Alumni Memorial in Memory of Those Lost in Military Service, UNC, Chapel Hill
The monument is a dynamic monument designed by Maggie Smith. It includes a bronze book that lists the names of 684 alumni that have died in wars. The Book of Names was designed with the intent to accommodate additional names that were not discovered in the original research for the memorial, as well as those who might be lost in the future. The memorial also includes a long bench near Cameron Avenue that points to the Old Well. The street side is a stone wall like those common across campus. The other side, facing the rest of the memorial, is a red sandstone bench inscribed with a quote from Look Homeward, Angel.
Book of Names, left: LIST OF CAROLINA ALUMNI LOST IN MILITARY SERVICE
Book of Names, right: The Soldier Walks Under the Trees of the University / The walls have been shaded for so many years / By the green magnificence of these great lives / Their bricks are darkened till the end of time / Small touching whites in the perpetual / Darkness that saturates the unwalled world; / Saved from the sky by leaves, and from the earth by stone /
The pupils trust like flowers to the shades / And interminable twilight of these latitudes.
/ In our zone innocence is born in banks / And cultured in colonies the rich have sown: /
The one is spared here what the many share /
To write the histories that others are. / The oak escapes the storm that broke the reeds, /
They read here; they read, too, of reeds, /
Of storms; and are, almost sublime /
In their read ignorance of everything. / The poor are always--somewhere, but not here; /
We learn of them where they and Guilt subsist /
with Death and Evil: in books, in books, in books. /
Ah, sweet to contemplate the causes, not the things! /
The soul learns fortitude in libraries, /
Enduring patience in another's pain, /
And pity for the lives we do not change: /
All that the world would be, if it were real. /
When will the boughs break blazing from these trees, /
The darkened walls float heavenward like soot? /
The days when man say: "Where we look is fire-- /
The iron branches flower in my veins"? /
In that night even to be rich is difficult, /
The world is something even books believe, /
The bombs fall all year long among the states, /
And the blood is black upon the unturned leaves. /
--Randall Jarrett
Book of Names, pedestal: The fading footsteps lost forever /
The eloquent lips, the passionate hearts /
All be as if they'd never been? /
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /
Now all our walking is the paths they trod, /
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /
So thus the dead do live in us again, /
And we the living honorably may die. / --Paul Green
Bench, facing Book of Names: He heard ... the mellow booming of the campus bell. And suddenly it seemed to him that all the beaten walks were thudding with the footfalls of lost boys, himself among them, running for their class. Then, as he listened, the far bell died away, and the phantom runners thudded into oblivion / --Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
Plaque on left of bench: GIVEN BY THE CAROLINA ROTC ALUMNI
UNC Chapel Hill
April 12, 2007
35.911070 , -79.052380
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"Carolina Alumni Memorial In Memory of Those Lost in Military Service," The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of University History, (accessed March 29, 2012) Link
"Carolina Dedicates Memorial to 684 Alumni War Dead," UNC GAA News, (accessed March 29, 2012) Link
"Dedication for the Carolina Alumni Memorial," UNC GAA News, (accessed March 29, 2012) Link
Neefa, Deborah. "Fallen Alumni Memorialized," The Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, NC), April 13, 2007, (accessed June 25, 2012) Link
Yes
Bronze, sandstone, concrete
Alumnus Robert Eaves, who came up with the idea, worked with a committee to raise the funds for the memorial, most of which was donated by ROTC alumni.
$300,000
The monument was dedicated on the morning of April 12, 2007. UNC System President Emeritus William C. Friday, a World War II veteran, spoke. Robert W. Eaves, the man who started the committee for the monument was also present.
Robert W. Eaves formed a committee of former UNC students and in 2002 began with the General Alumni Association to plan for a monument that would honor alumni who were lost in wars.
The monument is located between Memorial Hall and Phillips Hall just south of Cameron Avenue.
The monument was designed with space to add names in the case that there are additional names that were not discovered in the original research for the memorial, as well as those who might be lost in the future.
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