Well, I knew Anne Queen when she first came here. The President of the
University doesn't deal as directly with student organizations as most
people think because that's really the job of the Chancellor. But having
been a Dean of Students myself, I took more than a casual interest and
that's why I got to know her. My wife, Ida, was on the board of the YWCA
and in fact, was chairman, I think, at one time and she helped to get
people into the program. So, my whole family has been involved with the
Y program in Chapel Hill. Anne Queen is what I would call "out of the
mold" of Chapel Hill. Let me explain what I mean by that. Having seen a
lot of universities all over the country in thirty-five years, you get
to the point where you wonder why there are such differences among these
institutions. They all teach, they all have research activities and they
all engage in public service. But what is it that makes it so different
when you say somebody's from Chapel Hill? or somebody is from Madison or
Ann Arbor or Austin or Berkeley? Those are the great public universities
in the country. I think it's this. I think that young people, when they
go through the experience at Chapel Hill get so much more than this
classroom and laboratory experience; that they learn how to live in the
world. They learn to get along with people. They learn that compromise
is the way to advance an idea, never giving it up, but moving in a
constant but gradual movement forward to achieve a longer objective. Now
the reason for that kind of process is that you learn as you do. And I
believe that the reason that
Page 2 Chapel Hill conducted
itself the way it did during the post Kent State problems and the Viet
Nam problems was because students here knew first, that they could speak
their mind. They knew that they could speak to anybody they wanted to
from the President on down. But they also knew that when they were free
to do these things, that they had to act responsibly because there is no
such thing as freedom without some sense of obligation and
responsibility. If you try to assume that, then it's anarchy. People
don't act within the context of a democratic process. So, I believe that
the difference in young people who go through and really work at the
experience of being a student here gain so much more in the sense of
maturity and judgment and experience that they're ready to take on the
world when they leave here. You don't find this in every institution,
regrettably. Well, Anne Queen is one of those spirits. I used to tell
her she was den mother to the whole student body, if they wanted to come
to her house, you know, because her place stayed open all the time.
There was never a time when you couldn't go by there and find students
sitting and talking and arguing and debating. She was a marvelous, and
still is as far as that goes, a marvelous personality at helping
students think these things out, you see. It's one thing to react
emotionally to something because you feel it and believe it, and that's
good. But it's also the mark of an educated person to have that sense of
motivation, but to have the capacity to reason and think all the way
through it to a resolution or solution. Well, that's what Anne did. She
was a catalyst, she was a stimulator, she was den
Page 3
mother, she cooked, she sewed. She did all these things because her
whole life was given to young people. She got such enormous satisfaction
out of it that I don't believe she was ever tired. She was running full
speed from the moment she woke up in the morning until she put her head
on the pillow at night. I don't think she ever quit moving and working
and challenging and doing and serving, and you know, touching the lives
of people. I know of no time when she ever faltered and I knew her
pretty well. Our means of communication was always through the telephone
or by meeting each other and talking. We never worked in the structured
formality of the University because it was not possible. But there was
never a time when she ever doubted that she could pick up the phone and
say to me, "This is what we need to do," or "This is where we need some
help." And I would explain to her what I could do or couldn't do. We
were perfectly open with each other and in that way she was a very
valuable person to me. Of course, I knew when I heard what she had to
say that she was reflecting the consensus from students. Any university
administrator needs that, you see, if he's really going to work with
young people. I'll put it another way around. Any chief administrative
officer who didn't develop that is throwing away one of the greatest
assets he could have. So she moved through all these years and the lives
of all of these people as a positive, challenging, stimulating,
motivating, spiritual force. In other words, she lived, in my view, a
very noble existence here. Never easy, always with stress. But you see,
the demarcation of people like Anne Queen is that they have
Page 4 inner peace. They can take on all these controversies
because it doesn't upset them. They know what they're dealing with. I'm
sure the person she loved the most and cared for the most was Dr. Frank
Graham. He taught her that and the rest of us, too. I consider myself as
much a student of his as Anne. Now, that was a generation at Chapel Hill
that you don't see today, regrettably, and I don't know why. I don't
think what I characterize as the experience or the demarcation of a [unknown] with this place, I think that's still true. And
I'm sure it's because I'm not in touch. But I really believe what
happens here is of such force that it carries you with it. She had that
experience here and lived it to the fullest and is still doing it. I
keep getting notes from her all the time. She watches a little
television show I do and she's my resident mountain critic, I call her.
[Laughter] But I think my
characterization of her as den mother to the student body is about as
encompassing as you can make it.