Dr. Jenkins continues to talk a bit about faculty members. JENKINS: But you take a guy like Ovid Pierce, no one told him to write a damn book, but he had it in his soul. He wanted to get it out.
By the way, talking about newspapers and Ovid, here is another illustration of how it works. Ovid won the legislative award. He had been here twelve years at the time that he won it and there was a big editorial in the Greensboro paper. The first winner was a professor of chemistry at Chapel Hill, completely identified. You know, all about where he taught and everything. Then came the philanthropist and all about her. She was from Greensboro. And then came Ovid Pierce of Greenville.
[End of Tape 1, Side 2]
Anyway, to make it even more ridiculous, the chairman of the committee that chose the recipients was the senator. So I said, "You are going to tell me now Bill that you picked a guy and gave him this great award, you had no idea where he worked? What he did?" He knew. I said, "You knew darn right well. You knew that he was a professor here for twelve years. You knew that he came from Tulane, but you weren't nice enough. You weren't man enough to give credit here, because you let hatred come in here, which isn't good. It is not a compliment to you."
I said, "You knew darn right well that we would have been proud to have Ovid Pierce identified. He's a winner and he's also a professor here. Now if he had got in trouble, some embarrassing type of trouble, you know darn right well the headline would be EAST CAROLINA PROFESSOR GETS CAUGHT ROBBING BANK, you see or something of that type." I said, "Now why can't it work for the good part?" He said, "Oh, you're just sensitive over nothing." I said, "No, I'm not sensitive over nothing at all."
Then sometimes you catch them in lies. They had a real unkind editorial which was based on lies. I forget the paper. I called the fellow. I said, "You know this is absolutely not true. You know it's not true." He said, "Well, that was written by a cub reporter and he probably didn't know." I said, "You're going to tell me now that you have one of the major papers and you let a cub reporter write your editorials?" I said, "You know better than that, don't you?" He started to laugh a little bit, you know.
But you've got to let them know once in awhile that they're not pulling anything over on you, that you know your way too.
And I found this to be the case, believe it or not, two things. The cumulative effect of afternoon newspapers is much more powerful. I wouldn't care what they said about us in the Charlotte Observer, because people don't read it seriously. They don't take it seriously. I wouldn't care about the N & O, but if I could have twenty of these little afternoon jobs. Because people in the afternoon jobs read every word. What house is for sale. Who got a traffic ticket. The Daily Reflector, they read every word in the Daily Reflector. But they don't read every word in the Charlotte papers. Some of the sports guys take the sports page. The businessmen take the business page. The women take the women's page. The first thing she asks for in the morning, "Give me the women's page." The people who are up in age rush for the obituary and see if any of their friends have been knocked off. So, therefore, that is very, very powerful, the accumulative effect.
BRATTON: We had better press in small [newspapers]?
JENKINS: Oh my goodness, yes. The small newspapers, well there were some exceptions, but generally speaking the small papers were with us almost 100%. The biggies meant nothing to us.
I met with a group of editors from the Charlotte Observer years ago. We had a meeting off the record. We all agreed that there would be nothing to come out of this except to bare our hearts. And I asked a question. I said, "How many of you men have ever been to East Carolina?" They had been writing all kinds of editorials and stuff. Not one of them had. I said, "How many of you have ever been in the East?" They laughed a little bit and one of them said, "Well, I flew to Morehead one time." I said, "Well, that's not being in the East. You flew over. You flew over the East. You haven't been in the East. How in the world can you fellows write these editorials, this negative stuff, when you've never been there?"
BRATTON: Easy, probably easier.
JENKINS: They just sit down and do it. Another thing, too, I've learned over the years. People will not read in depth and they do not read editorials as a rule. I've had a very ugly editorial in the paper and I'd go up to Raleigh and people would say, "I saw your name in the paper. Keep up the good work!" Which means they didn't read it. They just saw the damn name.
BRATTON: They thought that "he's busy again."
JENKINS: They thought that "Hey, he did something." His name was in the paper. Keep up the good work. It would be a nasty editorial.
[interruption in interview deleted]
BRATTON: Was Morgan, Bob Morgan, more politically involved as far as the daily political arrangements?
JENKINS: Yes. bob was politically involved when we needed to put out a fire.
BRATTON: He would be the chief?
JENKINS: He'd know how to put out the fire.
BRATTON: I guess Walter Jones was involved with it.
JENKINS: Well, Walter was more involved with the Nursing School than the Med. School. Because he was in Congress and a congressman can't do you any good up there at all.
BRATTON: But when he was in the Legislature.
JENKINS: He was good with the Med. School. Well, Governor [Jim] Hunt himself as the lieutenant governor, he stuck with us.
BRATTON: And [William Kerr] Scott?
JENKINS:L No, Scott did more or less what I asked him, but he wasn't a pusher.
BRATTON: He was not as much of a pusher, but a supporter.
JENKINS: He was a supporter, but not to the extent that Hunt was. I mean Hunt was a fiery supporter and put his political career on the line. I've mentioned that in many speeches. He was a young fellow, now, lieutenant governor, aspiring to be governor, when he took on the power structure same as we were doing here. He risked a lot of contributions, a lot of help, a lot of support. He definitely put his political career on the line. He could have been knocked off. He could have played it neutral. He could have said, "Let's make a study of the this and whatever people want," and that type of thing. But he didn't take that road. He was right there fighting for it and he's got to be given a lot of credit. Scott was with us, but he did not fight the way Hunt did. Now, Sanford was against us quietly. I knew thing that he was doing, but without his knowing that I knew. But whenever he could put a dig to kill it, he would do it. It would get back to me, because these things are never kept secret.
BRATTON: They do eventually come out.
JENKINS: I knew about every time he made a crack.
BRATTON: Was that because of an alliance more with the . . . ?
JENKINS: It wasn't a Duke philosophy that he was adopting. I think that he adopting. I think that he was just adopting some of the bigger money that he might have got in support when he was in politics. Or it might have been a personal feeling on his part. And yet, and yet, non-Medical School, he was a good supporter of ours. Oh yes, he worked very hard for many of the things we had here and was a good friend of ours. But when it came to the Medical School, he was definitely not a friend. I never called on him for any help and just let it get back every so often that I knew what he was doing. But it was sort of an enigma, because he was very good on everything except Med. School. He was very much anti-Med. School.
Governor [Dan] Moore was 100% opposed to everything that we tried to do here. He just was anti-East Carolina, period. Fortunately, he wasn't powerful enough to do any harm, because he had, he had no following to amount to anything. And his administration didn't accomplish anything that I know of. So he really did not hurt us, because he was too weak to hurt us.
[James] Holshouser, as a Republican representative was with with us. As governor he was not. As governor, he was very anti-East Carolina.
A real, we had a real strong friend in Hunt. A friend in Scott. [Luther] Hodges was more or less neutral, but he had too many other things to worry about to worry about us. He really was more concerned with the Research Triangle and things of that type.
BRATTON: We weren't in the high gear during that period.
JENKINS: No, we weren't there either. We were beginning on university status then. I debated, not really, but they called on me to make a speech. And he made one completely opposite before the legislature, but that was neither here nor there.
Let's see, who else you might talk to. Now Ralph Scott was a good friend of ours. He was a very powerful senator and he always voted with us. We had Horton Roundtree who was always a good friend. Frankly, it wouldn't hurt you to talk to Horton. He was a very good friend. Julian Allsbrook was always a friend of ours. He was a veteran senator, still there. He came up in 1935 and he's been there since. That's a long time.
