Socializing with other young couples and families
Aycock describes the friendships she and her husband, William Aycock, formed with other young faculty members at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during the late 1940s. Aycock's husband had just graduated from law school in 1947 when he became a professor at UNC. During the next several years, the Aycocks lived in close proximity to people like William and Ida Friday. Aycock describes how these young people socialized with one another, focusing on her interactions with some of the other wives.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Grace Aycock, March 28, 1990. Interview L-0037. 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
What was it like in Victory
Village? Did you have one of the houses? First were you in a house or an
apartment?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
We had what was called a U.K. house. They were built during the war for
the United Kingdom. We were on Daniels Road, which was a dead end road.
There were about sixteen houses, and residents were graduate students
for the most part. There was an ROTC instructor and one government
employee, but most of us were graduate student families.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
Did you make friendships with those people?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
We were very close. It was a happy time. All of us were budgeting and
counting pennies.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
Lots of children?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
Not everyone had children. There were some wives who went to school.
There were some who worked outside the home. There were others, like me,
who were having babies or were full-time homemakers.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
Did Ida and Bill Friday live in Victory Village?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
Yes, there were several families on our end of Daniels Road who stayed
with the University after they finished schoolߞ Ida and Bill
Friday, the Gordon Clevelands, the Chanletts, Eliska and Emil Chanlett,
Bob and Martha McKee, Joe and Gen Hilton. We are still friends.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
Those are the kinds of friendships that really seal tight, I think,
those that you make in graduate school, and sharing so much the same
experience and pinching pennies. Did Dick Phillips and his first wife
live in Victory Village when Dick was in Law School?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
No, they lived nearer town, on Pittsboro Road, nearer than where we
lived when we lived out there.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
There were other people in Bill's Law School class and in his
study group, John Jordan.
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
John Jordan, Bill Dees. Bill Dees and Ozella lived in the Carolina Inn
apartments.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
I don't know where he lived. It's not important.
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
I do not think John was married. I'm not sure.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was living on campus, Grace. I knew
vaguely who he was in those days. What did you all do? What kind of
social life was there other than seeing each other coming and going and
being there? Did you all get together on Saturday nights and do things?
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
We did do some cooking outside at cookouts. All of us had friends in our
particular schools where the men, and they were men for the most part,
who were in graduate school were studying.
- FRANCES A. WEAVER:
-
So you would do things like that when the men could take any time or
would take any time.
- GRACE AYCOCK:
-
Well, we had friends in other parts of the University, and we socialized
with them also. I remember, Fran, so pleasantly, being outside with
other mothers of small children who needed to be
babysat, and we mended, we visited, we became close friends watching the
children play outside.