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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with John Medlin, May 24, 1999. Interview I-0076. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Regional character lessens but persists

Medlin believes that North Carolina still has a strong southern character, but also that the state has benefited from the hybridization of northern and southern cultures.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with John Medlin, May 24, 1999. Interview I-0076. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JOSEPH MOSNIER:
How much has a identifiably regional character persisted in today's economy? Is there still a southernness to Wachovia, a southerness to the business in North Carolina in the region? Is that coming less relevant, still quite relevant?
JOHN MEDLIN:
I think there's still a southernness, whatever that means. I've married a young lady that grew up on Long Island who I met at Chapel Hill. We argue periodically about what that means. She has different view sometimes than I do. When something bad happens, 'Agh, that's the damned southerners.' I talk about the damned Yankees too. But no. I think there's a, I'd like to say a gentility, a niceness, something friendlier that would characterize the southern term still. But what was more southern is less southern as witness the Research Triangle. Cary probably has a minority of southerners living in it now.
JOSEPH MOSNIER:
I suppose that's true.
JOHN MEDLIN:
A city that's built over the last twenty years by Research Triangle people moving in from somewhere else. So I think the blending, there's strength in the blending too. I think we have a stronger family by having a northerner and southerner as mother and father. I think there are aspects of that that have a durability and have value long run. There are aspects of it that are parochial and probably can be dispensed with, some of the traditional things. So hopefully we'll keep the best and get rid of the worst.