100 Years at the GAA
Posted on Nov. 12, 1999When the 20th century dawned, there was not a Carolina Alumni Review; the Alumni Review did not begin publishing until 1912. Of Carolina’s 218,658 living alumni today, only 17 were alive to experience the end of the 19th century.
At the turn of that century, Thomas S. Kenan from the class of 1857 was president of the General Alumni Association. He had served as the senior volunteer leader of the GAA since 1891 and would go on to serve until 1911 — longer than any other individual in the GAA’s 156-year history.
The GAA’s dues program was only a few years old, and annual dues were $1 (life memberships became available in the 1960s). Local chapter/club meetings across North Carolina and along the East Coast had been held for more than a decade while reunion gatherings at Commencement were held yearly since the association’s founding in 1843, with the exception of a 12-year period during and immediately after the Civil War.
Louis Round Wilson of the class of 1899 was the first editor of the Alumni Review, but it was not until 1922 that the association had its first alumni secretary. Daniel L. Grant ’21 served in that capacity until 1927, when J. Maryon “Spike” Saunders ’25 moved into South Building and began a 43-year career as the GAA’s alumni secretary.
Spike Saunders and UNC hosted the first meeting of the American Alumni Council — an organization of alumni secretaries from across the United States. Twice Spike served as president of the AAC. In 1974, the American Alumni Council merged with an organization of college and university editors and public relations officers to form the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
When John Sprunt Hill of the class of 1889 gave the Carolina Inn to the University, the GAA offices were moved from South Building to the Inn, where Spike and the GAA also supervised the Inn’s management. In 1952, the GAA started Alumni Annual Giving (AAG), and Spike, while continuing to serve as editor of the Alumni Review and alumni secretary, also became the first director of AAG (later known as Carolina Alumni Giving). The GAA and Spike quickly concluded that University fund raising should be coordinated by the University, and AAG was moved under the umbrella of the UNC administration.
Before retiring in 1970, and with the GAA continuing to expand, Spike arranged for the GAA offices to be moved out of the Carolina Inn and into the nearby Bryan Apartments (also known as the Carolina Inn Apartments), which would become the Alumni House. That same year, Clarence Whitefield ’44 succeeded Spike as alumni secretary. Under Clarence’s leadership, the GAA published the first alumni directory since 1953, greatly expanded the alumni travel and life membership programs, and launched an alumni recognition program with the awarding of the first Distinguished
Service Medals.
Today, the association’s staff numbers 35, and we serve more than 63,000 dues-paying Carolina Alumni members from our offices in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center. The 3-by-5 cards with names and addresses of Carolina’s former students that were gathered by volunteers in the 19th and early 20th centuries later were transferred to addressograph plates. Today, with an alumni records staff of seven and through advances in technology, we maintain records on Carolina’s more than 250,000 former students.
We continue to coordinate reunions and local club meetings, and we also involve our alumni in a growing number of enrichment programs, the Alumni Advisor Network and alumni career services, an alumni family camp, the Tar Heel Network, the alumni admissions program and our College for Learning in Retirement. We now offer a student membership and an expanding number of student programs.
Like the University and alumni we serve, the General Alumni Association has changed a great deal in the past 100 years. However, our purposes remain the same as those identified in the GAA’s first constitution adopted over 150 years ago:
- “Perpetuate the friendships formed in the collegiate course”;
- “Promote the welfare” of alma mater; and
- “Promote the cause of education generally.”
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
