| SOHP Preserves
Oral Histories in Rapidly Changing Cary, North Carolina
By Wendy Lemus
This article was published in the Cary News, February
8, 2006.
Like historic buildings, fine antiques or your grandfather's cherished
watch, memories of the past need to be preserved, too. Otherwise,
they die along with the folks who lived them.
In Cary, words are helping to preserve history and remember a
way of life that has vanished in the wake of sprawling subdivisions,
chain stores and four-lane highways.
"We wanted to try and get certain stories of Cary--the culture,
the day-to-day living and anything where we could find out about
people living in Cary," said Peggy Van Scoyoc, who heads an
oral history program for the Friends of the Page-Walker Hotel,
a local preservation group.
"We were as interested in learning about living daily life
as we were in what happened during World War II, or who were the
leaders in the community, when, why and what did they do? How did
Cary evolve, how did it grow?" Van Scoyoc said.
What has emerged from interviews with more than 40 residents--some
now deceased--are first-hand accounts of life here from people
both prominent and obscure.
In recorded interviews, longtime residents have opened up about
everything from local politics and school desegregation to tobacco
farming, doctoring and dating in Cary.
Portrait of the South
The interviews have become part of a broader sketch of the past--the
Southern Oral History Program at UNC-Chapel Hill (see www.sohp.org).
That program was founded in 1973 and has collected nearly 3,000
interviews with people from all walks of life, including a couple
of U.S. presidents as well as many southerners who have led quiet,
unassuming lives.
"I'm told that it's one of the more heavily used collections" at
UNC-CH's Wilson Library, said Beth Millwood, outreach coordinator
for the Southern Oral History Program.
Millwood said all types of people have perused the collection,
which is part of the library's Southern Historical Collection--researchers,
students, history buffs. She even recalled an author who studied
the materials to add authenticity to a novel.
The Southern Oral History Program "seeks to foster a critical
yet democratic understanding of the South -- its history, culture,
problems and prospects," the program's Web site states.
"It's trying to broaden the historic record ... from just
being white men [contributing] to men and women of all colors," Millwood
said.
She added that Cary's histories are a welcome addition to the
collection; it's rare that a single community has contributed to
that extent, she said. "They are unusual and unique in that
respect."
Van Scoyoc said the preservation group has not yet found a way
to make the histories easily accessible to the public in Cary;
the best way to access them is at the Wilson Library.
But for those who wish to make the trip to Chapel Hill, the histories
-- in tape-recorded and transcribed versions – offer vivid
glimpses of life in this once-sleepy farming town.
Read longtime resident Rachel Dunham's account of living at the
Page-Walker Hotel after the turn of the 20th century while attending
school in Cary, of later marrying R.S. "Dad" Dunham and
earning $100 a month as a teacher.
Listen to a doctor's son, John Yarborough, recall the 1950s, when
house calls to the sick were routine, as were teen marriages between
Cary High School students.
Hear Gwen Matthews recount the frightening days of desegregation,
when as a young girl she was bused from Raleigh to small-town Cary
and "a sea of angry white faces," Van Scoyoc recalled
from an interview.
"She's a teacher. Her story is just amazing to hear," Van
Scoyoc said of the 1999 interview she did with Matthews, one of
six black girls who helped to integrate Cary High School in 1963,
before desegregation became law. Matthews now teaches at Wake Technical
Community College.
Everyone has a story
Cary's first oral history interview was conducted in 1976 by the
Cary Historical Society. A few interviews were done in the years
following, but it wasn't until 1998 that the Friends of the Page-Walker
Hotel picked up where its predecessor left off.
"We started the oral history program as part of the Friends'
charter to preserve history," Van Scoyoc said.
The preservation group invited staff from UNC's Southern Oral
History Program to the Page-Walker for training; a professor did
a free seminar there in 1998.
Interested volunteers learned how to approach an interview, what
types of questions to ask, how to keep interviewees on subject
and how to get a good, clean recording.
"Brainstorming" was how the Friends' oral history committee
came up with people to approach for interviews. Rather than documenting
so-called "hard core" history found in textbooks, the
group seeks to preserve cultural history--the people, their lives
and recollections, Van Scoyoc said. Although, events such as the
Civil War and World War II are intertwined--and discussed -- along
with Cary's history.
Some people decline an interview, Van Scoyoc said. Maybe they
are shy. Others wonder what in the world they would say that would
be valuable to the oral history program.
But Van Scoyoc and Millwood agree that everyone has a story to
tell, every recollection helps flesh out the story of Cary, and
of the South.
In fact the mission statement of the Southern Oral History Program
is "You don't have to be famous for your life to be history."
President Bill Clinton was not yet famous when he was interviewed
for the program in 1974. He can be found in the program's Southern
Politics section along with Al Gore Sr. and President Jimmy Carter.
Cary artist Jerry Miller is one longtime resident whose voice
has been preserved for posterity. Miller, who moved to Cary in
1957, helped start the Lazy Daze Arts & Crafts Festival, which
has its 30th anniversary this year. He sat for an interview in
2004.
Miller said he has spent much of his life "trying to capture
the vanishing American scene on paper," so he was pleasantly
surprised to hear that his words would be captured as well.
"I feel great about it," he said. "Anything I can
do to help, I'm all for it."
Helping save the past
Millwood said the Southern Oral History Program routinely reaches
into communities to help them learn how to preserve their own history.
"An ongoing part of our mission is to teach the methodology
at the community level," she said.
Often an event or trend will prompt interest in preserving voices
-- for example, the decline of a town's fishing industry, Hurricane
Floyd, or the rapid growth that transforms an old way of life.
Cary was once a small farming community of a few hundred people.
Today, with a population of more than 110,000, the number of people
who remember "when" is dwindling.
"It's the knitting together of community that happens across
lines of race, class and education," Millwood said.
Cary's woven voices are indeed a patchwork of time, gender, race
and occupation: a former police chief, a former mayor, a second-grade
teacher, a tobacco farmer, a black landowner and a black sharecropper
are among the more than 40 people
who have been interviewed.
"One of the things that fascinates me and I continue to
try to understand is the southern way of life, the southern way
of
thinking," said Van Scoyoc, who -- like many other current Cary residents
-- is not from here.
So why the interest in the town's past?
"I've always been interested in history. When this became
my new home [in 1994], I immediately began digging into the
history ... and that led me to the Page-Walker, and here I am."
She thinks other new residents -- not just history buffs -- might
also be interested in learning about where they live.
"Because 90 percent of Caryites came from somewhere else,
the majority of people have no idea of Cary's history."
The oral histories, Van Scoyoc said, are helping to capture "the
tale of just this wonderful kind of innovative, hard-working American
way of life that is gone now but that was here through the '60s,
and I hope to capture more of it."
Sample histories
John Yarborough is the son of Dr. Frank Yarborough, the second
doctor in Cary. John was born in 1938. He was interviewed by phone
at his home in Virginia on Aug. 21, 2000.
On his days at Cary High School: "At one time in Cary, I
think everybody in the 12th grade got married. Either then or before.
There were more teenagers that got married in Cary at a particular
time while still in high school. I don't know what
precipitated that. Thank goodness those things aren't in vogue nowadays."
On paving Academy Street: "Then in about 1942 or '43, they
paved Academy Street for the first time. I remember pretty vividly
when they did that. I got the tar all over me and I got a pretty
big whipping because of that. ... Our old home place
on Academy Street had a pretty good-sized garage for those type houses at that
time, and they had outside big sinks in the garage. I remember the paving so
good because that's where I ended up, in one of those sinks with kerosene getting
the tar
washed off from the asphalt."
On his father's profession in the early 1950s: "I remember
a little sign, a little note he wrote to his patients one time,
that due to circumstances and due to inflation and things like
that, he was going to have to raise his office visits from $2 to
$3
[laughs]."
John W. Boles was Cary's police chief from 1971
to 1988. He was interviewed on Nov. 1, 1998.
"There had been a big holdup of a [bank], I believe it was
back over around Hillsborough, Chapel Hill or somewhere, and they
took the manager and a couple of the employees in his car and got
out on [Interstate] 85. ... There was a shootout with all the innocent
people. So we couldn't tolerate that, so we developed a bank robbery
plan."
Rachel Dunham was born in 1904 and was sent
to Cary to attend school. While attending Cary High School, she
lived at the Page-Walker Hotel. She later taught elementary school
and married R.S. "Dad" Dunham.
She was interviewed on Nov.
18, 1998 (and died at age 97 in 2001).
"Oh, I don't know. I got about $100 a month. I don't remember.
He may have gotten, I don't know, $200. Not much, though. But we
built this house and we added to it ever since. ..."
Speaking about the salaries of herself and her husband, who also
was a teacher, and their house on Kildaire Farm Road.
Clyde Evans Jr. was from a prominent black family
of landowners. He was interviewed on March 28, 2000 (and died at
age 84 in 2003). At one point, the Evans family owned about 1,000
acres in north
Cary and off Old Apex Road.
"We had horses, we carried cows, mules and [had] a big plantation
to take care of."
Eventually Clyde Evans Sr. divided the land among his children;
Clyde Jr. described the transfer as a "wedding gift."
On riding on train to Raleigh:
"When I was about 10, 12 years old, we'd catch a train from
Cary to Raleigh for 10 cents to go to the movies. I couldn't understand
why they'd stop a big thing like that for a few dimes. Segregated
theaters, though. Segregation was at its peak
during that time."
Marie and Fred Seeger are longtime residents, "full
of tidbits about Cary in the '40s, '50s and '60s, covering World
War II, Korea, tobacco industry and life in Cary," a profile
from the Friends of the Page-Walker Hotel states.
Fred: "Then, in addition to working at the drug store and
taking the The News & Observer around Cary, I also was very
well known for cutting grass. I cut a lot of grass all over Cary.
So
that was my three things that learned me my work habits
for life, I guess, was carrying the newspaper, working at the drug store and
mowing grass."
Marie: "But the place your parents might never hear of about
you going was to the Rock Station. That was on down a little
further [Northwest Maynard Road at N.C. 54]. They sold lots of beer, and that
was supposed to be a really rough place, so
you'd better never be caught going to the Rock Station, especially if you were
a girl."
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