The North Carolina Awards
1979
The North Carolina Awards were instituted by the 1961 General Assembly, which acted on the idea of the late Dr. Robert Lee Humber of Greenville, then State Senator from Pitt County. The purpose of the Awards, as set forth in the statutes, is to recognize " notable accomplishments by North Carolina citizens in the fields of scholarship, research, the fine arts and public leadership."
The 1979 recipients were chosen just as others have been over the years. The North Carolina Awards Committee, whose five members were selected by Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., had the responsibility of naming the winners after subcommittees conducted research to establish candidates in the areas of the fine arts, literature, public service and science.
Occasionally a second award in one of these categories is presented to a particularly outstanding North Carolinian who lives outside the state. That is the case this year.
The medal was designed by the eminent sculptor Paul Manship and was one of his last important commissions before his death. It is of ten karat gold with a diameter of two and three-quarters inches.
The North Carolina Award is given for achievements in years prior to the date on the medal. It is the highest honor the state can bestow.
16th North Carolina Awards
Dinner and Awards Presentation
Raleigh Civic Center
November 27, 1979 7:00 pm
Welcome - The Honorable Sara W . Hodgkins, Secretary North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
Invocation - Elizabeth D. Koontz, Assistant State Superintendent, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
Entertainment - North Carolina School of the Arts Jazz Trio
Remarks - Mary D . B. T. Semans, Chairman, North Carolina Awards Committee
Presentation of Awards - The Honorable James B. Hunt, Jr., Governor, State of North Carolina
Following dinner, Governor and Mrs. Hunt will receive at the Executive Mansion, 200 North Blount Street.
Military Aides, headed by Lt. Col. Douglas B. Whitiey, are North Carolina National Guardsmen who are assigned to Governor Hunt's personal staff.
North Carolina Awards Committee
Mary D. B. T. Semans, Durham, Chairman
Mary Lee Cecil, Asheville
Voit Gilmore, Southern Pines
Wilbert W. Johnson, Raleigh
Guy Owen, Jr., Raleigh
Archie K. Davis
Public Service
Archie K. Davis receives the North Carolina Award for Public Service for his contributions on a national level as well as to his native state. Mr. Davis was Chairman of the Board of the Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, N.A., until his retirement in 1974. He has been associated with Wachovia since 1932.
Mr. Davis has followed a number of directions in his career; in each enterprise his unique talents have provided an important dimension.
Of particular significance for North Carolina has been his instrumental role in the development of the Research Triangle. As President of the Research Triangle Foundation, he was the moving force in bringing the National Humanities Center to the state, an occasion that alerted the rest of the nation to North Carolina's leadership in culture and education. As a businessman, Mr. Davis has earned the admiration of his colleagues across the nation, serving as President of both the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and the American Bankers Association. He is Director and member of the Executive Committees of the Wachovia Corporation and Wachovia Bank and Trust; Director of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Chatham Manufacturing Company; Media General, Inc., and Southern Railway Company; and a member of the International Advisory Board of R. J. Reynolds Industries, Inc.
As a prominent contributor to the educational environment of North Carolina and the nation, Mr. Davis has served as a Trustee of the University of North Carolina and is now Chairman of the Duke Endowment, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina Press, Trustee of the National Humanities Center and Committee for Economic Development, and Trustee of Salem Academy and College.
Mr. Davis was one of the founders and first President of the Northwest North Carolina Development Association. From 1958 to 1962 he represented Forsyth County in the North Carolina Senate. He also was a member of the State Legislative Building Commission.
Mr. Davis is a native of Winston-Salem. He was graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1932 and received his M.A. there in 1975. Presently he is working toward a Ph.D. from the same institution.
He and his wife Mary Louise live in Winston-Salem. They have three sons and one daughter.
John D. deButts
Public Service
John D. deButts receives the North Carolina Award for Public Service for a North Carolinian who lives outside the state. His professional, philanthropic and community service contributions have significantly enhanced the quality of life in his home state and in the rest of the United States.
John Dulany deButts was born in Greensboro and attended college at Virginia Military Institute, graduating in 1936 with a B.S. in electrical engineering. His first job consisted of summer work as a member of a railroad construction gang. After his college graduation he took the first step into a career that led him over the years to the top rung of one of the world's largest corporations.
On July 1, 1936, Mr. deButts signed on as a traffic student in the Richmond office of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia. He advanced, in seven years, to the position of district traffic manager. In 1949 he went to New York with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; after returning to Virginia for several years' assignment, he became Assistant Vice President of AT&T. More promotions followed, with duties in New York, Washington and Chicago. In 1966 he was named Executive Vice President and, in 1967, Vice Chairman of the Board. On April 1, 1972, Mr. deButts became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T, positions he held until his retirement this year. Of those years, Business Week said that, as a "corporate strategist with few peers," he had implemented changes "few other men would have dared to undertake."
Currently he is a Director of General Motors, Kraft, U. S. Steel, the Hospital Corporation of America, Citicorp and AT&T. He is a Trustee of the Duke Endowment and the Brookings Institution.
The North Carolina Award recognizes Mr. deButts' professional achievements, but it also is presented for his many volunteer efforts with such organizations as the United Fund, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Boy Scouts of America and the Business Committee for the Arts.
He is particularly noted for his interest in quality education for minorities and in the whole field of race relations and human relations.
Mr. deButts is married to the former Gertrude Willoughby Walke. They have two daughters.
Harry Golden
Literature
Harry Golden receives the North Carolina Award in Literature for his accomplishments as a journalist, humorist and perceptive viewer of human life.
He was born in the Galician Province of the AustriaHungary Empire on May 6, 1903. Two years later his parents brought him to America. They lived on the lower east side of New York where he graduated from public school and high school. He went to City College of New York for three years.
Mr. Golden's newspaper career began in New York with work on the Daily Mirror and the New York Post. Then, in 1940, he came to Charlotte to work for The Charlotte Observer. A year later he founded the Carolina Israelite, which he calls "a monthly journal of personal opinion." When Mr. Golden published the last issue in 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey wrote to say, "This whole world of ours will never be the same."
Harry Golden's first book, Only in America, was in production in 1957 when his friend Carl Sandburg told him, "I always figured there oughta be a book out of the Carolina Israelite." The insight and wit which was displayed in the Israelite carried over well into book form, and the volume sold 300,000 hardbound copies, with two million more in paperback. Only in America brought him national celebrity and gave him the impetus for more books, including For 2� Plain, Enjoy, Enjoy, Carl Sandburg, You're Entitle', Forgotten Pioneer, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, The Spirit of the Ghetto, The Israelis, Our Southern Landsman, The Right Time (an autobiography), and others. He is now working on his 20th book, America, I Love You. His books are anecdotal, humorous and compassionate, often revealing courage in defense of just, but unpopular, causes. Mr. Golden has received honorary degrees from Belmont Abbey College, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Johnson C. Smith University and Theil College. He is a member of the Shakespeare Society of America, the Catholic Interracial Council and the B'nai B'rith. Harry Golden has served North Carolina and the entire nation in many capacities, for many years. The work continues, as Mr. Golden declares himself to remain "a newspaper man, an American, a Jew, a 'Democrat and a Zionist in that order." He still lives in Charlotte and is the father of three sons.
Walter Gordy
Science
Walter Gordy receives the North Carolina Award in Science for his achievements as a researcher and a teacher in the field of molecular physics. As James B. Duke Professor of Physics at Duke University and founder of the Microwave Research Laboratory there, he has helped to insure that North Carolina's institutions remain in the top rank of scientific research centers.
Born on a Mississippi farm, Dr. Gordy earned his undergraduate degree at Mississippi College. He came to North Carolina in 1932 as a graduate student and teaching assistant in physics at the University in Chapel Hill. He received his M.A. and, in 1935, his Ph.D.
Following six years of teaching and research, Dr. Gordy won a fellowship to work with Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology. His work was interrupted by the onset of World War II, and he moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he spent the war years working on the development of microwave radar.
In 1946, Dr. Gordy brought several top assistants from M.I.T. and his own impressive background to Duke University, where he began an effort to apply scientific techniques developed in wartime to basic research. The Duke Microwave Laboratory has since become a major center for microwave research, recognized worldwide as a leader in spectroscopy.
As a teacher, Dr. Gordy has insured that his knowledge will not be confined to a single laboratory. He has supervised the research of seventy-five doctoral candidates and trained almost sixty postdoctoral fellows, many of whom hold high positions in institutions around the world. Dr. Gordy has also spoken out more than once about the need for strong physics programs in colleges and universities; his support has benefited physics departments at the University of North Carolina and other schools as well as Duke.
His colleagues in the scientific and academic communities have honored Walter Gordy many times over, bestowing such awards as the Science Research Award of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of North Carolina. This summer, Duke University held in his honor a conference on microwave spectroscopy. Dr. Gordy is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has served with more than a dozen other national organizations. His books, articles and papers number almost three hundred.
Dr. Gordy and his wife Vida live in Durham. They have a son and a daughter.
Sam Ragan
Fine Arts
Sam Ragan receives the North Carolina Award in the Fine Arts for his many and diverse contributions to the artistic environment of his home state.
Samuel Talmadge Ragan was born in Berea in Granville County. He is a graduate of Atlantic Christian College and was awarded a Doctor of Literature degree by that same school in 1972.
Mr. Ragan was the first Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Art, Culture and History (now Cultural Resources), serving in 1972-73. He is a past Chairman of the North Carolina Arts Council-he is still on the board of directors-and was on the founding commission and original board of trustees of the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has served as President of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association and on a number of boards and commissions of statewide cultural institutions. He is President of Friends of Weymouth, which operates Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines.
As a journalist he served as managing editor and executive editor of The News and Observer in Raleigh for 20 years and has worked on other newspapers in North Carolina and Texas. He is a past President of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association of America, the largest newspaper organization in the country, and of the North Carolina Press Association. He also was a Director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Presently he is editor and publisher of The Pilot in Southern Pines.
Mr. Ragan is the author of two prize-winning collections of poetry--The Tree in the Far Pasture and To the Water's Edge--as well as works of non-fiction: The New Day, Dixie Looked Away, Free Press and Fair Trial and, with Elizabeth Ives, Back to Beginnings. He is a consulting editor of several literary magazines and a contributing editor of World Book Encyclopedia.
As a teacher, commentator and concerned artist, Mr. Ragan has generously shared his skills and insight with others. A past chairman of the North Carolina Writers Conference, he for nine years conducted the Writers Workshop at North Carolina State University and also taught journalism and contemporary issues. He has also been on the faculties of St. Andrews College and Sandhills College.
He has served as moderator of the North Carolina Literary Forum in Raleigh since 1957 and of the North Carolina Writers Forum in Charlotte since 1964.
He is married to the former Marjorie Usher of Laurel Hill. They have two daughters.
Sam Ragan receives the North Carolina Award in the Fine Arts for his many and diverse contributions to the artistic en�vironment of his home state.
Samuel Talmadge Ragan was born in Berea in Granville County. He is a graduate of Atlantic Christian College and was awarded a Doctor of Literature degree by that same school in 1972.
Mr. Ragan was the first Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Art, Culture and History (now Cultural Resources), serving in 1972-73. He is a past Chairman of the North Carolina Arts Council he is still on the board of directors and was on the founding commission and original board of trustees of the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has served as President of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association and on a number of boards and commissions of statewide cultural institutions. He is President of Friends of Weymouth, which operates Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines.
As a journalist he served as managing editor and executive editor of The News and Observer in Raleigh for 20 years and has worked on other newspapers in North Carolina and Texas. He is a past President of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association of America, the largest newspaper organization in the country, and of the North Carolina Press Association. He also was a Director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Presently he is editor and publisher of The Pilot in Southern Pines.
Mr. Ragan is the author of two prize-winning collections of poetry The Tree in the Far Pasture and To the Water's Edge as well as works of non-fiction: The New Day, Dixie Looked Away, Free Press and Fair Trial and, with Elizabeth Ives, Back to Beginnings. He is a consulting editor of several literary magazines and a contributing editor of World Book Encyclopedia.
As a teacher, commentator and concerned artist, Mr. Ragan has generously shared his skills and insight with others. A past chairman of the North Carolina Writers Conference, he for nine years conducted the Writers Workshop at North Carolina State University and also taught journalism and contemporary issues. He has also been on the faculties of St. Andrews College and Sandhills College.
He has served as moderator of the North Carolina Literary Forum in Raleigh since 1957 and of the North Carolina Writers Forum in Charlotte since 1964. He is married to the former Marjorie Usher of Laurel Hill. They have two daughters.
