Remembering Hargrove "Skipper" Bowles Jr. '41 (1919-1986)

Posted on Oct. 20, 1986

On Sunday September 7, one day after the official dedication of the Dean E. Smith Center, which his leadership made possible, Skipper Bowles ’41 died of Lou Gehrig’s disease in his home in Greensboro. Skipper had a special relationship with Carolina and the GAA.

He was a member of the Board of Trustees for eight years, serving as its Chairman in 1980-81, He was a member of the GAA Board of Directors and received our highest award — the Distinguished Service Medal — in 1982. Each of his four children are Carolina graduates — Hargrove III ’65, Erskine ’67, Holly ’69 and Martha ’75. In addition, his brothers John ’38 and Kelly ’48 are Carolina alumni.

Speaking at Skipper’s funeral was his longtime, close friend, a colleague on the Board of Trustees and presently a member of the GAA Board of Directors, Thomas W. Lambeth ’57. As Lambeth spoke, the bells in South Building rang for the first time since 1978 when former Dean of Women Katherine Kennedy Carmichael passed away.

I include Tom Lambeth’s remarks in this space in appreciation for the many special contributions Skipper made to the University, to the GAA, to my life and the lives of so many Carolina alumni and friends of the University.

— Doug Dibbert

To remember Skipper is to remember the smile that brightened our time with him — a smile that shone forth from a strength of spirit that even illness could not destroy.

To remember Skipper is to remember the warmth of his hand — a hand that reached out in times of despair to comfort, in times of accomplishment to celebrate, and always to lift us up, to lead us forward.

To remember Skipper is to remember a gallant and generous heart — a heart big enough to encompass a multitude of family and friends and to care for all of North Carolina.

To remember Skipper is to remember a man who sought to improve the world and to enjoy it. In doing both he touched the lives of all of us here.

Most of all it is to remember how his life transcended time and place and station and circumstance to enrich the lives of so many others.

If a young lawyer set up a practice, Skipper wrote his friends asking them to become clients and never told the young lawyer of what he had done. If a poor but talented young person needed a college education, Skipper helped see that the opportunity was realized. If a teenager wanted to fish in his lake, Skipper fished with him.

He got excited about Carolina basketball, home-grown vegetables and grandchildren — his and everyone else’s — and his excitement made you excited too. He not only had the capacity to understand the pain and joy of others, he had an ability to share those experiences in a way that made him a partner in your living.

He enveloped his family — Dez, Holly, Martha, Erskine, Hargrove, his brothers and all their families — with his love, and because of that, he understood what family meant to other human beings everywhere.

In a time when some would insist on imposing hard line ideological labels, his ideology was people. He saw issues in people terms. Jobs, education and housing were never statistics. They were always the hurts and needs and triumphs of individual people.

In a period when his state came to grips with the travesty of a segregated society, he helped lead the way because his heart was too big to shut out others on the basis of their race or color or religion.

To remember Skipper is not to forget the accomplishments — the business successes, the legislative achievements, the awards and honors, but to remember him best is to remember him as he was as husband, father, brother and friend.

The final tangible achievement of his life is an athletic facility that exists because of his determination, but don’t look for Skipper in the brick and mortar and steel of the place. He is not there. Skipper will be there only when it is alive with the music and the smell of people and competition, with the roar of the crowd and the pounding of the heart; with the love of Carolina.

He was an exuberant cheerleader of life — reminding us of its richness and its goodness; he reached out his friendly hand and made us stronger; and with all of that he took hold of our hearts. A warming smile, a clasping hand, a generous and gallant heart. Now the smile becomes a memory, the hand lets go; but the hold on our hearts will last forever.

Memorial gifts may be made to the Medical Foundation of North Carolina for the Alcohol Studies Center, 229 McNider Hall 202 HI, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514.