This is Isabella Cannon speaking and the time is the spring of 1993. I am
participating in an Oral History Project which was authorized by the
Raleigh Bicentennial Task Force. During the entire year of 1992,
Raleigh's Two Hundredth Birthday was being celebrated with many exciting
events. I am speaking from my home at 212 Brooks Avenue, Raleigh.
I would like to begin by giving you some background about myself, and
then I want to speak primarily about Raleigh, the life of Raleigh and as
it has impacted my life, and my life as it may have had some impact on
the city of Raleigh.
First, I would like to point out my international background. I was born
in Scotland and came to this country when I was twelve years of age. The
trip here on a huge Cunard liner was the first of the many exciting
adventures of my life. This was during World War I in 1916, and Britain
was at war with Germany. Our British steamship was chased by a German
submarine, and we had to learn lifeboat drills in case we were
torpedoed. Happily, this did not occur.
Later in life, I had the privilege of living in Monrovia, Liberia, on the
west coast of Africa. Again traveling there on a British freighter,
leaving New York in a devastating storm, and learning that a Liberty
ship had broken in half near us in the raging storm was quite an
experience. Liberia is a child, perhaps I should say a step-child, of
the United States. Their form of government is based on ours, with a
Constitution and Congress like ours. Their flag is
Page 2
modeled on ours, with stripes but only one star. Their government is
more like a benevolent dictatorship instead of a presidency. While I was
there, President Tubman was able to set aside limitations on his term of
office and continue as president until he died. This experience in
government gave me a new perspective on forms of government.
My husband had been in government service for a number of years, being in
charge of civilian Lend-Lease in India and China before being assigned
to Liberia. At first I could not join him because of health conditions
in Monrovia, the Capital. I was working in Washington, D.C., first with
the Russian Lend-Lease, then with the French Lend-Lease, then with the
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Life was
primitive in Liberia. My husband had built a cement house with a palm
thatch roof which brought snakes and rats overhead. No glass for
windows, so we had shutters of wood when storms came. I made trips
through the jungle, canoe trips on the river which almost ended in
tragedy when our oars were swept away from the dugout canoe we were in.
My life there is a whole interview in itself.
From Liberia, we were assigned to Baghdad. We were there for almost three
years. When we first went to Baghdad, nobody knew where it was: Is it in
Egypt? Is it in India? Where is it? Unfortunately, with the recent
developments in 1991, '92, and '93, everyone knows that Baghdad is in
Iraq, and the name of Saddam Hussein is linked with it. In spite of the
intense heat there, I loved the Iraqi people and loved seeing the
beginnings of our civilization at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and
the biblical places of the Tigris and
Page 3 Euphrates
Rivers.
Again, there was the experience of living in a different kind of
government. The King had died, and his son, the young King, was too
young to govern, so there was a regency and an autocratic form of
government. Veiled women, camel trains, desert sands were part of my
life. Much too early for me to analyze it, I had lived in the British
form of government; therefore, my knowledge of government is in four
different types, including the United States and our form of Democracy.
Ours gives me a perspective on citizen involvement, helping me to know
that the form of government which we have here is the best that has been
developed in all the world, as well as the longest lasting. It has its
flaws, but it is a fine form of government and one that all of us need
to be more involved in. This is something that has dominated my life,
that is, my belief in the American system of Democracy is deep, lasting,
and one that I advocate constantly. Voter participation and citizen
involvement are of primary importance to me.
Now let me talk about coming to Raleigh. When I first came here, I was so
fortunate. It was really a wonderful beginning of my life in Raleigh. My
husband and I had come here after living many years in Elon College, and
I had put down deep roots there, so it was very difficult for me to
leave Elon. My husband had gone through the Depression as business
manager for the college. Later he began to work for the U.S. Government
in the Works Progress Administration—the WPA. There he had done such an
excellent job that they asked him to go into the new national youth
work, the National Youth
Page 4 Administration, the NYA.
This meant moving to Williamston, North Carolina, which I definitely did
not want to do. I could not pull up roots easily. It was so traumatic to
me that I ended up in the hospital in "Little" Washington, N.C., needing
blood transfusions. My husband's blood matched mine, so he was the
donor.
We were in Williamston only six months, when we were asked to come to
Raleigh where he was to be head of the NYA work in five states. I was
willing to leave Williamston, and I was excited about coming to Raleigh.
I had been here on visits but never to live. I had the most wonderful
beginning of my life here. We found an apartment that was a dream. It
was in the first block of New Bern Avenue that now has a big government
building there. It was right in the middle of that first block, right
opposite Christ Church, an apartment with a family, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest
Bain. The city's Bain Waterworks are named for him. He was a tall
slender southern gentleman, cultured. Mrs. Bain was a small, very busy
lady from Eastern North Carolina. Between the two of them and the
proximity of Christ Church, and of the Capitol, my beginning knowledge
of Raleigh was exciting. Our first floor apartment had high ceilings,
bay windows, polished floors, beautiful furniture. The Bains were living
upstairs. I think this was a result of the Depression because it is not
the sort of thing that Mr. and Mrs. Bain normally would have done,
renting part of their home. I walked each night up to the Capitol. I
could take my dog for a walk there, go around and look at the monuments,
read the inscriptions. I got to know the Capitol, the historic building
and the grounds, intimately.
What a
Page 5 wonderful beginning for my life here in
Raleigh.
On the other side of the Capitol, on Hillsborough Street about two blocks
away, was the second thing that had a tremendous impact on my life here.
Elon College was the college of the Christian denomination, which later
became the Congregational Christian, and still later the United Church
of Christ. This was a beautiful stone building that has now been
replaced by a parking lot. I went there because I had been deeply
involved with the denomination and had held many volunteer jobs with the
women's organizations and with Sunday School, as well as local and
statewide activities. Elon College Church was a moderately conservative
church, neither right wing, nor liberal, just a moderate type of church.
So now I come to this church in Raleigh, which I had heard about. All
our denomination knew about this church, how unusual it was. It was a
most tremendous experience to go into that group. The congregation was
largely faculty members from N.C. State University. We were also the
beginning, the nursery, for the Quakers and for the Unitarians. Neither
group was large enough to establish its own church, though later they
were able to become independent, and they had a real impact on us. The
Open Forum that we had was led by Dean B.F. Brown, who was Dean of the
School of Science and Business at N.C. State. Dean Brown was one of the
most dynamic, most liberal minded people I have known in all my life.
Small, feisty, intellectual, he prodded and pulled us. It was far from
being the normal Sunday School group. It was a group that explored every
aspect of life—political, humanitarian, economic. We were the earliest
ones, insofar as I know, talking about
Page 6 integration in
Raleigh. We were such an unusual church, and so visible, that newspapers
and radio were always picking us up and commenting on us. Among the
radio commentators who gave us a bad time, WRAL's famous commentator,
now Senator Jesse Helms, really worked us over. We have tapes of some of
his recordings. We were "eggheads," we were "communists," we were really
dangerous people. This was my introduction to Raleigh, and it had an
immense impact on my life. It opened my mind to what the church could do
for people if they truly believed in social action. It was a time of
great ferment in social action throughout the nation.
As a continuing thing in the church, not immediately but later, we began
the famous Institute of Religion, which was started under the leadership
of Dr. Allyn Robinson, who is being honored this week with the Frank
Porter Graham Award by the American Civil Liberties Union. He came here,
a young man, full of idealism, as well as full of practical applications
of that idealism. One of his ideas was the Institute of Religion, which
continued for twenty-five years. It brought together people from
Virginia, from all over North Carolina, who came first for a dinner,
followed by a series of classes, then a speaker. The dinner was a
remarkable thing and one of the most difficult things for North Carolina
and for Raleigh at that time. As Harry Golden had said, "You could have
standup receptions with blacks and whites, but you didn't sit down
together to eat." We had dinners, we sat down together, black and white.
We lost some members because of that, but we attracted people from all
over the city, all over the state. This was a real departure, a real
leadership thing that we
Page 7 initiated. We had people
come to speak like Eleanor Roosevelt. Allyn Robinson was a personal
friend of hers, and he was able to bring her here. We brought Norman
Thomas, and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hubert Humphrey, Ralph Buncheall
distinguished national speakers. I was treasurer and also on the
committee that helped to look for, search out these people that were so
exciting to bring here. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came, we met at
Needham Broughton High School Auditorium, and we had so many people that
we had a spill-over meeting in the United Church. He was heavily guarded
by police because there was so much anger and excitement about what we
were doing. We were not deterred by that. We kept on with what we were
doing.
In the meantime, my husband and I had moved. Mr. Bain became ill and they
needed to move downstairs. So my husband and I bought a little house out
at Mordecai, right in the little point between Mordecai and Courtland
Drive. Once again, I began to get soaked in Raleigh's history because
Mordecai House was nearby. Actually, I was quite frightened of it at
first. Its grounds were overgrown, it was a scary place to walk by as I
went down to the nearby shopping center. Later, I was on the Board of
Mordecai and a docent, also I was instrumental in bringing the St.
Mark's Chapel there when I was Mayor of Raleigh. The Chapel was in such
a dreadful condition that I had a lot of opposition to the cost, but now
that little Chapel is one of the beauty spots of Mordecai. Again, I
began to get more of Raleigh's history such as the Bains and the Capitol
had helped me understand.
Soon, a new dimension came into my life . . . the Raleigh Little Theater.
I
Page 8 had fallen in love with the theater and drama
when I was in high school and first discovered the fascination of
acting. I had little opportunity except for the debating team, since my
school had no drama activities, and what I could manage was in the
summer when I was in town. When I came to Elon College, I immediately
tried out for the debating team and was accepted. I loved that. I was
always excited about getting up and defending my position, then arguing
in the rebuttal. I managed, in spite of a double load of studies, to get
into an occasional play or skit, and loved that, too. So, when I
discovered the Raleigh Little Theater, it was like a dream come true. I
love theater, the ambiance of it, the study of a character and helping
to bring that person to life. I was in fourteen plays before I left
Raleigh. My husband was completely supportive of me. He did something
that was wonderful that men didn't often do in those days. We would get
through supper, and I needed to hurry to rehearsal, so he would wash the
dishes. This does not sound like much, but it was unusual. He did it
because he was so supportive of what I was doing.
The theater had no place to meet, so we rented the third floor of Briggs
Hardware for our workshops and rehearsals. If you have not been in there
recently, go in and look at those high ceilings and figure how many
steps it took to get up to the third floor. It was a real labor of love
to get up to the third floor where we met. We even put on one-act plays
up there. I soon became head of the workshop and put on one or two
one-act plays, as many as I could, every month, always one, sometimes
two.
Among the wonderful people that I met and who helped with our plays
Page 9 was the famous playwright, Ann Preston Bridges,
whose play
Coquette had played in New York and
featured Helen Hayes as lead player. Ann was so supportive of me, and
later, she proposed something which was totally impractical for us
because we were suffering from the effects of the Depression. We were
struggling financially. Ann felt very strongly that I had some of the
qualities that were in Helen Hayes, and she wanted me to go to New York
and get some professional training and try to get into theater. I
believe it's the biggest compliment I've ever had. It was completely
impossible for us, but it is a memory I cherish of her wanting me to do
this. Ann would write plays for me to put on and one play that she wrote
featured Sarah Vette Royster who is now still active in the Raleigh
Little Theater.
Ann lived on Hillsborough Street in winter and in the summertime went to
the mountains. She was able to do things for us in the theater that were
professional. She was gentle, kind, guiding us in the way that we should
go—to do good theater. We were still, however, operating from the
workshop on the third floor of Briggs Hardware. By this time I was on
the Board of the Raleigh Little Theater. In fact, I was Vice-President.
I was doing so much for the theater and loving every minute of it. I was
also loving the people I was meeting. Some of these names I'll mention
will bring memories back to some of you. Jimmy Thiem, who died only a
few years ago. He was Mr. Raleigh Little Theater himself. A wonderful
person. Heath Long, the first President. Tall, imposing. Sam Leager, who
is an attorney here in Raleigh. And Primrose McPherson that I want to
mention especially. I had the lead part of Abby in a
Page 10 play called
The Late Christopher Bean. Christopher
Bean had been a portrait painter. I was Abby and in the play I had
inherited a painting of me that he had done. Primrose McPherson did this
painting of me, and I kept it for many years, but with my many moves
across different parts of the world, I finally had to dispose of it. We
rehearsed our productions on the third floor of Briggs Hardware. We made
costumes and made scenery as best we could there; however, we had no
place to give the plays. As a result, we gave them anywhere we could.
Murphey School auditorium was one place, as was the old Hugh Morson
School. We produced many of our plays there. Some of them were given at
Needham Broughton, but increasingly we came to realize that we needed a
building.
Here's where another marvelous theater person came in, Mrs. Cantey
Sutton. She was our theater angel, really. She was the wife of the
president of Carolina Power and Light Company. And Cantey still is
highly honored at the theater. She guided us into a major undertaking,
an effort to raise money to build a new building. The WPA, the Works
Progress Administration, had monies for projects similar to this, but
any of you who have worked with government regulations know the
bureaucracy and paperwork. It was incredible. The WPA people were not
really sold on this project, it wasn't quite as practical as they
thought, just to build a theater. However, with many, many stops and
starts, we finally got the outdoor amphitheater built, which is a
beautiful amphitheater with good sound. I wish it could be used more
than it is used now. Jimmy Thiem used to put on every weekend a
delightful
Page 11 program of recorded music, and
people could take their picnic baskets and sit there under the stars and
listen to the music. It's not used very much, partly because of the
uncertainty of our weather here.
Our building would start and then stop. The WPA would tell us "There's no
more money." Cantey would go to Washington and beg. Okay, we would get
it started again. Finally, we got the amphitheater built, and proposed
they start on the building itself. Finally, we got the foundations done,
and then they adamantly said, "No more money. We cannot get any more
money." Here we were, stuck with an outdoor amphitheater and a
foundation of a building, but still no place to put on a play. Again,
Cantey Sutton came to the rescue. One thing Cantey did is really
incredible when you think back on it: Norman Cordon, a native North
Carolinian, was a member of the famous Metropolitan Opera Company, one
of its stars. We put on a production of the opera Faust at Needham Broughton School, and he came and sang with us.
He sang in his gorgeous costume, a Metropolitan Opera costume. He sang
in German, and we sang in our homemade costumes and in English. I don't
know why he ever agreed to do that, but it was really most unusual. I
don't think it could ever happen again.
My interest in drama had to stop when I left Raleigh, and since I came
back, I have not had the time. I've always had to earn a living or be so
involved with other things. Recently, I've had two small parts, lovely
things, at Meredith College. I was in the Dylan Thomas play, "Under Milk
Wood," and also a small cameo part in
The Crucible. I
had the lead in the first play in the
Page 12 new building
of the Raleigh Little Theater. This was one of the most exciting events
in my life up to then. To be in that first play in the new building with
a wonderful cast. I also had a small song and dance part in the fiftieth
anniversary of the building. The Raleigh Little Theater really takes
more time than I can give it now, so I've not been in any of the recent
plays.
In the meantime, in my life here in Raleigh, I was involved with United
Church activities. I made speeches to book clubs; anybody that wanted me
to make a speech I was willing to do it. However, the time came when I
needed to go to work. My husband and I were needing the money. I was
using a lot of time and energy and decided that I really needed to go to
work and earn some money to help with our expenses. Again, I was so
lucky. The first job that I had it was with WRAL radio station when the
offices were downtown on Salisbury Street. Fred Fletcher was manager. I
got to know A.J. Fletcher, a tall, disciplined man, who was kind, but I
didn't know him as well as I knew Fred. Also, Ray Reeves, the big,
breezy, bouncy, announcer. Ray was wonderful, and he and I became real
friends. In fact, one time while I was there and my birthday came along,
Ray tricked me into coming into the broadcasting room, and he teased me
about my birthday. He ended up as a birthday tribute playing Fats
Waller's, "Your Feet's Too Big," which I thought was really
inappropriate.
WRAL didn't pay me as much as I needed, so in my next job—again I was
very fortunate—I went to work with the Superior Stone Company. I got to
know these fine people, the Ragland family. I was lucky in so many ways
in
Page 13 the things that I did. However, my husband's
job had changed. He had gone up and up in his work with the WPA and then
with his work with the NYA, the National Youth Administration. He was
now head of five states around North Carolina. He was extremely busy and
away from home a great deal. His work was so impressive they asked him
if he would come to Washington and head up fiscal planning for the
Lend-Lease Program, which was a worldwide program, establishing
financial procedures and other procedures that had to be initiated. He
was very hesitant to talk to me about it because he knew how difficult
it had been for me to leave Elon. So he hesitated to talk to me about it
until the deadline came, but I immediately said, "Yes, let's go."
Off we went to Washington. I'm a healthy individual, but I had had an
operation and I was recovering from that, so my first few months in
Washington were a time of exploring Washington. For about six months I
did nothing but ride the buses, go to the museums, go to the historic
places. I got to know Washington deeply, as well as I had known Raleigh.
However, instead of sending my husband overseas, they stationed us in
Washington for about a year; then finally, they sent him to India, and
later to China. They would not let me go along because he was going into
war zones, and wives could not go. I had to stay in the United States.
My decision was to stay in Washington, and again I looked for jobs. The
very specific thing that I decided was that I wanted a job I could not
do in Raleigh. I was adamant I would not do anything that I could do in
Raleigh. The first job I got was with the Russian Purchasing Commission.
I hated it there. I hated their discipline. I was supposed to be
Page 14 doing work in statistics, but they asked me "Would
I please help them do some typing, some emergency thing?" So I said,
"All right. I'll do that for a week or so." At the end of the first two
weeks they said, "We need you again for this typing." So I said, "Look,
I'm not interested in a typing job." In fact, I was not being paid as a
typist, but as a statistician. I said, "Ok, I will do it, but this is
the last time." When I went in at the end of the following two weeks,
they started to say, "Now we need you again in typing." I said, "I'm
leaving. I'm not working as a typist when I'm supposed to be doing
statistical work."
However, I still know some of the Russian words that I learned there. It
was a fascinating glimpse of the life of the Russians in Washington.
Again, I had been so fortunate in where I found a place to live. I was
living with a French couple, Mom and Pop DeVarney. He was a short,
sturdy, vigorous, Frenchman who spoke French. Mom DeVarney, whom he had
met and married in New York, had been a former chorus girl. In her late
fifties, she still could hold her hand straight out, shoulder high, and
do a chorus girl kick, touching her hand to her toes and kick shoulder
high. She was the first woman I ever knew who got up in the morning and
put on her makeup. She smoked cigarettes, and I had never known,
personally, a women who smoked. But Mom loved me, and she was so good to
me. I had only a room, but I'd come downstairs in the morning and she
would say, "Wouldn't you like some coffee?" and we would sit and visit,
drinking her strong French coffee. I'd meet my husband at night, and
we'd go somewhere to dinner. We explored all the glamorous places in
Washington that we could afford, and if we couldn't
Page 15
afford to eat there, we'd have a drink or a cup of coffee.
They finally sent him overseas to India. I was going to be in Washington
alone. Mom DeVarney fixed up a little apartment for me in the basement
of her house. I went to work for the Russian Supply Mission nearby, but
I stayed with them only a few weeks as they also wanted me to do typing
when I was employed as a statistician. The exposure to their culture was
significant for my later understanding of the country. I moved then to
the French Purchasing Commission where I became head of their
Statistical Department. Meanwhile, my husband had been moved to Shanghai
where he was in charge of Lend-Lease for both India and China. Months
later he found that the head of his work was transferring to Washington
and would work with the United Nations. He suggested I contact Mr. Ray,
which I did, and while he couldn't send me to China as we had hoped, I
worked with the United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Agency for
several years. It was a fascinating job with contacts all over the world
and a high degree of responsibility.
Ultimately a job opened up that would have let me go to China with the
United Nations, but at this point, the Government moved my husband from
China to the West Coast of Africa, to Liberia. So I dropped my efforts
to go to China, which was a mistake, as they would not let me go to
Liberia. They would not let any wives go there because there had been so
many deaths of Americans, and health conditions were so bad. Finally,
one wife made her way there, so I decided I, too, could go. Again, the
adventures of getting there and living in Liberia are things I would
like to tell but would take far too much time
Page 16 now.
Later, we moved to Baghdad and lived there for years. His health
deteriorated until he was very, very ill. We finally came back to the
United States where he was terminated. I was in my late forties, he was
in his late fifties. We came back to the United States, to North
Carolina. We bought a house here in Laurel Hills, but he died within six
months. I was left without any pension, without any social security, and
desperately needed a job. I started looking for work. It was very hard
to find a job, because the first thing a job application asks is, "What
is your work record for the last five years?" I had been overseas for
years, and it is looked on with disfavor for wives of high ranking
officials to take jobs that might be thought of as taking away from
local people. This made it difficult for me to find a job. The first job
I got here was part-time—again, a lucky circumstance—with Ruth Johnson
at the State Book Shop on Salisbury Street. She was a great person to
work for. However, it was part-time and I needed more money. I was lucky
again. I found a job at NC State University at the D.H. Hill Library. I
had to fudge a bit on what I could do. I took a secretarial test knowing
that I probably wouldn't pass it, but I squeaked through, and I got the
job at a very low level. However, it was a job, and it paid enough for
me to manage on. I didn't stay in the actual work there; the position
didn't change but my work changed.
The thing that I am quite good at is statistics. When I was in Washington
with the French Purchasing Commission in the statistics department, the
headof my department was a woman called Priscilla Alden,
Page 17 who was a direct descendent of the real Priscilla Alden.
Priscilla was very crippled with polio. She became ill, and I was
promoted to the head of that department and stayed with that until I
went with the United Nations job. My work at the N.C. State library soon
developed into a much higher level than the work I was supposed to be
filling. I ended up handling budgets, in particular federal budget
records, and I also became the screening office for new positions, both
professional and non-professional. I worked there for fifteen years. In
the meantime, I had bought the house where I am now, the house on Brooks
Avenue, which is very important in the further development of my life. I
was just two blocks away from the University, and could walk to work. In
addition, I was in the midst of all the changes that were happening at
the University. Before, I go into that, let me wind up what I was doing
at the library. My father had died, and my mother was very ill. They
lived in Concord, North Carolina, and I was under great stress going
backwards and forwards trying to take care of them. So I finally decided
that I would retire before the library was ready for me to go. I
probably should have held on because my mother died within three months.
However, I had already retired. In the meantime, I had become more and
more involved in the social activities of my church. Also, I had become
involved in political action. I went through the real learning process
of political activity, from literature drops at residences, to
telephoning for candidates. I went through the ranks of precinct
officers. I was Precinct Chair for several years and am still a precinct
officer, although I had to drop out when I became
Page 18
an elected official. In addition, I have been Chair of the Citizens
Advisory Council for the Wade Community, an advocacy position for the
area to City Council. I resigned all these when I ran for office but
have since been deeply involved. I continue to be a delegate to party
conventions and to be active in political campaigns.
About that time, Jim Hunt started his first campaign for Lieutenant
Governor, and I was really caught up in his mixture of patriotism and
idealism that I felt he brought to the political scene. I worked two
days a week as a volunteer for him, doing ordinary jobs like stuffing
envelopes and telephoning, ordinary jobs I didn't care much about but
that are necessary. However, the excitement of being in Headquarters,
being part of all the campaigning and learning the importance of voters,
voter registration . . . all the activity that is so important in the
political realm was challenging and exciting and had a deep impact on
me.
Gradually, I became increasingly angry, not only at NC State University,
but at the City. Let me talk about the City first. City elections are
held citywide but at that time were held without any district
representation. There were eight men on the City Council, no women, of
course. They inevitably lived near this area where we are now, Cameron
Village, Five Points, all from throughout that area. The eight men
represented this part of city, with no representation from the rest of
the city. At one famous meeting where the eight of them came together,
they decided then and there who would be mayor. It was not the top vote
getter which the voters would have expected. One of the men on
Page 19 the council was Mike Boyd, a controversial person,
really a rebel in every way. Sometimes he was so brassy and pushy that
he aggravated people. But he saw something needed to be done, that we
needed voter representation throughout the whole city, not just West
Raleigh. He initiated and succeeded in getting a referendum by the
voters to change the government of the city into what we have now: five
districts with two at-large members, and the mayor, also elected
citywide. Of course it angered many people. I saw the value of it, and
in fact my position then and now is that the system as a whole works
against the average citizen. If you go down to City Hall for a zoning
change, the people who make a lot of money have hired lawyers and
landscape architects who are being paid to sit there. Meanwhile,
ordinary citizens take time off from their jobs, take time away from
their private lives at great sacrifice, especially if the meetings are
postponed or changed or repeated. The people who are hired are still
sitting at hearings making money, and, in the end, really have the
advantage over ordinary citizens. So I was a strong supporter of what
Mike Boyd was doing. I was also involved in what had developed in the
City of Raleigh, the Citizens Advisory Councils. This was not something
the city wanted to start, rather it was mandated by the Federal
Government in the Revenue Sharing Act, that citizens had to be fairly
represented in city government. I was very active in the area where I
live now, the Wade Citizens Advisory Council. I was Vice-Chair, and then
became Chair, and was constantly down at City Hall on community matters.
The Citizens Advisory Councils were concerned with citizen
representation, and I learned
Page 20 more about zoning and
intricacies of city government than I had ever dreamed there was. It was
a learning experience. I am extremely articulate, and I was constantly
speaking at City Hall and became pretty well known. I became more and
more aggravated at the City Council. There are eight members, and
frequently there was a deadlock, four and four on zoning votes.
Aggravated by the then Mayor, Jyles Coggins, who was critical not only
of the citizens but of his own council members. Derogatory remarks to
citizens and elected officials alike angered me. In fact, the first time
when I went down as chair of the CAC, and I don't know if this would
anger everybody, but it certainly angered me, I got up and introduced
myself as Isabella Cannon, the Chair of Wade CAC. Mr. Coggins looked at
me and said, "Well you're the new chair." I said, "Yes, Mr. Mayor." And
he said, "Well, you're better looking than the man that preceded you." I
thought that was a big put down, and I wondered what that had to do with
the zoning case I was there to talk about.
Finally, I decided I was going to run for a seat on the City Council.
[text missing]The night before the deadline to file for office, I had a call
from Betty Ann Knudsen who was a tremendous organizer and had real
political power. She said, "Isabella, have you thought about running for
Mayor?" No, I had not thought about that, but I was excited about her
asking. At that moment the doorbell rang, and it was a young man there
saying, "Can I take you out to Betty Ann's and let you talk to her?" I
said "Yes." She had pulled together a group, including Mike Boyd, a
group of community leaders, and we sat there and talked till midnight
about me running for Mayor. I was unknown to the biggest
Page 21 segment of the population, certainly to the wealthy
segment, and to the big business and developers. I was known to ordinary
people. I had no money, I had no organization, but I said, "Ok, let's go
for it. I threw myself into it, fully expecting to win. I was always
surprised when someone would say to me, "Aren't you surprised that you
won?" I replied, "I went in there to win—I didn't go in to lose." The
next morning after the meeting at Betty Ann's, Mike Boyd took me in his
big elegant automobile to all the radio stations, newspapers and TV
stations with a statement that I was a candidate for Mayor. It was my
opening statement that kicked off my campaign to the complete surprise
of all the politicians in Raleigh.
My campaign was the most fun, the most exciting campaign that anyone ever
ran. It started out with my newspaper boy bringing me one dollar. I wish
I had kept that dollar, but that's the sort of support I had—$10 here,
$25 here, a very, very, rare $100 that I received as a contribution.
Volunteers came from everywhere. My campaign manager, Earle Beasley, who
was actually a professional, came willing to help me. I would go to the
grocery store and come home with my handbag full of little slips of
paper with names of people saying, "I want to help." The telephone would
ring, "We want to help." It was a people's movement and was exciting. I
made speeches all over, anywhere. I was going from eight o'clock in the
morning to midnight making speeches. I went anywhere and everywhere, and
I had fun doing it. Earle was taking care of the mechanics of it. My
first shock, however, was when he came to me and said "Isabella, I need
$3,000." It hadn't occurred to me that I was going to
Page 22 have to pay for the privilege of running for Mayor, and that I had to
find money to do so. Of course the reality soon came home to me. I ran
as "The little old lady in tennis shoes" for a special reason. I live
near NC State University and near Fred Olds School. At that time, it was
the most derogatory thing you could say about anybody, "Oh, she dresses
like a little old lady in tennis shoes," or "She thinks like a little
old lady in tennis shoes." It made me angry because I saw all these
young people walking by my door and what did they have on their feet?
Sneakers, tennis shoes. It is no longer a derogatory comment, and
perhaps I helped to change it.
Mr. Coggins really suffered by having a female run as his opponent. He
was shocked. I had filed one hour before the deadline, and no one had
thought that there was going to be a competition or that anybody else
was going to file. He thought he was going to breeze in without any
difficulty. For him, a very macho person, to have a woman to run against
him—especially a 73-year old woman—he really suffered. He came out with
wisecracks like, "How can you campaign against anybody old enough to be
your mother?" I did a little figuring, and since he was in his late
fifties and I was 73, I commented that I would have had to start mighty
early to have been his mother. He said, "She can't even drive." I've
been driving since I was sixteen and still am driving, but my policy was
that if somebody would drive me to a speech, and I didn't have to worry
about parking, I'd get them to do it. He identified me with the Raleigh
Coalition, a very active political group. The Raleigh Coalition had been
so upset with how the city was being governed, and he equated this,
almost, to
Page 23 Communists. Well, I had lived through
the McCarthy Era in Washington, and I kept comparing his attitude toward
the Raleigh Coalition to the McCarthy Era. He was so down on that group,
so strong in his ideas and criticism, so unwilling to let citizens be
fully represented. I kept an incredible campaign schedule, and I loved
it. It was great. Finally, of course, came the election. It was total
shock to the big business people and the developers. My campaign had
been a joke to them, and I think the idea of "the little old lady in
tennis shoes" perhaps added to them thinking of me as a joke. The
business community had not taken me seriously. And Mr. Coggins himself
really did not think I was going to win. He never conceded my election,
never once admitted that I had won.
Immediately following the election that night, there was an explosion of
media. I had telephone calls from Scotland, from the newspapers there,
and from all over the United States. It was featured in newspapers from
Tehran to Tokyo. The Stars and Stripes featured it in
Japan. Reuters, the international news agency, picked it up, and it went
all over the world since I had lived in Africa and The Middle East. I
had fan clubs in Germany. There were people who wrote me from Australia,
from Canada, from Korea. It was a real media explosion. Not only that,
but in the United States, I have a list here of some of the major
newspapers that featured me. Every major newspaper all over the United
States featured me. Seventy-two major newspapers and magazines from all
over the world, sixteen major magazines.
Lindsey Wichard told me he had been in China for three weeks and had not
seen an English speaking magazine
Page 24 for that time. He
came into Hong Kong, picked up
Time Magazine, and
there I was. It was the sort of thing that was happening, and caught me
by surprise. I didn't think anything at all of being 73 years of age,
and that I had never run for office before. Eventually, I was on every
major TV show. Donahue over and over, "60 Minutes" twice, Tom Snyder. I
would be on the game shows: "Who is the female Mayor of Raleigh, North
Carolina?" On "60 Minutes," the chairman of our Better Business Bureau,
who should have been looking for publicity for Raleigh, said, "We don't
need a Mayor who's getting all this publicity." Which was rather
astonishing since that was his job, but it indicated how the business
community looked at m.
My Inauguration was a real celebration. Up to that time, the eight
elected men gathered in the council chambers, put their hand on the
Bible, said the oath, sat down and went to work. I said, "No, we're
having a celebration." I talked to the City Manager. "I want a room for
the Inauguration at the Civic Center." He said, "Nobody will come." I
said, "You give me a room," so he gave me a rather small room. I looked
at it, and I said, "I want the big room." "Oh," he said, "nobody will
come." I said, "Give me the big room. People will come." I got Dick
Hatch to work up a program, and we got my current minister, the first
woman minister at a City Council Inauguration, to give the Invocation. I
had asked for Chief Justice Susie Sharp to do the swearing in but she
was unable to do so. Perhaps that was just as well because Susie was not
a feminist in any sense of the word, which I didn't realize. We then got
the woman who was head of the Court of Appeals to do the swearing in. We
had
Page 25 music, we had dance. The huge room was full
of people; about 500 came. I also said to the City Manager, "I want
coffee." "Oh, we don't have money for coffee. We can't do that." I said,
"I want coffee." Now I have a marvelous picture of a long table with all
the coffee cups on it. I personally paid for all the coffee. Now when
they have the Inauguration of the Mayor and City Council, they have
coffee, soft drinks, pettifours and sandwiches. However, Mr. Coggins
would not come to the Inauguration. His daughters came, but they refused
to shake hands with me when I offered them the Bible and the city flag
as gifts to the outgoing Mayor.
From the Inauguration at the Civic Center, I went then to the Municipal
Building to start my work as the first woman Mayor of Raleigh. The first
problem I ran into was the Mayor's chair. It was made for a six-foot,
four-inch male. The eight City Council members sat behind a table, a
very high table, rather intimidating to citizens. I remembered that I
was intimidated the first time I appeared before the City Council. Here
are these officials looking down at you, ordinary citizens, almost like
group of judges. When I sat down, I found that the Mayor's chair was so
big, and I am so small—I'm five feet and weigh less than 100 pounds—so
when I sat in the huge chair and they rolled it down so that my feet
were on the floor, nothing was seen from the audience but the top of my
head. When they rolled the chair up, my feet were dangling, and since
City Council meetings go four or five hours, it was impossible to sit
like that. What to do? We had to get a stool for my feet, and then we
had to get a big cushion for my back. Another problem was that there was
no ladies'
Page 26 room anywhere near the Council chambers.
There was a men's room, but I had to go all over the building for a
ladies' room.
My first meeting was full of difficult problems. First of all was the
Revenue Sharing Act. The Revenue Sharing Act mandated that the City of
Raleigh was not in compliance with U.S. requirements for Affirmative
Action regarding hiring minorities and women. As a result, we were
facing a possible loss of fourteen million dollars. That was the first
item that I had to cope with. And I had received no advance information
on this crucial issue. It was amazing that administrative managers had
not given me details before the Council met. Of course, I put things in
action and ultimately it was solved with great effort. The second thing
that I was not prepared for was the decision to turn the Sir Walter
Hotel into subsidized housing for the elderly. The pressure on the
Council was so strong that it went through, which was really a mistake,
because it meant moving elderly, dependent women into this building as
housing. They were frightened to go out to Fayetteville Street. There
were no shops or grocery stores, no recreation facilities.
Another pressing item which came up that first session was the difficult
case of the Reilly property. I had been involved with this earlier with
the CAC, but had not known it was to come up that day. It concerned the
garden of Isabelle Bowen Henderson, a beautiful and historic spot. The
plan of the city was to run a street through this property, coming from
the corner of Oberlin Road and Clark Avenue, through the garden and
buildings, coming out at the entrance near the tower at N.C. State
University and eliminating a small jog in
Page 27 the
street. This was bitterly opposed by the citizens but strongly advocated
by the City and the University. The City finally stopped pressing this
item, saying they would wait until Mrs. Reilly's death to go on with the
road. (Mrs. Reilly died in January 1993 and her grandson is now picking
up the challenge.)
I presented to the citizens in my inauguration speech some twenty items
that I would work for. The first and most important being that I would
complete the Long Range Comprehensive Plan, a twenty-year plan to guide
the growth of Raleigh. It was bitterly opposed by every developer, every
builder, every big business. Jim Quinn, who had been the chair of the
Comprehensive Planning Committee under Mr. Coggins, who was adamantly
opposed to the plan, had resigned due to financial needs and Mr. Coggins
had dropped the committee, had decided to do nothing about it. This was
one of my strongest campaign points: "I will get the Long Range
Comprehensive Plan developed if you elect me Mayor." It took incredible
effort. I apponted a Long Range Comprehensive Planning Committee which
met every two weeks for the whole year of 1978. On the committee I was
wise enough to appoint Smedes York as chair of the committee,
representing the City Council, knowing that he had an open mind about
this and yet was extremely knowledgeable about the developers. Ed
Walters and myself were the others from the Council. From the developers
organization called PROD, Progress Towards Raleigh's Orderly
Development, came four of the most bitter opponents of the Comprehensive
Plan. They sat at one end of the table. I had appointed four from the
overall Citizen's Advisory Council, including the wonderful Hamilton
Fish who has
Page 28 since died, and they sat at the other
end of the table. Three of us from the City Council, four from the PROD,
and four from the City's Planning Department comprised the group. We met
for long hours, tumultuous meetings that made me think of lightning
bolts accompanied by thunder as the emotions of the two groups came to
the fore. There were bitter exchanges, but ultimately we came up with a
modified plan that we were able to agree upon to present to the City
Council. When I presented it to the Council, I said that the
implementation of it depended on the interpretation and intent of those
sitting behind the Council table. It is quoted at every Council meeting
where city planning and zoning comes up, and I sometimes say it is like
the Bible—often quoted but then ignored or not as the case may be.
It is, however, the most important thing I did as Mayor and one of the
most important instruments in city government. Our work was very rough.
It had to be because of the compromises that had to be made to produce
any document at all. It was not precise or we would have been able to
produce nothing at all. Since then, under the strong intellectual and
comprehensive understanding of the plan by Norma Burns, it has been
revised, refined and made more detailed, more functional.
Another challenge I had to face immediately was the problem of the
Comprehensive and Employment Training Act, CETA. This was a huge Federal
program that the government had put into effect, trying to get people
back to work through training programs in the current depression. Rules
were constantly changed. Every day we would get new documents, new
changes
Page 29 from Washington. It was difficult for
the City to administer, but also the City's administration left much to
be desired. No document was ever presented to the City Council for
approval. I was faced with signing contracts for millions and millions
of dollars that nobody had any say-so on, except the CETA administrator.
I was most uncomfortable with that. I could not be responsible for
spending that Federal money without the City Council at least knowing
something about it. After great opposition from the administration, I
ultimately brought it to the City Council, and while it is forgotten
now, the ramifications of CETA and what it did in Raleigh were great. It
was an important thing, and it was being very badly handled.
Another thing I was faced with immediately was that we were threatened
with what was called at that time "blue flu." The morale of City workers
was at a low ebb because of conflict between the City administration and
the workers. The police, the firefighters, and the sanitation workers
were threatening a strike, a total black-out of all services for the
City, which would have completely tied up the City. It was one of the
questions that was thrown to me by the Chamber of Commerce when they
interviewed me as a candidate. "Well, Mrs. Cannon, what would you do it
you were faced with strikes of the police and other City services?" I
said, "I will not have strikes. I will work with the police, and the
firefighters, and the sanitation workers, and we will not have strikes."
They laughed at me, but it actually worked that way. Under the strongest
opposition from the City administration, I worked intensely with the
police. The result was, we had no strikes by the police. In fact, what I
was
Page 30 able to work out was that I wanted each
police officer to have a car, to drive anywhere, any time, 24 hours a
day. My firm belief is that if you see a police car in somebody's
driveway, or at the grocery store, or at the movies, you don't question
whether it's on a personal errand. You sit up and are careful. The
administration said no, that it would take an extra million dollars and
we could not afford it. Fortunately we were able to get enough money for
fourteen cars, and I was able to work it out so that two officers were
assigned to each car. This meant that when an officer came in after a
wild chase, and maybe stripped the brakes, maybe the tires were gone,
maybe it needed oil, formerly he just parked and left it because he
didn't know who was going to be the next person using it. Assigning a
car to two officers revolutionized the whole system. The officers took
so much pride in their cars, that they would come into my driveway and
say, "Mayor Cannon, come and look at our car." They had waxed it, they
had carpets in it, maintenance changed, there was a whole difference in
the attitude of all officers.
The same thing happened with the firefighters. The firefighters started
to work at a certain level, the first level being Firefighter I. There
was no advancement until occasionally a position would open up as a
driver for one of the fire engines. This would be a big promotion in
pay. There would be fifty men applying for that job. Only one got it,
and we would then lose a lot of the trainees. I was able to get some
intermediary steps, again with great opposition, so there was possible
advancement. The first thing that the administration wanted was that
these intermediary applicants must learn
Page 31 emergency
medical training (EMT) as part of the requirement for promotion. I
asked, "Do the Captains have to have it (EMT)?" "No." "Do other groups
have to have it?" "No." I then said that everybody does it, or nobody
does it. Again morale improved, and we did not lose firefighters who had
gone through expensive training.
Another thing that I did, which was not immediate, but I got the first
women firefighters. This, too, created a lot of opposition. People came
to me and would say, "A woman can't get a limp body out of six-story
window. There's no way she can do that." I said, "Have you ever heard of
Karate and Judo? You can teach them." So we got our first women
firefighters in.
However, unexpectedly, the wives of the current firefighters created more
problems than anyone else. Firefighters work twenty-four hours on a
shift; they don't go eight hours then go home. That means they sleep
overnight in the fire station. They slept in dormitories. Their wives
would call me. "I don't want my husband sleeping with some women in
there!" My first question was do they trust their husbands, but I didn't
dare ask that. So I said, "What do we do?" "Okay, we will make little
cubicles for the women so that they can be private and apart from the
men." Well, the men looked at this and said, "If the women can have
cubicles, why can't we have them too?" We promptly and easily solved
that. This was the sort of problem I frequently had to try to solve.
The other problem I had, which was urgent, was the condition of the
Fayetteville Street Mall. The Civic Center had been opened the year
before.
Page 32 It was not attracting business. We had
no hotel downtown. Most of the storefronts on Fayetteville Street were
boarded up. Many of the stores had been owned by people who had died,
and their families had inherited the property. They were in Connecticut
or California and cared nothing about the City of Raleigh, North
Carolina. Fayetteville Street was pretty much a disaster. The street had
been closed to traffic. The few shops that were open were having a very
difficult time because people had not adjusted to where they would park
when they came downtown, and the whole Fayetteville Street was in
serious financial condition. The first thing I needed to do was see if
we could get a hotel downtown. We had the Civic Center, but there was no
hotel nearby. We approached various hotel chains. My deepest thanks go
to Earl Barden who was head of First Union Bank and who carried the
responsibility on this. We approached several hotel chains, but the few
who came to look would say, "We want no part of this." [unknown] Finally, the Radisson chain said, "We'll consider
it under three conditions. One, that you condemn the land and property
where we proposed to build the hotel." This was expensive for the City.
Condemning property is very expensive and is not a good way to go if you
can help it, but we had to go that way. The second condition was "We
need a parking deck." So the parking deck on Salisbury Street was
negotiated for, again, at great expense to the City because of the long
leases that we had to buy out. The third condition was the one that
surprised most people. "You've got to have liquor by the drink." Up to
that point you could buy alcohol at ABC stores in Raleigh, but you could
not serve alcohol as a drink at
Page 33 a dinner in a
restaurant. People went to the ABC stores, bought their alcoholic drink,
then would take it with them to the restaurant. The bottle was put on
the floor beside the table in a brown paper bag. This meant you had
"brown bagging." This meant that at the end of the dinner, you either
had to drink all of the alcohol and maybe go home in questionable
condition, or you had to carry an open bottle in your car, which was
illegal. I campaigned vigorously for liquor by the drink and got the
comment, "What's a nice lady like you doing campaigning for liquor by
the drink?" I've lived all over the world, I've lived in London, Paris,
and Beirut, and I knew that liquor by the drink was so expensive that
the notion people had of drunks in the gutter was not going to be
realized. We passed liquor by the drink. But again, it was a
tremendously difficult thing, but made it possible to get a hotel to
come. No convention would come to the Civic Center if people could not
buy a cocktail as a highball in their hotel.
The Memorial Auditorium was my next problem. It was in terrible
condition. We were trying in Raleigh to get the North Carolina Symphony
to make Raleigh its home. Competition was strong from Chapel Hill and
from Duke in Durham. With great effort, we got a million dollars and
renovated the entire inside of the auditorium, including new chairs. We
were not able to do anything for the rehearsal halls, but we made the
auditorium beautiful with new red seats and painting the interior.
The Governor came for the ribbon cutting. The other thing about the
Governor, which I failed to talk about in speaking of my Inauguration,
is that Governor Hunt came to my Inauguration. It is the first and only
time a Governor of North Carolina has come to the Inauguration of a
Page 34 Mayor of Raleigh. My ties with the State and with
the Governor were very strong, and my cooperation with them was an
important part of my administration. This leads to my next point. I felt
that the State of North Carolina needed to start paying for some of the
services that the City was giving the State for free. For instance,
garbage collection. The citizens of Raleigh were paying for garbage
collection from every building that was state-owned and therefore exempt
from paying City taxes. Finally, with a lot of work, we got the State of
North Carolina to agree to paying for having its garbage picked up
instead of the citizens of Raleigh covering these costs. We were also
providing fire protection free and police protection free. There have
been some efforts along those lines since then, but I'm not sure how
much the State is now doing.
With all of the things that I was undertaking, the City was in the midst
of tremendous inflation. This was the late seventies and inflation was
skyrocketing. In spite of inflation, we raised property taxes only two
cents per hundred. The Mayor has a lot of responsibility in matters such
as these. People think of the Mayor as cutting ribbons, and they don't
realize the hard work. Every Sunday morning I sat here at home with
anything from four to six hundred pages of material that I had to study
for the upcoming City Council meeting. My homework was overwhelming.
When I make speeches at public schools, I ask the students if they have
homework to do. They answer with groans, and when I tell them of my four
to six hundred pages, they are in awe.
As Mayor, I was at a disadvantage by not having been on the City
Page 35 Council prior to being Mayor and not having
learned all the groundwork first. I had to start at zero base and had to
get all of my information together because you cannot preside at City
Council meetings and not know all the answers. I also had a good bit of
difficulty with two of the City Council members who challenged me on
parliamentary procedures, Roberts Rules of Order. Fortunately, I got the
president of the Parliamentarian Society of North America who was here
in Raleigh to come and sit in the City Council meetings and critique me,
and tell me what I was doing right, and what I was doing wrong.
To return to my earlier comments. We raised taxes only two cents, and yet
were able to increase salaries and benefits up to eleven percent. I was
very proud of my financial and fiscal responsibilities, and the work we
had done. I had, in addition, two or three things that I particularly
like to speak about, that I am very proud of, which happened while I was
Mayor. We opened eleven parks, some of which had been started by my
predecessors. One that I initiated was the Jaycee exercise trail. We did
not have in North Carolina an exercise trial except the one at Duke
Medical School. I was able to get the one at the Jaycee Park. It was an
important breakthrough in health benefits. We also have near the Jaycee
Center a little beauty spot that is not well known and is not often
recognized which I helped to get. It is the Hemerocallis Garden. It is a
beautiful spot. It is kept up all year round by the Day Lily Society and
the City. It needs to be known better than it is, with terraces, walks,
a water garden, and of course magnificent Hemerocallis, or day lilies.
One of the parks
Page 36 that I was particularly proud I
was able to get was at Shelley Lake. The park there was one of the best
in Raleigh. Lake Johnson Nature Trail was another one that I liked and
had worked to get. One of the things I was happiest about was being able
to renovate the calliope for our historic and unique carousel that we
have at Pullen Park. I was able to get the calliope redone, and that was
a fun thing that adds to the enjoyment at Pullen.
I worked very hard. I was down at City Hall at the office before the
secretaries. It was often midnight before I came home. The police were
so good to me. They would see me leaving. "Mayor Cannon, would you like
somebody to meet you at your home?" They would meet me here, walk me in
through the dark, and check the house to make sure I was safe.
One thing that I was proud of was opening the Boylan Avenue Bridge.
Miriam Block, City Council member, and I worked very hard on that. It
linked up two areas of town and was most important. One thing I tried to
do, without success, was to get new industry here. Budweiser wanted to
open a plant here, and I thought that was great! It is a well-paying
industry, it's a clean industry, and I had extensive negotiations with
them. The Chamber of Commerce and big business totally clobbered this.
It was a business with union wages and union wages were considerably
above the average being paid here. We didn't get Budweiser here, and we
should have gotten it. However, I didn't have the clout with the Chamber
of Commerce and big business to pull that through.
Another thing that's still creating problems is the sign ordinance.
This
Page 37 was passed while I was Mayor and it was
rightfully passed and needed to be passed. The Goodyear blimp was flying
overhead with advertisements. Stores everywhere—gas stations, fast food
places—all had movable blinking lights out front. There were so many
signs cluttering up the streets, you couldn't see the signs telling you
which street it was or what the speed limit was. We didn't consider the
flag issue that has since risen. If we thought of it, we could have
handled it. The big problem was the movable signs and the clutter they
created.
The work I was doing as Mayor totally absorbed my time. I went to some of
the national meetings, though I have little confidence in national
meetings being worth the money that is spent on them, but I did go to
two of them, one in San Francisco and one in St. Louis. The one in St.
Louis was interrupted by the killing in San Francisco of the Mayor, and
all of the elected officials present were immediately guarded by police
on horses and with dogs. The one in San Francisco was the first
experience I had that I'm going to tell you about, which was often
repeated. Our delegation was rather proud of having a woman Mayor,
especially one who was getting so much publicity all over the world. I
would be introduced to someone our delegation wanted me to meet, and
they would say, "We would like you to meet Mayor Cannon," and point
towards me. The hand of the man that was being introduced to me always
went out to the man standing next to me. It never, never went out to me,
to everyone's embarrassment. Here is this little old lady, she wasn't
supposed to be the Mayor, and everyone was surprised and embarrassed.
I
Page 38 thought it was funny.
The dominant thing, then and now in my life, and as Mayor and in my
continuing work in community affairs and city government, has been to
open up the government to every citizen. It is important to me to listen
to people, and I did. Citizens still call me up and ask me for help. I
was and am open to them. My telephone was always listed, and I've always
answered it myself. I always try to cooperate with citizens. Somebody
quoted about me, "She would be the conscience of the people to the
greatest extent possible," and this is what I have tried to do. I tried
to emphasize and encourage participation in government, and I'm still
working whenever I can. My speeches always emphasize this.
I mentioned I was featured in many magazines, and I was featured on many
TV shows also. One was the "Donahue Show." I flew to Chicago and was
interviewed by Donahue. I received endless letters afterwards. They
circulate the show to an area and then recirculate it, so I got hundreds
and hundreds of letters, really quite wounderful letters. In fact, the
letters I got, particularly from women, I still cherish, and I have a
special file of them. Women wrote to me saying that I had given them
hope, since I was a woman who had never been in politics before and had
overcome great odds and still had been elected. I was 73 years old and I
hadn't let that stop me. In fact, it never occurred to me that 73 years
of age was anything of importance. I really never thought about my age.
I was active, and the age item never occurred to me to be of any
interest to people. But women wrote to me saying that they
Page 39 had considered something and had been told, "Oh, you're too
old," or "No, you've never done this." The letters describing the hope I
gave to women are among the most precious things I have. As I mentioned,
I was on "Donahue," on the "The Tom Snyder Show"—I was flown out to
Hollywood for that—and I was repeatedly on "60 Minutes."
I'm still doing hundreds of speeches, still emphasizing citizen
participation. I now have my speeches catalogued and classified and keep
adding to them. I am most proud of the fact that the prestigious
Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill has requested my papers.
They now have about 12 file boxes of my mayoral papers including all the
work about CETA and various other problems. At my house now, I have
about 14 boxes of papers including family letters and personal photos
and journals that I'm trying to do something with, hoping to write about
them. [unknown] Since being Mayor I've had an incredibly
long list of involvement in community affairs. I sometimes wonder if
perhaps I should have concentrated on one or two, perhaps I have been in
too many things. To mention a few, I was in Hopeline for years, a
wonderful service to citizens who need hope, who want help, and who can
speak anonymously to someone who is trained to listen and help. For
years I was President of the North Carolina Senior Citizens Association,
which had around 20,000 members. I've been on the Child Advocacy
Institute, and am very interested in children and the things that need
to be done for them. I've been for many years Vice-President of the
Women in Business Advisory Council, which produced a national
publication which encourages women to
Page 40 support each
other through mentoring and assisting, but doesn't confine it to women,
although women are the primary objective. My work in history: soaking in
the history of Raleigh, being in Mordecai Historical Society, and being
a board member at Mordecai. I am a member of the Women's Forum of North
Carolina, and for several years I had the exciting privilege of teaching
English to foreign women, a project of the North Carolina State
University Women's Club.
However, the main thrust of my time since being Mayor has been in the
neighborhood where I live. I was the originator of the University Park
Homeowners Association. In this area, we feel the full impact of the
explosive growth of NC State University. NC State University grew
suddenly, from about 8,000 students to 27,000 students, plus about 6,000
faculty and staff, plus about 10,000 visitors a day. It is one of the
largest cities in North Carolina! The growth was so explosive and so
sudden. It may have been better planned than those of us on the outside
thought. The impact on the nearby neighborhood of housing, traffic,
noise, has been almost too big for me to be able to explore in this
brief interview. However, I will point out that the work we have done
has kept this area from becoming a slum area as has occurred around many
major universities. For example: Columbia University, University of
Chicago, and others. The areas around most of these universities have
become slum areas. I have involved myself in endless meetings and
hundreds of hours. I have spoken at City Hall; have been an advocate for
the area; have involved many, many of the residents of the neighborhood
who have been supportive. We
Page 41 have studied, and we
have learned some of the intricacies of City government and have fought
many, many battles. We have established three major projects that have
become citywide. One is establishing two-hour parking. Maybe that
doesn't sound very exciting, but it does mean that students can no
longer come into the area, park their cars on Sunday night and leave
them there until Friday night, blocking the area, making it difficult
for homeowners to find parking. This two-hour parking has meant a great
deal to us because it has moved the parking from the streets as being
permanent parking. In fact, once or twice the parking was so severe that
a neighbor whose husband had a major heart attack found her driveway
blocked, and the ambulance couldn't get in.
Another thing I was able to do is much more technical. This goes back to
the time when I was Mayor when I was able to bring through, again over
great opposition, two important changes in City government. These are
technical things, not things that are popularly known. Our City charter
was not in compliance with the charter of the State of North Carolina,
so our laws were constantly subjected to possible denial. The former
Mayor had fought against having this approved by the N.C. Legislature,
and it was one of the things that I promised in my campaign that I would
do, that I would get our City charter in compliance with North Carolina
laws. It is something that the average citizen has no knowledge of and
yet was probably one of the most important things I did as Mayor, yet
not popularly known.
The other thing that I did as Mayor was to get the City Code revised. The
City Code is a huge document, probably several hundred pages. It too
is
Page 42 constantly being changed, and was not in
compliance, one section with another. With immense effort, I got it
revised. These are two technical things that the average citizen is not
aware of, and yet they are the nitty-gritty of government.
The next two things I'm going to mention are somewhat in that same
category although they have more popular understanding. One is the
Policy Boundary Line. This affected primarily the area on Hillsborough
Street near NC State University. Since then it has been adopted citywide
and has been applied in other areas. To explain it, on Hillsborough
Street we have a series of shops and businesses that face Hillsborough
Street. They back up to a very lovely residential area—some of the
loveliest homes in our area are there. However, the competition for
business space began to be so severe that the area on Vanderbilt Avenue
was threatened by changing from a beautiful residential street to
becoming an unpleasant business or parking area. The Policy Boundary
Line sets a boundary line between the businesses and the residential
area. It has been violated only once, and it was violated by our own
City Council, not the current one, but the one previous to this, when
they voted to change an area back of a bank and let a parking lot go in.
A parking lot is considered a business. It had been violated only this
once. It is important to the neighborhood to preserve the residential
area, to keep the high quality of the area. Our effort of the University
Park Home Owners Association has been to preserve the residential
quality.
When the explosive growth of NC State University occurred, they now
Page 43 have 27,000 students but have housing for 7,000.
Where do the rest go? Does the University care anything about that? They
say it is not their responsibility; certainly it shouldn't be the
neighborhood's responsibility, yet it is dumped on the neighborhood.
Housing, parking, eating places . . . all were dumped on the area
without the neighborhood having any say-so in it. Our endless efforts to
preserve our area have involved the residents of the large area called
University Park, which runs from Oberlin Road to Faircloth, and
Hillsborough to Wade Avenue, primarily, of course, zeroed in near
Hillsborough Street. We also established a Pedestrian Business Overlay
District because so many shops wanted to open up, and parking
requirements were so large that they couldn't open their businesses. We
worked with some of the businesses, primarily the Electric Mall which
has been a disappointment to us. Presently, the businesses are
requesting more parking, overlooking the fact that this is considered a
pedestrian area. While the parking requirements have been established,
they are still under constant controversy.
I was the initiator of a liaison group between the University and the
neighborhood. It was first called the University Neighborhood Council. I
objected to the name UNC being at NC State, and I kept talking about it,
but nobody listened until one day at City Hall, Dean Claude McKinney,
who was head of the University Neighborhood Council, was reporting on
the Council. I pointed out that the initials UNC were hardly fitting for
an organization established NC State. At our next meeting the name was
abruptly changed to the University Neighborhood Planning Council, UNPC.
Since then it has been
Page 44 an important means of
communication between the neighborhood and the University. One of the
problems that occurred was when someone in the faculty could not find
parking one night on the campus near his office. He appealed to the
Faculty Senate, and that body approved a requirement that anybody
parking on the campus at night would be required to have a parking
sticker. That meant anybody going to computer labs, the library, or
going to a Friends of the College program, even going to study, would
have to have a $10 sticker. We in the neighborhood doubted that people
coming to the campus at night would buy the stickers, and the parking
pressure on the neighboring streets would get much worse. I went to the
Chancellor and talked to him about the problem, also I talked to some of
the Deans about it, and they began to see how difficult this would be
for the neighborhood. They had not realized some of the problems that
were created by the University's action and how adverse it would be on
the neighborhood. The outcome of these discussions led to the
establishment of the liaison group, the University Neighborhood Planning
Council. We have had and continue to have good meetings, and we have
done a lot of good things by having open communication. Communication is
important, and there had been no official means of communication until
we had the University Neighborhood Planning Council.
Another thing I did a great deal of work on was the Hillsborough Street
Task Force. We are very proud of some of the things that we did on
Hillsborough Street. One of the things that I am particularly pleased
about, and
Page 45 this was one that I did almost
single-handedly, involved our beautiful Capitol Building which I love,
and which is an architectural and historical gem that needs to be seen
by our citizens. Our Capitol was blocked off on all four sides from
being seen by people approaching the Capitol. Halifax Street to the
north had disappeared. Fayetteville Street on the south had been turned
into a mall. New Bern Avenue became a dead end cul-de-sac before being
picked up going east away from the building. Hillsborough Street, big,
wide, beautiful Hillsborough Street, was one-way heading west away from
the building. Every street, every one of the four main streets turned
its back on the Capitol. I was determined that Hillsborough Street
should be opened up so that at least one lane of traffic permitted
citizens to approach and see our beautiful Capitol. The City's
Department of Transportation was bitterly opposed to this. It was a real
battle before the City Council approved opening one lane toward the
Capitol on Hillsborough Street so that people could approach the Capitol
and actually see it. Perhaps as a reprimand, they left a huge blob of
cement in the middle of the Hillsborough Street and Morgan Street
intersection that forces motorists to do an involved manoeuver if they
indeed want to drive toward the Capitol. I hope one day I may get the
energy to go to City Hall to see if I can get that removed.
One of the major things I have been doing is being involved with the
planning and producing the events for Raleigh's Bicentennial year of
1992. I have been on the task force for four years and have spent
between four and five hundred hours on it. The events and the program
have not had the good publicity we should have had. We have done better
than we have had credit
Page 46 for. We have sponsored,
approved or supervised the production of four major publications. One
was the Junior League's 1992 revision of the Elizabeth Waugh book, "
North Carolina's Capital, Raleigh." The Bicentennial
Task Force supported financially and physically over 40 neighborhood
celebrations, many of which were excellent. In my own neighborhood, we
rented the converted historic trolley, rode people all over the nearby
streets pointing out homes of historic interest. An in-depth study of
Camp Polk was prepared after a trip to Washington, D.C., to get
authentic photos and other information. Another presentation consisted
of photos and memorabilia of the Raleigh Little Theater and the Rose
Garden. Other neighborhoods had as exciting programs as this one. The
Bicentennial Task Force sponsored three plays, numerous celebrations,
produced the copper acorn which is now an established part of our New
Year's Day celebration similar to New York's big apple, and we gathered
information for a time capsule which is buried in Nash Square until the
year 2092. This project I am now part of, the oral history project, is
another Bicentennial effort.
Another worthwhile effort I put much time into was compiling an "Honor
Roll" with names of persons who had had an impact on Raleigh over the
entire 200 years of the City's existence. This was a project of the
"Committee of 1992" composed of the seven living former Mayors of
Raleigh. While it was fairly well-advertised, we had no staff support,
and it is quite incomplete. However, it was added to the items buried in
the time capsule. One disappointment to me was my proposal to invite
well-known North Carolinians
Page 47 to participate in our
celebration, which never was followed up on. I felt that persons such as
Charles Kuralt, with family nearby in Chapel Hill, David Brinkley, Andy
Griffith, who maintains a home on the North Carolina coast, and Roberta
Flack, all well-known, would have added great excitement to our
programs. Also in 1992 I spent a great deal of time in political
campaigns, both local and national. My deep abiding belief in the
importance of citizens keeps coming through by my working in political
campaigns and emphasizing the importance of every citizen voting. I have
held all precinct offices. I am a charter member of the Wake County
Democratic Women, and I have been on the Presidential Electoral College
three different times but have never yet had the privilege of voting for
the President. I have been elected as a statewide at-large member for
the Democratic Party and since North Carolina has voted for a Republican
president in each of the past three national elections, including 1992,
I have never been able to vote as a member of the Electoral College. I
hope to be on it again for the next national election.
In cultural affairs, I've mentioned work I've done with the Raleigh
Little Theater, and also I have done a good bit with the Theater in the
Park. Theater in the Park has given me a beautiful Lifetime Achievement
Award and medal. I've worked with the Raleigh Symphony and was the
narrator for their production of "Peter and the Wolf," and I've helped
them in many of their programs. I have also helped the Raleigh Oratorio
Society.
I sponsored the first art exhibit in the Mayor's Office. I am now very
much involved in the NC State Arboretum and have established there an
Page 48 Isabella Cannon Internship. I've been honored by
the YWCA's Academy of Women as the outstanding nominee in their
Government Award. More recently, I have done a great deal of work with
Elon College in Leadership, which comes again from my belief in the
ability of citizens to lead: The Isabella Cannon Room has been
established there. I've received the Elon College Medal, but most
importantly, the Isabella Cannon Leadership Fellows Program has been
established there, and is an important factor in the Honors Program,
very demanding and very prestigious.
I am speaking constantly at schools and colleges about Leadership and
Citizen Involvement. I've spoken in most of the local public schools on
the importance of voting in the next election. They respond. They're
good. They ask good questions. In fact, at one of the schools I spoke to
during the Bicentennial, the Aldert Root Elementary School,
(Incidentally, I did all speeches in costume.) I somehow got things
going so that the Aldert Root School wrote a play about the Bicentennial
that was wonderful. I always take the flag of Raleigh with me and tell
the story about the flag and show it, and this group ended their
hour-long production of music, drama and dance by showing the flag and
singing "Happy Birthday to Raleigh," at which point I was in tears, it
was so beautiful. I have been honored by being in several Who's Who's
and by much recognition throughout the United States and throughout the
world.
Raleigh has had great impact on my life, and I hope I've had some impact
on the life of Raleigh. The richness of Raleigh, my love for the culture
of the South has grown continuously. There is something wonderful here
in the
Page 49 South. Of course, I know more about North
Carolina than I know about the other states, but I feel so happy that
I'm an adopted North Carolinian. I am not native born, but I don't think
anybody who is native born can love this state any more than I do.
I am deeply grateful to the City of Raleigh and to its citizens for the
many opportunities that have been given to me to serve. It is a
challenging place to live, yet the traditions of the South are still
vital here as well as the openness to new ways and new thinking. No
place could be more beautiful in the spring, which makes me think of a
friend, Peggy Hoffmann, who does not recall the quote I am going to
give. She said to a class she was teaching, "When I die, and I get to
the gate where St. Peter is, I am going to ask him if it is as beautiful
in heaven as Raleigh is in the spring time. If it isn't, I want to go
back there, not stay here!" Raleigh's academic and intellectual climate
is exciting, its economic future promising, the friendliness of store
clerks who say, "Come back again," and of neighbors who rally round in
times of sorrow or gladness make it home for my heart as well as a joy
to serve here. Thank you, Raleigh.