Gift from Gladys Hall Coates estate to benefit Wilson Library’s N.C. Collection

By CHRYS BULLARD
Office of University Development

CHAPEL HILL -- A gift of nearly $1 million from the estate of Gladys Hall Coates will establish the Albert and Gladys Coates Endowment Fund benefiting the N.C. Collection in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library.

The N.C. Collection is the largest and most comprehensive repository of published materials relating to a single state in America.

Income from the Coates fund will support the research, writing and publication of biographies of all former presidents and chancellors of UNC-Chapel Hill and of Albert Coates, who, with Gladys as his wife and partner, founded the university’s Institute of Government (now School of Government) in 1931. Following publication of these biographies, interest earned from the endowment will be used to provide funds for research, exhibits, Web projects and speakers on state-related topics.

"We are grateful to Mrs. Coates not only for her generosity, but for the vision of her concept and the opportunity it provides for the University Library and the North Carolina Collection," said university librarian Joe Hewitt. "We are pleased that the North Carolina Collection was chosen to carry out her intent."

Characterized by her husband as the Institute of Government’s "staff member without a portfolio," Gladys Coates also conducted research, wrote and lectured on various university-related topics, including the history of women at UNC-Chapel Hill; the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, especially their portrait collections; and author and university alumnus Thomas Wolfe. Her research into the development of student government resulted in "The Story of Student Government in the University at Chapel Hill," a 435-page book she co-wrote with her husband in 1985.

During her lifetime, Gladys Coates earned many of UNC-Chapel Hill’s top honors, including the William Richardson Davie Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Board of Trustees; the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award for significant contributions to the university by a woman; the Distinguished Service Medal from the General Alumni Association; and an honorary doctor of laws degree given in 2001 when she was 99 years old.

The campus building that first housed the Institute of Government was named in honor of the Coateses, and they were the first couple to have separate endowed professorships established in their names at UNC-Chapel Hill. A garden courtyard at the new School of Government was named in her memory following her death in September 2002.

This gift from the Gladys Hall Coates estate counts toward the Carolina First campaign goal of $1.8 billion. Carolina First is a comprehensive, multi-year private fund-raising campaign to support Carolina’s vision of becoming the nation’s leading public university.

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UNC News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu