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"OK brother," Ronald Wesley Hyatt said as he swung open the door to his office
in Woollen Gym and pointed at the donkey's head hung above his desk. Then he
gestured toward his chair. "The other half goes right there."
He's a country boy from Dillon County, S.C., sure enough, but don't be fooled
by his fooling. This man is no jackass.
What he has been for this University for more than three decades now is a
workhorse who needs no lash.
John E. Billing, a professor and coordinator of Sports Administration with an
adjoining office in Woollen, described Hyatt as a visionary who never runs out
of ideas. Or the energy to make them happen.
"He loves this campus and he loves this University and he'll do anything to
make it a better place," Billing said.
And this spring, the University recognized Hyatt and his mountain of
achievements when it named him one of five C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service
Award winners.
"I consider it one of the highest honors I have ever received if not the
highest honor," Hyatt said. "To be recognized for loving your University, man,
that is like a double dipping of peach ice cream on a hot day. Homemade peach
ice cream, son, homemade."
Planting seeds
With his James Dickey drawl and Charles Kuralt folksiness, you can
imagine him playing opposite Bert Reynolds in some vintage car-chase movie from
the 1970s. You can imagine him, too, in a scene out of Mayberry, maybe swapping
a joke or two with the boys down at Floyd's barbershop.
What is harder to imagine is all that he has managed to accomplish in the three
decades he has worked on behalf of this campus, this county and this state.
The award citation states that Hyatt's record of service is a product of his
"can-do-and-glad-to-do-it" willingness to take on whatever task asked of him.
He worked nine years on the Orange County Recreation Advisory Board and served
as chair of the N.C. Parks and Recreation Legislative Committee, which worked
to pass a $35 million bond issue for state parks and a State Trust Fund.
He has also served on the Governor's Council on Fitness and Health and the
Governor's Task Force on Cardiac Health and Stroke Prevention.
In May, the N.C. High School Athletic Association named him among the group of
citizens who had contributed the most to high school athletics over the past 50
years.
In June, he finished a one-year stint as president of the Chapel Hill Rotary
Club.
And since 1992, he has become a familiar figure in academic processionals as
the University's faculty marshal.
No list could be written nor any award crafted to capture the full sweep of his
contributions.
But if you want to see proof of Hyatt's green thumb for service all you need do
is drive out with him to Carolina's Faculty and Staff Recreation Association --
better known as "The Farm" -- east of campus.
The office is still an old farmhouse. Inside it Hyatt greeted Nancy Campbell,
the longtime accountant, and Ben Allred, the new manager.
"Dr. Hyatt was a very active member, and we'd love to have him rejoin,"
Campbell quipped as she and Hyatt looked through old records.
More than three decades ago, organizers signed a lease that gave the
association rights to use the land for 99 years for a dollar.
Given that, it would appear Hyatt was overpaid when he signed on as the
organization's first president for a whole dollar for a single year. Don't fret
it, Hyatt said, "They never paid me."
As Campbell flipped through the pages of records, Hyatt mentioned the names of
people such as Alice Ingram and Jack Simmons, whom he will tell you did far
more than he.
Ingram was the one who got faculty members together to push for this, Hyatt
said. Simmons was a young fellow Hyatt knew from the intramural program. He was
supposed to stay on as director for three years while getting his master's
degree. "Twenty-five years later he left," Hyatt said.
To Hyatt, it was one of the best examples of faculty and staff working together
for a common cause. "There was little support from administration. The idea and
the efforts came from faculty and faculty families," he said.
They came out that first year with machetes and axes to attack the overgrowth
of kudzu. "We cut, we said bad words, cut some more, then we had a picnic on
the grounds," Hyatt said.
And then it dawned on them, as they sat there sweating and eating and looking
at all the work still left to do, that maybe what they needed was a bulldozer,
Hyatt said.
In Hyatt's personal dictionary, hard work and great fun seem to carry the same
meaning.
"There were so many things that needed to be done, and I enjoyed working with
people to get 'em done," Hyatt said. "And they were fun. We were small in
number and our salaries were not great but our camaraderie was.
"It was a different world. We knew each other, and we knew our administrators
on a first-name basis. The campus was just filled with opportunities to help
others, and we were glad to respond."
The original goal was to get 100 families to join.
Today, the number of families is climbing up to 800.
The Farm was just one of the many seeds Hyatt planted, nurtured then stood
aside to let others grow.
He planted the seed -- or in this case the bug in the ear -- to get state
officials to open a State Employees Credit Union in Chapel Hill.
As Hyatt remembers it, "We went over and asked the people in Raleigh, `Will you
come to Chapel Hill?' and they laughed at us a little bit. I told the fellow in
Raleigh, `If you will come to Chapel Hill, I'll rent a pickup truck, and I'll
drive you and your equipment over here.'"
The director laughed a little bit, too, but it so happened that the director
had gone to Carolina. The credit union opened in the basement of the Smith
Building until it grew out of it and into the building on Pittsboro Street.
Poor but privileged
After all these years, Hyatt still has a soft heart for this place, not
a big head about all that he has done for it. He still is mindful of how
grateful he should be for just being here.
His father passed away when he was in fifth grade, and he grew up in a
three-room "shotgun house" -- so named because of the central hallway that cut
through its length. Keep the doors open at both ends, and you could fire a
shotgun through it.
Hard times had been a part of South Carolina living since the Civil War. In the
1920s, they got harder when cotton fell to 4 cents a pound and tobacco to 3
cents. They didn't get any better for Hyatt growing up in the middle of the
Depression.
They were poor, no doubt, Hyatt said, but rich in the things that counted.
"I was privileged," Hyatt said of his upbringing. "Thanks to the good people of
my hometown and my church and my high school, I was able to finish high school
and go to college."
For Hyatt, sports would prove to be a different kind of salvation. Name the
game, and he played it. He would go on to make a career out of teaching and
studying the science of it. And that career ultimately led him north of the
border to that other Carolina.
As he tells it, he did his master's here back in '58 and '59 and fell in love
with the place, then got all married up and went off to the mountains around
Asheville to teach and coach football. He came back east to teach at Atlantic
Christian (now Barton College) in Wilson before landing at Campbell University
-- "the Harvard of Harnett County" -- for two years. He ended up back at
Carolina in 1966.
Even when he was off from work he was off working. As a deacon and Sunday
School teacher at University Baptist Church. As a PTA president and Cub Scout
leader. And as a member of one board after another -- from the credit union to
the UNC Dance Club to the Chapel Hill Museum.
He kept busy weekends, too, spending 41 years in the N.C. National Guard before
retiring as a colonel. Part of that time was spent as commandant of the N.C.
Military Academy, which trains and commissions officers for the National Guard.
Among its notable graduates is Dick Baddour, the University's athletics
director.
The University is a liberal-leaning campus, Hyatt knows, but he does not feel
in the least bit out of step with it or the many here who march to his left.
"I love them all, brother. Them's my people," Hyatt said. "I go from them who
wave the flag to them who stomp on it. They're all my people, brother. They all
need to have a place to swim or hit a tennis ball or a place to go for a good
loan on a house."
Head of the herd
Perhaps no job better fits Hyatt or reveals more about him than the one
he performs every year as faculty marshal, out front and leading processionals
as if each one was another project that needs a little pushing to get
started.
Hyatt found out about the assignment from former Chancellor Paul Hardin in
1992.
"He came down to Woollen Gym -- I will never forget it -- and said, `An
advisory group has said they want you to consider being the faculty marshal.' I
was overwhelmed, and I said, `Chancellor Hardin, I'll name you 15 people right
now who deserve this honor more than I do and who have led and loved this
University in a much higher manner than I have.'
"I started naming them and he said, `Whoa, whoa, they didn't name them, they
named you.'"
And so right before the Bicentennial celebration he became faculty marshal.
"I must tell you that was a very, very high honor," Hyatt said. "I do it with
love. I try to do it with bearing. I try to do it with a sense of obligation
and duty, but sometimes we still have fun. Even in the rain. When it's raining
on you, why cry. You only add to the water."
Longtime physics professor Larry Rowan said Hyatt tends to the job with just
the right mixture of humility and aplomb. "It's a monumental task to try to
herd faculty colleagues into orderly columns so that they look reasonably well
organized as they enter the stadium on Commencement Day," Rowan said. "He has
done it with humor and graciousness."
Said Hyatt: "You have to recognize it's the students' graduation and yet you
want some modicum of decorum," Hyatt said. "It's a regal occasion, and there
should be a dignity and honor paid to it. I'm old fashioned. I love the rites
and rituals of an institution. They connect us to the past, and we have a rich
heritage that they connect us to."
He knows it's "a little bit different," but every University Day he walks over
to Memorial Hall and stands there reading the list of people who died in
service of Carolina. He walks over to the Davie Poplar, too, to stand and "pay
a little bit of homage."
"It's a bit sophomoric, but I do it every year," Hyatt said.
Several years back, he wrote a letter to retired Provost Dick Richardson,
insisting that the "high honor" of serving as faculty marshal needs to be
shared.
Hyatt said Richardson wrote back, "`Of all the things that don't need to be
retrofitted, that do not need to be reorganized, that do not need to be changed
at all is the faculty marshal. Ron, you came in with me and you are going out
with me.' I sat there and laughed at that letter and I said, `What an honor to
be associated with a man like that.'"
He will turn 67 at the end of the month, old enough, he says, to think
seriously about not buying green bananas. Just don't expect him to talk
seriously of retiring. Not now, not when there is so much left inside of him to
get out and so much work left out there to do.
He wants to write the 60-year history of the University's Exercise and Sport
Science Department.
He is developing an online course on the Olympics, and prior to the 2000 Summer
Olympics in Sydney, Australia, he will travel to Sydney to present papers and
preside over a symposium of the Scientific Congress of the Olympics.
He has been working for years on a history of sports in the American South.
He'd like to finish it. "I've had my good friends tell me there is no such
thing as sports in the American South, but I think I can convince them there
is."
And there are still his classes, still the students he still loves to teach.
So why quit work you still love?
Why say goodbye to people you will miss?
Why leave a place that's home?
"We've got a great University here, but we can't rest on our laurels."
And neither, rest assured, will he.
"We have a great role to fill in our state, and we do it by serving in a
variety of ways. I'm grateful I was given the opportunity to do so, to say
thank you. As James Brown said, `I feel good.'"
Editor's note: This story is one of a series featuring 2000 winners of the
C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award. The late C. Knox Massey of Durham
created the awards in 1980 to recognize "unusual, meritorious or superior
contributions" by University employees. The award is supported by the
Massey-Weatherspoon Fund created by three generations of Massey and
Weatherspoon families. Former Interim Chancellor William O. McCoy selected the
honorees from nominations submitted by the campus. They each received an award
citation and $5,000.
Ron Hyatt
* Birthplace: Dillon County, S.C. (Aug. 28, 1933)
* Family: Wife, Gayle; children, Wes and LuAnn
* Current position: Professor of Exercise and Sport Science
* Education: B.A., Furman University, 1956; M.Ed., Carolina, 1959; Ph.D.,
Carolina, 1970; graduate of U.S. Army War College
* Scholarly interests: History of physical education and sport; the Olympics;
sociology of sport; public policy in sport; technology and sport; fitness and
wellness; economic development of sport in North Carolina; sport and the fine
arts
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