to learn something from the choices he made.”

Even in the episode that many would have preferred to forget, there were life lessons. Williams says that “98 percent” of responses sent or called into the paper were positive. “People wrote things like, ‘I still have deep respect for his character and his talent, and to me it just made him a richer character,’ ” Williams says. One woman told Williams that Kuralt had such a big heart that he probably needed two lives to give it all. Another said that if he had two lives, good; he deserved both.

Some came away from the revelation with a sense of disappointment. Others cast moral judgment. Williams walked away having learned that despite his seemingly simple character, Kuralt was a complicated man. “Many great people are,” she adds. “They are not linear, they are not one dimensional, they have a lot of stuff going on, and a lot of times that is what drives their art, what drives their passion.”

The Four Who Were One

Growing up in Charlotte, Kuralt and his first road partner, Smith, had been friends since middle school. They spent nights together. They listened to jazz records on an old Victrola. In amber fields, Kuralt and Smith sent records soaring through fall skies, like Olympians hurling disks. They shot basketball, picked boysenberries and spent glorious youthful days as friends.

They hosted a magic show together, “Landon’s Revue of Wonders.” Smith was the magician, Kuralt the assistant and emcee. Once, Smith recalls, he and Kuralt had to substitute a kitten for a disappearing dove. Unlike the dove, though, the cat meowed after it vanished. And while Kuralt was usually adept at diverting the audience’s attention from such a goof, this time he failed, Smith says.

The two boys organized a daredevil show, charging a dime admission to neighborhood kids. In one stunt, Smith was to jump 10 feet from one ramp to another on a motorized bicycle called a Whizzer. To heighten the dare, Kuralt and two other kids stretched out between the two ramps. Smith revved the engine, began his descent down a slight grade and succeeded in bridging the gaping chasm without scraping so much as a belly.

When not taking such risks, Kuralt, only 14, worked as a broadcaster. Mack Howey, who makes his home in Lake Junaluska, assisted Kuralt, who announced games from Memorial Stadium for the Charlotte Hornets, then a baseball team.

Friday evenings, Howey, Smith and Charles “Abie” Lockwood dialed in to hear their buddy’s radio show, at 610 on their AM dial”“WAYS. Smith remembers Kuralt started and ended each program with Louis Armstrong’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” The young DJ “talked slightly faster than he did in later years, but always clear, concise, pleasing and relaxing,” Smith says.

After Kuralt’s broadcast, he, Smith, Lockwood and Howey would head out to the Town House, which at that time was a drive-in restaurant. The four boys were not only inseparable but also gave validity to the notion that boys will be boys, even Kuralt.

“He wasn’t a goody two-shoes,” says Lockwood, who still lives in the neighborhood where he and Kuralt grew up. Like his friends, Kuralt scaled fences for a midnight swim. He pulled innocent pranks, such as the one on Halloween when the four boys planned to hang a neighbor’s lawn chairs in the top of a tree. To their surprise, though, the owner was sitting in one of the chairs.

“We didn’t see him until we got close,” Lockwood says. “So we took off running.” There was a house under construction next door, and either Kuralt or Smith ran into a two-by-four extending from one of the sides of the house. “I can’t remember which it was,” Lockwood says, “but whoever it was, we thought he was dead.”

Separate Paths

Kuralt and Smith had started down the same road together, but like Robert Frost’s proverbial poem, when two roads diverged in a wood, Kuralt took the one less traveled by. Smith went to the Navy. Kuralt went to CBS. Smith became an electronic engineer for AT&T. Kuralt became the poet laureate for the common man. Smith raised two children and stayed devoted to his first wife for 42 years now. Kuralt followed his calling at the expense of his first family.

Twenty years after their road trip together, Smith caught up with Kuralt at a Holiday Inn in Greensboro. The conversation was “kind of cool,” he recalls. Kuralt was “a little more reserved,” he adds.

“College life is not only a great educational experience but also a good social experience,” says Smith, as if trying to explain the reason for wedge that had worked its way between him and the man who had once been his best friend. “I consider myself successful, and certainly Charles was successful. I married, raised two children and lived comfortably. He did the same, but we just took separate paths.”

In the apparent fabrication of part of his life’s story, was Kuralt making a symbolic separation from his boyhood friends so that he could begin the journey that would engage him for the rest of his life? Maybe this was a coming of age for Kuralt, a rite of passage, mythically told.

Autobiography can contain a high quotient of invention, says former college pal Ed Yoder Jr., who now teaches journalism at Washington & Lee “What seems to matter to those who write their own stories is that anecdotes be more or less faithful to character and experience.”

As teenage boys, Smith and Kuralt used to talk about going to New Orleans. Kuralt loved Dixieland jazz. He idolized Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Pete Fountain and other jazz greats. Years later, Smith moved to the New Orleans area. For the next decade, he kept hoping that Kuralt would visit. “We could have had a ball together,” Smith says.

He kept hoping, too, that he and Kuralt could have remained lifelong friends. Listening to Smith, one gets the sense that his loss is great. Maybe too much was left unsaid. Smith makes reference to having once given Kuralt a black eye. “He probably never forgave me for that, and I can’t blame him,” Smith says. “Now, fifty years later, I can’t remember why it happened. I hope he can see this. I’m sorry Charlie.”

Makings Of The Broadcaster

It was apparent early on that Kuralt was headed down a different road. At Charlotte’s Alexander Graham Junior High School, he was co-editor of the school newspaper, The Broadcaster, where he wrote a column called, “Kaleidoscope.” Even then, his style seemed more mature than that of his classmates, his observations keen. In this column, he appeared on the outside, looking in.

The bell will ring at 2:55 today. Instead of the usual sounds of hundreds of tramping feet, a much more natural, quieter noise will be heard.

What’s going on? Oh, that’s right; report cards will be given out. Cries of joy, distress, and horror will be heard throughout the building.

Students may leave the building slowly with plans to do better next quarter, or they may leave quickly with hurried steps for home and a promised reward.

“He had the writing skills as well as the ability to express himself,” says Anne Batten, who taught Kuralt at Alexander Graham.

But he was still a boy, too, a fun-loving boy. “The staff wanted to report the news,” Batten adds, “but they also wanted to improve the school, and to them improving the school was giving more dances.” Thus, “Late Note!” was the headline that blasted an announcement in Kuralt’s November 12, 1947, Kaleidoscope column:

Miss Stephens announced yesterday that a Semi-Formal Dance will be held in the school gymnasium on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12. The dance will be sponsored by the Student Council.

Later, at Central High, Kuralt carried a typewriter to school each day. After classes, he pecked away at a radio script for his show on WAYS or a piece for the high school newspaper, Smith recalls.

Kuralt was a fiercely competitive member of the debating club, Abie Lockwood recalls. In religious debates with his friends, he held that if there were a hell, it was here on earth. Some of the fundamentalists took offense to that, Lockwood says. “But he would always make you come up with specifics,” Lockwood says. “He wanted to know who we knew who was going to hell. You couldn’t get away with generalizations.”

Lockwood and Smith watched Kuralt take first place in the “Voice of Democracy” speaking contest. As one of four national winners, he was invited to give his speech at the House of Burgesses in Colonial Williamsburg. The winners also traveled to Washington, where they met President Harry Truman.

At home, Smith and Kuralt cut out newspaper photographs and made up stories about them, Smith says. “We’d ask ‘Well, what’s that person like? What do you think his business is? What type of character does he have?’ ” Even then, Kuralt studied people, Smith says. “He liked to talk about their lives and put himself in their place.”

Smith also sat through the incessant squeaking of Kuralt’s clarinet practice, and he allowed Kuralt to correct his diction, because he knew Kuralt’s grammatical acumen was unassailable.

At the same time, Kuralt was developing superior broadcasting skills. Brooks Lindsay, who worked late nights at WAYS, says Kuralt would sometimes drop in and “hang around for the longest time.” Against one wall of the studio was a fire escape that Kuralt walked out on to look out over the city. “We’d hang a mike on him and let him talk as I played music,” Lindsay says. “And he would literally create poetry without notes or anything. He just looked out at the city and described it.”

Another time, Lindsay came into work to find Kuralt pecking away on an old Royal typewriter. “I asked, ‘Charlie, what’s up?’ and he said, ‘Oh, Harry [the program manager] asked me to do a bio on Julian Barber.” Barber had just broadcast Matthew Ridgway’s cease-fire proposal to the North Koreans. The American Broadcasting Company needed a bio on Barber, who had worked at WAYS before being drafted into the Signal Corps.

“Charlie looked like Schroeder, the kid in the Peanuts series who plays the piano,” Lindsay says. “He was just banging away, and I thought, Boy, oh boy, is he going to have to redo something. You wouldn’t believe the strike-throughs and this and that. I call it hen-scratching.”

Kuralt typed a final draft and handed it to Harry Barfield, who sent it over the newswire to ABC headquarters. “I asked Harry how much did they [the editors at ABC] cut,” Lindsay says. “He said very quietly to me, ‘Not a word.’ I knew then who Charles Kuralt was.”

Off To New York

After being voted by his class, “Most Likely To Succeed,” Kuralt graduated Central High School and set off to Chapel Hill, where he became editor of The Daily Tar Heel, the University’s student newspaper. In 1955, he returned to Charlotte to work on the Charlotte News. Two years later, CBS hired him, and for nearly four decades, Kuralt spent his life with the network.

Margery Baker was an executive producer of one of the last shows that Kuralt worked on for CBS. Called “I Remember,” the show retold historical events through the voices of correspondents who covered the stories and those who were there. “Whenever he would arrive at the studio for taping, people would gather around to chat and visit with him,” Baker says. “There wasn’t any situation where people didn’t flock around him and enjoy his company. People glowed in his presence. He brought out the best in everyone.”

Despite the crowds, though, Kuralt was a lonely man, says Terry Martin, an executive producer at CBS who worked with Kuralt on various programs through the years as well as the “I Remember” series. In the 1980s, Martin traveled around the country with Kuralt, who was giving speeches at various functions. “After we were done, which was usually 10:30 at night or so, he’d suggest that we go out for drinks or dinner,” Martin says. “And then I was greeted with a very different kind of Charles Kuralt from the very professional, sober-sided and serious guy I had worked with on the show.”

Martin says dinners with Kuralt would stretch on for hours. “And at the end of them, I got the feeling that he was kind of sad to see them come to an end,” Martin says. “I always had the feeling that he was a very lonely man who really liked company but could only take so much of it. And that I found very odd, and kind of sad in a way.”

The road for Charles Kuralt ended, of course, July 4, 1997. The nation mourned his death. An estimated 1,600 people filled Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall for the public service.

Landon Smith was not among them, but not for lack of love. “I’ll never forget his good, honest character, his thoughtfulness of others, and his deep desire to let the world be aware of the inner beauty of individuals and all God’s creations,” Smith says. “He knew how to view the color of the world. He truly lived his life ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street.’ “

Posted on September 2, 1997 - by Ralph Grizzle

Remembering Charles Kuralt

Like many Americans, I was shocked to hear the news: Charles Kuralt, dead at the age of 62. A little more than two years ago, I spent an hour talking with the former CBS anchor for a magazine article I was writing. It was the highlight of my career and an event that deeply touched me.

Kuralt was, to me, the quintessential American, not because of the way he looked or the way he carried himself but because of the way he felt about America. Having watched him on TV on Sunday mornings, having read his books and later having spoken with him, I knew that more than anything else, he believed that America was still good and strong and decent, and, perhaps more importantly, that the notion of patriotism wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

On television and in his writings, Kuralt informed us that America was “more just, more neighborly and more humane” than it used to be. “The country that I have found does not bear much resemblance to the one we read about on the front pages of newspapers or hear about on the evening news,” Kuralt said to me in his familiar voice. “The country that I found presents cups of coffee and slices of apple pie and people who always want you to stay longer than you have time to.”

Visiting the various hamlets along America’s backroads had indeed given Kuralt a great deal to be reassured about. He met many Americans who were involved in purposes that he says were “decent and compassionate and unsullied by arrogance or hostility toward other people or delusions of superiority or motives of greed.” These were people who really cared about their communities and their country. Their only motives were to help make America a better place to live. “It’s what we used to call patriotism before that became such an old-fashioned word,” Kuralt said.

To illustrate his point, he related a story about Montana-native Gordon Bushnell. “Mr Bushnell always thought there ought to be a straight highway from Duluth to Fargo, and the state would not build it,” Kuralt said. “So about 25 years ago, he decided that he was just going to have to build it himself.”

All alone, with a number-two shovel, an old wheelbarrow and an ancient John Deere tractor, Bushnell began to negotiate with people for the right to build a road across their land. “When we met him he had finished 11 miles of road, had 180 miles to go-of course, he was 78 years old at the time,” Kuralt said with a chuckle. “But I loved him, and he just pressed on, because he knew it was the right thing to do.”

Talking to Kuralt, I got the impression that despite the cynicism of the time, he still believed that Americans have an inherent sense of knowing the right thing to do. I was deeply moved by his love for the people of this nation. Kuralt’s America was, in fact, one of concerned citizens, of good and decent people. He inspired me, as I’m sure he inspired everyone, with his entertaining stories of goodness. He was a Panglossian fellow, believing that we lived in the best of all possible worlds. And perhaps we do. I know that for me the desperate world became less desperate when Kuralt framed events in his broad historical perspective. He had the gift, perhaps more than any reporter, of seeing the big picture.

He told us that maybe, just maybe, we were all better off than we had thought we were. No progress in race relations? Kuralt recalled the time when four black students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, until they were served a Coke. “I never thought I would live to see the day of genuine racial justice in the part of the country I come from,” said the North Carolina-native. “I’m about to believe that I am going to live to see that day.”

Kuralt succeeded in convincing me that we are better off than we used to be, even though our self-pity may be greater. He told me the story of how, on an airplane flight in the spring of 1993, a young graduate sitting beside him began to talk about how this must be the worst time in America to be graduating and looking for a job. Kuralt said he silently recalled how in the 1930s his father, a recent college graduate, set out looking for a job and, after six months of searching, found one: creosoting telephone poles in eastern North Carolina. “I didn’t say anything to the young graduate,” Kuralt told me, “but I thought, Didn’t they teach you any history in that great university of yours?”

Kuralt’s America was one of self-reliant, self-determining, problem-solving people. National conscience was more than a concept to him. It was something real, “a naive idea,” he said, “but one that we really believe in,” and one that we cannot shake. “The idea we adhere to is a very appealing one to me,” he said. “It is that there is a solution to every problem. Let something go wrong in America, and you can be sure somebody will form a committee. Next thing you know people are at work on the problem just as if there really were a solution to it. It’s the most appealing thing of all to me about our fellow citizens.”

In his lifetime, various “handfuls of people, willing to be ridiculed,” stood up for what they believed. Their perseverance, he added, succeeded in raising awareness about our environment, women’s rights, racial equality and other national concerns. “It still amazes me that even in this big, complex society, one man or one woman can make all the difference.”

I thought Charles Kuralt would live forever. I wished he had lived longer. That his death will be remembered on the birthday of the country he loved is fitting.

“If you could have been on the journey with me to every corner of every state over and over again, I think you would agree that people of all races and ages and conditions care for their country more than they used to. They have come to see the grace and worth and joy in taking part themselves in solving our problems and becoming a part of the national conscience. I think there are grounds for modest self congratulations in the history of our country during my years as a reporter.”

Thank you Charles Kuralt. We will miss you dearly.