Reflections at Year's End
Posted on Nov. 13, 2003The close of a year affords opportunities to reflect — to think back on significant achievements and important concerns, to recall notable events, to remember special people who have passed. And it is an appropriate time to celebrate what is special about Chapel Hill.
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
What does Chapel Hill mean to you?
Chapel Hill is Franklin Street, Dean Smith and the Old Well, the Arboretum, Kenan Stadium and drop-add. For most of us it is all these and more. It’s people. It’s memories. It’s the sights and sounds of the oldest and the most beautiful public university.
Do you remember your first day of class, the first exam, the terror? Do you remember writing that 15-page essay on the role of Russia in the Crimean War, how the sun came up as you put the concluding words on the middle of the final page? When the old prof with the gray beard said your paper contained “remarkable insight”? Or the excitement that came as that special professor opened your eyes to ancient truths or made inert gasses come alive?
Do you remember standing in line for tickets to a game in Carmichael or Woollen or the Smith Center?
Things in Chapel Hill have changed for all of us. For some, it is disturbing to realize the Tin Can or our favorite tree exists no longer. Buildings that we don’t recognize change the feel of a remembered favorite spot. Some of those special people who opened our eyes and ears to the world are gone.
It is special to live in Chapel Hill, to work at Carolina, to walk down Franklin Street and across the campus, to pass the Old Well, to see the excitement on the faces of students, to share the joys of special sports moments, to sympathize over the anxieties of final exams, to revel in the anticipation of spring and those beautiful dogwoods and azaleas.
In the past year among many, many others, we have mourned the passing of longtime public servant and state Treasurer Harlan Boyles ’51, Red Clay Rambler Tommy Thompson ’63, the Carolina Alumni Review‘s own Ed Long ’48, UNC Dean of Students Jim Cansler ’47 and football icon Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice ’50.
We also have celebrated Karine Dube’s receipt of a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, Fred Eshelman’s ’72 transforming gift of $20 million to the UNC School of Pharmacy, Roy Williams’ ’72 return to Carolina, the Carolina First Campaign surpassing the $1.1 billion mark (and research funding exceeding $535 million), and the election of Richard “Stick” Williams ’75 as the first person of color to chair the UNC Board of Trustees.
We were excited and inspired by the announcement of the Carolina Covenant — ensuring that UNC students with demonstrated financial need will graduate from Carolina debt free. We are reassured by the yearlong observance of Honor Carolina, a recommitment to Carolina’s cherished honor system. Many of us were perplexed by the controversy over this year’s first-year student reading assignment, Nickel and Dimed. Nearly all of us were exhausted by the seemingly endless meandering toward the expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
We were troubled that the N.C. General Assembly did not provide funding for a much-needed and long-overdue new clinical cancer hospital. We are grateful that our campus was spared from the more severe cuts in appropriations visited upon public universities in many states, but we are disappointed that the state again was unable to provide funds for salary increases for University staff and faculty.
People. Places. Special moments. Concerns. All came together in May in Kenan Stadium, where Carolina’s newest graduates, their families and friends, along with UNC faculty were inspired by Commencement speaker Bill Cosby. His address was the first to benefit from the new 65- by 50-foot video board.
Near the end of that ceremony, the GAA-sponsored Clef Hangers — Carolina’s oldest a cappella group — sang Chapel Hill native James Taylor’s Carolina In My Mind. Five months later, in Asheville, the Clefs sang this song again, but instead of the celebratory mood of a Kenan Stadium Commencement, in October the Clefs sang at the funeral of our beloved Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice.
The song’s closing words were never more poignant: “Carry on without me, say nice things about me, I’m gone, yes, I’m gone.” Soon the year will be gone, but our memories of the people, places, special moments and concerns that shaped the year will remain. Hark the sound!
Yours at Carolina,
Douglas S. Dibbert ’70
