Category: Victory Village

Did You Say ‘Crip’ School?

Toward the end of my sophomore year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I was still undecided about my major. I had made up my mind to be a newspaperman but should I major in journalism or should I major in, say, English or, maybe, Political Science?

So I began asking around.

I asked my boss, Bob Quincy, the Sports Information Director at UNC. I worked there after I got out of class.

“How smart are you?” Bob asked me back.

“Well, so-so, I guess,” I replied.  “Smart enough.”

And he said, “If you think you might have a problem, major in journalism. It’s a crip school.”

Dr. Stuart Seacrest
Stuart Sechriest

I also asked my advisor, Stuart Sechriest, who happened to be a professor in the School of Journalism. I told him what Quincy told me, that the J-School was a crip school. Sechriest said that won’t so, and he urged me to major in journalism.

I was leaning that way when the J-School offered me a scholarship.  That made up my mind. My wife, Donna, and I had a baby on the way and we needed the money.

Dr. Norval Neal Luxon
Dr. Norval Neil Luxon

At the appointed time I showed up in Dean Norval Neil Luxon’s office to sign the paperwork.  After we exchanged pleasantries he put his hand on the scholarship paper and pushed it across his desk for me to sign.  But as I reached for it, he pulled it back.

“I hear you think this is a crip school,” he said.

I was caught off guard but I thought my response was pretty good: “That’s what I’ve heard, Dr. Luxon. But I wouldn’t know. I’ve never taken a class here yet.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think you find will it to be a crip school.”  [Or did he say, “I don’t think you will find it to be a crip school.”]

He was right. I made some Cs, a few Bs, and one A. My grade point average in my journalism classes, my major, was lower than my grade point average in the general college.

Sechriest gave me the only “A” I got from the School of Journalism, in copying editing of all things. That was not my forte — I’m not what you call a good speller or all that careful with punctuation or verb tenses.  Maybe it was payback for ratting me out.

Coming Friday:  We Made Peanuts

“Why?” she asked.

I was hitch hiking home, to Charlotte from Chapel Hill, and I was a little down.

It was Thanksgiving of my freshman year at the University of North Carolina and my grades were not as good as I had hope they would be: Two or three “A’s” and  “B’s,” a “C” or two and a “D” in Spanish. School was harder than I had expected, especially Spanish.

When Charles Bernard, the man who gave me a ride, introduced himself, I knew who exactly who he was. He was UNC’s director of admissions. Earlier that year, when I applied for admission, I had written to him a couple of times.

When I told him my name he repeated it, “Stith. You just got out of the Navy, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Went to Charlotte Garinger.”

“Yes sir.”

“Didn’t study very hard in high school, did you.”

“No sir, I didn’t,” I said.

My high school Plain Geometry report card
My high school Plain Geometry report card.

I had failed four subjects in high school: Latin, Biology, Plane Geometry and College Algebra. But, just before I got out of the Navy, I had tested OK on the SAT. And, in high school, I had been a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. I skipped the test to try to qualify as a finalist after my high school adviser told me that no college in America would give me a scholarship.

Mr. Bernard said his office had written my high school advisor asking whether she thought I ought to be admitted to UNC, and she said, “No.”

But because I had tested OK he figured I could do the work and because I had been in the service he figured that, maybe, I had grown up.  So UNC decided to admit me anyway.

Mr. Bernard said that after his office notified my high school adviser that I had been admitted my advisor wrote back with a question of her own: “Why?”

If I had any doubts about getting my degree, and about graduating in four years, they disappeared right then.

Coming Friday: Black Belt