Category: Victory Village

My Best Teacher

I’m sorry I don’t remember the name of the best teacher I ever had, a woman who taught me College Algebra when I was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

That was the “bone head” math class of that era but for me it would be a challenge — I had failed College Algebra in high school.   That’s why I had to take it again in college, and pass, to stay in school. Because some of my high school grades were so poor UNC required me to pass two math courses and four foreign language courses by the end of my sophomore year.  Or go home.

I was nervous.  I figured College Algebra in college would be every bit as hard as College Algebra in high school, or harder.

But on the first day of class this woman said I could make an “A” if I tried.  This is what she told my class:

  • I know all of you have had trouble with math, but you are smart enough to learn College Algebra or you would not have been admitted to UNC.
  • I know this subject well and I am an excellent teacher.
  • When you run into a problem I will help you. Come and see me during my office hours if you can.   If you can’t, I’ll see you at other times, outside of my office hours.
  • If you come to class, and study, you can make an “A,” every one of you.  And then she said, “I want you to make an ‘A.'”

I took her at her word. I went to class. I studied. On at least a half a dozen occasions I went to see her to get help with a problem. I killed the final. I made an “A.”

Coming Monday: The Memo I Ignored

You May Find This Odd

Kerry Sipe was a good newspaperman even when he was a student at working on the school paper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but I fired him anyway.

Kerry Sipe,
Kerry Sipe

He was night editor of The Daily Tar Heel. I was the managing editor, his boss, and he ignored my instructions.

One of our columnists had put a racist “joke” in his column meaning, he told me, to make fun the University of Mississippi.  Maybe so, but he missed badly and we had to fix it, or try to.

I required the columnist to write an apology and told Kerry to put the apology in the column exactly where the “joke” had run. But he didn’t do that, he moved the apology to the top of the column. In retrospect, Kerry was right about that but I couldn’t let a subordinate jerk me around.

After I graduated in 1966 I went to work for The Charlotte News and he went to work for The News & Observer in Raleigh.

Now here’s the thing you may find odd:

I told The News about Kerry, and recommended him, and they tried, unsuccessfully, to hire him – twice.

And he told The N&O about me and urged me to apply. They hired me and I stayed at The N&O for 37 years.

Postscript: Kerry left The N&O in the early 1980’s and worked the last 25 years of his career at The Virginian-Pilot.  Here’s what his colleagues said about him when he retired on Dec. 31, 2008.

Coming Monday: My Father’s Finest Hour