Growing Up With Raleigh: Smedes York Memoirs and Reflections of a Native Son, Conversations With John Sharpe

By John Sharpe

Smedes was once asked as a child what did you want to be? His answer: “I wanted to be part of our family business after attending college. I also wanted to attend and play basketball for North Carolina State University.” He did both.

Smedes grew up with Raleigh. He saw the city evolve from a small state capital with legislative and educational institutions to the vibrant metropolitan community that it is today. The Smedeses and the Yorks put their mark on the community through education and construction. And Smedes followed their example. In these conversations he gives us his perspective on what they gave him as well as what the community gave in return.

Growing up in Raleigh in the 1940s and ’50s, he also reflects on how foreign the sensibilities of those years are to us today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483410760

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GROWING UP

with

RALEIGH

SMEDES YORK:

MEMOIRS AND REFLECTIONS OF A NATIVE SON:

Conversations with

JOHN SHARPE

Copyright © 2014 John Lawrence Sharpe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1532-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1076-0 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 07/15/2014

CONTENTS

An Introduction

ENCOUNTERING THE WORLD

1    The Shamrocks And A Cross-Country Golf Trip

Six Teenagers In A ’57 Chevrolet Station Wagon

2    Growing Up In North Carolina With Segregation

From The 1940S Through The 1960S

3    Basketball—The Game

Rules Define The Play: Everett Case And The Rise And Fall Of The Dixie Classic And The Point Shaving Scandal

4    Five Years In The ’60S

The Death Of A Friend, The Military, Graduate School And Marriage

GOALS AND CHALLENGES IN A CHANGING WORLD

5    Politics—Running For Office And Public Service

6    A Life Principle

Treat Everyone With Respect

CAMERON VILLAGE

7    A Village Within A City

PASSING THE BATON

8    Passing The Baton: Between Fathers And Sons

Willie’s Sayings

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES

Appendix I The Beginnings: The Yorks Of Raleigh

Appendix II The Smedes And The Poyner Families

Endnotes

Dedicated to the Memory of my Father

Who led the way with vision and wisdom

To my Mother

Who encouraged me every day

To my wife Rosemary

Who has supported me and participated in all that I do

and

To my sons George and William

Who will keep our business and family growing into the future

AN INTRODUCTION

Smedes did indeed grow up with Raleigh. He has seen the city evolve from a small state capital with legislative and educational institutions to the vibrant metropolitan community that it is today.

Early on the Smedeses and the Yorks put their mark on the community through education and construction. And he followed the examples set by parents and grandparents. In the conversations that follow he reflects on both what they gave him as well as what the community offered. He saw it change, and he made his own contribution in the process.

The world of the 1940s and ’50s was so different. And one may say that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the forties and fifties are foreign to today’s sensibilities. Smedes has seen that transition, and as he has grown up with the city of his birth, he has seen the changes. In 1946 when he was five years old, he could walk from his house at 13 Maiden Lane along Hillsborough Street to his grandmother’s house on Groveland Avenue. With his playmates he could explore the creeks and woods along Oberlin Road in what is now Cameron Village. According to the 1950 US Census Raleigh had a population of 65,679, and the city occupied just over ten square miles. But sixty years later the landscape had changed dramatically. And according to the 2010 US Census, the population of Raleigh had grown to nearly 404,000, and the city had spread to almost 144 square miles! Throughout these years Smedes observed this expansion and has been part of the transformation of the city where he was born.

Growing up with Raleigh is the story of what he saw happening around him as he watched the city mature. In these conversations he tells his story from the point of view of a participant who came of age with the city. The many levels of his participation are recounted both as a private citizen and as a public elected official, offering observations and commentary, as it were, from the inside.

With the arrival in Raleigh of the Yorks, his father’s family, and the Smedeses, his mother’s family, the foundations for building successful businesses and educational enterprises were laid. It is fitting that as Smedes York he bears the name of both families that have been so influential in Raleigh’s maturing. The Yorks had come from Randolph County in the middle of the nineteenth century and brought with them their knowledge and abilities in construction and development. And then the Smedeses arrived in the 1840s when Bishop Levi Silliman Ives of the Diocese of North Carolina invited Aldert Smedes and his family to relocate in Raleigh from New York to revitalize St. Mary’s, a languishing boys school. Smedes was the beneficiary of these two creative and industrious families from whom he learned devotion to family, friends, and community, bound together with vision and hard work.

Early on Smedes met the world with determination and vigor. As a five-year-old he was frustrated that he was not able to attend Miss Busbee’s kindergarten with his older brother Jimmy, so he headed to his grandmother’s house on Groveland Avenue. Mary Sherwood Smedes Poyner was Gran, as he called her. She was the daughter of Bennett Smedes who had succeeded his father Aldert as Rector of St. Mary’s. Gran was an inquisitive, spirited, and adventurous woman who taught him the basics of arithmetic, how to count money, and all manner of things about dogs and raising rabbits. Theirs was a close relationship that lasted throughout her life.

Academically for Smedes school was not a problem. Mostly A’s. For a time during the early grades and in middle school, he and his friend Joe Webb were frequently reminded that they talked too much in class. On his eighth-grade report card Miss Godard marked with an X the entry Refrains from unnecessary talking and noise. And on one occasion he and Joe found themselves before the principal, Mr. Holliday, in conference with their respective fathers. This was hardly more than an episode in the middle school years because the lighthearted attitude toward school would change. He recalls the occasion that had a profound effect on him and his approach to his studies. It happened in algebra.

At Daniels in the ninth grade, his algebra teacher was Mary B. Cannon. She was known as a strict disciplinarian and demanded order in a course that everyone regarded as a challenge. In her class no one talked. To drive a point home, she would often pound the chalk on the blackboard and consequently get chalk dust all over her clothes. Smedes was good at math so the subject was likely not so much of a challenge for him as it was for some other students. His brother Jimmy, now a distinguished mathematical physicist, had taken her class before Smedes and blazed the trail by setting the academic bar very high for his younger brother. Smedes was expected not only to meet but also to surpass his brother’s record.

He remembers: ¹

Miss Cannon was very strict. Nobody said a word when Miss Cannon was talking. So one day I came in—and I promise you this, in a lot of ways, turned my life around…. When I walked into class that day, I realized that unbeknownst to me she had seen me going home without my books.

When I came in and as soon as the class sat down, she asked me for the formula for the area of a trapezoid. And I knew it: One-half the height times the sum of the bases. And I said it just like that. And she said, Class, he may not take his books home, but he knows his algebra. And for Miss Cannon to say that in front of the class I could feel myself changing—and from that point on I became almost a straight-A student.

And that one sentence turned me around.

His encounter with the world in a mature way had begun. In high school for him academics and athletics were partners. In the classroom, on the basketball court and the football field, he was competitive, and meanwhile he was laying the foundations for relationships that have survived to today. The evidence is clear in the relationship established very early among seven boys who formed their own fraternity which they called the Shamrocks—however obscure the origin of the name.

In 1957, as a graduation gift of their parents, six of the Shamrocks—Jimmy and Smedes York, George and Billy Dunlap, Dick Mason, and Jimbo Rouse—went for a six-week cross-country drive to play golf at selected courses and to see the country, the first stop being the U. S. Open in Toledo. Among the six Smedes and George at sixteen were the youngest. Smedes’s brother Jimmy, Dick, Jimbo and Billy were the oldest at eighteen.

Those six weeks together created the lasting bond among them when they made that memorable journey in the summer of 1957 in a 1957 Chevrolet station wagon with a specially constructed container fitted to the roof to carry suitcases and golf clubs for six. The story of their adventures could have brought about either the dissolution of the relationship or its confirmation. It was confirmed.

During his formative years of the 1950s and ’60s, the strictures of a Jim Crow South were prominent features in Smedes’s world. Even to him as a thirteen-year-old, the separate elementary school for African Americans on Oberlin Road was definitely not equal to that which was available to white students. When he went to NC State as a freshman in the fall of 1959, there were only four black undergraduate students who had enrolled two years earlier. And there were no blacks on the State basketball team. Although in the 1958 Dixie Classic Oscar Robertson of the University of Cincinnati and Johnny Green of Michigan State had played before an approving Raleigh crowd, it would not be until the summer of 1960 when Smedes went off to Kutsher’s Country Club in the Catskills to organize athletic games for the younger vacationers and to play basketball for the entertainment of the customers that he would socialize with an African American.

That summer at Kutsher’s he met Billy McGill, an All-American basketball player at the University of Utah. Outside of the Jim Crow South, this experience would provide a new perspective on his predisposition for compromise and consensus. He not only played basketball with African Americans, he went to the movies with Billy McGill. Coincidentally it was at the end of Smedes’s summer at Kutsher’s, that his father as a member of the Raleigh School Board, offered the motion to integrate Murphey School. In September Bill Campbell a second grader was admitted as the first African American. The social significance of these events were never lost on Smedes throughout his career.

In our conversation about The Game it is clear that team play and the individual talents of teammates are the keys to success when played according to the rules. The coordinated effort of the five players to score proves the value of combined talents to achieve a common goal. However, there are always those who would game the system in order to achieve unmerited rewards. Smedes saw this happen firsthand when the New York gangsters suborned susceptible players to corrupt the rules of play. He saw that the seduction of honest rules of play in basketball eventually led to the termination of the beloved Dixie Classic even though point shaving was going elsewhere in intercollegiate play. The rules were clear. The purpose of the game was unambiguous. The role of each player was defined. And for a player to violate the objective of the game in order to satisfy interests that were not part of the aim of the contest was a serious betrayal of personal and team integrity.

The game, and in this case basketball, has always been a major force and even a metaphor in Smedes’s life: the rules define the play. Play tough but play by the rules. He had played throughout high school and then at NC State on an athletic scholarship at the invitation of Everett Case. From then on he took every opportunity to play the game. Even the day after he was elected as mayor of Raleigh on October 10, 1979, he was caught on film by Jim Erickson, a photographer for The N & O, in a pick-up game at the Raleigh Y. Even in his seventh decade he played on a seniors team—three on three in half court. For him teamwork can be transformed into the synergy of any community or municipal endeavor in order to achieve the best results for those whom the team represents.

However much he attempted to manage the world around him by anticipation and advanced planning, things did not always go his way. There was no way he could have foreseen the scandal that would close down the Dixie Classic. He did not understand why he was red-shirted and then saw so little court time in his junior and senior years at State. Coach Case never explained why. Otherwise, his academic career was outstanding, and his ROTC service guaranteed him a second lieutenant’s commission with a two-year deferment to attend graduate school in business at Harvard. Then the unthinkable intruded.

Shortly after midnight of Saturday, May 26, 1963, in the early hours of Sunday morning, one week before graduation on June 1, his best friend, fraternity brother, teammate, and roommate Jon Speaks was killed in an automobile accident on the way to the beach. The driver and the back-seat passenger were injured, but Jon, riding in the front passenger seat, was killed instantly when the car struck a bridge abutment. Jon’s father called Smedes with the dreadful news early Sunday morning. The sudden jarring loss would have a lasting effect on Smedes that would follow him as he navigated the next year.

Graduation brought to a close his university career. Studies were over and as he looked forward to the summer after graduation there was a promised respite with friends in a trip to Europe before he packed up and headed off to Harvard Business School in the fall. He sailed to Europe with friends on Mrs. Lyon’s student tour and returned early by air for the wedding of Jimbo Rouse, one of the Shamrocks. After the wedding he returned home to Raleigh, packed up, and went off to Cambridge.

He gave it his best try, but right now Harvard was not for him. He was there for hardly more than ten days before he cleared out everything and returned to Raleigh. It just did not work. He was not ready for graduate school. Was it because of the intensity of four years of academics, basketball, and ROTC, or was it because of the loss of a teammate and good friend? He left graduate school with the full realization that he then had to satisfy his obligation to the US Army. He had sacrificed his deferment, and so now he must enter military service. He came home and worked with the family company until May 26, one year after Jon’s death, when he was on his way to Ft. Belvoir to present himself on May 27 for active duty.

This was not a happy time. For all the planning and the execution of schedules this civil engineer had not been able to control these events in his life so much as he would have wished. But he had to meet the obligations in the Corps of Engineers, and that’s why he was at Ft. Belvoir. By the end of August he was on his way to manage a civil engineering project in Po’hang, Korea, a coastal installation that stored and supplied the military on the Korean peninsula with fuel for the American mission there. There was no question whether he could manage supervising the project, but there were the issues that he could not leave behind but which in his memory he carried forward into this new phase of his life. One can only imagine the specters in the imagination of a twenty-three-year-old on those interminable hours on a troop transport from California to Seoul, anticipating an assignment at a remote and foreign place. He did have the comfort that one of the Shamrocks, Billy Dunlap, was at the airport to see him off when he departed.

When he arrived in Seoul, he was officially given his assignment: manage the installation of a fuel storage facility at Camp Libby in Po’hang nearly 200 miles to the southeast. So he was off to his new mission. When he arrived, he met with the officers in charge and was briefed on the task. And then he went for a walk trying to make sense of what had happened over the past year. And on that walk he realized what he had to do. He pulled out of his pocket a small scrap of paper and on it he wrote: You’ve just got to try. 26 August ’64. The importance of that note to him was evident at our first meeting when he opened his wallet and showed it to me. Today it is framed in a place of prominence in his office.

He was in Korea for a year, eventually becoming Company Commander supervising the construction of fuel storage tanks at Po’hang. He adjusted to the responsibilities of a task for which he had been prepared as an honors graduate in civil engineering. In September of 1965 he returned to Raleigh and continued his military service at Ft. Bragg until he completed his active duty in the spring of 1966—his two-year obligation satisfied. In December 1965 he was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for Service in Korea.

With his service in the military completed, he looked to the next stage of his career that included the school of business at the University of North Carolina in Chapel. It was there in his first year that he was reintroduced to a young school teacher who was working on her master’s degree: Rosemary Ward Adair, from Erwin, North Carolina. This meeting made his time there one of the happiest of his life especially after the tragic loss of Jon Speaks and his withdrawal from Harvard. And then the uncertainty of what a stint in the military would entail in far-away Korea. This was a significant transition, a happy pivotal moment in his life. The courtship lasted two years, the second of which was spent commuting to Richmond on weekends when Rosemary had completed her degree and returned to work there. He proposed on a cold Ground Hog Day in 1968, and they were married on July 6, a hot North Carolina summer day.

Upon receiving his M.B.A. as a Dean’s Scholar from UNC, he joined the family company, working with his father. And as a businessman, he was convinced of his responsibility to, as he says, Give something back to the community. So it was natural that he would become active in the Chamber of Commerce and continuing his enthusiasm for sports, especially basketball, the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Y.

Then it happened. Someone recognized his interest, even his desire, to make a larger contribution to the city; and at thirty, he became very excited about the prospect of serving on the City Council when Tom Adams, a prominent real estate attorney suggested that Smedes run for City Council. Smedes’s father had been appointed to numerous business and civic boards—from the Raleigh School Board to the Chairman of North Carolina Conservation and Development Board—but he had never run for public office. His Dad had an important position in the community, and Smedes recognized that that he was not able to do the kinds of things his father had done. But at the same time Smedes realized that his father might not have been able to do some of the things that he, Smedes, could do better. He debated with himself about when to run—the debate lasted six years from 1971 when Tom Adams suggested that he run until 1977. He made the decision after city governance was changed from an all at-large council to a district system with representatives from five districts and two at-large and the mayor. He felt confident that he could win from his home district, District E. So in 1977 he ran.

In 1977 Isabella Cannon, the little old lady in tennis shoes, was elected mayor and Smedes to the City Council from District E. His contribution during her tenure was to shepherd Raleigh’s first Comprehensive Plan through committee, a project that involved working with diverse and even divisive issues concerning planning for the city’s growth. The two years serving on the Council with Mrs. Cannon as mayor was trying. Little did he know when he was elected to the Council in 1977 that in two years he, standing six-four, would be facing the little old lady who was not even five feet tall! What a contrast! With encouragement of a large coterie of supporters, he entered the race for mayor. But how would a collegiate basketball player campaign against a diminutive lady without appearing to be a bully? He campaigned on the city’s need for leadership. He won.

During his two-terms as mayor he would face the challenges of the growth/no-growth factions that were at odds with one another about greenways, downtown development, zoning regulations—there was continuous friction between inner city concerns and the suburbs. Navigating these issues was a challenge for someone who valued negotiations with compromise and consensus. In our conversations he tells the story of what it was like during his first term on the City Council with Mrs. Cannon as mayor: meetings that lasted sometimes as long as twelve hours, the tensions between the mayor and council members, utter disorganization and a lack of planning for the meetings. And he explains how with the assistance of several members of the Council they were able to deal with the issues at hand.

Throughout his time as a representative of his community from District E on the City Council, as the Mayor of the city of Raleigh, or as a member of the Chamber of Commerce, there was never any questions as to the responsibilities of each office: examine the requirements for membership, fulfill the obligations, and do the best that you can to meet the assignment. And the obligations were passed on to him when he became a member of the Board of Trustees of NC State University. In 1993 he was appointed to the board by the then governor of North Carolina Jim Hunt. He regarded it as an honor to serve as a board member for the university that had meant so much to him. There were many things happening while he was a board member—a new chancellor was installed, enrollment issues were on the agenda, and expansion of the curriculum were on the calendar. He was appointed member of the board in 1993 and again in 1997. It was inevitable that he would eventually become chairman. But that is another story.

In the process of advancing to the chairmanship of the NC State Board of Trustees, he was given the opportunity to observe the value of treating everyone with respect. For him relationships require attention and cultivation. That is the story of the Shamrocks; the same can be said about relationships among members of the City Council, the Airport Commission, York Properties, Cameron Village, the Chamber of Commerce, and family. Personal relationships thrive when each individual is appreciated. Such is the story when he was elected chairman of the Board of Trustees at NC State at the September meeting in 1998. The vote was a tie. And the deciding vote for Smedes was cast by a member of the Board who was not part of the back-room intrigue that attempted to elect another candidate.

Among his great interest as a developer was the Urban Land Institute to which he has devoted considerable time and energy throughout his career. The ULI is a nonprofit that provides leadership in responsible land use. Its membership represents the entire spectrum of real estate development. It was through the ULI that Smedes’s father Willie met the developer Jesse Clyde Nichols from Kansas City, Missouri, and the idea for the development of Cameron Village was born. Willie was very active in the ULI, and not long after Smedes joined the firm just after graduation from UNC with a master’s degree in business, his father took him to his first meeting of the ULI in September of 1970. The meeting was in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he witnessed firsthand the innovative traditions set in motion by J. C. Nichols. Smedes became involved with the ULI and very soon he was participating especially in the Advisory Services Panels. And to the degree that Smedes became more involved, Willie relinquished his role in the ULI to Smedes for whom participation in the organization was an opportunity to move up in it and ultimately to become a leader. And that he did, chairing many Advisory Services Panels and rising to become Chairman on July 1, 1989. He presided at his first meeting on October 23, 1989.

The ULI has remained for him a significant organization through which he could make a contribution to the Institute and to the larger community as well. The story of his involvement with the Urban Land Institute is told in Smedes York: Memoirs and Reflections: The Urban Land Institute and the Yorks.² For Smedes the ULI provided him an opportunity to be of service on a national scale, something that his father had not actively pursued. He was chairman for two years—from July 1 of 1989 to June 30, 1991—and served on twenty-one Advisory Service Panels from 1978 through 2012. His ability to work with the diverse talents represented in the composition of the panel and to produce a report to assist the community in planning its way ahead was evident in the concise reports that the panels provided for the communities they advised. Whether it was how to deal with the development related to the tar sands at Ft. McMurray in Canada, or the future development of lower Manhattan after 9/11, or the restoration of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, these panels provided him with an opportunity to use his skills in guiding a widely diverse group of financiers, ecologists, and urban designers to produce a plan for recovery and development of their community. For him the process was successful when after hardly more than four days, a committee of diverse composition, having studied the project, could make recommendations that covered everything from financing, planning and construction. Having chaired nineteen of twenty-one of the Advisory Services Panels, Smedes became a champion of negotiation using compromise and consensus. He was especially tested when he was Chairman of the ULI in 1990 and ’91 in dealing with the real estate credit problem.

The early 1990s was a very difficult period economically not only for the country but particularly for real estate. In an attempt to constructively confront these issues, as Chairman of the ULI he led a delegation to Washington to meet with senior officials of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan; and among others from Federal agencies, Roger Porter, assistant to the President for Economic and Domestic Policy, to discuss steps to ensure that a balanced approach be taken so that overreaction on the part of lenders and regulators may be avoided. Who could have foreseen that when Smedes became Chairman of the ULI he must confront not only the fiscal debilitating matters in his own business but also would have to lead the ULI through the troubled waters of its own identity crisis and the near melt-down of the real estate market. He was successful on both fronts.

Growing up with Raleigh is the story of how he has been able to observe the expansion and maturing of a community from multiple perspectives: from his point of view as a businessman, an elected municipal official, appointed member of city and county boards and volunteer organizations; and as a basketball player, a student, and his place in his family.

The Yorks and the Smedeses provide a long perspective in the history of Raleigh’s development from a quiet town as the state capital to a lively city with a rich cultural, educational, and vibrant business community. The Yorks developed and built so much that is easily recognized and appreciated as distinctive contributions to the profile of the city. One can point to Memorial Auditorium that was built by Smedes’s grandfather Charles Vance York during the Depression; and then there is Cameron Village, the realized vision of his father Willie—just two of the most obvious contributions. And there are the contributions of the Smedeses who enlivened educational opportunities for young women at St. Mary’s College.

The York’s contribution to Raleigh and North Carolina began with Charles Vance, and it passed to James Wesley Willie and on to George Smedes who has valued the quiet, steadfast support of his wife Rosemary, mother of George Smedes, Jr., now president of York Properties, and William Wesley, academic at the University of Indiana-Bloomington.

ENCOUNTERING THE WORLD

CHAPTER 1

THE SHAMROCKS AND A CROSS-COUNTRY GOLF TRIP

SIX TEENAGERS IN A ’57 CHEVROLET STATION WAGON

Seven is a magic number. Seven high school students with strong multiple athletic interests got together at first as friends to play golf, basketball, and football. Six decades later the Shamrocks—Jimmy and Smedes York, George and Billy Dunlap, Dick Mason, Jimbo Rouse, and Tom Wingfield—remain a close-knit fraternity without formal rites and secret passwords, though retaining over the years the unique Shamrock language names for each. Few relationships on any level survive that many years. This is a story of constancy and support of a brotherhood built upon shared experiences whether building boats, at summer camp, on the basketball court, the golf course, or the bonding adventure of a remarkable cross-country trip in the summer of 1957.

In the middle 1950s when television did not dominate after-school time, these ever inventive, ingenious, athletic, competitive boys enjoyed sports especially basketball, football, or golf. It was out of their interests that the story of the need for an identifying name grew. And it is easily understood that the origin of their name has several versions. The group wanted to identify their team when they played in the neighborhood of the York family home on Craig Street. Jimmy, Smedes’s older brother, says that the name Shamrock was suggested by Tom Wingfield’s father, Bud Wingfield, while he was driving some of the boys to an athletic event in Durham.³

Billy Dunlap offered another version. He said that it happened in the summer of 1955 when several of them were sharing a cabin at Camp Seagull in coastal North Carolina. Smedes was not with them on that occasion. Sharing the cabin that summer with Billy were Smedes’s older brother Jimmy, Dick Mason, and Tom Wingfield. While at camp the boys talked about forming a a group with athletics as the focus. According to Billy, they needed a name for their neighborhood team to identify themselves when they played other teams in their informal neighborhood league.⁴

Whatever the origin of the name, some time between 1955 and 1956 the Shamrocks came into existence among these teenage boys bound together by the love of sport and team play. In the Craig Street league there was a team from another neighborhood called Bill Shinn’s Team. Shinn was a very good basketball player on Broughton’s varsity team. Whenever the Shamrocks played Shinn’s team, their competitive spirit came to the fore. They were a formidable opponent, and they took great pride in competing against his team—or, for that matter, any other team in the league, but they were especially pleased to defeat Shinn’s team. Within this competitive environment the Shamrocks became a fraternity.

For these teenagers, growing up in the 1950s meant friendship, play, and school—with summer freedom assured. The cares of the world were far from them although their parents may have felt otherwise. The Shamrocks studied hard in school and together enjoyed football, basketball, and golf.

THE 1950S: A DECADE OF TRANSITION

What were the 1950s like for this generation of students? The economy was on an upswing, and the job market was strong. And thanks to the GI Bill veterans could secure low interest loans and with few apartments available in the cities, the soldiers returning from the war looked for opportunities to move to the suburbs with their wives and girlfriends. In 1950 there were 1.396 million new houses. By the end of the decade the number of homeowners had increased from 23.6 million to 32.8 million.⁵

The move to the suburbs was made possible by the automobile. As the suburbs grew so did the need for convenient stores and businesses that relocated closer to where the customers lived. In shopping centers stores were grouped around parking lots, a concept of urban development introduced by Jesse Clyde Nichols when he opened Country Club Plaza in the 1920s. Nichols’s idea was not lost on Smedes’s and Jimmy’s father, Willie, who acknowledged the change in the urban landscape when he opened Cameron Village in 1949. The shopping center now was clear evidence that the automobile had become an essential part of the landscape. Further acknowledgement of the automobile’s possession of the landscape was the Eisenhower administration’s authorization in 1956 of the institution of the interstate highway system. However, in 1956 it was not yet available to the six Shamrocks who planned to drive from Raleigh to the west coast and back.

During the 1950s when fathers worked outside of the home, mothers managed things at home. The most visible role model was Betty Furness who day and night, product after product, even in the heat of summer, coolly sold appliances and vacuumed the floor in apron and high heels. At home mother was the queen who made her husband happy and saw that her children were clean, polite, and successful in school and sports. Smedes remembers that his mother was the model of the 1950s wife and mother—always sympathetic and encouraging. For her, husband, children, and home were the causes for which she did her utmost. As Smedes said, My mother was totally supportive. She really thought we could do no wrong.

In the ’50s television and magazine advertisements sought to convince women that they could create a perfect family life with these wonderful frost free home appliances that guaranteed the lady of the house her place in their home palaces. The teenage Shamrocks lived in this world and imbibed the values of their mothers and fathers—respect, good manners, and independence.

On the other hand teenagers found their own place apart from their parents. Liberated from the yoke of being seen and not heard, they developed independence as the next generation, even rebellion against parental supervision in so far as they could. The rebelliousness of the Shamrocks emerged in their desire to start out on an adventure of their own—first of all to see the U. S. Open in Toledo. They didn’t want so much to rebel as to prove their independence while adhering to the values they had learned within their families. Their rebellion was to a large degree their strength in unity, their value in self-sufficiency and independence. And for the Shamrocks their independence was acknowledged by their parents when they sent them off from the Carolina Country Club on that June day in 1957.

The Shamrocks were children of the 1950s The pictures from this time show some of them with the very short haircut of the day—the flat top—a sharp contrast to the long-haired beatniks of the next decade. Today the Shamrocks remember wistfully their teenage years. To a man they say It was a very different time. How much of that was fact, or how much of it was innocent memory?

SHAMROCK LANGUAGE AND NAMES

The Shamrocks created a nomenclature for one another and even for parents and events—you name it and they would find a name for it. Billy Dunlap was known variously as Rocky or The Lout. But when Rocky and Smedes joined together as the Vikings—Billy adopted the name Thor and Smedes Gunnar. After some time Smedes says that he changed it to Eric since he thought that Eric the Red was better than Gunnar. Nevertheless, Billy remained the Mighty Thor, a gag that continues.

Jimmy York was called Gorill—as in Gorilla—because of his aggressive football tackling. Smedes got his name Chop because of his particular drive from the tee. He was also known as Choppy due to his persistent fouling in basketball. The nickname has stuck—even today his grandsons call him Choppy. George Dunlap had several nicknames: Putting Pig, Sunshine Swine, and Ah. Tom Wingfield was known as the Champ and C. O.—or, the Crafty One. Dick Mason was known simply as The B or The Smiling B. And, Jim Rouse was Jimbo or Horse Cat. And to this day, each calls the other by his Shamrock name.

A GRADUATION GIFT

The Shamrocks’ journey to the West Coast in 1957 was an appropriate way for enthusiastic golfers to celebrate graduation from high school. They wanted to attend the U. S. Open in Toledo and from there play major courses on the way to the West Coast and back. Each one of the Shamrocks—including the two younger ones—was an avid golfer and quite proficient at the game, and among the professional golfers of the day, they had their heroes. For them Ben Hogan was their man. So when the four older Shamrocks devised their itinerary, it seemed natural that they would follow their sun wherever he was playing. In 1957, Smedes at sixteen, and Billy Dunlap’s brother George at seventeen, were the younger members of the group. Much to the dismay of the younger ones, George and Smedes, they were regarded by their four elders as tag alongs. Their elders at eighteen had finished high school and anticipated attending college in the fall.

An article in the Raleigh News and Observer, written when they set off on their journey, described their travel agenda.⁶ Accompanying the article was a photograph of Smedes, Jimbo Rouse, and Dick Mason hanging out the back of the car over the tailgate, and George Dunlap, Jimmy York, and Billy Dunlap leaning out the windows. In The N&O Johanna McKevlin wrote: Probably the ‘most unique’ graduation present given in Raleigh this year was the one received by Billy Dunlap, Jimbo Rouse, Jimmy York and Dick Mason courtesy of their parents: Mr. and Mrs. George Dunlap, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Rouse, Mr. and Mrs. J W York, Mr. and Mrs. Dick Mason. The trip to the West Coast and back was to last about six weeks.

The six-week journey was planned to a T. On the morning of June 11 after a big sendoff event at the Carolina Country Club they were on their way. They had packed suitcases and golf clubs for each of the six of them in a container that Smedes’s and Jimmy’s father Willie had made to be mounted on the top of their copper and cream 1957 Chevrolet station wagon.

Their itinerary was planned for the group to play golf at notable courses along their planned route often where Willie’s ULI friends could provide hospitality, but it was laid out in detail likely as much to keep them on track to give their parents the comfort of knowing that their sons would be checking in from expected locations at designated times during their six weeks on the road. A handwritten copy of their itinerary by Billy’s and George’s father provides the outline for their trip. Jimmy was the only one of the group who kept a journal. They knew where they wanted to go to play golf, how long each event would take, how many days they would be at each location, and how long it would take them to get from place to place.

As avid golfers, they planned to make the 1957 National Open Golf Tournament in Toledo their first stop. After the several days of the Open, they planned to head to Detroit to see Ted Williams and their favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, attempt to down the Tigers in a three-game series. From there they planned to go on to Chicago, Yellowstone Park, Seattle, and places in between. Before leaving Washington State, they hoped to try their luck playing golf with Governor Albert Dean Rosselini—a match arranged by Mr. York—if they could work this out.

Next on the schedule was Portland where they would visit for a couple days with Mr. and Mrs. Owen Cheatham, aunt and uncle of Billy and George, at their home Blueberry Hill. Mr. Cheatham was president of Georgia-Pacific Lumber Company.

Then they planned to continue down the coast to San Francisco and Los Angeles to check out some of the California courses. Hollywood was definitely on their agenda. McKevlin wrote, "Just listen to this … they are going to meet several of the film capital’s famous personalities. This part of their trip was arranged by Jimmy Poyner who is the York brothers’ uncle.⁷ He has made arrangements with Les Brown, the famous orchestra leader who has also a good friend of his to introduce the boys to some of Hollywood’s VIPs and also see that they don’t miss a thing!"

Then on to Phoenix where they planned to tee off at one of the courses there. El Paso is next, according to the article, and from there they’re going to scoot over into Mexico just so ‘we can say we’ve been there.’

Dallas and the Colonial Golf Course at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth were to follow on their list. They were determined to play the Colonial Golf Course. It was the home course of their hero Ben Hogan. Already among these teenagers there were three titleholders in the group—Jimbo was the current champion at the Carolina Country Club, Billy the former junior champ in Raleigh, and, at the time, Jimmy was the city’s most recent junior champion.

After Dallas-Ft. Worth, their route would take them to Houston to play on one of the most exclusive private courses in the United States. From there it was on to New Orleans, coming home by way of the Augusta National Golf Club, the home of the Masters. By July 22 they would be back in Raleigh.

As each of the Shams say, it was a different world in 1957. Billy Dunlap comments that in the 1950s there was a kind of innocence of the time when no one considered the threats to life and limb that one considers today. Sure, he said, this trip seems pretty remarkable that four 18-year-olds and two 16-year-olds would go around the country. But two years before that, when I had just turned 16 and my brother [George] was still 14, along with a 16-year-old cousin, my aunt gave us her 1950 Buick in Walhalla [South Carolina] to drive to Florida for three weeks. And the three of us at 16, 16, and 14 took a three-week trip to Florida driving around. And that was two years before our trip in 1957. That just shows the innocence of the time.

Smedes comments:⁸

The remarkable thing is that, number one, our parents would let us do that. The oldest guys were just out of high school. It was a graduation present for them. There were four of them. George Dunlap was just finishing the eleventh grade, and I was just finishing the tenth grade. So I was just 16. Of course, you didn’t have cell phones in those days. [It was] just a different world that they would let us take this trip around the United States. We had an itinerary. [Our parents] knew that at certain times we would be in certain places, and we would call, and people would be expecting us. But I find that so fascinating. Even with all the communication today, I don’t know that any high school graduates would be permitted to try that. It was a very different world; it was a safer world.

There were six of us. In one car! It was a ’57 Chevy station wagon. My Dad had this special luggage compartment built on the top. It contained six suitcases and six sets of golf clubs, and it was not something that General Motors came