Four Receive Davie Award Marking Extraordinary Service

Posted on Nov. 18, 2005

Four friends of the University were presented this week with the prestigious William Richardson Davie Award by UNC’s Board of Trustees.

This year’s honorees are Marjorie Bryan Buckley ’62 of Bethlehem, Pa.; Donald Curtis ’63 and Frank Daniels Jr. ’53, both of Raleigh; and Richard J. “Dick” Richardson of Pittsboro.

The award, established by the trustees in 1984, is named for the Revolutionary War hero who is considered the father of the University. It is the highest honor bestowed by the trustees and recognizes extraordinary service to the University or to society.

Here is how this year’s honorees have provided such service:

• While working for the N.C. Fund, founded by former N.C. Gov. Terry Sanford ’39, Buckley read an article about Outward Bound and attended several courses. Those experiences spurred her to lead efforts establishing the N.C. Outward Bound School at Table Rock Mountain, which opened in 1967. She also was instrumental in founding the Carolina Center for Public Service. Dedicated in 1999, the center gives N.C. residents access to UNC’s resources as well as helps foster a service ethic and practice among UNC’s students, faculty and staff. Buckley served on the Board of Visitors from 1997 to 2001. She now serves on the Carolina First Campaign Steering Committee and the Carolina Women’s Leadership Council, as well as its executive committee. She received the General Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2004.
• Curtis, who began his first radio job at 15, has gone on to head Raleigh-based Curtis Media Group, which operates North Carolina’s largest network of radio stations, including flagships WPTF-AM and WQDR-FM. Curtis was inducted into the N.C. Association of Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame in 2002. He is past president of the N.C. Association of Broadcasters and has served on its board of directors since 1978. He received the association’s Distinguished Service Award in 1990. He also has been named to the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. Curtis and his wife, Barbara, have created a fund to support extracurricular student activities at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is a member of the Carolina First Campaign Raleigh Regional Committee and helped lead the effort to renovate Memorial Hall. He served on the Board of Visitors from 1998 to 2002.
• In 1971, Daniels became publisher and president of The News & Observer in Raleigh, posts he held until retiring in 1996. During this stretch of his career, he championed government openness, and The News & Observer won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism in 1996 for stories on the environmental and health risks of waste disposal in hog farming. That same year, Daniels was inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame. Also in 1996, Daniels and his wife, Julia Jones Daniels, were named outstanding philanthropists of the year by the Triangle chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives. Daniels is a former director of the General Alumni Association and a former member of the Board of Visitors. He served on the steering committee for Carolina’s Bicentennial Campaign and has served as a trustee for UNC’s Kenan Institute.
• A few years after joining Carolina’s department of political science in 1969, Richardson received the Tanner Award for Excellence in Teaching, his first of four career teaching awards. In 1995, then-Chancellor Michael Hooker ’69 selected Richardson to be the UNC’s provost. Hooker and Richardson served four years together, and during that time seven new deans were appointed, along with several other high-ranking administrators. Richardson’s honors include the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award, the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Order of the Grail, the Society of Janus, the Thomas Jefferson Award, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the James Johnston Undergraduate Teaching Award, the General Alumni Association’s Faculty Service Award and the Order of the Old Well. Colleagues and friends also established the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship for a senior scholar and teacher in American politics.

Chancellor James Moeser and the Board of Trustees presented the awards at a dinner at The Carolina Inn on Wednesday.

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