I’ve been away for a while owing to a very busy last couple of months.
Though Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972) has no particular association with Rutherford County of which I’m aware, I nonetheless think the world of him & thought I would try to get the blog rolling again by dedicating a post to him. Most people will know Frank Graham – if they know or remember him at all — as North Carolina’s very liberal (for his time, anyway) university system president & as a U.S. Senator. But to me he was quite simply the greatest North Carolinian of the 20th Century.
I say this for two reasons: 1) as an influential liberal in State politics for his two decades as UNC’s president, he was the moderating force — with his Christian humanism — who helped to pave the way for the civil rights movement & ease North Carolina through a period which was more difficult elsewhere in the South; and 2) he was completely dedicated to service for others — moreso than any other man of whom I can think of in public life in his day or any other.
As evidence of this latter point, I offer that after he was rejected by his own state in the racially-charged Senate campaign of 1950, Graham threw himself completely into the cause of world peace for which he worked the remainder of his life; & when he died, he did not even own a home (he died in hospital but while residing at his sister’s home in Chapel Hill & I believe his estate amounted to no more than a small insurance policy). He loved & cared for his fellow man with a genuine, Christ-like compassion. And when Charles Kuralt called him a saint, he wasn’t kidding.
My God! If a man like this would just step forward to lead us through the wilderness in these troubled times. I feel compelled to digress here & ponder the sad lot of leaders that our state finds itself saddled with today (though I do not mean to impune all of them, as I think men like Mike Easley, Richard Moore & Roy Cooper have served us well in recent years). But “Dr. Frank” — as he was affectionately known — would not approve of such musings, & I would dishonor his memory with further talk of this sort.
I do not really recall how I first became aware of Dr. Frank, but it was only about five or six years ago that I really began to venerate him & feel a special bond. That was when I found my first Frank Porter Graham letter on eBay.
I bought the letter for just a few dollars without really knowing its contents (the photo in the dealer’s listing was too small to determine that) & gave it little thought, but oh was I surprised when I received it! For it turned out that I had bought a letter which Graham had sent to my very own Greensboro apartment complex in 1950! What do you think are the odds of that?
Since then, on my occasional research trips to Chapel Hill, I like to stop by his grave at the cemetery near campus or, if I only drive by, try and catch a glimpse of his tombstone. I guess in some strange way that leaves me with a comforting sense that his spirit lives on.
I’ve bought a number of Frank Graham letters and autographs since that first one & just got another the other day. Pictured above is a letter he wrote to Mrs. James Turner Morehead as President of the University of North Carolina in 1942. I like this one because he mentions the “open house” during which he regularly entertained students at his home on Sunday evenings.
Others of the Graham letters I’ve bought (which range in date from about 1935-1967) also reference significant aspects of his biography, such as the movement of the engineering school from UNC-Chapel Hill to North Carolina State, the Morehead Planetarium & the death of his wife. Sometimes he signs his name “Frank Graham,” but I think more often he uses “Frank P. Graham.”
If you don’t know about Frank Porter Graham & would like to learn more, there are three books of which I’m aware: Warren Ashby’s Frank Porter Graham: A Southern Liberal (1981); Dr. Frank (1993) by John Ehle; and Frank Porter Graham and the 1950 Senate Race in North Carolina (1990) by Julian Pleasants & Augustus Burns.
I regret that I’ve never managed to pick up a decent photo of Dr. Frank, but I’m sure you can find one with a google image search. I especially like the one in which the band leader, Kay Kiser, is jokingly scolding him. I do, however, have a postcard (see below) of a performance of the famous North Carolina outdoor drama, “The Lost Colony,” in which a balding man can be noted seated in the foreground, bottom righthand corner of the picture. John Ehle identifies this man as Frank Graham.
