Campbell Magazine | Fall 2016

FALL 2016

Finding Little Bethel

FALL 2016

READY, SET, EAT! | Homecoming is just around the corner, and if you haven’t thought about how you’ll spend the hours leading up to kick-off on a perfect autumn day in Buies Creek, we have just the thing for you — recipes, gear and tips to make your tailgate a memorable one. Check out Page 24 in our fall 2016 edition. Photo by Lissa Gotwals 2

FALL 2016

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FEATURES

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FALL 2016 | VOLUME 11 | ISSUE 3 __________________________________ PRESIDENT

J. Bradley Creed VICE PRESIDENT FOR INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT & SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT

Britt Davis

ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING

Haven Hottel (’00)

__________________________________ DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS & MAGAZINE EDITOR

Billy Liggett

DIRECTOR OF VISUAL IDENTITY & MAGAZINE ART DIRECTOR

Jonathan Bronsink (’05) DIRECTOR OF CONTENT STRATEGY & SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Cherry Crayton

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DIRECTOR OF WEB DESIGN

Nikki Zawol

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CONTRIBUTORS

Gerardo Gonzalez Lissa Gotwals Kendra Granger (’06) Hannah Hunsinger Lydia Huth Michael Little (’06) Bill Parrish Bennett Scarborough Lynsey Trembly Leah Whitt (’11,’14) ACCOLADES

CASE III Grand Award

Most Improved: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Best Magazine: 2013

CASE III Award of Excellence Publications Writing: 2014 Illustrations: 2016

Founded in 1887, Campbell University is a private, coeducational institution where faith, learning and service excel.

Campbell offers programs in the liberal arts, sciences and professions with undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees. The University is comprised of the College of Arts & Sciences, the Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business, the School of Education, the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, the Divinity School, the Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing, the School of Engineering and the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine. Campbell University was ranked among the Best Regional Universities in the South by U.S. News & World Report in its America’s Best Colleges 2017 edition and named one of the “100 Best College Buys” in the nation by Institutional Research & Evaluation, Inc.

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EEO/AA/Minorities/Females/Disabled/Protected Veterans www.campbell.edu/employment FALL 2016

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COVER STORY

FINDING LITTLE BETHEL

Theatre Arts professor Bert Wallace took on the challenge of adapting a novel by Harnett County’s most famous son, Paul Green, for the stage this past spring. In order to do so, Wallace immersed himself in Harnett history, spending days in the same old churches, farms, cemeteries and cornfields that inspired Green’s work a century ago.

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GOING THE DISTANCE

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Lawrence Kipkoech and Amon Terer grew up within miles of each other in the Kenyan city of Eldoret. Last May, the two ran side by side on track’s biggest stage — competing in two long-distance events at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

THE REVOLUTIONARY

Lewis Jacobs was 16 when he joined the resistance against communism and Soviet rule during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and became one of more than 200,000 Hungarians forced to flee the country at the time. His epic escape led him a half or world away to the United States, where a small rural school in Buies Creek took him in and helped launch a successful career in chemical engineering.

COVER | Professor E. Bert Wallace walks by a mile-long cornfield in rural Linden, North Carolina, across the highway from the presbyterian church that helped inspire his novel-to-stage adaptation of Harnett County native Paul Green’s This Body The Earth. Photo by Hannah Hunsinger

PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

AT HOME IN FAMILIAR SURROUNDINGS

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he first time Kathy and I visited Buies Creek, it rained. When we stepped outside, I took in a deep breath. I could smell pine trees. I said to Kathy, “Take a deep breath.” When she did, I stated, “Smells like home, doesn’t it?”

Home for us was where we grew up in the Piney Woods of East Texas, behind the “Pine Curtain” as some Texans say. We both assumed that we would spend our lives in the Lone Star State.

That’s where we went to school, began our careers, and where all our family lived. Then we spent a few years in Louisiana before returning to Texas and ending up in Alabama. Buies Creek, North Carolina, was not on the radar. Living here was beyond the realm of imagination.

I was settled and ensconced in Birmingham, not looking to leave Samford University when a search firm contacted me about Campbell’s presidency. I initially put the matter out of my mind, but in a matter of months, we started the process of making a transition to a new place of service and leadership. From the first day we stepped foot on campus, you welcomed us warmly with open arms.

In my first year as president, I made it a priority to get to know this place and its people, so I traveled to 13 cities across North Carolina, in Virginia and Georgia, and even in California. I met more than 2,300 alumni and friends and convened 25 listening sessions here on campus. Hundreds and hundreds of you told me your Campbell story.

You told me about professors who challenged you academically, staff who prayed with you, classmates who gave you a new perspective.

You told me how Campbell helped develop the skills and confidence you needed to succeed in your chosen field of work. You told me about the spiritual transformation you had, the spouse you met, the suitemate who became your best friend, the purpose you found for your life.

Here, you told me, you found a home. Kathy and I have, too.

I’ve worked at several schools during my 30-plusyear career. But no other school has a group of alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends who compare to your intense loyalty and genuine enthusiasm. Like no other, you show up for athletic events, plays, concerts and art shows. You provide financial support to students in need. You offer prayers and words of encouragement.

Because of your good will and support, no other school compares to Campbell in the opportunities it provides students and the direct impact it has on its community.

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We enroll and graduate more North Carolinians each year than any other private school in the state. As one of the most comprehensive private universities in North Carolina with more than 100 degree programs, we are one of only three private universities in the state to achieve the highest accreditation level. We have lawyers practicing in every county in North Carolina; and with new programs in medicine, physical therapy, physician assistant, public health and nursing to complement our historically strong pharmacy program, we are poised to be one of the region’s largest suppliers of health professionals.

Our impact will expand further when we graduate our first engineering students in four years. Your support has enabled these opportunities.

In the years ahead, we will be deliberate stewards of your support as we pursue the opportunities that await us. Specifically, we are developing a strategic plan that enhances the student experience, extends our reach for the benefit of the state and world and increases the value of your Campbell degree.

No matter what comes next, I imagine I will never have another year at Campbell quite like this first year as president. There were a lot of firsts: My first time to tweet, eat eastern North Carolina barbecue, visit the coast and travel to Asia, where we have a partner institution in Malaysia. It was also the first time I rode a camel — and kissed one!

Most days, I’m having fun. On those few challenging days, I head to a bookshelf in my home and pull out one of the 1,000 or so notes, prayers and passages of scripture that students wrote and presented to me during the week I was installed as president. I read their words, and I say a little prayer for the student who wrote them. I also think about your stories of how Campbell changes lives. Your words always uplift and inspire me.

RELIVE CREED’S INSTALLATION DAY

This summer, Campbell Magazine published a special edition chronicling the first year and Installation Ceremony of Campbell’s fifth president, J. Bradley Creed.

The special edition includes 40 pages of stories, photos, congratulatory remarks and social media posts from Creed’s big day. Visit campbell.edu/ installation to view the digital version of the magazine and to watch the full ceremony.

Post Office Box 567 Buies Creek, NC 27506

www.campbe

ll.edu

PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID RALEIGH, NC PERMIT #2483

SPECIAL EDITIO

N: THE INSTA

LLATION OF

J. BRADLEY

#ASKDRCREED

President Creed took over the @campbelledu Twitter account for an hour on Sept. 7. The results? Hilarious. Read some of Creed’s tweets below and search #AskDrCreed on Twitter for the whole transcript. @_gretchenharris: Do you play Pokemon Go? Creed: I’m more about Pokemon Stop @legit_moody: If I get you some all white Nike Air Force Ones ... would you wear them?

Creed: My legs are all white. I don’t need shoes to match. Seen better legs on cheap furniture. @rawegman: Will you marry me? #Officiant #ReverendDrCreed Creed: I’ll have to check the calendar @CUCampusRec: Dr. Creed we have an extra spot in our fantasy football league. Wanna Join?

With just a year and a few months behind me, I am more enthusiastic about Campbell today than I was when I started. That is because of you and the hospitality you have shown us.

Thank you for making Campbell a place of blessings. Thank you for welcoming Kathy and me home.

Creed: Possibly, but I wouldn’t advise using a computer under water

J. Bradley Creed President

Creed: How do you join something that’s not real? @halclark01: Can we get wifi at the Keith hills pool?

@NikkiZawol: My 4 year old currently wants to be “a mama” when she grows up. When you were a kid, what did you hope to become?

Creed: A garbage man. Looking cool hanging on truck driving down the street — something mama didn’t allow when I was 4.

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EDITOR’S INBOX

CONCERT RANKINGS

Many of you had something to say about our list of the Top 20 concerts to ever come through Campbell University. Read our favorite comments below, and let us know what else you’d like to see us rank by emailing liggettb@campbell.edu Janet Hofstetter: Jimmy Buffett played to a very small group in D. Rich! I think there were more people from Lillington there than students.

But on weekends in the 70s, the Creek really was a ghost town!

Beth Butler: Sawyer Brown actually started the country series at Campbell. They came before Tracey Lawrence. The Oak Ridge Boys came to Campbell in the early 70s as well. Little Big Town has been in the Pope Center in recent years.

David Morrow: In the late 80s there were a lot of contemporary Christian artists that played at Campbell — Mylon Lefevre and Broken Heart, Russ Taff, David Meece and more. Not a one of these mentioned?

Jeff Colombo: I got kicked out of the Gin Blossoms show! I jumped up on stage, and the lead singer yelled at security, “Leave em alone!: Very fun night.

Richard Phelps: As to Kris Kristoffersen playing, he was the second choice after the administration would not allow Molly Hatchett. As a result, the chairman of the Entertainment Committee quit, and I took over the duties. If only the admins knew what Kris did out in that bus ;)

SEND US YOUR LETTERS

Campbell Magazine wants to hear from Campbell alumni, students, faculty, staff and anybody else who bleeds orange and black. Comment on our stories or send us your Campbell experiences by emailing Editor Billy Liggett at liggettb@ campbell.edu. Or send us your letters to Campbell Magazine | PO Box 567 | Buies Creek, NC 27506.

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SPRING 2016

Hannah Connolly, a senior clinical research major at Campbell, is studying abroad through Arcadia University’s STEM research program at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Her summer project is called “Thermophiles in the Urban Environment,” studying organisms that thrive in high temperatures.

WHY CAN’T SH

E?

Only 13% of our country’s engineers are So why do women. we continue to hold them back?

GIRLS: IT’S OK TO LOVE ROBOTS To the Editor: I connected personally to the article “Let Them STEM,” and I applaud the attention that is being brought to the lack of female presence in STEM occupations.

This summer, I had the unique opportunity to work on a STEM research project in Scotland at the University of Glasgow, and I will forever be grateful for this opportunity to grow exponentially as a student and researcher.

Like School of Engineering Dean Dr. Jenna Carpenter, I wouldn’t be where I am today performing international research if it wasn’t for my father who encouraged me to pursue

my passion for science and math and not be discouraged by the male-dominated field — that I was just as good as any male in my position.

I believe it is imperative that all girls believe from a young age that their gender does not define or limit their roles in society. Girls: it’s OK to enjoy astrophysics; it’s OK to like nuclear chemistry; it’s OK to play with robots.

It’s actually really cool!

HANNAH CONNOLLY Senior clinical research major Campbell University

@jfreeze13 Proud as an employee and alum of @campbelledu to see us take a lead role in the advancement of women in STEM education

Origin of the Camel To the Editor: I was Gaylord the Camel from fall 1993 to spring 1995. You article on the origin of the Camel mascot brought back memories.

I know one of the key people mentioned, Campbell Times writer Rexanne Hege.

Thanks for continuing the heritage associated with the mystery!

JASON GANT (’95)

To the Editor: I read with great interest your article, “Why the Camels?” I was head cheerleader in the early 1950s, probably ’51 or ’52.

We encountered some opposition to the mascot then from those who said the camel was too docile. But anyone who has been around camels knows this isn’t true. We knew the camel was aggressive and would spit at you.

We also knew he was the most unique mascot of any college in the country. He just fit.

JOHN C. DREWRY (’52) Wilmington

Homecoming Alumni Village Saturday, Oct. 22 | Noon-3:30 p.m.

Located outside Barker-Lane Stadium’s main ticket box

GREAT FOOD

FRIENDS

Alumni Village is open to all — local alumni chapters and campus departments will be joining the Ultimate Campbell Tailgate.

LIVE MUSIC

Beach music favorites Bantum Rooster take the stage at 12:30 p.m.

Seven food trucks will be on site.

Barnes & Noble will have all the orange and black gear you can handle for sale on site.

alumni.campbell.edu

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CAMPBELL GEAR

See page 65 for the entire list of homecoming events

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AROUND CAMPUS CAMEL IN RIO | Former Campbell golf standout Michelle Koh (’12) represented Malaysia in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

She was one of only 60 women golfers to compete over a four-day span in Brazil.

Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images

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AROUND CAMPUS SAFE CROSSING | The long-awaited tunnel under U.S. Highway 421 was completed over the summer, allowing students easier and safer access to main campus from the Barker-Lane Stadium parking lot. Photo by Hannah Hunsinger

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AROUND CAMPUS MAKE IT RAIN | Campbell students returned for the 2016-17 academic year to a new Welcome Week tradition — a paint splatter party (Paint U) in the Academic Circle. The crowd gathered for a pre-paint group photo before the fun began. Photo by Bennett Scarborough

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AROUND CAMPUS

@thesierrafox Happy first day of classes from me and Tyler Hubbard to my fighting camels! @campbelledu #FloridaGeorgiaLine

PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT STUDENT 1 OF 10 IN U.S. TO JOIN NAVY PROGRAM

HIGHER STANDARDS

CLASS OF 2020 SCHOOL’S STRONGEST EVER ACADEMICALLY

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his fall’s group of freshmen and transfer students is Campbell’s strongest incoming class academically in its 129-year history.

The entering cohort — comprised of 898 first-year students and 258 transfer students — has a cumulative average GPA of 3.9, an average 1,510 SAT score and a 22.5 average on the ACT. All three averages are highs for an incoming Campbell class. The group marks the fifth year in a row that Campbell has welcomed a class of at least 1,000 new students.

“It’s a very special fall at Campbell,” said Britt Davis, vice president for university advancement and senior advisor to the president. “The class of 2020 has raised the bar for us in the profile of students coming to Campbell to study in the health sciences, engineering, business, education, fine arts and the liberal arts and sciences.”

Of the new students, 78 percent are from North Carolina and 22 percent from out of state. Fifty-seven percent are female, and over 41 percent identify as a minority group.

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HEALTH CARE FIELD MAJORS Nearly half of this year’s incoming class, or 556, declared their intent to major in a pre-professional or health-related field. That includes 135 students in pre-pharmacy, 104 in exercise science, 101 in pre-nursing, and 185 in biology, including 157 on the pre-professional biology track, which prepares students for professional studies in medicine, physician assistant, dentistry, physical therapy, veterinary medicine and optometry.

The Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing held its first pre-nursing seminar in 2014. The 46-member inaugural Bachelor of Science in Nursing class began classes as juniors in the new Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences this fall.

Miles is one of only 10 students in the nation selected for this exclusive program, which provides a salary, housing allowance and additional benefits to medical, dental, physician assistant and other qualifying students while they complete their health professional studies.

“It’s an honor to be selected for this program to serve as a PA,” said Miles, whose wife read him the oath during the commissioning ceremony held in the Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences. “I get to serve my country while doing what I love.”

Miles is on track to graduate in July. Upon graduation, he will serve as an active duty Navy officer and PA for at least three years.

Photo by Haven Hottel

Photo by Bill Parish

The U.S. Navy commissioned Daniel Miles, a second-year student in the physician assistant program, into its Health Services Collegiate Program during a ceremony in August on Campbell’s Health Science Campus.

BY THE NUMBERS

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The School of Engineering and the Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing are the eighth and ninth school or college at Campbell University —joining the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business, the School of Education, the School of Law, the Divinity School, the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences and the School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Photo by Billy Liggett

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SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING LAUNCHES WITH 96 STUDENTS

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t his previous schools, engineering instructor Lee Rynearson led off the first class of each semester with a question for his students —what had they heard about his class from other students?

What had they heard about him?

Those questions didn’t apply to Rynearson’s first Introduction to Engineering (with lab) course at Campbell on Aug. 24. Surrounded by shiny new machines and 23 eager students in Carrie Rich Hall’s new “Area 87” lab, Rynearson had the honor of leading the first engineering class of Campbell’s newest school.

“Since you’re first to do all of this, it’s going to be an adventurous experience,” Rynearson told his students. “It’s going to be exciting.”

The School of Engineering opened the fall semester with 96 students, nearly double the expected first-year enrollment when the program was announced in May 2014.

Campbell’s school is only the second engineering school at a private university in North Carolina.

It offers an interdisciplinary Bachelor of Science in General Engineering degree with two concentrations. Seventy-seven members of the inaugural class intend to concentrate in mechanical engineering and 19 in chemical/ pharmaceutical engineering.

“The whole campus has been working incredibly hard the last 12 months to get ready for this day,” said Jenna P. Carpenter, founding dean of Campbell Engineering who started preparing for the school’s launch in July 2015. “We could not be more excited to welcome this special group of students to campus.”

The inaugural engineering cohort is comprised of 78 incoming students and 18 current students transferring from other programs within Campbell. The first-year engineering students arrived with more Advancement Placement credits than nearly all the other majors, boosting the academic profile of the entire Class of 2020 — the strongest entering class academically in the university’s 129-year history.

Campbell Engineering is housed in Carrie Rich Memorial Hall, which was revamped over the summer to include a state-of-the-art 3D printing lab (complete with embroidery machine, a vinyl cutter and Dell Precision Desktop workstations), a professional-grade metal and woodworking fabrication facility, the Area 87 Foundations of Engineering Design Lab, a commons area, a “think tank quiet study lounge” and several classrooms specifically designed for the hands-on, projects-based, collaborative learning that will define Campbell Engineering.

There are 10 kinds of people in this world — those who understand binary, and those who don’t. — Sign in Lee Rynearson’s Intro to Engineering course on the first day of classes for the School of Engineering

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Situated on the second floor of Carrie Rich Hall (above the “stacks,” where much of Campbell’s history is currently archived), is Room 387 ... known to new students at Area 87. The lab houses the School of Engineering’s innovative Living With The Lab Foundations of Engineering Design curriculum, and it features reconfigurable interactive space, technology-enabled classroom capabilities and numerous engineering workstations with powerful tools to support a variety of hands-on team projects.

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Campbell School of Engineering’s founding dean Jenna Carpenter was hoping for 50 students when she began planning for the new school’s first semester. The demand was far greater. This fall, the school welcomed 96 students — 78 incoming freshmen and 18 others either transferring or switching majors to join Campbell’s newest program. Students in the four-year program will experience an innovative hands-on, project-based freshman curriculum in the newly renovated Carrie Rich Hall, former home to the physical therapy and PA programs.

62,527

The median entry-level salary for graduates with a degree in mechanical engineering (one of two concentrations at the School of Engineering) is $62,527, according to January 2016 figures from payscale. com. Chemical engineers (the other other concentration) enter the workforce slightly higher with a median entry-level salary of $67,007. The U.S. unemployment rate for engineers with a degree is a slim 2 percent.

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AROUND CAMPUS WALK THIS WAY | Students walk through D. Rich Commons on their way to annual Street Fair — the setting sun providing an autumn-like golden hue in the background. Photo by Bill Parish

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and lead creativity? That’s a skill set. That can be taught. That’s what we want to teach and showcase. That’s what will make our students different.

One of the first things a business student learns is how to perform a SWOT [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats] analysis on a company. What do you view as strengths and challenges in your new role as dean?

Photo by Lynsey Trembly

One major strength is the new president. I don’t think I can stress enough how important it was for me to meet President J. Bradley Creed. I like his style. He’s from Texas, and I like Texas, having spent a few years after college working in the oil industry in Texas. I see him as someone who has a real feel for how he wants to grow the university. He appreciates the history of the university, its mission and those that preceded him. But he is also focused on building something substantial in terms of the educational experience of all Campbell students.

INNOVATION WITH VISION

NEW BUSINESS DEAN SAYS CAMPBELL HAS PERFECT COMBINATION OF OPPORTUNITY, GROWTH, INNOVATION

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nnovation has been at the heart of Campbell’s business program since the school added a business curriculum in 1892. Within just four years, the business program had become so entrenched into Buies Creek Academy and expanded its offerings so much that the academy was renamed the Buies Creek Academy and Commercial School to represent both liberal arts and business curriculum.

Seventy years later, the program revolutionized the way banking professionals were trained by offering the nation’s first undergraduate Trust and Wealth Management degree. In 1983, the business department became its own school within the university and offered undergraduate courses along with an evening MBA program – the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business.

The school believes it has found a dean who matches its innovative spirit: Kevin O’Mara.

He sat down to talk about his new role and his goals for the school of roughly 800 students.

Why Campbell Business?

The remarkable thing about Campbell is that it is the perfect size. With about 3,000-4,000

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undergraduate students on campus, students from different disciplines are able to work together and know each other. The business school is roughly 800 students — that’s 200 students in each class every year — with minors, concentrations, unique and niche majors, and full-fledged graduate degree offerings.

Typically, business programs with 800 students do not have that kind of depth or breadth in their curriculum. Campbell not only is able to offer those opportunities, but it also has a solid infrastructure in place.

We have staff that is focused on student success, alumni engagement, and job placement. With Raleigh, the No. 2 city for business and careers according to Forbes Magazine right down the road, Campbell possesses a very nice combination of opportunity, growth and innovation.

What does innovation look like to you?

Survey after survey of corporate CEOs reveal that innovation and creativity is either their top, or among the top three, strategic priorities. And it’s not so much that you are the creative person coming up with the idea, but can you get others to be creative? Can you inspire innovation

Another strength and opportunity is the large number of alumni in the Research Triangle Park region. That is a potentially powerful force for obtaining internships, jobs, and engagement with the real-time projects of our business students. My sense is they are very proud of their Campbell degree and they want to be involved.

What do you hope to accomplish in your first year?

I want students to become more engaged both in the classroom, the community, and regional businesses. I hope to do this by making connections and integrating Campbell Business with the other schools on campus.

Innovation requires multiple perspectives so collaborating with the other schools will benefit all of us. Each school can provide unique knowledge and their own perspectives. We have certain capabilities here, as businesspeople, which are useful to other disciplines on campus. Collaboration across schools will make Campbell very unique as a university.

I also intend to encourage our faculty and students to take advantage of the deep knowledge of industries all around us. If we can get connected to those in other parts of campus and with the business community, we can share resources and offer a differentiated education experience for our students.

— by Leah Whitt

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HERE COMES THE SUN | First-year medical student Ryan Welborn captured this shot of the sun rising after a morning storm on Campbell’s Health Sciences Campus, home of the Leon Levine Hall of Medical Sciences and the new Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences, which opened its doors in the spring. The campus now houses Campbell’s School of Osteopathic Medicine, School of Nursing, physician assistant program, Doctor of Physical Therapy program and medical research program.

JONES HALL REOPENS AS HONORS DORM, WITH KITCHEN AND OTHER NEW AMENITIES Jones Hall, a three-story residence hall located in the heart of campus, underwent a dramatic transformation this summer. Not only has Jones been renovated, it’s also Campbell’s first honors residence hall.

In addition to 36 single rooms for honors students, the space also includes the Honors Program office, Study Abroad office and multipurpose space for teaching, learning and studying.

Resident assistant Maiya Bonilla said

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many of the students have already taken to the study spaces. “I like studying here because it’s in a central location,” she said. “I don’t have to go the library.”

Senior Candace Kinneywood moved back on campus because of the new dorm after a year in off-campus housing.

Her favorite part of the renovations is the full kitchen on the first floor.

“It’s made my transition back on campus so much smoother and creates a homey feel to the dorm,” she said.

LAW SCHOOL

PROFESSORS COLLABORATE ON BOOK TO HELP FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS First-year law students often feel like they’ve been tossed into the deep end of a muddy pool, says Melissa Essary, former dean of Campbell Law School and current professor.

She and two other members of the law faculty are offering a lifesaver.

Navigating the First Year of Law School: A Practical Guide to Studying Law, a collective effort by Essary, law professor Zac Bolitho and adjunct faculty member Nick Herman, is a road map for new law students and law school orientation programs. The book is available via Carolina Academic Press.

“Our book helps clear up that muddy water and gives students tools for success, even before their first law school class begins,” Essary says.

“It’s also a resource that students can return to time and again during their first year of school.”

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Throughout the book Essary, Bolitho and Herman convey how lawyers use the law, how the legal system works, how to study, how to read and brief case decisions, how to participate in class, how to prepare course outlines and how to study for exams and write essay exam answers. It also includes a chapter with pointers about legal research and writing — both important in the first-year curriculum.

“Law school is notoriously demanding and rigorous,” says Bolitho. “We wrote this book with the goal of helping future law students be as prepared as possible on day one.”

Their book has been vetted by more than 25 reviewers, consisting of law professors, current and prospective law students and practicing lawyers. For more information, visit the Carolina Academic Press website.

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Photo by Billy Liggett

Photo by Bennett Scarborough

AROUND CAMPUS

LIBRARY UNVEILS NEW WIGGINS PORTRAIT

A new portrait depicting Campbell’s third president, Norman A. Wiggins, and his wife, Mildred “Millie” Harmon Wiggins, now resides in the library that bears their name.

Norman Wiggins served as president of Campbell from 1967-2003. Under his leadership, Campbell achieved university status with a thriving and respected fouryear undergraduate liberal arts program as well as five professional schools, including the Norman A. Wiggins School of Law. He also established Campbell’s reknowned Army ROTC program in 1971; satellite campuses at Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh; and a degree program in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

“MIllie” Wiggins, who was on hand for the portrait unveiling, taught in the Rocky Mount and Winston-Salem public school systems throughout her professional career. In 1998, she received the Campbell’s Alumni Service Award followed by an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2007.

FULL-SERVICE CHICK-FIL-A, ‘GREENS TO GO’ COMING

Main campus has a new dining option and will have an updated one this fall.

Greens to Go is a grab-and-go restaurant housed in Shouse Dining Hall. Salads and wraps are customizable from the kind of lettuce base to the protein and dressing.

Opening later this fall is a full-service Chick-Fil-A. Still located in Britt Hall, the newly renovated restaurant will offer all menu items available at a freestanding location, including milkshakes. Chick-Fil-A is set to open by the end of October.

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Graphic design and studio art major Kaela McCoy looks up at her painting of Buddy, a pup who found a home this year through the Harnett County Animal Shelter. McCoy, an employee of the shelter and a full-time student, painted five small murals to liven up the building’s lobby.

A SPLASH OF JOY

ARTIST’S MURALS LIVEN UP HARNETT COUNTY’S ANIMAL SHELTER

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uliette was alone, afraid and abandoned when Kaela McCoy first met her at the Harnett County Animal Shelter. A beautiful chocolate lab who was quick to cower and bite when approached by humans, Juliette found a friend in McCoy, an employee at the shelter and rising senior at Campbell.

“For some reason, we had a really strong connection,” says McCoy. “We’d run in the parking lot together, we’d play all the time, she’d sit under my desk. And when I left, she’d get upset. I loved that dog to death.”

Juliette’s story had a happy ending. She found a foster home, and the family that took her in, fell in love with her and adopter her permanently.

When McCoy, a talented graphic design and studio art double major, approached the powers that be with an idea in the spring to liven up the shelter’s lobby with paintings of dogs and cats who have found homes over the past year, Juliette was first on her mind. Today, the pup’s image is one of five animals that greets visitors through a painted window, a big smile on her face and a bright pink bandana around her neck.

“The animals on these walls are all really special to us,” says the Rocky Mount native. “All have been here and have a special story. I just wanted to tell their stories through art.”

McCoy has always loved animals, and for years, she has wanted to become a veterinarian. But

art was always her other love, and when it came time to choose a college and a major, she opted for the double major to highlight her talents.

Working for the shelter satisfied her need to be around animals.

“This is my happy place,” she says, beaming.

“Even on days I don’t have to work or on days when classes are canceled, I’m here. Some might find an animal shelter to be depressing, but for me, it’s a place where I get to help both animals and people.”

The idea to add some color to an otherwise drab and gray lobby was actually the brainchild of McCoy’s supervisor, program manager Steve Berube. Berube spotted a painting McCoy had done of her own dog and suggested she try her hand at the lobby walls. McCoy took two weeks off to prep the walls — a task that took longer because latex paint was used when it should have been oil-based — and finished the project about a month later. The experience has been invaluable as she has also done side work for a local muralist, helping with larger-scale projects.

Her paintings have caught the eye of not only visitors, but county animal control employees whose jobs can often carry stress and grief.

“A lot of people come in and say how nice it looks, how different it all feels now,” she says.

“And for me, these animals were all special.

Seeing them every day reminds me why our jobs here are so important.”

— by Billy Liggett

JUMP MAN | Elijah Burress (14) celebrates his first career touchdown as Zach Roderick (3) piles on in Campbell’s season-opening 59-7 win over Bluefield College at BarkerLane Stadium. | Photo by Bennett Scarborough

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AROUND CAMPUS

DIVINITY SCHOOL

Photo by Bennett Scarborough

NEW HEALTH SUMMIT A ‘REJUVENATING EXPERIENCE’ FOR VISITING PASTORS Ministers, take heed. When a member of your congregation asks how you’re doing, they don’t really want to know the answer.

NEW VIDEO BOARD AT BARKER-LANE

The best Game Day atmosphere in the Pioneer Football League got even better thanks to the installation of a new video board.

The latest improvement at BarkerLane Stadium is a state-of-the-art Daktronics video board that dominates the landscape at the north end of the facility. The new display measures 24 feet high by 42 feet wide with a 15 HD pixel layout.

Capable of variable content zoning, the display can show one large image or it can be divided into multiple windows to show any combination of live video, instant replays, game statistics and information, graphics and animations, and sponsorship messages.

Barker-Lane Stadium is ranked among the best in FCS College Football, with Stadium Journey rating the home of the Camels No. 16 of 125 FCS stadiums.

QUOTABLE

“The journey of my undergraduate degree was really a time of growth and figuring out where my call really was leading me.

And realizing that there is no limit and no cap to what women can do in ministry.”

— Deborah Jodrey, a Christian studies graduate sharing her Campbell experience during the Divinity School’s 20th anniversary commissioning service in September.

“They’re really asking if you’re OK enough for them to lean on you,” said H. Mac Wallace, ordained Baptist minister and senior professor of pastoral care at Campbell University.

The real answer to that question is often troubling. More than 1,500 pastors in the U.S. leave their ministries each month due to burnout, conflict or moral failure. About 80 percent feel they spend insufficient time with their families, and 75 percent report their jobs cause “severe stress.” Most troubling — the pastoral profession is said to have one of the Top 3 suicide rates of any profession.

In an effort to address these statistics and provide pastors with resources and tools that will help them take better care of themselves and their congregations, Campbell University Divinity School hosted its first Pastor’s Health Summit June 2. More than 75 professionals attended what will become an annual summer event that included breakout sessions dealing with topics like grief, marriage and family life, nutrition and exercise, mental health and depression, financial health and more.

If the attendance, participation and feedback were good indications, the inaugural summit was a success, according to Peter Donlon, the Divinity School’s director of church relations and development and organizer of the summit.

“Personally, I feel very satisfied that we provided a life-giving and rejuvenating experience to ministers who give so much to others,” Donlon said. “Pastors are called on to pray and intercede for others on a continual basis. Many told us [the summit] was a welcome and necessary support to their ministry work.”

Wallace partnered with Mary Whitehouse, a

PROGRAM’S MOST DECORATED PLAYER RETURNS AS COACH

Two-time NCAA Championship qualifier and four-time Big South All-Conference pick Tahnia Ravnjak (’16) returned to the program this fall to coach alongside John Crooks. A native of Cordeaux Heights, Australia, Ravynjak is one of only four players in school history to participate in NCAA regional competition four times and one of only nine Camels to earn all-conference honors four times in the 27-year history of the program. She completed her career with the secondlowest stroke average in school history, ranked second in career rounds played, tied for second in tournaments played and tied for third in top-10 finishes. She also ranked among the nation’s top 250 golfers in each of her four seasons.

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2006 Divinity graduate and current psychologist with Wake County Schools, to deliver two session on “mental health, depression and loneliness.” According to Wallace, pastors are more prone to depression than most other professions because they’re constantly dealing with grief, they’re constantly trying to live up to the expectations their congregations have for them and they’re usually understaffed, underpaid and underappreciated.

“We take on the responsibility of other people’s anxiety,” Wallace said. “It’s a constant tug-ofwar — how can I hold on to what I am, what I believe and what I want to be versus what my congregation thinks I am, who they want me to be and what they want me to believe?”

The summit was a multi-departmental event with professors from the School of Osteopathic Medicine, College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences and School of Business on hand as session presenters.

“This summit was rich on information and much needed,” said the Rev. Lionel Cartwright, former pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Chadbourn, Divinity School alumnus, member of the summit’s steering committee and attendee. “We all came here seeking self help, seeking ways and tools to care for our families and our communities, and seeking ideas for better outreach. This summit complimented and nurtured those dynamics.

It gave me as an attendee a renewed vigor for what this profession is supposed to be about. I’m overly excited to not only help make it happen, but to be a part of it.

“I can go out and preach about love, but that love has to also include me. In all the ways we care for our church, we as pastors need to care for ourselves as well. That’s a powerful message.”

— by Billy Liggett

Photo by Leah Whitt Photo by Bennett Scarborough

NURSING PROFILE | A CAREGIVER’S HEART

NOVEL APPROACH

TOP STUDENT-ATHLETE ALREADY A PUBLISHED AUTHOR Tori Griffin’s first novel was a four-year project that she finished during her freshman year of high school. “That manuscript has never and will leave my drawer,” says the senior from Claxton, Tennessee.

She’s written much more since. Griffin has more than 30 fiction publications and has presented two academic papers at Campbell’s Wiggins Memorial Library Academic Symposium. This summer, she was a recipient of the Big South Christenberry Award, the highest academic honor awarded to undergraduate student-athletes in the conference. A member of Campbell’s softball team, she’s only the second female athlete from the University to receive the honor.

Juggling softball and maintaining a 4.0 GPA hasn’t been easy for the English major.

“Campbell has high standards, both academically and athletically,” she says. “In the end, it’s a question of time commitment and keeping clear goals in sight. I can’t say I had much of a social

life during college, but that was never a priority.”

A fan of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, James Agee and several other authors, Griffin started writing not long after she learned to read. She has a folder of horror stories she wrote in the first grade (she’s grateful her parents encouraged writing rather than putting her in therapy), and she got serious in high school by challenging herself with different styles and forms and by participating in National Novel Writing Month.

Her recent works, “The Big Spill” and “Replaced” were published this spring in the national literary and art magazine, Atlantis.

When she graduates in May, Griffin plans to pursue her master’s degree and work as a freelance writer and editor.

“Writing is always in my plans,” she says. “I’ve got a completed suspense novel I’m hoping will find a home and am halfway through another — with a setting strongly inspired by Buies Creek.”

Jacqulyn Dixon is not a newcomer to Buies Creek. She grew up just down the road in Erwin and went to school at Buies Creek Elementary while her mom was enrolled at Campbell. Her first memories of campus were walking to the Oasis for ice cream when her mom needed a break from studying.

But her love and appreciation for Campbell did not show itself until she toured several college campuses as a high school student.

“At first, I didn’t even think about Campbell because I wanted a change of scenery,” she said. “But every campus I toured, it wasn’t the same. I just didn’t feel at home anywhere else.”

Now the 20-year-old junior is a member of the inaugural class of the Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing, which began classes in August. A lifelong science lover, she found her passion for helping others through volunteering with hospice and working as a certified nursing assistant through a local community college program while in high school.

“I really learned that nurses are the ones who bring it all together,” she said of her volunteer experience. “Doctors are very important, but nurses work closely with the patient and their family members.

“I have a caregiver heart, my mom [a teacher] taught me to care for others deeply. That is why I want to be a nurse.”

Dixon, along with 45 other BSN students, is working through a rigorous curriculum that melds the foundational knowledge of science and critical thinking with clinical learning experiences both in the classroom and in practice sites across the state.

She will graduate as one of Campbell’s first nurses in May 2018.

dakotades Campbell gained another Camel today!!!! #Campbell20 #CU20

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jake_schopp33 Only 17 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes and 3 seconds until move-in day, but hey ... who’s counting? #CU20

— by Leah Whitt

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WELCOME WEEK

Photos by Bill Parrish

A dance in D. Rich Commons, a 5K with hundreds of Camels, a Street Fair that spanned the length of the entire campus, bingo night, a medallion ceremony, and much more — Welcome Week 2016 was an eventful and memorable one. Photos by Bennett Scarborough and Bill Parish.

Ccbforlife President Creed in the house! Nbd, just hangin’ with the prez! #moveinday #Campbell #CU #CampbellWelcomeWeek 22

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@Docjonas Pre-Medallion Ceremony selfie.

Congratulations new Camels! @Campbell_CAS @campbelledu

@BrendaJochems Beautiful Convocation, Campbell! Thank you!! @LIZL0NGNPROSPER

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@jasmine_renee9 Rubbin’ that stache Round Two! #FDOC @campbelledu

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READY, SET, EAT! Your guide to the perfect Game Day tailgate Since re-launching its football program in 2008, Campbell University has created one of the most exciting atmospheres for FCS football fans in the country. Stadium Journey rated Barker-Lane Stadium 16th out of 125 FCS stadiums — ranking it the top stadium in North Carolina and the Pioneer Football League.

A big reason for the high marks is the pre-game experience. In the last two years, Campbell has expanded its area for tailgating, and each Saturday, h undreds arrive hours before kick-off to eat, socialize, watch other games and bask in the orange-and-black atmosphere.

Campbell’s 2016 Homecoming is set for Oct. 16 when the Fighting Camels host Stetson. This year’s festivities will introduce the Alumni Village, featuring live music, food trucks, activities for kids, alumni chapter information booths and … of course … tailgating.

To get you ready for this year’s big game, Campbell Magazine presents The Perfect Tailgate — your guide to recipes, neat food ideas and Camel gear to make your Saturday with friends the best experience possible.

By Leah Whitt Photos by Lissa Gotwals

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Spicy Pimento Cheese 1 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated ¾ pound Monterey Jack cheese, grated ¼ pound cream cheese, softened 2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill 2 cloves of garlic ½ teaspoon of Texjoy red pepper (more if you like it spicier) 1 4-ounce jar of pimentos, drained 3 tablespoons of Duke’s Mayonnaise Mix all ingredients (except mayonnaise) into a food processor and pulse it (not too long, you don’t want it to lose its texture). Pour into large bowl and add mayonnaise. Refrigerate, but set it out in room temperature 15 minutes before serving. Enjoy on white bread as a sandwich or spread on thick-cut slices of warm, fresh French bread.

Football Cutting Board Official Campbell University-licensed football-shaped cutting board — 15 x 8.75-inches, made of bamboo with 123 square inches of cutting surface. Available at Barnes & Noble store on Campbell’s main campus.

Football Truffles 1 package of cream cheese, softened 1 package of Oreos 1 package of semi-sweet chocolate morsels White icing Finely crush Oreo cookies in a food processor or plastic bag with a rolling pin. Place the cookie crumbs into a mixing bowl. Add cream cheese; mix until well blended with an electric mixer or by hand. Roll mixture into football shaped balls. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Refrigerate for an hour. Melt chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl for 30 seconds at a time until smooth. Remove truffles from refrigerator. Dip truffles in melted chocolate; place back on the cookie sheet.

Refrigerate until chocolate is firm. Pipe football laces before serving.

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Mini Chicken & Waffles 24 Frozen mini waffles, toasted 24 Chicken nuggets or 12 tenders 24 Toothpicks Maple syrup or honey Slice cooked chicken fingers into 3-4 pieces each. Place 1 piece of chicken atop 1 mini waffle. Secure with a toothpick. Drizzle with syrup or honey and serve warm.

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Crockpot Chili 2 pounds lean ground beef 2 (15 ounce) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed 1 can whole kernel corn 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce 1 can tomato paste 1 cup water 1 jalapeno pepper ½ red onion 2 cloves of garlic 2 tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon ground cayenne pepper 2-3 tablespoons chili powder ž teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon white sugar Cook the beef in a skillet over medium heat, and cook until evenly brown. Drain grease and set aside.

In a crock pot set to low, mix the beans, corn, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and water. In a food processor, finely chop the jalapeno, onion, and garlic. Mix into pot. Mix in the cooked beef.

Stir in flour. Season with cayenne pepper, chili powder, salt, black pepper, and sugar. Cook 4-6 hours, stirring occasionally. Carefully transport to tailgate area and serve warm.

Taco Dip 1 large container of sour cream (or non-fat Greek yogurt for a healthier option) 1 package taco seasoning 1 jar of salsa 1 package of shredded Mexican blend cheese Mix sour cream together with taco seasoning.

Spread the mixture in a serving dish then add the jar of salsa. Add the shredded cheese on top. Serve with tortilla chips.

Pepperoni Rolls Yields: 48 pepperoni rolls

1 package Bridgford Parkerhouse Rolls 1 package pepperoni slices 1 package pepperjack/string cheese (optional) Follow package instructions for rolls to thaw and rise. Once risen, rolls should be puffy and about the size of a baseball. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut dough rolls in half. Fold a slice of pepperoni into each half and place it on a non-stick baking sheet, adding cheese if desired. Once all the dough is rolled, place the baking sheet in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown on the bottom of the rolls. Let cool and enjoy.

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Banana Pudding

Inspired by Paula Deen’s “Not Yo Mama’s Banana Pudding” 1 bag mini Nilla Wafers, with a handful reserved 5-7 bananas, sliced 2 cups milk 1 (5 oz.) box instant French Vanilla pudding 1 package of reduced fat cream cheese, room temperature 1 can sweetend condensed milk 1 container frozen whipped topping, thawed Lemon juice, optional Line the bottom of a serving dish with mini Nilla Wafers and add a layer of bananas on top.

In a bowl, mix milk and instant pudding together using a handheld electric mixer. In another bowl, combine the cream cheese and condensed milk together until smooth. Fold the thawed whipped topping into cream cheese mixture. Add the cream cheese mixture to the instant pudding mixture until well blended. Pour over the wafer ands and bananas. Crush reserved wafers into a fine powder to add to the top of the dish. Add extra slices on top if desired.

To prevent browning of banana slices, lightly cover them in lemon juice before adding them to the dish.

Southern Sweet Tea Yields: ½ Gallon 6 Luzianne tea bags ¾ cup sugar (or more if desired) pinch of baking soda Heat 4 cups of water. As water approaches boiling, remove from heat and add the tea bags.

Steep for 15 minutes. Add sugar and a pinch of baking soda (to prevent bitterness) while still warm. Transfer to pitcher and add 4 cups of water. Chill & serve cold.

Essentials Miniature Campbell football helmets, Camels Orange Lemonade, Orange Hot Chocolate, Campbell Hot Sauce and Campbell Salt & Pepper are all available at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on campus.

Don’t Forget • Outdoor chairs

• Bug spray

• Stadium blanket

• First aid kit

• Trash bags

• Your tickets!

• Hand warmers if it’s cold

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A

F

tailgate?

E

The Perfect Tailgate A. Outdoor tent Whether it’s the sun or the rain, this 9 x 9-foot orange and black Campbell Camels tent will protect you from whatever elements Saturday throws your way. Available at Barnes & Noble on the main campus.

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B. Folding Chairs Perfect for tailgating, concerts or any other outdoor activity — this black Campbell folding chair is designed for comfort with full-length back fabric, arms and a cup holder. Comes with carry bag and drawstring. Available at Barnes & Noble on the main campus.

C. Grilling Accessories Man the grill with this Campbell waist apron and protect your pants from whatever stains those burgers, dogs or pigs may throw your way. Comes with handy mitt. Available at Barnes & Noble on the main campus.

B C

D

D. Cups, Plates & Napkins Everything else is orange and black, you may as well go all out. Plastic cups, paper plates and napkins are available at Barnes & Noble on the main campus. You’ll also find pom poms, neck beads, face stickers, orange eyelashes, foam fingers and more to make your tailgate complete.

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E. Cornhole Officially licensed cornhole games come with two 24 x 48-inch regulation boards with folding legs, a complete bag set (8 bags) and a string pack to carry the bags. Available online at victorytailgate.com and amazon.com.

F. Camel Gear Shirts of all kinds — long-sleeve, short-sleeve, three-quarter-sleeve, sweatshirts, polos, tees and more — plus jackets, hats and other Camel clothing and accessories at Barnes & Noble and online at shopcamelgear. com

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Photo by Hannah Hunsinger

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Finding Little Bethel Before he adapted Paul Green’s novel for the stage, Professor E. Bert Wallace sought old churches, log cabins and corn fields to get into the mind of Harnett County’s most famous son

By Billy Liggett

T

he shade of giant oaks and the breeze that gently rustles the cornfields offer a respite from the mid-day summer heat for E. Bert Wallace, who sits on a wooden bench — leather satchel at his side, laptop on his knees — soaking in his surroundings. The rural silence is broken only by the whine of cicadas or the occasional hum of a passing motorist.

A two-lane paved farm road separates Wallace from the church. Towering above the peaked stalks is a century-old Gothic revival structure, Parkers Grove Methodist, a building that — like the nearby town of Linden — is well past its prime. The steeple no longer stands straight. The white paint is giving way to rot.

Yet, even today, it’s glorious. Inspiring.

Wallace effortlessly drifts back in time to early 20th Century North Carolina and imagines what life was like where the Cape Fear and Little rivers meet, where a young, observant boy named Paul Green overcame the cultural deprivation of the rural South to become one of America’s most distinguished authors and playwrights. Tapping away on a keyboard that doesn’t belong in this scene, Wallace has entered Green’s mind.

This Body The Earth, Green’s 1935 novel about poor white tenant farmers and former slaves in the post-Reconstruction South trying to eke out an existence on often unforgiving land, paints a similar scene. The church; the corn, cotton and tobacco fields; the rivers; Linden, Erwin and Buies Creek — they may all have different names in the book, but Green’s descriptions … they’re what he’s known.

This is Little Bethel, North Carolina. This is the home of Alvin Barnes, our tragic hero.

His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.

Wallace, pausing a moment to dab the sweat from his brow as a passing tractor interrupts his train of thought, has set out to adapt Green’s epic novel for the stage. He’s here to experience old Harnett County and to introduce its famous son — the pride of Campbell University — to a new generation.

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mother’s death by reading as many books as he could and saving money for a college education. In addition to pitching, Green worked on farms (begrudgingly) and even helped out the local schools as a teacher.

In 1912, at the age of 18, Green was a student at Buies Creek Academy, where he would flourish as a debater, president of the Philologian Society and eventually historian of his senior class. He played baseball, ran track and was a member of a team of prospective lawyers called The Counsel (Green chose this over the Prospective Farmers club, again distancing himself from his father’s line of work).

“He is a young man of great ability,” read Green’s bio in his senior class photo in the 1914 Pine Burr yearbook.

“Books are his passion and work his recreation. Difficulty has been no barrier to his success, for he has overcome many. In his chosen vocation in life as a lawyer, we wish him every success.”

His chosen motto for his photo: “Be true to thyself, and you will be true to everything.”

In 1916, Green got an acceptance letter to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His writing was so advanced, he taught freshman English there as a 22-year-old freshman. But his education was put on hold the following year when World War I called him to volunteer for the Army and serve in Paris. Uncertain he’d make it back home, he published a thin volume of poems, Trifles of Thought by PEG, before he left for the war.

In the Army, Green rose rapidly through the ranks — from private to second lieutenant with the Chief of Engineers in Paris. For a year in Belgium and France, he experienced heavy combat in the trenches — an experience that had a lasting effect on him (and one he rarely spoke about).

Born and raised in Buies Creek and a graduate of Buies Creek Academy in 1914, Paul Elliot Green became a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, best known for his award-winning 1927 dramatic play, In Abraham’s Bosom.

Photo courtesy of the Paul Green Foundation

ACT I: Be true to thyself Paul Green grew up in the South.

Born Paul Eliot Greene (he would later drop the “E”), he was born and raised on a farm in Buies Creek on March 17, 1894. When he was 10, he developed osteomyelitis in his right arm and underwent a serious operation in a hospital in Baltimore to fix it. The surgery helped Green become a heck of a baseball player — he learned to throw with his left arm as his right arm healed, and he would later go on to pitch ambidextrously for various semi-pro teams in Benson and Lillington to earn extra money as a teen.

His mother, Betty Byrd, collapsed and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in their home when Green was 13. He was closer to her than his father — her love of music and her desire to educate her children influenced Green more than his father, whose life was the farm. Green coped with his

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“Volumes could not hold all I’ve learned in these last two months,” Green wrote to his sister Erma from Paris in March 1919. “I’ve walked at least a thousand miles and ridden many more. Today I stand where kings lost their heads; tomorrow where saints were massacred. One hour I see the most marvelous creations of art; the next I see the most abject misery on earth crawling along the streets.”

Upon his return, he was back in Chapel Hill studying playwriting under legendary UNC professor Frederick Koch, founder and director of the Carolina Playmakers.

One of his classmates would become arguably North Carolina’s most famous author, Thomas Wolfe. Another was a young redhead named Elizabeth Lay — the two met while painting scenery in an art class in 1920. They married in Beaufort two years later and would go on to have four children — Paul Jr., Janet, Betsy and Byrd.

After graduation and a short stint studying at Cornell University in New York, Green taught philosophy, creative writing and English at UNC and got serious about his own writing. Over the next dozen years, he rocketed to fame.

It began with one-act plays on his experiences growing

Paul Green’s 1941 collaboration with author Richard Wright to adapt Wright’s novel “Native Son” for the stage was controversial. Photo courtesy of the Paul Green Foundation

Native Sons One was a white Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. The other the black author of a best-selling novel in 1940. Their collaboration was groundbreaking. Their intentions were genuine.

But Paul Green and Richard Wright famously clashed as artists while working together to adapt Wright’s novel Native Son to the Broadway stage in 1941. Disagreements over character arcs, religion, the play’s ending and more marred how history would portray their historic partnership.

That partnership began well. Green was a huge fan of Native Son, writing in his journal, “I found it horrifying, brutal and extraordinarily vivid. Doubt I could do anything with it. However, I feel it’s the most vivid writing I’ve seen by any Negro author in America.”

That year, Green tried to do something with it. He invited Wright to Chapel Hill to collaborate on a stage adaptation for the novel. In addition to loving the book, Green was intrigued when he heard Orson Welles and John Houseman had the stage rights (Welles had just wrapped up a little movie called “Citizen Kane” at the time).

up in Harnett County. His plays featured both white and black protagonists — progressive writing for his day. “[His plays] were full of regional dialect, the folk beliefs and wild superstitious terror of the uneducated, and full of their love of songs and dreams and rich phrases,” his daughter Janet wrote in 1981 in a short biography on her father. “These plays like The No ‘Count Boy, White Dresses and Hymn to the Rising Sun are marvelously skillful depictions of rural conflicts dealing with the powerful feelings like racial hatred, passion, fear of ostracism or ruin and greed.”

In 1927, Green wrote In Abraham’s Bosom, a drama about a black man with a white father who tries to start a school to educate black children and earn an honest living in the South. He gets the school, but racism and his own demons drive him to murder, and his life is forever ruined. The play made it to Broadway and had a six-month, 200-performance run from December 1926 to June 1927.

In Abraham’s Bosom also earned Green the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; the judges writing, “The play does not sentimentalize on the tragic situation of the Negro. It is scrupulously fair to the white race. But it brings us face to face with one of the most serious of the social problems of this country, and forces us to view this problem in the light of tragic pity.”

“The Father of Outdoor Theater” earned this honorary title with Lost Colony in 1937. Based on accounts of Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement on Roanoke Island, Green coined the term “symphonic drama” with the play. Still performed annually in the Outer Banks, Lost Colony is the nation’s second-longest running historical outdoor drama, behind The Ramona Pageant in California. More than 4 million visitors to the Outer Banks have seen Green’s play since its first production 80 years ago.

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Their alliance was controversial, to say the least. The two men worked in Green’s home and in his office on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

Because of segregation laws, Wright could not stay in Chapel Hill hotels, so he stayed with a black family in Carrboro (Green would later write that he regretted not inviting Wright to stay in his home). Green’s daughter, Janet, shared a story 40 years later about the community’s reaction to Wright’s visit: “My dad was alarmed by a crowd of angry white Chapel Hill citizens who told him they resented Wright’s presence with white girls at a racially mixed party,” she wrote. “They threatened trouble. One was my dad’s cousin, and he had a gun. Dad calmed them down as best he could, but he spent the night beside Wright’s rooming house, in case the mob came for him.”

Greens’ intentions were good, but when it came time to adapt Wright’s book, the two had their disagreements. Their views on religion differed.

Green’s passion was Greek tragedy (his heroes were flawed and tragic), while Wright was more of a realist. Their biggest dispute was the play’s ending, the main character Bigger Thomas’ execution (Wright re-wrote Green’s ending without his approval).

Despite the in-fighting and delays, Native Son made it to Broadway the following year and made history, opening up new opportunities for black actors tired of playing stereotypes and caricatures. Wright reached out to Green via a telegram after the opening, according to “Backstage and Onstage: The Drama of Native Son,” a short story by Hazel Rowley.

Wright wrote, “[I] wrote an article for NY Times on our collaboration discussing problem of hero in US drama,” Wright wrote. “Gave your views and mine. Tried desperately to be objective and fair.”

On March 24, 1941, Native Son played before a diverse full house on Broadway and ended with “vigorous applause” and “15 curtain calls.” The New York Times called it “the biggest American drama of the season.” But the initial hype waned — the show ran for 114 performances before ending in late June of that year. Green would later write that the believed changes to his screenplay contributed to the short run.

In 1961, a year after Wright’s death, Green wrote Wright’s agent expressing regret that the two men did not get along better: “I always admired him and counted him a friend, though to my sorrow and regret he often seemed not to understand my intent nor me his need — and vice versa. Both of us failing — in an environment which then as now murks up the truth by which men try to live.”

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In all, Green authored more than 40 dramatic productions, produced about a dozen film scripts for Hollywood, wrote numerous short stories and songbooks, published two novels and released hundreds upon hundreds of letters he’d written to friends and family over the years. He lived until 1981, and he wrote until his final days.

“In his own long, incredibly active life, Paul Green saw Americans becoming richer, more decadent, more selfindulgent, more violent, destroying more land, water, air and people,” Janet Green wrote shortly after her father’s death. “He never stopped talking against those infamies, and writing those letters to politicians that most of us can’t be bothered to write, making phone calls, lobbying in legislatures, going to dull meetings, giving money to causes, following the news carefully, reading and thinking.”

ACT II: Let’s see what he can do E. Bert Wallace also grew up in the South.

Born Edward Bert Wallace (he would later drop the “Edward,” but keep the “E”), his parents weren’t farmers, but he’d often visit aunts and uncles in rural Alabama; their tin-roof houses, farmland and family dinners a lasting memory from his childhood. He admits it’s a loose connection he has with Paul Green — raised on a North Carolina tobacco farm over 100 years earlier — but it’s an important one.

Wallace studied drama and English at Furman University before earning his master’s degree in playwriting and dramaturgy from the University of Alabama. As a playwright, several of his works — We Shall Fire the

Southern Heart, Porcupine Meringue, Hopeful, Quem Queritis: Whom Seek Ye? and The Purse, to name a few — have made it to the stage.

Both Wallace and Green are and were professors. Both men are/were firm believers in a “sense of place” in their writings. But the real connection Bert Wallace feels with Paul Green is Campbell University.

Wallace, the associate professor of Campbell’s theatre arts program, works today where a century ago, Green attended classes, led the debate team and Philologian Society, pitched for the baseball team and ran track, worked on the yearbook and joined a club of future lawyers. Wallace’s office and the stage where his students have performed isn’t far from where the Paul Green Outdoor Theatre once stood on campus.

Chapel Hill is where Green flourished as a writer, but Buies Creek is where he became a man.

“He would have known the schoolmaster, the founder, J.A. Campbell very well,” says Wallace. “He was very much a part of the community here, even after his fame.”

In April 2012, Campbell University collaborated with the Harnett County Library and the Chapel Hill-based Paul Green Foundation to celebrate Green’s legacy with a two-day event. The Paul Green Festival featured actors performing scenes from Green’s dramas, participants dressed in Lost Colony-inspired costumes, bluegrass music, the showing of the 1934 film “Carolina” (based on Green’s play The House of Connelly), lectures and stories, baseball games and more. Before the festival, Wallace was approached by the Foundation and asked if he could direct a Paul Green play — an attempt to “rekindle” the Green-Campbell connection in time for

Professor Bert Wallace found solace and inspiration in the cemetery across from a small church in rural Linden, North Carolina.

The church was even featured on the playbill for Wallace’s adaptation when debuted by Campbell University’s theatre arts program in April. Photo by Hannah Hunsinger

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The Foundation A year after the author’s death, the Paul Green Foundation was established in 1982 to “advance the ideals of human rights to which Paul Green was committed; to own, preserve, and promote his literary works; and to encourage dramatic art with special emphasis on symphonic outdoor drama.”

Laurence Avery, formerly the chairman of the English department at UNC-Chapel Hill, was the founding vice president of the Foundation who had spent a lot of time with Green in his later years. Avery, then about 35 while Green was in his 80s, spent anywhere from three to five days a week in the author’s home in the country to go through and document “tens of thousands of letters” from Green’s life — the earliest dating back to 1916 before Green’s service in World War I. Avery would later edit and produce “A Southern Life: Letters of Paul Green, 1916-1981.” Those letters provided intimate details of his life, from his time in the war to his early relationship with wife Elizabeth. It also included correspondence with authors Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and others — the content often dealing with literature, the arts and human rights in the South.

Through his letters, his published works and his time with Green, Avery became an admirer.

“When we met, I’d call him Mr. Green, and very soon, he told me, ‘I wish you’d just call me Paul, if you can be comfortable doing that. It’ll suit me better,’” Avery recalls. “He was extremely well organized and a hard worker — even in his 80s, he was always working on something. He was very personable. A gentle kind of person, really.”

Marsha Warren joined the Foundation in 1991 and today serves as executive director. She played a big role in Harnett County’s Paul Green Festival in 2012, and she and Avery worked together to get soft cover reprints of This Body The Earth made in 2003 (Avery wrote the introduction for that edition).

“We all love this book,” Warren says. “We feel very strongly about the story, and we’re very happy it’s getting reintroduced to a new generation.”

the event. Wallace was involved in the festival’s planning, but he didn’t think at the time he could pull off a Green play with Campbell students. So the play didn’t happen.

But a relationship was formed. Wallace met Marsha Warren, the Foundation’s exective director, and the two stayed in touch. Warren and the Foundation used the festival to reintroduce one of Green’s two novels — a book not often included among his most notable works, but one that many North Carolina historians often include in their lists of Green’s most important contributions to literature.

This Body The Earth, published in 1935, chronicled the dreams and ambitions, the burdens and the struggles of a poor white man named Alvin Barnes, a North Carolina sharecropper in the early 1900s. Barnes was molded

by Green as a man who refused to accept his “lower” lot in life and a man who believed black people in his community deserved better lives as well (certainly a progressive thought at the time).

Barnes’ story is tragic in every sense of the word — Wallace calls the book “Grapes of Wrath” based in North Carolina — but it’s also an unflinching, true-to-life look at the struggles white and black families endured in the rural South in the decades following the Civil War. Author John Ehle once called it, “The most important novel by one of North Carolina’s most important writers.”

Wallace’s wife, Kelley, picked up a copy of the book at the festival and began reading it at home. Before long, she was telling her husband how good it was. “She kept telling me it would be a really interesting thing to adapt for the stage,” Wallace recalls. “Eventually, I read it and said, ‘Yes. We have to do this.’”

Warren never had This Body The Earth in mind when she approached Wallace before the festival. Her reaction to Wallace’s pitch wasn’t a confident one.

“I thought, ‘There’s no way it can be on stage,’” she says.

“It has to be a movie. My favorite parts of the book — and there are many — these are all scenes I felt like I could see on a big screen. In fact, there was a guy who talked to us from Hollywood years back about a movie, but he didn’t turn out to be too reliable. So when Bert suggested it for the stage …”

“I told her, ‘Let’s see what he can do,’” says Laurence Avery, poet, playwright, author, Paul Green historian and former chairman of the English department at UNCChapel Hill.

Campbell professor E. Bert Wallace (right) walks with Paul Green Foundation members Laurence Avery and Marsha Warren in Chapel Hill.

The foundation was established in 1982 to advance the ideals of human rights to which Green was committed and to preserve Green’s works.

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Avery spent a lot of time with Green in the author’s final years, editing hundreds of his letters from as far back as 1916, many of which appeared in “A Southern Life: Letters of Paul Green,” published in 1994. Avery was a founding board member of the Paul Green Foundation, formed a year after Green’s death in 1982 to not only protect, preserve and perpetuate Green’s works, but also to support the arts and human and civil rights.

This Body The Earth is an important book to the Foundation. The book, they maintain, says as much about

Green’s human rights beliefs as anything else he’s written.

“We all love this book,” says Warren, who joined the Foundation in 1991. “Bert just had an amazing idea. I was skeptical at first, but eventually we were all pretty excited.”

ACT III: A sense of place For much of his career, Paul Green found much-needed solitude in a small log cabin in the sprawling woods behind his home in Chapel Hill. From his rocking chair just feet from his fireplace, Green could gaze out the window and admire the beauty of a nearby dairy farm.

He could write. He could study plants. He could think to himself.

The cabin provided more than just refuge from a home bustling with the joyful, yet distracting, noise of children and eventually grandchildren. Its rustic feel, void of all modern devices, reminded him of Harnett County.

Ten years after Green’s death, that cabin was taken apart and rebuilt in the North Carolina Botanical Gardens, about a mile away from his home. Visitors today can walk right in to Green’s personal space and learn about him, his works and his love of botany and herbology.

Bert Wallace has spent more time in that cabin than most.

Much like his visits to the old church and cornfield in Linden, Wallace sought inspiration inside those four walls as he took on the monumental task of converting a 422page novel to a 90-minute stage production.

“Paul Green was very much about place,” Wallace says.

“You look at his outdoor dramas and his symphonic dramas — those plays are meant to be performed in a certain place. Lost Colony isn’t meant to be done in New York. It’s at home in the Outer Banks in a place like Manteo.

“To me, this cabin represented a strong connection Green had with Harnett County,” he adds. “This Body The Earth is clearly based on this environment. I spent a lot of time just driving around this area — a lot of time in church yards, swamps and cotton fields. I didn’t want to take on a project like this without immersing myself in the environment. It was very inspiring to do that.”

Wallace compares This Body The Earth to “Gone With the Wind” and “Grapes of Wrath” in terms of scope — it’s an epic story, following Alvin Barnes from his early childhood to (spoiler alert) his early death. Characters come and go (more than a few are introduced and die within a single chapter). Settings change constantly as Barnes searches for fertile land.

These landscapes and quick character arcs might have worked well on the screen, but on stage — where scene changes are grueling tasks and cast members are limited — it presented a challenge. Wallace tackled the first problem by taking a character introduced and killed off in the second chapter and making him the play’s narrator after his death. Rassie, the youngest son of the

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His Theatre During the 1933 and 1934 school years, Paul Green made a number of trips from his Chapel Hill home to Buies Creek to work on an outdoor theater.

Green was involved in everything about the theater — its planning, its construction and even its future use. He was often seen on campus “looking like the farmer he used to be growing up on his father’s farm … grading the incline with a team of mules, distributing the guano by hand, building rustic bridges or planting trees and shrubs.”

Located between D. Rich Hall and the old gymnasium site (where Taylor Hall stands today), the Paul Green Outdoor Theatre was completed in 1934, a few months after the death of Campbell’s founder, J.A. Campbell. According to “Big Miracle in Little Buies Creek” author J. Winston Pearce, “In size, location and beauty, it was, according to informed critics, unsurpassed anywhere in the state.”

And the structure was sentimental to Green — some of the rock used for the stage came from an old dam on the Cape Fear River, a common playsite in his childhood. A brick from Green’s childhood home was also used in the construction.

Numerous productions — including a few Paul Green outdoor dramas — were performed in the theatre over the next 30 years, but by the late 1960s, the theater became little more than an outdoor study or picnic area for students. In the early 70s, the theater was leveled and paved over to make way for Taylor Hall, which opened in 1973.

According to Professor Bert Wallace and newspaper clippings from that time, bricks and stones from the theater were kept and set aside for a new, better theater bearing Green’s name.

“That never happened,” says Wallace. “And who knows if they were sincere about rebuilding it or not. I was told Paul Green had a fair amount of resentment about the ordeal — not that they tore it down, but that they promised to rebuild.”

UNC-Chapel Hill built its own Paul Green Theatre — a 500-seat indoor theater and dramatic arts center — in 1976.

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The cabin used often

by Paul Green for solitude and inspiration was moved from his former home a few miles away to the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill, where it remains today.

Visitors can walk in and see Green’s former workspace and learn more about his career and his love of botany.

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neighboring black family who tenant farmed on the same land as Barnes’ parents, befriends young Alvin in their first scene together and eight pages later, is buried in an unmarked cottonfield after succumbing to “the scourge.”

Southerners who applaud Dixie the loudest may be urged to sympathy.”

In those eight pages, though, Barnes’ friendship with Rassie molds the young man’s views on blacks — views that didn’t sit well with many whites in North Carolina in the 30s.

This Body The Earth debuted in Ellis Theatre on the night of April 14, the first of four productions in consecutive days. The play chronicling a piece of Harnett County history came a week after another historical day at Campbell — the installation of the University’s fifth president in 129 years. President J. Bradley Creed and members of the Paul Green Foundation were among the audience for opening night — a thrilling moment not only for Bert Wallace, but his students as well.

“I have to credit my wife. She suggested making Rassie the narrator,” Wallace says. “He became the best way to tell the audience where they were at this point of the production. He also allowed me to get in a lot Green’s beautiful prose.”

If Marsha Warren had her doubts coming in, there was newfound optimism that Wallace could pull it off when he pitched Rassie as the narrator.

“Bert just had an amazing idea,” she says. “It was very clever having Rassie there the whole way. It made you feel good that he got to be around. Paul Green used a historian in Lost Colony, and for this adaptation, I feel it brings the audience along. It’s a very clever device.”

Another challenge for Wallace was the book’s language — while Green was progressive in his racial views, he didn’t soften the blow when it came to his white characters’ use of racial slurs. “Negro” and its harsher alternative were prevalent in much of Green’s writing, including This Body The Earth. And the dialogue written for black characters was heavy on dialect. What may have been historically accurate could come off as racist or caricature today.

ACT IV: A message of hope

“The students involved in it — from the actors to the crew — felt a sense of ownership of this play, as they were all the first to ever put it together and perform it,” says Wallace. “They helped create and mold these characters. They shaped many of the changes I made along the way. My general sense is they not only enjoyed the process, but they really did get it. The idea of it — what Paul Green was trying to say.”

To get his students in the right mindset, Wallace took a page from his own preparation and brought them to the same churches, fields and rural settings he visited for inspiration. For senior theatre arts major Tori Shue of Wake Forest, the mini field trips put her character — Alvin Barnes’ wife Ivy Chadbourne — into much better context as she prepared for the role.

Perry Balentine (left) as Alvine Barnes and Justin McKoy as Rassie perform in Bert Wallace’s stage adaptation of Paul Green’s novel, “This Body The Earth,” at Ellis Theatre in April. Photo

by Lydia Huth

Wallace had to decide whether he would use the controversial N-word in his production — a similar problem he faced a few years back when the theatre department presented Big River, a musical based on Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” In obtaining the rights to that play, Wallace was given the option of using a version with “softer” language — an option he took.

In his first draft of This Body The Earth for the stage, Wallace kept the strong language and racial slurs. He decided to keep it out as rehearsals approached.

“The language is very true to the period,” he says, “but even if that’s the case, I didn’t want to throw up barriers for these young actors and the audience. I can try to argue why it’s authentic and why that language is important to these characters, but when I finally decided the use of that word does more harm than good. It’s very different seeing it written on a page than it is to be in the presence of a human being uttering that word. The sound in the air is very different.”

Barnes’ compassion for Rassie and Rassie’s family were in line with Green’s real-life views on blacks. Green was publicly criticized for working with noted black author Richard Wright on the adaptation of Wright’s book, Native Son, and the New York Herald-Tribune once wrote of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, In Abraham’s Bosom: “[It’s] so well-written and so well-played that even

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Prepares you for life Campbell’s theatre arts program consists of theatre majors and non-majors alike. Those seeking a degree in the program can choose one of two concentrations — theatre arts and drama and Christian ministry.

Students can get involved in plays and musicals through acting, stage management, technical theatre, stage and costume design and even directing.

“Our students are involved in a lot of roles,” says associate professor of theatre E. Bert Wallace.

“A theatre education is a valuable tool that goes far beyond just wanting to be a professional actor or being on Broadway. We can prepare you for that, and we’ve had a number of students who’ve done very well professionally.

But we have a lot of other students who’ve done well in other fields. Theatre prepares you to meet deadlines, think creatively, work with a team and present your ideas clearly to an audience. It just prepares you for life.”

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“Professor Wallace would show us a farm and say, ‘This is where you would have grown up. This is where you would have worked. This mill, this church … they were your life,” says Shue, who also grew up near tobacco farms.

“Immersing myself in the surroundings and understanding what kind of towns Lillington and Buies Creek were when this play was set, it definitely helped me.”

Junior communication studies major Perry Balentine picked up This Body The Earth last fall when Wallace first talked about the adaptation. He was drawn to Alvin Barnes and knew immediately that was the character he’d audition for.

“I love the character. He’s very flawed and very interesting,” says Balentine, of Garner. “He has this drive and this determination to succeed in life, yet he has these anger problems and other flaws that hold him back. He’s kind, he’s emotional. He’s a tough nononsense guy, yet he’s very kind and loving of other people. I had to be him.”

Balentine and his castmates were the first to breathe life into these characters on the stage — which was both exciting and intimidating.

“You look at something like Hamlet or MacBeth, and these are characters that have been done over and over by so many actors who’ve given them so many different interpretations,” Balentine says. “It was nice to do something that had never been done before, to not have to worry whether your audience has seen this done before and whether you’re doing it right.”

Rehearsals for the April production began in January, and the script Wallace had then looked little like the draft he carried into opening night. Scenes that didn’t work well were cut. Other scenes were added. Even the final product debuted to the Campbell community isn’t the final draft, as Wallace continues to work in hopes another producer — possibly someone in Chapel Hill — will see it to the stage.

Regardless of the next step, Wallace has accomplished what he set out to do — introduce a new generation to Paul Green and share an important part of North Carolina’s history. It’s a tragedy, yes, but to Wallace, it’s also a story about hope. He points to a theme that’s prevalent throughout both the book and his play — the stars. They’re mentioned a lot in This Body The Earth (stars were prominent, along with the church in Linden, on the playbill and in Wallace’s set design) — sometimes they’re cold and distant and other times they’re warm and friendly.

More often than not, they represent hope.

“Certainly, Paul Green had hope,” Wallace says. “His message was not that life is bleak and depressing. It can be hard, and it can be sad. But there’s always hope. It’s what drives us.”

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Campbell students became the first to perform Bert Wallace’s adaptation of Paul Green’s This Body The Earth in April. Wallace hopes his screenplay will live on through the support of the Paul Green Foundation and find its way to other university theatre programs.

Photos by Lydia Huth

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GLOBAL REACH | One of the final touches to the Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences was a floor-to-ceiling map of the world highlighting the impact of Campbell University’s health science programs in orange. Photo by Lynsey Trembly

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Innovative & Inviting New Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences encourages collaboration in a state-of-the-art setting

BY LEAH WHITT

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he landscape heading east on U.S. 421 toward Dunn has changed dramatically over the past decade.

Barker-Lane Stadium in 2007, the Leon Levine Hall of Medical Sciences in 2013 — they’ve improved the forgotten rural fields to match the forward momentum of Campbell University.

and rewards of health care in a safe space so that they are at an advantage when transitioning into real world practice.

The newest addition, the Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences, solidifies the progression of the university as a leader in healthcare education. Ground broke in March 2015 on the $22 million building, which officially opened its doors to students, faculty and staff this May.

Not only have the classrooms been reimagined, every space in the building has been crafted to be used in the training of health care professionals. The tiles on the physical therapy floor are laid out in 10-foot increments to be utilized when students perform fall risk assessments and gait analysis.

Exercise labs are scattered throughout the building to enhance hands-on training and are available for small group exercise, such as yoga, during lunch hours. Faculty offices foster interprofessional education by being arranged in suites that include faculty members from each program in the building: nursing, physical therapy and physician assistant. This arrangement allows for students to become familiar with faculty and staff members from each program and become familiar with what the different fields of health care bring to the table.

“It’s designed to be a place to learn, to share, to discover and to accomplish great things,” says Vice President for Business and Treasurer Jim Roberts.

Plum and orange walls welcome guests into faculty office suites, while plush benches are built into the walls to invite students to stick around after class to study and socialize. Inside the classroom, students find that the rows of desks of years past have been traded in for round tables that foster collaborative learning and team building. Projection screens have been replaced by groups of monitors that can display multiple types of media at once. Skills labs include state-of-the-art hospital beds and accompanying machinery.

“The opportunity to create a culture of inclusivity, trust and respect drove us to thoughtfully consider the interventions for this reconstruction,” says Nancy Duffy, director of the Catherine W. Wood School of Nursing. “Our judgment is that students will thrive in an environment that promotes open discussion and allows for errors and growth from mistakes.”

The idea behind this collaborative space is to allow students to experience the challenges

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“We were fortunate to intentionally design a space that facilitates communication, teamwork and promotes psychological safety,” adds Duffy.

The Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences is named in honor of Tracey F. Smith of Farmville. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and graduated from St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing. After pursuing a career in nursing, she served as the director of marketing at Carolina Medical Products.

Smith is married to Henry Smith, a 1967 graduate of Campbell and a member of the Campbell University Board of Trustees. He was the founding owner and president of Carolina Medical Products.

Smith Hall is located on Campbell’s Health Sciences Campus, less than a mile west of the university’s main campus.

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“You are pioneers. You’ve gone where no one else has gone before, and it can be rough out there. But you will represent us well. There will be a lot expected of you. You’ve got to give attention to precision.”

— President J. Bradley Creed on Day 1 for Campbell’s inaugural class of BSN students

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GOING THE

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D I S TA N C E

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Photo courtesy of Nate Barrett Photography

Kenyan runners find success and a new life 7,000 miles from home

BY BILLY LIGGETT

T

here they were, running side by side on their sport’s biggest stage, orange letters spelling “Campbell” emblazoned across their black track uniforms. The duo spent a good portion of the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championship’s longest race at the front of the pack, eating up several minutes of valuable ESPN television time and sparking conversation about that “small school in Buies Creek” among the commentators.

The moment marked an apex for Campbell University’s track and field program, a program that’s been around for over a century. Running alongside the nation’s best from schools like LSU, UCLA, Syracuse and Alabama, Lawrence Kipkoech and Amon Terer would finish ninth and 11th respectively out of 24 runners in the 10,000-meter race, earning second-team All-American honors on the University of Oregon’s hallowed Hayward Field. A few nights later, they would hit the track again for the 5,000-meter run, earning honorable mention All-American accolades in that race.

It was also a pinnacle moment for head track coach Michael Kelly, who logged thousands of miles recruiting Kipkoech, Terer and other athletes from Eldoret, Kenya — considered

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the heart of the phenomenon that is Kenyan running. “I took a chance going over there, but I’m glad I did,” says Kelly, who entered his fifth season at Campbell this fall. “I’ve gotten to know Lawrence and Amon so well, that I find myself taking for granted just how talented they are. Watching them in Eugene, [Oregon], I was proud. Extremely proud.”

Two years earlier, it was Terer making the 7,158-mile trip from Eldoret to Raleigh, carrying with him little more than the clothes he was wearing and a small backpack. North Carolina was different — and not just because the temperature was in single digits the day he landed. Everybody owned cars. Poverty wasn’t nearly as prevalent. There were fast food places on every corner.

Most of all, the air was different. Easier to breath. Easier to run in. Ideal for long-distance races.

Eldoret is between 7,000 and 9,000 feet above sea level; Raleigh a mere 315 feet. The air in Eldoret is thin — when their runners hit lower altitudes full of rich oxygen, they’re flying.

But the altitude is only part of it. Running in the Kenyan city of just over 250,000 people is a pastime. The 10 fastest marathons

ever recorded have been run by Kenyans.

Their athletes won 11 medals at the Summer Olympics in London in 2012, and 13 at the games in Rio this summer. Running is a way out for many in Eldoret, a city that has suffered from violence and poverty in recent years.

Athletes who run professionally often give back to their city to pay for schools, donate to medical clinics and support local farmers.

Kelly first had the idea to travel to Kenya while an assistant at Campbell, and he finally took the trip after his first year as head coach in 2013.

His first recruit from Eldoret was a young man named Sosteen Kirwa, who spent a year in the program. Next came Jacob Kipserem, named the Big South Male Freshman Runner of the Year after his freshman year in spring 2014.

Kipserem, now entering his senior year, has had several Top 3 finishes in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and finished seventh overall (behind Kipkoech and Terer) in this year’s Big South Conference 5,000-meter run.

Kipserem helped Kelly in recruiting Terer, who had finished ninth in the 10,000-meter at the 2013 World University Games in Russia. At the time, Terer wasn’t even running for his university in Kenya because of the competition — he played handball instead. His running times in Kenya weren’t what Kelly would call “spectacular,” but the coach saw something in the young man.

“Their running times in Kenya may not be super impressive — they’re times you’d look at on paper that aren’t much better than what American runners are doing here,” Kelly says.

“But to do those times at that altitude? Coaches will tell me he only ran this time or that time, but I’m like, ‘Yeah … on a dirt track at 7,000 feet. I’ll take him.”

Terer won the Big South Indoor title in the 5,000-meter run a little over a month after his arrival and the 10,000-meter Big South Outdoor title that April. He’d go on to capture 11 first-place finishes in his three years in Buies Creek and several second- and third-place finishes.

Photos courtesy of Nate Barrett Photography

Kelly’s next trip to Kenya landed Lawrence Kipkoech, whose first race in January 2015 was a first-place finish in the mile run at UNCChapel Hill. Kipkoech qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 10,000-meter as a freshman and finished 10th at his first race in Eugene. As a sophomore, he became the first Big South runner in five years to with backto-back conference Male Runner of the Year awards.

This fall, Kipkoech, Terer, Kipserem and

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freshman Meshack Kipruto of Kapsabet, Kenya, will make up more than half of the defending Big South Cross Country Champion team (of which Kipkoech was also conference Runner of the Year). Kipkoech will then have two more years of eligibility in the spring track season, while Terer will possibly have one more (if the NCAA allows).

For Kelly, this year hopefully marks a beginning for Campbell long-distance success.

“We’re already earning recognition,” he says. “I still have to explain to some where Campbell is [while recruiting], but not quite as often.

And I’ll keep making the trip to Eldoret, and hopefully when these guys are gone, new talent will be ready to come in and fill their shoes.”

LIFE TRAINING

It’s a lot of training, a lot of hours and a lot of shoes to compete in a 10,000-meter race (roughly 6.25 miles) at the highest collegiate level. Yet for Kipkoech and Terer, running has been the easy part of their transition to the United States. Both have part-time jobs. Both have adjusted to paying rent and other bills.

Both have struggled to stick to the strict diet required of long-distance runners (Kelly jokes Golden Corral should be a sponsor for the way his team tears up a buffet after a long run).

“It’s easier to find work [than in Kenya], but here, you make money and just about all of it — at least most of it — goes to bills and taxes,” says Kipkoech, who works with Terer for campus facilities management and at the front desk of the Aquatics Center. “It’s fun making it … it’s not as fun watching it go away.”

Terer has even more responsibilities. He’s newly married, tying the knot at the Harnett County Courthouse with Joan Maritim of Kasok, Kenya, the women’s Big South champion this year in the 5,000 meters as a sophomore.

Then there’s driving.

“In Kenya, I never had to drive, and most of us didn’t really need to know how to drive,” Terer says. “You have to learn things more quickly here. I just got my licence and just bought a car.

It’s been crazy.”

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Photo by Hannah Hunsinger

They run anywhere from 12 to 16 miles a day on training days and anywhere from 70 to 90 miles a week. They can be found on the smooth walking trail in nearby Erwin; on the rocky, hilly dirt trails at Raven Rock State Park near Lillington; on the populated Tobacco Trail in Cary and the wooded Umstead Park trails in Raleigh.

That’s what the college experience should be, Kelly says. While both Kipkoech and Terer have the talent to run professionally after college, he understands that part of his responsibility is preparing them for life when their four years are up in Buies Creek.

“One of the biggest things we have to do for our international students is make sure they’re comfortable living in the United States,” Kelly says. “They’re moving halfway around the world. They can’t go home for Christmas or summer break. They’re making their own meals and adapting. It’ll get easier for future athletes from Kenya, because we’ll have young men and women who can offer advice.”

RUNNING WITH A LEGEND Kipkoech and Terer ate up a lot of national TV time at the front of the pack in their 10,000-meter run in Oregon. Unfortunately, they were merely setting the pace and, eventually, clearing the way for the most decorated long-distance runner in NCAA history.

With a little over a lap to go, University of Oregon star Edward Cheserek from Iten, Kenya — about 22 miles from Eldoret — showed his legendary kick and left the field in his dust.

The win, plus his win in the 5,000-meter a few days later, were his 14th and 15th national title, tying the NCAA record for individual titles set

by Texas-El Paso’s Suleiman Nyambui in 1982.

Cheserek, called “America’s next great runner” by the Wall Street Journal in 2015, will return for his senior year at Oregon in the fall. If his request for U.S. citizenship goes through, there’s thoughts he’ll be a shoo-in for the U.S. Olympic team in 2020.

Cheserek is the model of success in the sport, and he’s the motivation for Kipkoech to improve on his ninth and 10th-place finishes in the 10,000-meter runs in Oregon.

“When I first got here, I just hoped I could run in tournaments and place. Then I was hoping to be an All-American,” he says. “This year, I wanted to improve and run a better race. This year gave me a lot more confidence.”

“We’re definitely going to get faster,” Kelly adds.

“And I’d like to think we can challenge the Edward Chesereks and the best in the sport.”

Generosity is trending Thursday, October 20

See how our students say “Thank You� to donors like you by following us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook or by visiting campbell.edu/tagday on Oct. 20.

Each year during Homecoming week, more than 450 orange TAGs are placed around campus as a visual reminder of the generosity of donors. Once again, students will celebrate this generosity by thanking alumni, friends, faculty, staff, foundations and corporations who have helped make Campbell University what it is today.

#campbellTAGday

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Brother’s Keeper

Judge Lou Olivera (’96) leads vets treatment court with compassion, tough love

BY BILLY LIGGETT

“You and I are about to have an uncomfortable conversation.”

These words mark a rough start to another Veterans Treatment Court, a twice-monthly “alternative sentencing court” designed for veterans and active duty members of the military in Fayetteville, neighbor to Fort Bragg.

Cumberland County’s court is one of 264 nationally, and it’s been presided over by the same man since its inception in January 2015.

He’s District Court Judge Lou Olivera (’96 Law), a veteran himself who experienced the hell of combat in the Gulf War and a man who understands the aftermath those experiences can have on a person upon their return to civilian life. Veterans Treatment Courts distinguish themselves from other speciality courts by providing counseling and medical services and even employment, education and housing for ex-military in the legal system for misdemeanors and certain lesser felonies.

Mental health issues, alcoholism, drug abuse, unemployment and poverty are but a few of the problems many veterans face. Many suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, which often goes hand-in-hand with the other issues.

The court — and Judge Olivera — are there to help them. But not coddle them.

On this day, of the 13 men scheduled to go before the judge to provide updates on their treatment, nearly half have fallen short meeting all of their responsibilities in the program — making appointments, meeting probation officers and other requirements. This day requires what Olivera calls “tough love.” There are consequences, and they’re tougher to hear in a room full of their fellow veterans. But there’s a silver lining when court is dismissed — all 13 men are still in the program. And at the end of the day, Olivera still has their backs.

“Today was a hard day,” he says after the twohour session. “But there are days when there are far more accomplishments. Far more reasons to celebrate. We’ll have baby announcements, sobriety and drug-free milestones. Lots of applause. But people have slips and relapses,

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Cumberland County Veterans Treatment Court Judge Lou Olivera congratulates his program’s first graduate, Air Force veteran Garrett Vann, in April. There are currently more than a dozen veterans in the intensive program aimed at helping veterans retake control of their lives. Photo courtesy of Lou Olivera

and these guys are no different. What I push for more than anything else here is honesty. If you’re honest with me, you’ll earn my respect. You’ll get your treatment. We’ll get you through this.”

Olivera’s compassion made national headlines back in April. Hours after he sentenced former Green Beret and Afghanistan veteran Sgt. Joe Serna to a night in jail for violating his probation, Olivera spent the night with Serna in his one-man cell. The two sat on a cot for hours and shared stories about their families and their military experiences.

Serna suffers from PTSD stemming from an attack on the armored truck containing him and three other soldiers on a dirt road in Kandahar.

An explosive device sent the truck toppling into a canal — killing the three soldiers with Serna.

One of those men, Sgt. James Treber, unstrapped Serna as the truck filled with water and moved him to the one pocket of air as he searched for another. Serna, who is now several months into the treatment court program, earned three Purple Hearts and several other accolades for his service.

Serna’s story and his night with Olivera soon

became the subject of a column by Bill Kirby in the Fayetteville Observer, “Judge’s unbelievable compassion for a veteran.” The story went viral — People Magazine, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Fox News, CBS Evening News and many others reported on it, and soon, Olivera’s face was popping up on social media feeds across the globe.

“We’ve gotten a lot of attention over something I tried to keep quiet,” says Olivera, thumbing through envelopes containing letters of support from all over the world — Afghanistan, Great Britain, Korea. “When the calls started coming in from the media, I told them I had no comment. If Joe wanted to tell his story, which is a tragic story, then I’ll tell you my part of Joe’s story. It’s all about him, and if it helps Joe to talk about it, then great for him. Joe still has a long way to go in this program, but he’s going to make it.”

GOOD PEOPLE WHO NEED HELP According to the Bureau of Justice, one out of every 10 inmates in state prisons across country have prior service in the U.S. military.

“I felt like I had no other options in life,” he says. “Then I join the military, and I’m astonished. Here I am, some little Yankee Hispanic nobody, and they’re telling me I’m smart … that I scored well on these tests, and they want to put me in the counterintelligence and counterterrorism fields. This was pre-Sept. 11, so there weren’t too many of us in these fields.”

More than half of those veterans served during wartime. And more than half of those prisoners are serving for violent crimes (rape and sexual assault the most common offenses). Alcoholism, drug use and unemployment are also common.

Approximately 23 percent of the nation’s homeless are veterans.

Cumberland County is home to Fort Bragg and more than 42,000 veterans or retired military personnel. The county also has one of the nation’s highest crime rates, ranking 14th in the nation in property crime in 2013.

The statistics stress the need for the Veterans Treatment Court in Fayetteville, one of three such programs in North Carolina (Harnett County launched the state’s first in 2014). The program deals with misdemeanors and lesser felonies, and applicants must show that either substance abuse or mental health issues have contributed to their legal problems. Once they’re accepted, the program lasts between 12 and 18 months. In that time, the veterans are engaged in counseling, attend medical appointments, meet with probation officers, regularly drug test, spend time with a mentor and attend Judge Olivera’s court twice a month.

Cumberland’s court celebrated its first and (so far) only graduate in late April — Air Force veteran Garrett Vann, a veteran of two tours in Afghanistan who battled substance abuse, was homeless and faced several felony charges before entering the program. Olivera called Vann’s transformation “amazing,” and the graduation marked one of the judge’s many high points since leading the program.

“These are good people,” Olivera says. “They’re good people who need our help. I have a good relationship with these guys, and it’s a relationship built on honesty and respect.”

Olivera shares more than combat experience with the veterans. He’s seen the toll drug and alcohol addiction can have on people and their families. A native of upstate New York, Olivera grew up in a family of addicts — his father and grandmother were alcoholics.

After his mother died and his father’s parental rights were terminated, he was raised by his stepfather, a heroin addict. One of his uncles died of AIDS contracted through shared needles. As did a stepbrother.

“I’ve seen it,” Olivera says. “I’ve seen what addiction can do to people. I also have great memories of my grandparents and my uncle.

Substance abuse and mental issues don’t make bad people. They make good people do dumb things. In my court, I see good people who need help.”

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He was deployed to Iraq for the Gulf War in the early 90s, and he became a go-to guy for officers when it came to issues on terrorism.

Olivera found a purpose in the military, and he loved his work.

Lou Olivera (left) saw combat while assigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps G2, Counterintelligence Section during the Persian Gulf War. He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for his study and analysis of Iraqi unconventional warfare units and capabilities. Photo courtesy of Lou Olivera

Craig Shore, Cumberland County’s Veterans Treatment Court coordinator and Olivera’s right-hand man during proceedings, says the judge’s empathy is what makes him right for the job. Olivera, he says, has the unique ability to integrate the law with compassion.

“Having grown up in a dysfunctional family system, he understands the ravages of addiction and displacement,” Shore says. “As a veteran of the U.S. Army, he knows and embodies the bond between military members. His life experiences make him the ideal arbiter.”

HOOAH “How’s the missus?”

Olivera’s second veteran in today’s court is doing well. He and the judge converse more like old friends than their current roles suggest.

Olivera asks about his wife’s new job, and the veteran pokes a little fun at Olivera’s new haircut. Their five-minute back and forth ends with “hooahs” and applause from the group.

This happens more than the “rough talks.”

At times like these, court feels more like a counseling session. The 13 men not only want to succeed, they want to see their brothers succeed. The good days and the success stories are just as therapeutic for Olivera, who joined the Army to escape the tragedy that surrounded him growing up.

“I saw amazing things and met amazing people,” he says, “but I’ve seen the horrors of war, too. The military takes your youth — yes, you see the world, you get an education and you get training. But when you’re discharged, you’re left with all the other stuff, too. All that unspent youth.”

During his service, Olivera shatter his collarbone, injured his knees and suffered damage to his ears. Not a night goes by, he says, where he doesn’t grunt in pain while trying to sleep.

“And not a day goes by where I don’t think about the friends I lost,” he adds.

Olivera knew if he wanted a career in the counterterrorism field, he would need an education. He earned his bachelor’s degree at UNC-Pembroke and interviewed for the Defense Intelligence Agency shortly after graduation. A clerical error with his transcripts kept him from getting the job. Disheartened, Olivera saw a sign in a library encouraging people to try law school. He tore off one of the contact strips from the bottom of the sign and applied to Campbell. While waiting for that decision, he received a call from the DIA informing him his initial application was finally approved. Campbell accepted him shortly thereafter.

“It was a big decision,” he says. “But you can guess what decision I made.”

Everything happens for a reason. And Olivera’s decision to attend Campbell has put him in the position to help his fellow veterans.

“I owe Campbell a lot,” he says. “Both Pembroke and Campbell gave me a chance. Me — some guy from New York whose mom died when I was 13 and whose father’s parental rights were terminated. I thought college was just for smart people, and I never considered myself as smart. I mean it … I owe Campbell a lot.”

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Photo by Billy Liggett

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The Revolutionary

A freedom fighter and eventual refugee of communist-ruled Hungary in the 1950s, Lewis Jacobs found freedom and a new life in Buies Creek

BY BILLY LIGGETT

L

ewis Jacobs was 16 when he heard the news of a student protest in his native Hungary’s capital city of Budapest that ended with shots fired by the state police and the death of one demonstrator.

screen, says Terry Mayhew, a 1972 Campbell graduate who first struck up a conversation with Jacobs on a golf course in South Carolina after the two discovered their Campbell connection.

Young and idealistic, which together formed a sense of invincibility, Jacobs lived 60 miles away from the incident, but he was drawn to it. While many fled Budapest on the eve of a revolution, Jacobs hitched a ride on a truck and joined it. He became one of thousands who marched against communism and Soviet rule, and against the suppression of their ideals.

“Everybody has their story. Every Campbell student’s journey is different,” says Mayhew.

“But few have had to go through what Lew had to go through to get to Campbell and become what he is today.”

“I couldn’t tell you why I went,” says Jacobs, his English revealing a thick eastern European accent. “Maybe it was just the thing to do.

Maybe I was in it for the adventure. I certainly wasn’t all that knowledgeable about politics in the world. I knew I didn’t like communism. I worked in it. I saw what it did to our country.”

He pauses after the statement, then smiles.

“But that’s probably not the reason I got in that truck. Mostly, it just felt like the thing I needed to do.”

He arrived for Day 2 of what is now known as the Hungarian Revolution, or the Hungarian Uprising. By then, Soviet tanks had stationed themselves outside of the Parliament in Budapest, and soldiers manned key bridges and crossroads. The revolutionaries were armed now as well.

The secret police — Hungary’s equivalent of the KGB — fired again at the crowd, and at Jacobs, killing 86. Jacobs fled.

A high school student with a bright future two days earlier, Jacobs was now an enemy of the state. His harrowing escape from Hungary began a journey that would send him half a world away to a small, rural school in Buies Creek, North Carolina. It’s a story for the big

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A RESISTANCE CRUSHED “I was a coward,” Jacobs recalls of his first day in Budapest. “When I heard the guns firing, I ran. I hid behind a building. I can show you the those bullet holes today. They’ve been filled with brass balls — one for every person who was killed that day.”

Born on Oct. 23, 1956, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a success, albeit a short-lived one (it lasted 19 days). Hungary’s government collapsed as thousands of demonstrators organized into militias, battling the secret police and Russian troops and imprisoning and even executing pro-Soviet communists.

Ten days into the revolt, fighting had subsided, and Jacobs and his allies felt a sense of victory.

On Nov. 4, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other Hungarian cities. In a week’s time, more than 2,500 Hungarians were killed. By Nov. 10, the revolution was crushed, and thus began the exodus of more than 200,000 Hungarian refugees.

In those 19 days, Lewis Jacobs fought. If someone shot at him (which happened often), he fired back, even if he didn’t know where those shots were coming from. He and his allies were constantly on the move — sleeping under trucks or in the woods and fighting off the oncoming chill of early November in Hungary. What the revolution lacked, Jacobs says, was field generals — forward-thinking

leaders rather than reactionary fighters.

The lack of organization — plus the lack of support from countries like the U.S. — was the revolution’s undoing, he says.

Thousands of Hungarians — men, women and children — were captured. Jacobs left Budapest and returned home to his family, but even there, he was no longer safe.

“The principal of my high school was a staunch communist,” he says. “And he knew I was in Budapest. He knew my role. And I knew my future was bleak, to say the least.”

Peter Mansfeld was younger than Jacobs when the fighting began. The 15-year-old student had a father, an uncle and a grandfather who were forced into labor camps by the Soviets 10 years earlier. His grandfather died in the camp, and his father returned home and began to abuse alcohol. He fought alongside Jacobs during those 19 days, and even after, Mansfeld remained in Budapest gathering weapons and evading arrest. He was finally captured and arrested in 1958, among his charges — “striving for the restoration of capitalism, a very great danger to society.”

He was interrogated and tortured over the course of the next year and finally hanged to death on March 21, 1959, 11 days after his 18th birthday.

JAILHOUSE ROCK It is 107 miles from Budapest to the Austrian border. It was a trek that hundreds of thousands of Hungarians took to escape their country for neutral (and welcoming) Austria from 1955 to 1957.

Jacobs was late to the exodus, having stayed behind to fight. By the time he began to make his way west on foot, the border on the Hungarian side was heavily armed and guarded.

Jacobs walked through corn fields and

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vineyards, traveling mostly at night while staying away from busy roads and any hint of Soviet troops. Close to the border, he came across an older man feeding his cattle and horses, and the farmer offered Jacobs a meal and a shelter in his barn for the night.

“I look out, and on the turret, I see the red star. It was probably the scariest moment of my life. And I’ve done plenty of scary things in my life,” he says. “I was not so much afraid this tank was going to kill me … I was afraid he doesn’t know I’m in there.”

“The guy comes the next morning with a satchel of food and tells me to walk to the railroad station and hop a train as it’s pulling out,” Jacobs recalls. “He says wait four stations and jump off before the train pulls into the fourth one. Walk north and I’ll come across a vineyard then a cornfield where I’ll be able to hide until the sun goes down. Then I can cross the border.”

Jacobs thought about darting out and making a break for it, but he decided instead to come out with his hands up and give himself up. A moment before his surrender, Jacobs watched the tank move past him, its driver unaware of the boy hiding just yards away.

Jacobs followed the directions, devouring his lunch in the vineyard and setting forth toward the cornfield that would provide cover for his border crossing. When he reached the field, Jacobs’ heart sank.

His fear was broken by the sound of voices in the distance. Voices he could understand.

It was a group of Hungarians in a horse and buggy with papers and IDs that allowed them to approach the border. One of them was taking hay back to his farm. Jacobs approached the group and asked for help crossing the border. He handed over all of his money (about 2 dollars that would be useless in Austria anyway), and in return, was given directions to cross and avoid enemy troops.

“By that time, the corn was all picked, and the stalks were bunched together into small teepees throughout the field,” he says. “I remember thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’

How am I going to do this?”

In the distance, Jacobs heard machine gun fire.

The shots didn’t sound like troops firing at refugees, but rather warning shots to dissuade people from crossing the border. Wearing only a wool hat and a thin corduroy jacket with the cold night approaching, Jacobs chose to compose himself by hiding in one of the cornstalk teepees.

From his hiding spot, he could hear tanks in the distance. Then one of those tanks sounded like it coming closer. Much closer.

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“I froze,” he said. “I didn’t move for another 10 to 20 minutes.”

“I climbed a berm, jumped across a ditch and crawled under rolled up barbed wire — the Iron Curtain — and made it to a field just 10 meters from Austria,” Jacobs says. “I tell you, I broke every Olympic sprinting record crossing that field. I ran and ran and ran.”

He ran until he came across another farmer.

He spoke German. This was a good sign.

The farmer walked Jacobs to a border town and a pub that housed several other recent

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against communism and the government’s Soviet-imposed policies.

More than 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and more than 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Photos by Erich Lessing, courtesy of oldpicz.com

Hungarian refugees. There, the Red Cross fed Jacobs broth and tea and provided him with a straw floor for a bed and a few shillings.

“It’s strange, but what I remember most about that night was Elvis Presley,” he says with a quick laugh. “‘Jailhouse Rock.’ ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ They played it all night in that pub, over and over. I. Hated. It. I was so tired and still scared, and all they played was Elvis. I said I never wanted to hear Elvis Presley again. He kept me from sleep.”

Jacobs stayed there and an abandoned Russian military camp for a few weeks before taking a bus to the American Embassy in Vienna, where he would stand in line outside in the snow in late December — wearing tattered clothes as he watched men and women in formal gowns and tuxedos walk to the opera — waiting for instructions to get to the United States.

The next morning, inside the Embassy, Jacobs sat at a table with a man who took his information. It was a black man — the first black man Jacobs had ever seen face to face.

The man, Jacobs guessed a CIA agent, spoke fluent Hungarian. Better than he could, he says, and he knew Budapest better as well.

The man told Jacobs he’d be sailing across the Atlantic on the USNS General Haan, an old U.S. Navy transport ship used during WWII. A picture of the ship is the screensaver on Jacobs’ home computer today.

THE COUNT On Jan. 5, 1957, Jacobs arrived in Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, a camp that had been used to house returning WWII troops a decade earlier. There, he discovered things he’d only read about in Hungary — most of them foodrelated. Oranges. Bananas. Pancakes. He loved pancakes.

“I’d come back three times for pancakes,” he says. “The big fella serving me would just smile. Here’s this runt of a kid eating his weight in pancakes.”

Jacobs and several other refugees were sponsored by the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration and taken in by various religious and charitable organizations. Jacobs remained in New Jersey for two months before being taken in by a Catholic group in Charlotte, North Carolina. By then, he was making friends and developing a desire to learn English and return to high school. A friend of a friend suggested a small school about 140 miles to the east — and they knew the registrar, A.R. Burkot (a man who spoke numerous languages himself ).

Burkot agreed, and to pay for Jacobs’ tuition, the dean asked every student on campus if they would voluntarily donate $1. The student body unanimously agreed. To make up the difference, Jacobs would work in the school cafeteria.

In Buies Creek, Jacobs met an instructor who’d become “one of my many saving graces.” Mabel Powell authored the “Outline

of Fundamentals of English,” required reading for every student who came through her classroom and a book Jacobs still has with him years later. Jacobs and Powell would meet every Saturday and Sunday for at least two hours, and she would not only teach him English, but correct English.

“To this day, I do not split an infinitive,” he says. “I do not end a sentence with a preposition. I can diagram a sentence. She grilled me on English, and she was wonderful.”

Occasionally, she’d give Jacobs $5 from her purse and tell him to spend it on himself — a “soda pop” here and there. Every Saturday evening, he says, he’d do just that. Then he’d go sit in the library and watch Lawrence Welk.

Jacobs left Campbell with a high school degree in 1959, and the following year, he was accepted into Clemson University to study chemical engineering (a career another Campbell professor, Edna Proffitt, steered him toward during his time in Buies Creek).

He went on to a highly successful career with Eastman Kodak, traveling the world working in China, Brazil, Argentina, Israel … even Hungary. Three years ago, Jacobs was knighted in his home country — Count Lewis Jacobs.

Now 76, Jacobs is married, retired and enjoying life in the western part of South Carolina. He’s even made his peace with The King.

“It was quite a while before I could listen to Elvis,” he says. “But I like him now. I can forgive him.”

THANK YOU Jacobs shared his story with Terry Mayhew once the two connected and became friends.

Mayhew was floored, of course.

“We all have our problems and struggles growing up, but few of us had to go through as much adversity as he did to get here,” Mayhew says. “His story really got to me. It confirmed to me that no matter how bad or difficult life gets, you can still make it. There’s always people there to help you.”

Jacobs told Mayhew he’d never had a chance to return to Campbell to thank the school for taking him in and leading him in the right direction. In 2015, the two drove to Davidson College to take in a Davidson-Campbell football game and meet new Campbell President J. Bradley Creed. Mayhew then invited Jacobs to be his guest at the 2016 football opener this September.

Prior to the game, their families walked the campus; Jacobs pointing out the science building, Kivett Hall and D. Rich while recalling memories of his two years at Campbell while also marveling at how much the campus has changed in 60 years.

“I recognize very little,” he says looking around. “But that’s good. Campbell is growing.”

Every now and then, he says, he dreams of his time at Campbell. He dreams that he’s back in the classroom and working toward a degree.

They’re pleasant dreams, he says.

“I always held Campbell in very high regard,” he says. “They were very decent to me.

Everybody. The students, the faculty, they all took me in and treated me like a friend.”

He still visits his home country a lot as well.

Communism ended in Hungary peacefully in 1989. Poverty and massive foreign debt turned out to be its downfall, 30 years after Jacobs and a group of revolutionaries fought it.

Every time he visits, Jacobs visits the grave site of his friend, Peter Mansfeld. And every time, he sets a single red rose on the grave and says a prayer.

“I always ask my family to let me do it alone, and after I say my prayer, they join me,” he says. “I survived, and I’m thankful for every day.”

Lewis Jacobs visited Campbell University for the first time in nearly 60 years in September.

Jacobs finished high school at Campbell in 1959 as a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Photo by Billy Liggett

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CLASS NOTES New job? New spouse? New kid? New boat? Share your big news with us!

Email us at alumni@campbell.edu to be included in the next edition of Campbell Magazine

’65

Sue Little (’65) retired after 51 years of teaching from Chesterfield County Schools (VA).

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’86

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CAMPBELL GRAD LEARNS MORE ABOUT FATHER’S TIME AT BUIES CREEK ACADEMY James “Jim” Ashley Hardee did not intend to register for classes at Campbell College when he accompanied friends to visit the registrar in the summer of 1955. He was already accepted at UNCChapel Hill for the fall.

“I had a roommate and everything,” said Hardee, but after talking with Campbell’s registrar at the time, A.R. Burkot, he found himself enrolled with his friends for the fall semester at Campbell. At Campbell, Hardee said, you were not just one in a number of students.

“It was a down-home-feeling school,” he said.

“I enjoyed it. I had a good time.” The instructor he remembered most was the legendary English professor Mabel Powell — “She didn’t put up with any fools,” said Hardee. After a year and a half of liberal arts courses at Campbell, he transferred in the fall of 1957 to East Carolina University.

He was not the first Hardee to study in Buies Creek.

His father, Zora Ashley Hardee, attended the college in 1914 when it was still Buies Creek Academy. Jim remembers his father talking about only two things of his time at BCA — befriending the famous playwright Paul Green and pranking new students in the dorm.

Jim Hardee returned to a much-different-looking Campbell University this summer to search the digital collections of old Creek Pebbles newspapers and Pine Burr yearbooks to find pictures of his father during his time at Buies Creek Academy. He slowly “flipped” the pages of the digital 1914 yearbook and found where his father’s name appeared as “Z.A. Hardee” under a picture of the track team. Jim said

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Arthur B. “Chip” Mayo (’86 MBA) has been recognized by the Business Enterprise Institute (BEI) as a Certified Exit Planner (CExP™).

he never knew his father ran track — and he was not surprised to see he was also a member of the Prospective Farmers Club.

Zora Ashley Hardee grew up on a farm in Enfield in Halifax County and was the youngest of four children.

He was born on Oct. 13, 1890, the same day and year as President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Zora’s mother passed away when he was 2 years old.

At the age of 24, he enrolled in Buies Creek Academy and boarded in a dorm room in the tower of Kivett Building. He only stayed one year at BCA and returned to the family farm. Jim said his father likely could not afford more than one year of education.

Zora was drafted at 28 into the U.S. Army to serve in World War I. He cared for the horses in the calvary because of his experience on a farm. After the war, he married Kate Davenport, who died during childbirth in 1927. He remarried in 1937 on St. Patrick’s Day to Thelma Boyd, a teacher from Roanoke Rapids. Thelma’s family had lost their farm in Beaufort in the Great Depression and relocated to Roanoke Rapids to work in the textile mills.

Jim still owns the family farm in Enfield where he and his sister grew up picking tobacco, peanuts and cotton. He said he remembers his father as a hardworking, successful farmer who liked to joke around and have a good time. “He saw a lot of change,” Jim said. “From horse and buggy, to going to the moon.”

— by Kendra Granger

’90

Jeffrey Foster (’90 JD) was appointed

by N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory to fill a vacant superior court seat in Pitt County.

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’91

Keith Dimsdale (’91) was awarded the Chick-fil-A Symbol of Success award for franchisees.

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’93

Kevin McIntosh (’93 JD) was named Catawba County Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Chair.

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’96

Amy Apicella McCreight (’96) and Brett McCreight (‘97) celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on Aug. 3.

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’98

Joshua B. Durham (’98 JD) joined the Charlotte office of Bell, Davis & Pitt, PA.

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’00

Chrissy Edgemon Holliday (’00) was selected as vice president of enrollment management and student affairs at Colorado State UniversityPueblo. She began her role on July 25.

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’01

Jon Hutchins (’01) was named the director of college and career promise at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro.

J. Bryan Boyd (’01 JD) was named the clerk of court for the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Jason B. James (’01 JD) joined the Charlotte office of Bell, Davis & Pitt, PA.

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’03

Joe Sperazza (’03 BBA) began a golf event company in Southern California.

’06

Shandy Williams Dunlap (’06 BS) and her husband, Quint Dunlap, welcomed their second son on May 10. Hudson John Dunlap was born weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces, and was 22 inches long.

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’07

Courtney Willey Ottelin (’07) was named senior digital project manager at Luquire George Andrews.

____________________

’08

Mike Nuckolls (’03 MDIV) became full-time church

administrator at Ardmore Baptist Church in Winston-Salem in May.

____________________

’04

Toni Buchanan (’04 PharmD) was married to James Tillman Buchanan II, on Oct. 24, 2015.

Jason Leonard (’04 MDIV) was installed as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Homer, La., on May 15.

Michael Little (’06 BS) joined the Campbell University Office of Alumni Engagement as director of alumni engagement.

Kristin A. Rice (’08 BBA/MBA) joined the North Carolina Department of Commerce as attorney for the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks.

Blake Herring (’08) was hired to be the head baseball coach at Louisburg College.

____________________

’09

Ashley Baxter Curry (’09 JD) and husband Gary welcomed their first child, Eva Baxter Curry, on Feb. 10.

Darrena McCulloh (’09) was awarded the Chick-fil-A Symbol of Success award for franchisees.

W W W. C A M P B E L L . E D U / M A G A Z I N E

LAW GRAD RECOGNIZED FOR WORK IN MENTORSHIP PROGRAM Megan West Sherron (’10 Law) accepted a 2016 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award from the American Bar Association at the organization’s annual meeting in San Francisco in August.

Sherron, now the assistant dean of external relations at Campbell Law School, accepted the award on behalf of Campbell Law Connections, the mentorship program which she oversees. Connections exposes students and newly minted attorneys to valuable learning opportunities and experiences by partnering them with practicing legal professionals. In addition to the award, Sherron collected a cash prize of $3,500 that will go toward the program’s operational budget.

“This program is a success because of the commitment of our students to learn and gain experience,” says Sherron, “as well as the willingness of members of the Wake County Bar Association to mentor the next generation of Campbell lawyers.”

Connections, a joint endeavor between Campbell Law and the Wake County Bar Association, builds upon the law school’s professionalism focus that permeates its core curriculum. Students in the Connections program develop meaningful professional relationships and a more thorough understanding of the responsibilities and ethics demanded by the practice of law under the tutelage of a mentor.

The program began with a pilot phase during the spring 2014 semester, and was opened to the third-year class and expanded to the entire academic year at the beginning of the fall 2014 semester. More than 100 established and seasoned practicing legal professionals have already served as professional mentors for the program.

The honor marks the second time a Campbell Law program has received the coveted award, as the law school previously collected it in 2003 for the First-Year Professionalism Development Series.

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CLASS NOTES

Patrick Pait (’09 JD) was selected for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Leadership Academy.

Robert Yoder (’09 BBA/ MBA) joined the Wells Fargo Philanthropic Services administration team as a senior trust administrator.

Christian H. Staples (’09 JD) was named a 2016 Young Gun in Business North Carolina.

Lawrence Powers (’09 BA, ’13 MDIV) is the Cooperative Baptist

Fellowship of North Carolina Campus Minister serving the Raleigh area and at Duke University.

FIVE FORMER CAMELS MAKE UP 10-PIECE BAND, BANTUM ROOSTER Brothers Christian and Shane Morgan (’10) made up two-thirds of a three-man band in high school when they practiced regularly in their aunt’s basement. They recall the day their aunt walked down the stairs to tell them they sounded “like a bantam rooster cackling.” The description stuck. And it became motivation to improve.

Today, Bantum Rooster is a 10-piece band with five members having graduated from Campbell University. They’ll be the headline entertainment at this year’s Homecoming festivities, playing a blend of classic rock, beach, funk, dance and Top 40 hits in the new Alumni Village on Oct. 22. The band has begun promoting its first original single, “Carolina for the Weekend,” which includes a music video released in May. Drummer Jon Cheney (’13), tenor saxophonist Jimmy Plater (’11), vocalist Courtney Raynor (’12) and vocalist and guitarist Josh Causey (’14) make up the other Campbell grads in the band. They’ve played multiple charity shows benefiting food drives, soup kitchens, the Salvation Army and the American Cancer Society in addition their many paid gigs.

“This year we played for Relay for Life,” Shane Morgan said.

“Volunteering your time and talent for a good cause is one of the band’s founding principles and a key attribute to our success.”

The Campbell alums say they are particularly excited to play for students and alumni at homecoming. Raynor says she anticipates performing at homecoming will give her a chance, like many other alumni who will be on campus that weekend, to reconnect with the life she lived in Buies Creek. Shane Morgan views this opportunity to be of service to Campbell.

“I can’t think of a better way to give back to Campbell than to play Homecoming,” he says. “Campbell has given us a good foundation for success. Everything from business knowledge to musical talent to a desire to do good things for people. But most importantly, Campbell brought most of our band members together as friends.”

— by Michael Little

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FALL 2016

___________________

Morgan Brame Goforth (’11 BS, ’14 MA) and Jon Goforth (’13 BA) were married on April 16.

’10

Brian S. Humphrey II (’10 JD) was named to the 2016 Texas Rising Stars list.

Bryan G. Nichols (’10 JD) joined Marcari, Russotto, Spencer & Balaban, P.C. as an associate attorney.

’11

___________________ Michelle Koh (’12) competed in the Rio Summer Olympic Games in August for her home country of Malaysia.

She entered the Olympics ranked No. 57 of the 60-player field. She has played on the LPGA China Tour and is in the Top 500 in the world women’s golf rankings.

Jeremy Winters (’12 BBA, ’15 JD/MBA) started a new job as a tax associate at Pricewaterhousecooper, LLC. Samuel “B.J.” Kilgore (’12 Law) joined the Van Winkle Law Firm’s Trusts and Estates team.

Kilgore practices estate planning as well as trust and estate administration and resolution of disputes and controversies.

___________________

’13

Jennifer Clark (‘13 PharmD) and CPT. Matthew Clark are happy to announce the birth of their second child, Margaret Kathryn Clark, on May 11, 2016.

___________________ Paul Griffin (’11 JD) was selected for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Leadership Academy.

Megan Joyner (’11 MDIV) was ordained by Pullen Memorial Baptist Church on May 15.

’12

Rev. Dr. Lionel Cartwright (’10, ‘15) was inducted as a Distinguished Member

of the United States Army Quartermaster Regiment, Fort Lee, on June 10.

Ruth Levy (’11 JD) was selected for the North Carolina Bar Association’s Leadership Academy.

Kenzie Rakes (’13 JD) joined Meynardie & Nanney, PLLC as an associate attorney.

___________________

’14

Meagan Vizard (’14 MDIV) and Thomas Greene were married on May 8.

2016 Homecoming Schedule Friday, Oct. 21

Lundy-Fetterman School of Business Alumni Recognition Day 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

Lundy-Fetterman School of Business

Saturday, Oct. 22 Catrina Moretz (’14) and Sean Moretz (’17 BBA) were united in marriage on May 21.

____________________

’15

Abbie Davis (’15 MDIV) and Daniel Mullens were married on April 30.

Brooke Bellomy (’15) was named interim head coach of Marshall University’s women’s golf program in her home state of West Virginia. Her playing career at Campbell included nine top 10 finishes, and she was an All-Big South Conference selection in 201213. She advanced to the NCAA Regionals four times and played in the NCAA Championship in 2014 and 2015.

James Hoke (’15 MBA) joined Thrivent Financial as a financial associate with the organization’s east regional office in Kenly.

Hoke previously worked as a budget analyst at Fort Bragg and also served in an advisory role as a private contractor.

___________________

’16

Abdue Knox (’16 MDIV) was ordained an itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal church during the 147th session of the N.C. Annual Conference.

Andrew Lane (’16) accepted a position as manager of fan development with the Carolina Railhawks professional soccer team in the NASL.

Walter S. Barge Scholarship 5K – College of Arts and Sciences 9 a.m.

Register at https://runnc.com/ra/r/ walter-s-barge-memorial-homecoming-5k/

Lundy-Fetterman School of Business Alumni Golf Tournament 8 a.m.-Noon Keith Hills Country Club

(Registration Required, Limited Space Available)

26th Annual History, Criminal Justice, and Political Science Alumni Brunch 11 a.m.

D. Rich Room 119

“Back To Class” Sessions

• 10-11 a.m.: 2016 Presidential election discussion, presented by faculty of the History, Criminal Justice and Political Science Department, D. Rich 127 • 11 a.m.-Noon: “Would You Drink This?” Engineering design process presented by Lynn Albers, Carrie Rich 132 • 11 a.m.: First Citizens Wealth Management Center presentation, Lundy-Fetterman School of Business

CPHS Alumni Tailgate

Noon-3:30 p.m.

Plenty of time to socialize, enjoy our kids and family game zone, shop CPHS exclusive merchandise • 1 p.m.: Buffet line opens. Catered by Cooper’s BBQ • 1:30 p.m.: Recognition of Honorary Lifetime members/Distinguished Alumni Award • 1:45 p.m.: Greek headcount

Study Abroad Alumni Reunion

Noon-2 p.m.

Join us at our tailgating tent in the Alumni Village for food trucks & to reunite with study abroad students and faculty!

RSVP to studyabroad@campbell.edu

Office of Spiritual Life Kindness Tent

“To lean into kindness means honestly embracing our limitations and fears, that we do not have this road trip all figured out.” — Barry Corey Stop by our tent in Alumni Village and share your stories as we rediscover the power of the forgotten virtue of kindness.

Memorial Service Remembering the Lives of Our Alumni and Friends 1 p.m.

Robert B. and Anna Gardner Butler Chapel

Homecoming Parade

2 p.m.

Watch alumni, students, and groups as they parade through Buies Creek displaying their Campbell Pride.

Kids Zone – Inflatable Entertainment 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

Inside Barker-Lane Stadium (Free)

Camel Rides

2:30 p.m.

Near the Football Stadium

(Free)

CPHS Alumni Game Watch 4 p.m.

Fighting Camels vs. Stetson (Reserved Section)

Football vs. Stetson 4 p.m.

Barker-Lane Stadium

Men’s Soccer Alumni Cookout 5 p.m.

Eakes Athletics Complex

Men’s Soccer vs. Presbyterian

Alumni Village

Noon-3:30 p.m.

7 p.m.

Eakes Athletics Complex

Twitter: @CampbellAlumni | Instagram: Campbell_Alumni Facebook: Campbell University Alumni Association | alumni@campbell.edu W W W. C A M P B E L L . E D U / M A G A Z I N E

alumni.campbell.edu

CAMPBELL MAGAZINE

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CLASS NOTES

FRIENDS WE WILL MISS Robert Yeager (’62), April 3 Rhonda Cashwell (’82), April 22 James Luther (’70), April 22 Lynwood Williams (’03, ’04), April 22 Anthony Mitchell (’80), April 24 Horace Barefoot (’42), April 26 Douglas McIntosh (’84L), April 29 Robert Dillon (’98), May 26 Bobby Brown (’82), May 28 Michael Lamberth (’90), May 29 Cloteal Hunt (’69), June 1 Kelvin Starner (’85), June 3 Lisa Shearin (’83), June 13 Donald Onge (’72), June 18 Ryland Young (’49), June 21 Timothy Skaggs (’96), June 22 Craig Quinn (’74), June 23 Sherrill Johnson (’65), June 25 Hazel Sorrell (’34), June 27 David Upchurch (’90), July 1 Frances Jones (’48), July 4 Albert Meiburg (’07), July 23 Stanley Jarrell (’81), July 24 Susan Holt (’70), Aug. 6 Robert Buchanan, Jr. (’81), Aug. 15 Sheldon Worrell, Jr. (‘80L), Aug. 15 Ronald Montgomery (’71), Aug. 17 Michael Glover (’73), Aug. 18 Peggy Mason (’92, ’97), Aug. 19 Una O’Quinn (’69), Aug. 22 Gerald Olsen (’73), Aug. 23 Frances Williams (’78), Aug. 25

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SEN. ROBERT MORGAN 1925-2016

I

n 1942, Robert Morgan — the man who would go on to become a U.S. senator — wanted to attend his hometown school, Campbell College. The son of a 1907 Buies Creek Academy graduate, Morgan wound up attending what is now East Carolina, because his family couldn’t afford Campbell. In 2013, Morgan established a scholarship for future Campbell students so they won’t have to make that same difficult decision in the future.

“I’m very proud of my roots and very proud of Campbell University,” Morgan told Campbell Magazine in 2013. “I hope my contribution helps future students who want to go to Campbell. I want to support their education.”

U.S. Sen. Robert Burren Morgan died on July 16 at the age of 90. A prominent figure in North Carolina politics for nearly half his life, Morgan never swayed far from his Harnett County roots.

His grandfather, W.T. Morgan, is listed in University records as one of the 30 “distinguished citizens” in Buies Creek who helped persuade and support a Baptist preacher named J.A. Campbell to begin Buies Creek Academy in 1887.

“I wasn’t but 19, and here I was an officer helping bring home these old codgers who’d been over there fighting and fighting and fighting for months to years,” Morgan recalled in 2013. “I felt like a little boy compared to these men.”

His political career began soon after he returned when friends in high places urged him to run for Clerk of Court. He next ran for the North Carolina State Senate and won, becoming the president pro tempore and chairman of several key committees. He won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in 1974 and beat Republican William Stevens with 63 percent of the vote to earn the seat that fall. He served until 1980 before losing a close race to Republican John East. He returned to practice law in Lillington the next year and served as director of the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation.

On the walls at Robert Morgan Law Office in downtown Lillington are several photos of the late senator with presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, as well as several high-ranking men from that era. But a point of pride Morgan liked to make clear was that despite the many places his career took him, he never lived more than two miles from the farm house in Angier.

In 1942, Morgan enrolled at East Carolina for $300 a year; but was drafted and joined the Navy on his 18th birthday. He was on his way CATHERINE W. …

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W W W. C A M P B E L L . E D U / M A G A Z I N E

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SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

to welcome students fall 2016 MAGAZINE

67

FROM THE EDITOR FROM EDITOR THE COLLEGE ROOMMATE

L

ong before Facebook — when private lives were still mostly “private” — part of the excitement entering your freshman year of college was the mystery of that first roommate. In the summer of 1994, all I knew heading into my first semester was the name of the guy who’d be the first non-family member to share living quarters with me.

We’ll call him Jerry.

We’d be friends, I had no doubt. He’d like video games. We’d watch football together on Saturdays and Sundays. He’d have a girlfriend, and she’d introduce me to her roommate. We’d hit it off. Twenty years later, Jerry and I would vacation with our families and complain about our guts while staring at burgers on the grill, our kids smacking our legs with whiffle ball bats.

Yep. I had big plans for Jerry, even if all I had to go on was a white index card with his name and hometown in dot matrix ink.

Then came August. I finally met Jerry.

He’d already made himself at home in our 12-by-15 closet of a dorm room at my small university in the piney woods of East Texas. As I walked in carrying a laundry basket of freshly folded school clothes — my new backpack slung over my shoulder — Jerry was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie (it was 90 degrees that day), facing the window and doing Rockyinspired calisthenics while blasting Guns-NRoses at Volume 10. He was unaware of my presence. When he did realize he was no longer alone, Jerry turned around and dropped the hoodie.

“Hey,” he said with a nod. “Jerry. Too loud?”

“Nah,” I gulped, setting my basket on my bed.

Jerry wasn’t what I imagined.

Jerry was odd. Jerry was also 30.

I was crushed. Gone was this grand idea of whom my first college roommate would be — one of those people it’s a given will have an impact on your life, like a kindergarten teacher, first girlfriend, your cool uncle or that one coach who always believed in you.

And before you think this story ends with me finally realizing I shouldn’t have judged a book by the cover — before you think 30-year-old Jerry turned out to be a great friend and even a

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FALL 2016

mentor, let me stop you.

Jerry was everything you imagined a 30-yearold college freshman with no car who chose to stay in freshman dorms rather than an apartment would be. He was quiet and to himself. He didn’t like the lights or my TV on in the room after 10 (if I wanted to study late, which happened occasionally, I went to the lobby). I had to drive him to the grocery store every other weekend if his parents weren’t in town. He had a habit of deleting voicemails without telling me (pre-cellphone era). He did the weird calisthenics thing.

Granted, he wasn’t all bad. His age was a benefit for reasons I won’t go into here. Overall, he was a nice guy. We had lunch occasionally.

But we were square pegs.

And for a kid who had big ideas of what his college experience was going to be — and someone who hoped his roommate would be that first friend in a strange land full of strange people — Jerry was a disappointment.

But here’s the happy ending you expected a few paragraphs earlier. That friend I hoped Jerry would be — I met him the following year. We didn’t share a dorm room, but he lived on my floor, just down the hall. He was my age. Like me, he grew up in a small East Texas town.

Divorced parents. Played football. Owned a Sega Genesis. We’ll call him Toby.

By incredible coincidence, both of our careers led us to North Carolina. This summer — 22 years after we met — our families shared a beach house for a few days, and at one point, we found ourselves standing over a grill, watching burgers and dogs cook while debating the use of lighter fluid versus coals already soaked in it.

Our kids played nearby. One of them smacked me in the leg with a bat.

Billy Liggett Editor, Campbell Magazine

FROM THE VAULT This aerial view of main campus was shot in 1955. Kitchin Hall (bottom left) had just been completed, and its neighbor, Baldwin Hall was still but a patch of sand. Students could drive right up to D. Rich and Kivett Halls at this time, and Treat Dormitory still stood next to Jones Hall.

W W W. C A M P B E L L . E D U / M A G A Z I N E

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Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID PPCO Post Office Box 567 Buies Creek, NC 27506

www.campbell.edu

Photo by Leah Whitt