Hark the Sounds

More than 4,000 of the newest members of the Carolina family have arrived in Chapel Hill, ready to begin their Tar Heel journey – just as soon as they deal with move-in, family, roommates and simply finding their way around campus.

1968 was a watershed year in American history. For college students, Vietnam, civil rights and the sexual revolution mixed with the more mundane realities of daily life on campus. Back in Chapel Hill for their 50th reunion – some of them for the first time since graduation – the UNC class of 1968 gathered to reminisce about what it was like to live through that historic time.

Mike Wiley ’04 has been performing for school and regional theater audiences for almost two decades as a solo artist, and he often plays more than two dozen characters during a performance. “You almost feel like you have multiple personality disorder,” he says.

Martha Gunter Caldwell ’39 was on the small side from the beginning and topped out at 4-foot-10, but she has lived a big — and long — life. Caldwell, who turned 100 in April, graduated from UNC at a time when few women attended college.

“I still love Chapel Hill — I still love it. And every time somebody goes, I say, ‘Blow a kiss to the Old Well for me,’ ” Caldwell says. “Yes, I’m a Tar Heel. Hark the sound!”

(Story at http://unc.live/2o5xOkE)

A passionate storyteller himself, Jim White '71 created historians out of his students when he sent them out to listen to – and record – the stories of war veterans. Now the hundreds of cassette tapes that make up the Jim White Oral History Collection are part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC.

Freddie Kiger ’74, teacher of the GAA’s overwhelmingly popular N.C. History Series, gives us a preview of his class "History of The University of North Carolina, Part II (1835-61)," marking the rise of UNC—a “golden age,” if you will—before the destructive whirlwind of secession and civil war.