E A S T C A R O L I N A U N I V E R S I T Y
r e s e a r c h a n d c r e a t i v e a c t i v i t y SPRING 2000
AFTERMATH OF A FLOOD
Also in this issue: History Off the Record,
Opera at Full Throttle, Safety First
and Erasmus, Man of Letters
easing the tension
East Carolina University is in the midst of enormous change. We expect
our student body to grow significantly over the course of the next few years. We are
evolving into a more research- and creative-activity-intensive university. We are
striving to nurture and grow our graduate education programs and are continuing
to add new, relevant doctoral programs. We are strengthening our engagement
with the entire region of eastern North Carolina.
All this, of course, creates a certain tension as many members of our
community worry that we will not be able to accomplish all of this without damage
to our undergraduate programs. This concern is justified as we have seen in many
major research universities where faculty have time only for their research activities,
undergraduate students are taught primarily by graduate assistants and university
resources are rarely used to benefit the communities in which they reside.
I am convinced that these worries are unfounded at East Carolina. In fact,
research and creative activity are endeavors that everyone at the university can and
should be involved in. Done well, these activities can and will improve undergradu-ate
education.
Consider these benefits:
• Faculty members engaged in research and creative activity are more
energized. They are better prepared to teach because they are on the cutting edge
of their disciplines.
• Undergraduate students are provided the opportunity to know the thrill
and excitement of research.
• As ECU nurtures its reputation for scholarly achievement, the quality of
students who want to enroll here will increase, and this benefits everyone.
• As the university grows and matures and establishes its expertise, it can
more readily fuel economic development.
• Faculty members develop expertise in many fields that can be made
available to communities as they solve old problems and plan more vibrant futures.
This is especially important in the wake of Hurricane Floyd.
Clearly at this stage in East Carolina’s development, research and creative
activity go hand-in-hand with undergraduate education. Everyone wins.
In this, the third issue of edge, you will find superb examples of how our
research is directed toward producing a better, more engaged university with
wonderful opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students.
— Dr. Thomas L. Feldbush,
Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies
edge r e s e a r c h & c r e a t i v e a c t i v i t y
EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
Spring 2000
w w w . e c u . e d u / r e s e a r c h / e d g e
PUBLISHER
Dr. Thomas L. Feldbush
Vice Chancellor, Research and Graduate Studies
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
John Durham
Director, News and Communications Services
EDITORIAL BOARD
Tom Fortner
Director, Medical Center News and Information
Dr. Alan A. Schreier
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Dr. Emilie S. Kane
Associate Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
EDITOR
Garnet Bass
DESIGNER
Linda Noble
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Cliff Hollis
News and Communications Services
Tony Rumple
News and Communications Services
edge is published by the Division of Research and
Graduate Studies at East Carolina University.
Any written portion of this publication may
be reprinted with appropriate credit.
COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS
John Durham
East Carolina University
News and Communications Services
Howard House
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d u r h a m j @ m a i l . e c u . e d u
© 2000 by East Carolina University
Printed by Theo Davis Sons, Zebulon, NC
Printed on recycled paper.
4,000 copies of this public document were printed
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profile
18 T H E R E L U C T A N T D I V A
Louise Toppin never meant to be a singer, but talent
will out. Today the soprano’s performance schedule takes
her around the globe.
explorations
27 H O P E F O R F L U E N C Y
Patented device may eliminate stuttering.
28 T H E T R E A S U R E
O F T H E A L T I P L A N O
Through hindcasting, cores from the Bolivian Andes may
yield clues to future global climate.
30 S O U N D S F I S H Y
Love songs of spawning fish point the way to better
management plans.
31 L O S I N G P L A C E , L O S I N G H O P E
Social and economic upheavals batter African refugees.
in print
32 A look at recent publications by ECU faculty.
inside ECU
34 • Newest Ph.D. students jump into research,
presentations
• Telemedicine grant to advance work on
Next Generation Internet
• License income up as inventions roll in
on the cover
A toy fire truck left behind in a Princeville home tells of the
heartbreak of the flood of ’99. ECU geographers Paul Gares and
Scott Lecce (on the back cover) examine the exterior of the ruins.
Photograph by Cliff Hollis. Story, page 6.
abstracts
2 • Seeking the signals to halt MS
• Robotics surgery system comes to ECU
• ECU joins elite on high-speed network
• A smoother path to distance education
• A dollar figure for the environment
• A tree grows in Howell
• Life on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean
• Getting work teams to work
features
6 N O T I N A T H O U S A N D Y E A R S
Eastern North Carolina was stunned by the flood of ’99.
ECU seeks to learn from the event and aid the region’s
recovery.
• ECU Conference on Floyd, Flooding Attracts
Big Names in Disaster Planning
13 O F F T H E R E C O R D
Because written records reveal only part of the story, many
scholars go straight to the source to understand history
and culture.
• Reflected values
• Sandhills memories
2 2 H A R D H A T S O N L Y
Bicycle helmets get a big push in an effort to reduce injuries in
eastern North Carolina.
2 4 R E N A I S S A N C E M A N
In the 16th century, Erasmus opened the eyes of the world
to a new way of thinking. Today, an international team of
scholars hopes to open the eyes of the world to Erasmus.
1 • SPRING 2000 •
i n s i d e e d g e
• SPRING 2000 • 2
abstracts
Robotics
surgery
system comes
to ECU
Surgeons at the School of
Medicine have begun training on one of only
two da Vinci computer-assisted surgical
systems in the United States. The manufac-turer,
Intuitive Surgical of California, selected
the ECU-affiliated University Health Systems
of Eastern Carolina and the Ohio State
University Medical Center to install and test
the $1 million system in November.
The computer-guided robotics system
aids surgeons during heart valve and bypass
r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
T he National Institutes of Health
estimates that more than 250,000 Americans
have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, or
MS, a chronic, progressive disease in which the
body’s immune system attacks the protective
covering of nerve cells in the spinal cord and
brain. The disease impairs the ability of nerves
to transmit signals, sometimes resulting in the
temporary or permanent loss of function.
No cure exists today, and the primary
therapy calls for suppressing the general
immune system, which leaves patients
susceptible to infection. In his lab at the School
of Medicine, Dr. Mark D. Mannie, associate
professor of microbiology and immunology, is
trying to understand the immune system’s self-regulating
mechanisms in hopes of activating
them against the disease.
The immune system is so complex,
Mannie said, that “it’s very difficult to
understand why we don’t all have auto-immune
disease.” It must learn, for example, to
distinguish what belongs in the body from what
doesn’t, even though the two may be closely
related, such as the bacteria that cause infection
and the bacteria that help the intestines to
function properly. The distinction is crucial.
When the system goes awry, as with MS, the
Seeking the signal to halt MS
immune system incorrectly identifies the body’s
own tissue as foreign and attacks it.
The brains of the immune system are the
T-helper lymphocytes, or T cells, which make
the call on whether to launch an immune
response. Each T cell is designed to react to a
specific foreign protein, or antigen. When it
detects the trigger antigen, the T cell activates
and divides repeatedly to marshal large forces
against the foreigner. Mannie is looking into
this activation process and a second process
that causes activated T cell clones to acquire
and display the trigger antigen. When this
happens, the T cells kill each other and stop
the immune response. His goal is to learn how
to turn this self-regulating mechanism into a
defense against rogue T cells that attack the
nervous system in MS. The research is funded
by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Immunology, Mannie said, is a relatively
young field that has shown tremendous
growth in recent years. “I think over the next
five to 10 years, we may work out [the
fundamentals], and then immunology will
come into a golden age,” he said. “During this
period, we’ll find specific therapies for
autoimmune disease, organ rejection and
allergic disease.” •
procedures, enabling them to operate through
dime-size incisions. The result should be less
post-operative pain, shorter hospital stays and
faster recovery, said Dr. Randolph Chitwood,
director of the Greenville Heart Center.
Traditional open-heart surgery involves
making a 12-inch incision in the patient’s chest
and opening the rib cage. With the da Vinci
system, small robotic arms are inserted into the
patient’s chest through three half-inch incisions.
One arm holds a tiny camera that projects three-dimensional
images onto a monitor in front of
the surgeon. The other two arms hold the
pencil-size instruments. Using the camera as his
eyes, the surgeon guides the instruments from a
computerized master control console.
ECU will conduct a national clinical study
of robotics-assisted surgery for the replacement
and repair of mitral valves, located between the
chambers on the left side of the heart. Ohio
State will focus on performing coronary artery
procedures with da Vinci.
In Europe, where it has been approved for
use, the da Vinci system has assisted in more
than 100 cardiac procedures and more than 150
general surgical procedures. ECU’s Chitwood
became the first American to perform a mitral
valve repair using da Vinci in February 1999
in Germany. He predicted that the robotics
system eventually will benefit patients
undergoing general surgery and gynecologic,
thoracic and urologic procedures. •
Mark Mannie hopes the immune system’s
self-regulating mechanisms may be activated
to stop the progression of multiple sclerosis.
3 • SPRING 2000 •
a b s t r a c t s
ECU joins elite
on high-speed
network
ECU is preparing to tap into the nation’s
highest-performance computer networking system.
The National Science Foundation has awarded
the university a $341,000, two-year grant to connect
the campus to NSF’s high-performance Backbone
Network Service. The high speed and bandwidth of
the new service will allow scientists and engineers to
collaborate and share powerful computer and
information resources. The service network
connecting the ECU campus to the Internet is 15
times faster than the previous connection. It now
runs at 155 million bits per second and has begun a
move upward in speed to 2.4 gigabits per second,
compared with the previous 10 million bits per
second. This spring, the internal campus backbone
will be upgraded from the current 155 million bits
per second to 1 billion bits per second, full duplex.
In a related move, the university has joined the
ranks of 163 universities connected to the nation-wide
high-speed research network system called
Internet2. Together they form the University
Corporation for Advanced Internet Development.
Only four other North Carolina universities share
this distinction: UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, Duke
and Wake Forest.
“Our participation in this high-speed data
system will provide a boost to our research abilities
in the sciences and technology,” said Dr. Jeffrey
Huskamp, ECU’s associate vice chancellor and the
chief information technology officer.
Three research programs are targeted for the
first applications of the high band width:
telemedicine, biochemistry and physics experimenta-tion
in violin acoustics. Other applications — from
research projects to distance education and library
services — will be phased in over the next year. The
university is developing procedures for allocating
time and space on the bandwidth to ensure quality
of service for data-intensive applications.
Huskamp said the NSF grant recognizes the
quality of ECU’s research and its ongoing commit-ment
to technology. The university has spent $16
million over the past five years upgrading the
campus network. It also has committed to
upgrading faculty desktop computers every three
years and to maintaining student computer labs at
the state-of-the-art level. •
The School of Industry and Technology has partnered with Ericsson
Wireless Internet Solutions to devise strategies and technologies for improved
distance education.
The school began working with distance learning in 1994, delivering
courses to students at Black and Decker plants in North Carolina and Maryland.
“What we found was that the Internet chokes down when tools such as video
and graphics are being used,” said Dr. David Hillis, co-director of the project
with Dr. Barry DuVall. “But the performance of Internet-based education was
so promising that we wanted to take it to a third level that will allow us to
bypass the choke point of the Internet while still making use of the Internet
tools and the interactive things that we want to do over the Internet.”
ECU’s new network service (see story, this page) will improve capabilities
from campus, but students working from homes and offices do not have access
to the same high-speed service. The partnership with Ericsson seeks to
overcome such inherent problems. Ericsson Wireless Internet Solutions focuses
on developing wireless data technologies to enable faster, easier and more
secure access for mobile professionals in handling e-mail, accessing and
transferring files and browsing the Internet from remote locations.
The $4.6 million project is called On-line Wireless Learning Solutions.
Ericsson’s wireless division, based in Research Triangle Park, is providing
major funding and technology support. The U.S. Department of Education also
is contributing $924,437 through a “Learn Anywhere, Anytime” partnership.
ECU was one of 29 campuses selected to receive the federal funding last fall.
The new technologies will be tested over the next three years through a
distance learning consortium offering more than 40 courses from nine
universities. In addition to ECU, those schools are Eastern Michigan Univer-sity,
Central Missouri State University, Indiana State University, the University
of Wisconsin/Stout, Texas Southern University, Bowling Green State Univer-sity
and the University of Louisiana, de Lafayette. •
A smoother path
to distance education
Wireless communication
technology will enable the
creation of a global classroom,
says Barry DuVall, co-director
of the On-line Wireless Learning
Solutions project.
• SPRING 2000 • 4
abstracts
How much is clean air worth to
you? Or clean water? What would you be
willing to pay to ensure the health of coastal
fisheries?
For the past five years, Drs. John
Whitehead and Timothy Haab in the Depart-ment
of Economics have collaborated on a
series of studies examining just such questions.
Their goal is to help policy makers understand
the economic value of natural resources and, by
extension, the cost of public policies that
protect — or fail to protect — the environment.
“The environment is something we don’t
think of in terms of economics,” Whitehead
said. “With a car or a candy bar, we know what
it’s worth by what people will pay. If we can
put the same kind of economic valuation on
natural resources, then we can figure the true
cost of policies. And if the value of the resource
is higher than the cost of the policy to protect
it, that’s good public policy.”
Their projects have crisscrossed the state.
In Gaston County, commuters driving into
Charlotte were willing to ante up $14 a month
for vehicle emissions testing and other
measures to improve air quality in the region.
In another study, the researchers found that 86
percent of coastal fishermen were willing to
pay for recreational fishing licenses and
estimated the net value to the state at about $21
million annually. (The legislature nonetheless
declined to implement the licensing require-ment.)
They also found that farmers in the
Neuse River basin were less willing than other
property owners to spend money to improve
water quality in the river.
Whitehead and Haab also have put their
methodology, which involves household
A dollar figure for the environment
r e s e a r c h b r i e f s
surveys, to the test. “When you ask hypothetical
questions about the environment, people give
responses that are realistic and can be used to
develop policies,” Haab said. Some courts have
begun accepting data from similar surveys in
assigning monetary damages from manmade
environmental disasters.
Two current projects have turned the re-searchers’
attention back to fisheries. The Na-tional
Marine Fisheries Service has contracted
with them to study the value of marine recre-ational
fishing throughout the Southeast. In an-other
project, they will look at how people re-spond
to news reports of seafood risk. Funded
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration,
Seagrant and the Environmental
Protection Agency, the project will establish a
method for determining the economic impact of
Pfiesteria outbreaks in the Mid-Atlantic states. •
A tree grows
in Howell
You must look closely to see the
forest growing in Dr. Ronald Newton’s
laboratory in Howell Science Complex. There,
on shelf after shelf full of petri dishes,
thousands of microscopic fraser firs and
Virginia pines are being coaxed into existence.
It is the first step in a long, slow process that
may one day lead to healthier stands of trees.
Newton, a plant physiologist and
chairman of the Biology Department, seeks
to use genetic engineering to produce trees
with greater resistance to environmental stress.
His primary target: fraser firs and Virginia pines
that can withstand drought.
Traditional tree-breeding through cross-pollination
is largely a hit-or-miss proposition.
Biotechnology, on the other hand, presents
scientists with a way to pinpoint the gene or
genes that control a characteristic like drought
tolerance, insert those specific genes into the
DNA of other trees, then clone these tough,
new trees to get millions just like them. Just
don’t expect results tomorrow. “Technology
and research take time,” Newton said.
Before coming to ECU in 1998, Newton
worked with scientists at Texas A&M University
who developed technology for isolating genes
that respond to environmental stresses. The
group isolated 20 genes in loblolly pines that
“turn on” when drought begins to stress a
tree. Newton then identified the proteins that
five of those genes produce. The proteins help
explain how the genes work. Because of
similarities among conifers, he said, the same
technology will advance his work at ECU with
Virginia pines and fraser firs.
For now, Newton is concentrating on
developing technology that will allow him to
clone trees efficiently. In one line of experi-ments,
he takes tissue from seeds and treats
it with hormones to encourage multiple
embryos to develop. A second approach
encourages the tissue to develop shoots
and the shoots to develop roots. So far, only
1 percent of every 4,000 to 5,000 attempts
will produce viable seedlings, and it can take
several months of careful nurturing to know
which petri dish will bear fruit. Eventually,
immature plants like these will become the
targets for gene transfer experiments. Cloning
also will be important for propagating any
trees that are developed. •
Ronald Newton nurtures fraser fir seedlings in the
greenhouse where, eventually, he plans to raise
genetically improved firs and pines.
5 • SPRING 2000 •
a b s t r a c t s
Flexibility and speed have made
small-group work teams a mainstay of modern
business. College classrooms have been slower
to adapt.
“A major criticism of collegiate education
that we hear from business is, ‘We work in
teams, but you’re sending us people who don’t
know how,’ ” said Michael E. McLeod,
associate professor of business.
To answer the criticism, McLeod and two
colleagues turned a core business course into an
experiment in how to make small groups work
better. Over several semesters, they assigned
students to work in project teams but gave
T
Getting work teams to work
sections of the course different amounts of
guidance. Some received the assignment with
no additional instruction. Some received the
assignment with a description of the roles
needed to make the group function smoothly
— such as team leader and meeting coordina-tor.
Still others received the project assignment,
the information on roles and short training
sessions in such topics as conflict resolution
and time management. In the end, the
professors found that with more guidance up
front, the groups developed greater cohesive-ness
and did higher quality work.
“The bottom line for education is don’t
just put teams together and turn them loose,” said
Dr. John Bradley, associate professor of business.
“The more you help them understand roles, the
more you help them know how to function in a
team. And the same thing would apply to any
new job in industry.”
Bradley and McLeod conducted the project
with Dr. Brian Mennecke, who has since moved
on to Iowa State University. Their report on the
project won the award for best paper at the
December 1998 conference of the International
Academy for Information Management and
appeared in the fall ’99 issue of the Journal of
Informatics Education and Research. •
It only makes sense that critters on the
floor of the Arctic Ocean take a while to warm
up and become active after winter’s deep freeze.
Or so scientists once theorized.
Dr. Lisa M. Clough, assistant professor
of biology, has discovered a different scenario.
By late May, still early in the Arctic spring,
creatures from bacteria to starfish are revved up
and running despite the frigid temperatures.
This is well ahead of activity by animals in the
water column itself.
Furthermore, Clough has found that these
bottom creatures are feasting on pieces of ice
algae, which disputes another theory. Ice algae
are collections of single-cell plants held together
by mucus in strands up to 30 feet long. They
generally hang down from the thick sheet of ice
covering the surface, and scientists who study
the water column had suggested that ice algae
always float. Clough’s studies, however, show
that at least some of that ice algae fall to the
ocean’s floor to become an important source of
food for animals living there.
As a benthic ecologist, Clough studies
the bottom of the marine ecosystem with a
special emphasis on the Arctic Ocean. She is
particularly interested in the food chain and the
chemical interactions that take place as animals
feed on plants and each other, only to decay
(eventually) and cycle nutrients back to the
plants. The process is known as carbon cycling,
carbon being the common element in all life
forms. Because organic carbon locked up in
plants and animals is not available to form
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, understand-ing
carbon cycling in the Arctic may eventually
help scientists decipher the Arctic’s role in
regulating global climate.
Arctic research carries its challenges.
Clough vies for space with other scientists on
Coast Guard icebreakers and relies on a giant
underwater steam shovel to scoop boxes of
mud and ocean life from two miles below the
water’s surface. It takes three hours on the
ship’s deck in freezing temperatures to process
each scoopful for the lab. Then for two days,
Clough takes round-the-clock measurements
of oxygen consumption in the ship’s lab. These
help her determine the animals’ metabolic rates.
She also bring frozen samples back to campus
for carbon studies that pinpoint food sources.
In addition to doing her own research,
Clough was the chief scientist in charge of
coordinating the research efforts of more than
30 colleagues onboard a 1998 Arctic cruise.
She also serves on a committee overseeing
science taking place on the U.S. Coast Guard
icebreaker fleet.
A new
icebreaker holds
special promise.
Larger and potentially
more powerful than
the current 400-foot
models, it should be
able to plow its way
into the Arctic Ocean
in winter. So far,
Clough has found
that bottom-dwelling
animals are most
active in spring, then
slow down by July. “I
would love to get up
there in winter to see
if they’ve shut down
and find out how they
know to turn on
again in spring,” she
said. “This new
icebreaker may be
able to get us there.”
Her work has
been funded by the
National Science Foundation and National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
National Undersea Research Program. •
Life on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean
In her lab, Lisa Clough studies
organisms from the Arctic to
learn about their food sources.
Not in a Thousand Years
Pattillo Elementary fourth-graders take the field for a game of kickball
Two elementary schools were destroyed,
and of the 57,000 homes flooded, about
7,000 were damaged beyond repair.
In Pitt County, home of East
Carolina University, the Tar River
crested at 17 feet above flood stage. One-third
of the county was under water. The
campus suffered $7 million in damages
when Green Mill Run, a tributary of the
Tar, overflowed. Hundreds of students
and staff living off campus lost their
homes, clothes and cars.
Even scientists who had long
warned of the potential for such events
were stunned. Dr. Stanley R. Riggs,
professor emeritus of geology, canoed
through tree tops to check on a cabin
he owns on the south side of the Tar
River. “I wouldn’t have thought in a
thousand years I’d see my cabin in the
river,” he said.
Despite the personal loss, Riggs saw
the beauty of a deep blue sky reflected in
the flowing water. Then a strong north
wind brought the mooing of cattle from
the far side of the river. “As I was
standing there, the bawling from the cattle
became louder and more and more
frantic,” he said. “Then after 10 or 15
minutes, it went totally silent. Three
hundred head of cattle drowned. It
brought very clearly into focus that this
was a serious economic disaster for a lot
of people.”
Throughout the crisis, the ECU
family pitched in to help. Faculty and staff
of the School of Medicine helped guide
Pitt County Memorial Hospital as it coped
with loss of power and water and called in
the National Guard to ferry supplies and
patients from areas cut off by flood water.
University students, faculty and staff
• SPRING 2000 • 6
EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
WAS STUNNED BY THE FLOOD
OF ’99. ECU SEEKS TO LEARN
FROM THE EVENT AND AID
THE REGION’S RECOVERY. E
astern North Carolinians
gained a new measuring stick for
hurricanes in the fall of 1999. To
measures of wind and storm surge,
they now add rain.
By the time Hurricanes Dennis,
Floyd and Irene had done their damage,
dumping more than 36 inches of rain in
some places, people knew the meaning
of a 400-year-flood event. All told,
19,000 square miles of farms, towns and
forests were flooded — an area nearly
twice the size of the state of Maryland.
between rows of trailers that serve as classrooms, library and administrative offices.
mucked out the homes of neighbors
and friends, retrieved salvageable
belongings and raised money for relief
efforts. Faculty monitored water quality
and advised state and local officials on
environmental safety and structural
damage.
As the immediate crisis passed, the
university turned its attention to the
future. Chancellor Richard Eakin led a
three-day fact-finding tour of affected
counties and offered ECU’s expertise
in helping map the recovery process.
More than 250 faculty, staff and other
professionals volunteered their services
free of charge to communities, businesses
and individuals. Many did not wait to
be asked. They launched service and
research projects to help people cope
with the disaster and to learn from it.
A few of their stories follow.
COPING WITH TRAUMA
Six months after the flood, gutted
homes and piles of trash attest that life
has yet to return to normal in eastern
North Carolina. At the United Methodist
Church in Grifton, where the School of
Medicine is running a twice-a-month
mental health clinic, other signs appear:
depression, fatigue, irritability and a host
of symptoms that add up to the condition
known as post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The moment the weather
changes, especially if it clouds up or
starts to rain, they get anxious,” said Dr.
Thaddeus Ulzen, associate professor of
psychiatry. “People are more affected
by what happened than they thought
they would be. The flood has left the
headlines, but people are still struggling
to get their lives together.”
7 • SPRING 2000 •
C o n t i n u e d
• SPRING 2000 • 8
Rising waters forced 700 people to flee
their homes in this small Pitt County town.
One Saturday in mid-February, 40 of them
visited the clinic. There the team of psychia-trists,
family physicians, psychologists,
pharmacists and clinical social workers tried
to help them begin to reorder their lives and
to understand that their feelings are normal,
even if their circumstances aren’t. The clinic
will run into the summer.
In Pitt County Schools, another ECU
group is assessing and helping students
traumatized by the flood through school- and
home-based interventions. “We know that over
2,000 kids lived in homes that had serious
damage,” said Dr. Lane Geddie, assistant
professor of psychology. “We saw ourselves as
one of the few organizations with the
manpower to reach such a large number.”
Eight faculty members and 30 students
from psychology, marriage and family therapy,
nursing and psychiatry are involved in the
project. One is Dr. Kaye McGinty, assistant
professor of psychiatry. She spoke of a pre-holiday
workshop for students. “Their parents
were working three or four jobs to try to get
their families back on their feet,” she said.
“The teenagers talked about getting jobs to
help the families. The people in our group
were flabbergasted. The teens seemed to be
coping pretty well, but the stress in their
families is extreme.”
The N.C. Division of Mental Health is
looking into expanding school-based
interventions. It has applied for a grant from
the Federal Emergency Management Agency
to train social workers and psychologists in
31 counties to lead group sessions for children
on coping with trauma. It has asked McGinty
and others in the Department of Psychiatry to
act as trainers and advisers.
STRESS RELIEF
In Edgecombe County, a different
kind of school-based intervention is taking
place. On a sunny day in November, about
25 fourth-graders huddled on the makeshift
playground at the makeshift school.
“All right, let’s go over the rules,” Dr.
Carmen Russoniello told them. “No fighting.
No hitting. If you break the rules, it’s over.”
Then Russoniello,
assistant professor of
recreation and leisure
studies, mentioned the
event that shadowed their
young lives. Who lost
something in the flood?
Almost every youngster
raised a hand. “I lost my
house, my grandma’s
house and my uncle’s
house,” one said, “and
my clothes and my shoes.”
A minute more of quiet talk, and
they broke the huddle with a mighty
yell. For the next 40 minutes they ran
relays, played kickball and tossed
Frisbees ��� working off more energy
than the average adult can even
remember.
“What we’re trying to do, in
addition to normal growth and
development, is to do things that
address the behavioral problems that
are emerging,” Russoniello said. “This
is an opportunity to plant seeds that will help
them deal with trauma.”
Russoniello brought this combination of
mental and recreational therapy to Edgecombe
County in answer to a cry for help. About half
of the 500 fourth- and fifth-graders in
Tarboro’s Pattillo Elementary lost their homes
in the flood. They also lost their school. Pattillo
now operates out of mobile classrooms set up
on the grounds of the National Guard Armory.
For nearly the entire day, even lunchtime, the
children are confined to a single classroom.
Soon after school reopened, children and
teachers neared their limits.
Then Dana Alexander, the school social
worker, made a phone call, and Russoniello
and his students arrived, armed with recre-ational
equipment and almost as much energy
as the children.
“You could see the difference in the
children immediately,” Alexander said. “They
can learn math much better at 2 o’clock if
they’ve been outside and run off some of that
energy.”
What began as impromptu assistance has
become a formal alliance. Russoniello’s
students travel to
Pattillo three days a
week as part of
their classwork.
Some lead
youngsters in
group activities
while others work
one-on-one with
children having
emotional and
behavioral
problems. A
special stress-reduction
workshop
answered the needs
of teachers. The
university funded a
graduate student to
coordinate the
project and
provides a
university van.
As the recreation students arranged
donations of playground equipment, others at
9 • SPRING 2000 •
ECU also adopted Pattillo. One volunteer
group launched a “T’s and Tales” drive to
collect T-shirts and new books for the children.
Another group raised enough money to bus the
entire school to Greenville for a theater
production of Charlotte’s Web. Russoniello
said the alliance will last until the children get
into their new school — or longer.
BEFORE AND AFTER
A broader perspective on mental health
comes from the social sciences. “There are a
lot of articles about how a natural disaster
affects your mental health, but almost none of
it has any indication of mental health
beforehand for comparison,” said Dr. Marieke
Van Willigen, assistant professor of sociology.
She can now supply the missing information.
Luck played a role. Early last fall, Van
Willigen was studying the social and
psychological benefits of volunteering. As part
of her research, she had included questions
about three key indicators of mental health on
the Annual Survey of Eastern North Carolina
conducted by the ECU Survey Research Lab
beginning last August. The flood interrupted
the survey. When it was completed, Van
Willigen was able to compare the psychologi-cal
well-being of respondents before and after
the flood.
Her questions included three measures
recognized as indicators of psychological well-being:
whether people feel a sense of control
over their lives, whether they feel part of a
support network of people and whether they
feel their lives have meaning or purpose. The
flood hit women particularly hard on two of the
three measures. When it came to the sense of
control over their lives, both men and women
scored lower after the flood without any major
differences between the sexes. In terms of
social support and sense of purpose, women
scored much lower than men.
“With social support, that’s significant
because women tend to have higher levels of
social support, and here it actually flipped,” she
said. “Women were higher before the flood and
lower after it. The results concerning sense of
purpose or meaning were interesting, too. [My
students] thought people would have had eye-opening
experiences that added meaning to
their lives, but that is not reinforced at all.”
EVACUATIONS
Van Willigen is part of a team of social
scientists examining the impact of the flood
from several angles. The team is led by
sociology professor Dr. John Maiolo and also
includes Drs. Bob Edwards and Ken Wilson in
sociology and John Whitehead in economics.
The collaboration began in 1998. After
Hurricane Bonnie, the N.C. Division of Emer-gency
Management contracted with them to
study the evacuation patterns of households and
businesses in the eight counties that touch the
Atlantic Ocean. They also collected informa-tion
on property damage. The study involved
surveying 1,000 residents and 600 businesses
and created a tool the state can use to estimate
the economic effects of an evacuation order.
Among their findings:
• 26 percent of residents on the coast
evacuated.
• Evacuation cost the average household
about $200.
• The cost of an evacuation to businesses
varied substantially according to the type of
business and timing of the evacuation.
• People with disabilities were less likely to
evacuate than were able-bodied people.
C o n t i n u e d
FACING PAGE: From the top, retired
professor Caroline Ayers sorts donations for
flood victims. Gary Galloway rows by his
home in Grimesland. Floodwaters swamp
U.S. 64 Bypass at Tarboro.
THIS PAGE: Carmen Russoniello brings a
combination of mental and recreational
therapy to the displaced students of Pattillo
Elementary.
• SPRING 2000 • 10
• Property owned by blacks was more likely
to suffer damage, but the damage was less
severe than to property owned by whites.
• Households where there was a disability
were more likely to suffer damage and the
damage amounted to a substantially larger
percentage of household income than for
households without a disability.
Now they plan to repeat the survey
in those eight counties and to extend it to
31 inland counties, refining the economic
assessment tool and teasing out more
information along the way.
BUSINESS LOSSES
The team was on a faster track to assess
Floyd’s damage to businesses in eastern North
Carolina. They had 30 days to complete the
study and turn in a report to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
In most disaster areas, FEMA contacts
businesses individually to gather damage
assessments. In this case, that would have
meant calling on 100,000 business owners.
FEMA sought another way.
Using their experience with the Bonnie
study, the social scientists surveyed a random
sample of 3,000 business in the 44 counties.
Based on the survey, they projected a total of
$1 billion in physical damages and $4 billion
in lost revenue.
Wilson was stunned by some of the
particulars. Going in, he expected that any job
loss figures would reflect plants that had to
close because of flood damage. Not so.
“Eastern North Carolina lost over 30,000 jobs,”
he said, “but most of those were in businesses
laying off one or two people. These are very
small cutbacks, but when you get 30,000
pinpricks, it can have an effect on the
economy.”
Another finding also had long-term
consequences. Of all the businesses that had
been planning to expand before the flood, only
half expected to carry through with those plans
at the time of the survey. “I’m not sure that it
won’t bounce back over time as the economy
gets more positive,” Wilson said. “But at least
for a while they’re waiting to see what
happens.”
THE FUTURE
The flood exacerbated
already dire conditions in
eastern North Carolina. The
area has long been mired in
poverty. Recent developments
in the tobacco industry and
declining prices for pork and
other agricultural commodities
promised to drag the economy
down further. How, many
asked, can an area with so few
resources rebound?
“This is so huge that no
one knows what the first step
should be,” said Albert A. Delia, associate vice
chancellor for regional development. “We
need a coordinated response.”
To lead the response, ECU has estab-lished
the Sustainable Economic Recovery and
Growth Center. The center’s purpose is to
focus the resources of ECU and other
institutions on revitalizing the 40-county
region. Its multi-pronged approach will include
applied research, policy analysis, a venture
capital fund and new models for community
development and transportation planning.
Eastern North Carolina legislators have
pledged to push the General Assembly to
allocate funds for a permanent endowment for
the center.
THE FLOODPLAIN
Snow and ice dotted the landscape on a
February Saturday when a team of ECU
scientists piled out of a van at a deserted filling
station. Time was precious. Before spring
growth could disguise the landscape, they had
a chance to study sediment deposited by a
massive flood. So in the early morning chill,
they pulled on rubber boots, collected their
gear and headed off down the dike that once
protected the town of Princeville from the Tar
River.
“The question geomorphologists have is
whether a rare event like this deposits a lot of
sediment,” said Dr. Scott Lecce, assistant
11 • SPRING 2000 •
professor of geography. “The answers have a
lot of implications for how we interpret the
stratigraphic record.”
Along with Lecce, the group consists of
Drs. Paul Gares and Pat Pease in geography and
Catherine Rigsby in geology. From Tarboro to
Washington, they are surveying the floodplain
to see what the Tar River left behind. Along the
way, they collect samples to be analyzed for
soil type, heavy metal content and chemical
contamination. They plot each location using
the satellite-based Global Positioning System.
In the end, they will map the patterns of
distribution and link those with the typography,
land use and flood records. They also will be
able to compare actual sediment distribution
with estimates prepared by the U.S. Geological
Survey.
“If I were guessing ahead of time, I would
have thought we’d find two to three centimeters
of sediment,” Lecce said. “It would have been
that noticeable.”
In most places, however, they find so little
they must carefully separate flood-deposited
soil from autumn’s leaf fall. When one small
area turned up an inch-thick layer of crusted
and cracked mud, it was enough to start the
speculation. “I think the interesting thing is why
here,” Gares said. “Where does this stuff come
from and why is it deposited here and not
elsewhere?”
The group huddled. Perhaps frequent low-level
flooding routinely flushes out the system.
Maybe it had to do with the sequence of events
last fall. North Carolina had been in a drought
before hurricane season and the river level was
exceptionally low. Then when Dennis, the first
major storm hit, maybe it eroded most of the
loose soil and carried it to the estuary before the
river topped its banks. Or maybe this river
simply doesn’t carry much sediment.
Somewhere in the muck, they hope to find
the answers.
THE SOUND
For biologists, the flood has left a different
set of questions. One of the most serious
question marks hangs over Pamlico Sound, the
largest body of water in the state and a major
nursery for East Coast fisheries.
As flood waters washed out hog lagoons
and municipal sewage treatment plants and
swept across fields and lawns, it bypassed
nature’s normal filtering process and carried an
extraordinary load of nutrients straight into the
sound. There, trapped by the Outer Banks, these
nutrients hold the potential to wreak havoc in the
delicate ecosystem.
Last fall, the strain was already showing.
The huge quantity of fresh water had trapped the
heavier, oxygen-poor brackish water at the
bottom. Hurricane Irene came along and stirred
the waters. Disaster averted. The next critical
time is approaching fast.
“We don’t know what the consequences
will be next summer,” said Dr. Robert Christian,
professor of biology. “The temperature will be
higher and the ability of the water to hold
oxygen will be lower. What happens when the
bacteria and algae start growing?”
The concern is that the nutrients will feed
an unusually large crop of algae. As it dies, it
will add even more nutrients to the shallow
waters. Natural bacteria feasting on all the
decaying matter will rob the water of oxygen.
In a worst case scenario, this could lead to
massive fish kills. With little chance to exchange
water with the open ocean, the sound’s recovery
could be slow.
Despite the sound’s importance for fisher-ies
and tourism, Christian said, little attention
has been directed to understanding its response
to events like floods and hurricanes. Working
with Dr. Hans Paerl, professor of marine and
C o n t i n u e d
FACING PAGE: Scott Lecce (top) checks a
layer of sediment deposited on a discarded
lawnmower in Princeville. (Bottom) Scientists
carefully separate sediment from leaf litter to
determine what the flood left behind.
THIS PAGE: (Top) ECU scientists skirt a
breach in the Princeville dike as they return
from surveying the floodplain. (Bottom)
A composite of images from the Landsat 7
Thematic Mapper satellite reveals the extent
of flooding in Pitt County. The blue color
represents permanent bodies of water, as
shown in a July 28 image. By Sept. 30,
water covered the area in red. Dense
vegetation may conceal additional flood
waters in some areas near the river channel.
ECU Conference on Floyd, Flooding
Attracts Big Names in Disaster Planning
• SPRING 2000 • 12
environmental sciences at UNC-CH, Christian
wants to remedy that. They will be keeping
close tabs on the sound’s nutrient levels and
biological activity for the next year or longer.
They hope to assess the impact of the flood
and to create a model that will predict the
likely biological impact of any future storms.
The predictive capacity may be as impor-tant
as understanding current conditions. Cli-matologists
expect more and stronger hurri-canes
over the next two to three decades.
THE MAPS
The extent of the flooding drove home an
important point for almost everyone.
Floodplain maps need to be updated and
expanded. Three geographers are examining
the tools available for quick-response flood
mapping and modeling and for updating
floodplain maps.
Digital elevation models from the U.S.
Geological Survey are a readily available and
inexpensive tool for estimating the extent of
the flooding. They have just one problem.
“There are some questions about how accurate
they are in areas of low relief, like it is here,”
said Dr. Jeffrey Colby, assistant professor of
geography. Images from the new Landsat 7
satellite offer another possibility, but dense
vegetation can obscure flooding in some areas.
The geographers, Colby and Drs. Karen
Mulcahy and Yong Wang, are investigating
whether these tools can be combined for better
results. Their first step is to compare both the
digital models and satellite imagery taken
before and during the flood with actual flood
level readings.
THE RIVER
Only the magnitude of the flood surprised
geologist Stan Riggs. “If you look at the natural
process, the river was doing exactly what it was
made to do, and we got in the way,” he said.
“Moving water is a very powerful force. It
erodes mountains and canyons and sculpts the
land in a very vigorous fashion. It always has,
and it always will.”
The question he is trying to solve now is
how much people contributed to their own
undoing last fall. Ditches drain thousands of
acres of forest and farmland. Streams have been
channelized to move water faster. Urban
Mileti, director of the Natural Hazards
Research and Applications Information Center
in Boulder, Colo., and author of Disasters by
Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the
United States.
• “Mitigation in an Institutional
Context” — Dr. Rutherford Platt, author of
Disasters and Democracy: The Politics of Extreme
Natural Events and professor of geography and
planning law at the University of Massachu-setts.
• “Prospects for Mitigation in Eastern
North Carolina Creating Resilient Communi-ties”
— Dr. David Godschalk, author of Natural
Hazard Mitigation: Recasting Disaster Policy and
Planning and Catastrophic Coastal Storms: Hazard
Mitigation and Development Management.
Godshalk also is professor and former chair of
city and regional planning at UNC-Chapel Hill.
• “Extreme Weather Events in Eastern
North Carolina’s Future” — Dr. Robert Sheets,
former director of the National Hurricane
Center.
The conference also will include a series of
workshops reporting on research related to the
natural, physical, social and economic impacts
of Hurricane Floyd and the floods, a panel
discussion on “Living in the Eye of the Storm”
and roundtable discussions on selected topics.
More details on the conference are
available from the website www.ecu.edu/coas/
floyd or by contacting Laura Edwards at 252-
328-2484, email EdwardsL@mail.ecu.edu. The
deadline for registration is May 10. •
Some of the nation’s leading
authorities on natural disasters will address a
three-day conference at ECU on the effects of
Hurricane Floyd. The conference, to be held
May 24-26, is expected to bring together
policymakers, research scientists, relief and
recovery specialists, federal and local disaster
experts, and citizens of eastern North Carolina.
“We expect this conference to provide the
first organized assessment not only of Floyd’s
place among other natural disasters but equally
important, how we can use the lessons of this
storm to mitigate loss of life and property in
future calamities,” said Dr. John Maiolo,
conference chair and professor of sociology.
Among the highlights will be:
• “Disasters by Design” — Dr. Dennis
development has increased runoff. Roads and
bridges, on the other hand, often block the
natural flow of water. “We probably exacer-bated
this flood significantly through our lack
of attention to what we’ve been doing,” he said.
With a multidisciplinary team, Riggs
hopes to detail what happened on the Tar River
and its tributaries: how the natural system
worked where it was relatively intact and how
human modifications altered the outcome. He
has enlisted the aid of Dr. Richard Spruill, a
hydrologist, and Drs. Robert Christian and
Mark Brinson in biology. Their end product, he
said, will be a database to help people judge the
wisdom of policies and practices.
“No one even knows how many streams
have been channelized or how many bridge
dams there are and where they are,” he said.
“A bridge dam on one kind of stream might
actually be good because it might hold some of
the storm water back whereas on another part
of the stream it might be bad because it holds
the water back right into town. This is where
understanding the dynamics is so crucial to
society. You can’t have one rule that fits
everything. It’s a complex system.” •
Because written records
reveal only part of the story,
many scholars go straight
to the source to understand
history and culture.
13 • SPRING 2000 •
I
n a photograph over her desk, Dr. Lu
Ann Jones sits on the tailgate of a pickup truck,
holding a microphone and talking with an
elderly Mississippi Delta farmer named Charles
Bailey. “I feel like that’s my natural habitat,”
she says now.
It is her habitat in more ways than one.
The daughter of Gates County farmers, she
feels connected to the land and the people who
tend it. As an oral historian and assistant
professor of history, she inhabits another kind
of field, one that takes her to the people who
can share with her the history they have lived.
“Oral history lends itself to subjects where the
written records are silent or where they aren’t as
abundant as we might like for them to be,” she
said recently. “So if you’re doing a topic where
the best sources are still living human beings,
you go and talk with them.”
Once, all history was oral. Parents and
grandparents passed family stories on to
children, and village elders told the stories of a
whole people. Then, as formal education
became more widespread, reliance on the
spoken word declined. We wanted our history
in books. For source material, these written
histories often depended on official documents
and other written records. History became the
story of the powerful and elite. A course
correction was in order. About half a century
ago, as social historians began to dig into diaries
and letters to examine the lives of ordinary
people, another group of modern historians set
out to get people talking again. The academic
discipline of oral history was born.
At ECU, historians are joined by scholars
from English, nursing, anthropology and
folklore — among others — in capturing the
first-person accounts of modern history.
Working on a host of independent projects, they
seek to record the stories of people who might
otherwise be passed over, to fill gaps in written
documents, to heal society’s wounds.
With her own roots tugging at her, Jones is
drawn to the stories of people who have shaped
farming and rural life. Currently, she directs her
students in collecting oral histories of eastern
North Carolina schoolteachers. A larger part of
her work continues to flow from what she
learned on the back of Charles Bailey’s pickup
and many others like it.
Before coming to ECU, Jones spent five
years working with the Smithsonian Institution
on a project documenting the changes in
Southern agriculture since the 1930s. She
interviewed more than 200 men and women in
eight Southeastern states, from Louisiana to
Virginia. “These were people who had grown
up with mule farming and had retired or grown
old with these enormous machines, and it was
costing more and more every year to stay in
business, if they were able to stay in business,”
she said. “They were a generation that had
witnessed change and had made the choices
that brought about the changes.”
As the farmers looked back, she said, they
had a realistic attitude about progress. Running
water, indoor toilets and machinery that saved
back-breaking labor improved life, but
improvement came at a price.
���At the time, I caught from many people a
sense of ambiguity about the changes that had
taken place in farming,” she said. “Perhaps
without being able to articulate it, they realized
they had made some choices 20 and 30 years
before that were now having the unintended
consequences of really making it impossible for
their own children to continue farming. By
surrendering to the notion that bigger is always
better, which means you’re going to have to
borrow a lot of money and assume a lot more
risk, ultimately they wound up closing off
options for their own children, which many of
them found very saddening. Many also
question the wisdom of having adopted so
many pesticides. They talked about how they
felt insects had developed immunity (making
the pesticides) far less effective. At the same
time, they were hard pressed to look back and
C o n t i n u e d
Lu Ann Jones captures
farmer Charles Bailey’s words on tape as part of
a project documenting changes in Southern agriculture since the 1930s.
Off the record
Photo by Laurie Minor-Penland, Smithsonian Institution
• SPRING 2000 • 14
see what the alternatives may have been.”
Jones has written several articles about the
interviews and is under contract with the
University of North Carolina Press to publish a
collection of edited interviews. They also
undergird her dissertation, to be published in
2001 by UNC Press as Re-Visioning the
Countryside: Southern Women, Rural Reform,
and the Farm Economy in the 20th Century.
“In any anecdotal history, you hear about
swapping eggs at the country store,” she said.
“If you accumulate enough of these stories, you
can make the case that this was the important
part of the rural economy that everyone knew
about but no one stopped to take seriously.” By
combining the stories with written records, such
as store ledgers, Jones concluded that the
commodities under the farm woman’s control
— primarily butter, eggs and chickens — eased
the cash-strapped family whose tobacco or
cotton crop paid off only once a year. “It made
a difference,” she said. “It was not just
something to be relegated to the pile of
anecdotal history.”
Audiotapes and transcriptions of Jones’
farm interviews, some with photographs, are
held in the Smithsonian archives. Pete Daniel,
curator of agriculture at the Smithsonian’s
Museum of American History, compares the
interviews with those from the Federal Writers’
Project. Since the 1960s, social historians have
mined those New Deal interviews for a better
understanding of life around the time of the
Great Depression.
“Reading
[Jones’] interviews
is like visiting these
farmers and hearing
them tell their life
stories,” he said. “As
farming continues to
change and as
family farms
disappear, these
interviews will take
on even more
significance as a
source of study.”
A source of study is precisely the purpose
of the 200-plus oral histories in the Special
Collections Division of ECU’s Joyner Library.
The library has built substantial holdings of
papers from prominent North Carolinians and
from missionaries, tobacconists and military
personnel. The oral histories complement the
papers.
“Quite often, when you receive a person’s
papers, there’s a lot that went into their careers
that never winds up in black and white,” said
Donald Lennon, who retired recently as
coordinator of Special Collections. “Not many
people keep diaries, so oral history is a way to
supplement the documentation. At the same
time, written documentation is a way to help
clarify dates and places in the oral histories.”
The number of interviews in the
collection, he said,
is limited by the
time involved in
making each one.
“Our philosophy
is that the tapes
alone are
meaningless
unless they are
transcribed and
checked for
accuracy and
made available in
transcript form,”
he said. “So
we’ve done a
measured oral history program because we
didn’t want the interviews to outrun our ability
to transcribe and proofread and correct.”
An oral history may consist of one 30-
minute interview or 10 two-hour interviews.
“We’ll keep coming back for interviews as
long as they have something to tell us,”
Lennon said. A series of interviews with the
late U.S. Judge John Davis Larkins typed out
at more than 500 pages. Interviews with Rear
Adm. William Henry Ashford Jr. ran more
than 400 pages.
The naval history collection alone attracts
researchers from all over the country. In his
biography Bull Halsey, for example, author
E.B. Potter cited the Ashford interviews as
“the single most useful oral history for this
book.” Ashford served as an aide to Adm.
Halsey aboard the USS Enterprise during
much of World War II.
For the last 15 years, Lennon made it his
special mission to collect the papers and oral
histories of the Naval Academy Class of 1941
— the men who entered service in time to help
win World War II and then led the Navy
through the Cold War years.
With each interview, Lennon took the
officer from his youth and decision to enter the
Navy to the present. “I like to go through his
career in as much detail as possible because
while one researcher may be interested in this
individual’s involvement aboard ship in
Reginald Watson, left, listens to Louis Raynor, the man whose career launched
the oral history project.
“When people give you a story, it’s like giving you a gift,” says Lu Ann Jones, shown
here talking with Grace Whitehurst at Cypress Glen retirement home in Greenville.
As a soldier in Vietnam,
Louis Raynor celebrates receiving Valentine’s Day candy
from his wife. Finding mementos of her father’s military career propelled
Sharon Raynor to learn more about the black experience in Vietnam through oral history.
15 • SPRING 2000 •
Guadalcanal in World War II, another may be
interested in his involvement in the administra-tion
of Guantanamo Naval Base later in his
career or that individual’s duties as a research
scientist developing some advanced radar
program,” he said.
The results were often astounding. One
officer had the most phenomenal memory
Lennon had ever encountered — recalling
dates, times and places of even the most trivial
events. Another, he said, “describes the Battle
of Guadalcanal in such graphic detail that
you duck.”
A later war has led three members of the
English Department into the realm of oral
history. Their project, “Breaking the Silence:
The Unspoken Brotherhood of Vietnam
Veterans,” seeks to provide insight into the
problems black soldiers faced before, during
and after America’s most unpopular war. Did
racism make their lot more difficult, leading
to higher rates of depression and drug use?
Preliminary interviews indicate the answer
is yes, but a
qualified yes.
As one veteran
from Norfolk
told assistant
professor Dr.
Reginald
Watson: “In
battle there was
no time for
racism. When
the battle’s over,
that’s when
racism showed
up.”
Problems continued after service. “White
and black soliders came home to a different
reality,” Watson said. “They all had the stigma
of having served in a war the country didn’t
like, but black soldiers had the double burden
of being a Vietnam vet and dark.”
The two-year project got under way in fall
1999 with a grant from the North Carolina
Humanities Council. In the end, Watson and his
collaborators, lecturer Sharon Raynor and
assistant professor Dr. Seodial Deena, hope to
heal some of the wounds through public forums
based on the materials they gather. “We want
to understand what went wrong so we can
construct a different future,” Deena said.
In the School of Nursing, associate
professor Dr. Russell E. “Gene” Tranbarger
is trying to capture the experience of another
group of forgotten men: graduates of male
nursing schools.
At least four male nursing schools existed
between 1888, when the first one opened, and
the 1960s, when they all closed. Tranbarger
himself graduated from the largest of these, the
Alexian Brothers School of Nursing in
Chicago, and he is annoyed that these schools
have received little public acknowledgment.
The premier book on nursing history includes
only one paragraph on male nursing schools, he
said, and a historical outline produced by the
American Journal of Nursing makes no
mention of male nurses, even though half of all
nurses at the turn of the century were male.
With no one else eager to write their
history, Tranbarger, who teaches nursing
administration, took on the task and began
collecting oral histories of the graduates. It is
a personal mission. He works on his own time,
using his own money. So far, he has taped
interviews with five graduates. One interview
stretched over three days. In time, he plans to
write about each school and its contributions
to the profession. “Eventually, I think it can
be a book,” he said. “I’m determined the
literature will include something.”
Among the varied oral historians are an
equally varied assortment of philosophies — to
transcribe or not to transcribe, to edit or not to
edit; of end products — a tape and transcript, a
public forum, a book; and of goals — to inform
here, to heal wounds there. Almost universally,
however, oral history becomes a transforming
process for interviewee and interviewer.
The Vietnam project began with a single
veteran, Louis J. Raynor of Clinton — Sharon
Raynor’s father. Although he was a decorated
veteran, Sharon Raynor said, “I wouldn’t have
known he was in Vietnam if I hadn’t found his
diary.” His silence drove her to learn more. She
said he and other veterans have been surprised
and pleased when they realized someone was
willing to listen to their experiences. “I’m just
hoping this project will help more people
understand Vietnam vets,” she said. “They feel
betrayed.”
Lu Ann Jones’ interviews may have
begun on a less personal note, but they didn’t
end that way. She has stayed in touch with
several of the farmers, who take pride in
introducing her to friends as “that woman from
the Smithsonian who’s written about me.” It
can be a humbling experience.
“Doing oral history brings with it a lot of
responsibility in terms of learning to respect
other human beings and listen to their stories,”
she said. “When people give you a story, it’s
like giving you a gift. You should be very
responsible with what you do with that gift.” •
Sharon Raynor opens a
“Breaking the Silence”
public forum.
• SPRING 2000 • 16
cooked up by a hundred or more groups
competing for the barbecue blue ribbon —
merits a two-week fast beforehand to make
room for seconds and thirds. But why the
elaborate decorations and costumes, the
meticulous arrangement of the finished pig?
“It seems to me that part of what’s
happening is the presentation of food as art,”
said Baldwin, who edits the North Carolina
Folklore Journal and won the 1992 Brown-
Hudson Folklore Award from N.C. Folklore
Society. “But we’re also in an area and time
when agriculture is in deep trouble, and hog
farming in particular is presenting all kinds of
problems to the region. Part of what’s going on
is a way of talking about the importance of hogs
and farming to the region by setting up this
really eloquent contrast between the adulation
of the pig as food and the kinds of hazards that
intensive agriculture are presenting to the
region. At least that’s my folklorist interpreta-tion.”
Such interpretation and an emphasis on
the aesthetic help set Baldwin’s discipline apart
from its near relative, oral history. Consider it
oral history with a twist. Researchers in both
fields employ similar tools and methods. In the
folklore archives next to Baldwin’s office, thick
manila envelopes pack shelf after
shelf. The contents would be
familiar to any oral historian:
cassette tapes of interviews,
transcripts, photos, written reports.
“Folklorists link up with oral
historians at one end of the
academic thought about how
people render accounts of their
history and verbal accounts of
their culture,” she said. “(Like oral
historians) folklorists are very
much involved with listening to
people talk about family tradition
and community tradition, but
folklorists may be more interested
in the aesthetic dimensions of such
narrative and how it carries over
into traditional aspects of
narrative, such as legend.”
Legends like the recurring
tales of mysterious lights. To
Baldwin, it’s only natural that
these legends grow up along deserted
lumbering tracks. What are called ghost lights
symbolically recall the lumbermen who once
labored there and the towns that vanished as
the timber dwindled.
“Folklorists do a lot of interpretation,”
she said. “We’re given license to pull together
all sorts of interesting threads about what this
could mean without having to prove it in a
scientific lab. It comes out of the methodol-ogy.
We’re used to looking at artistic
metaphors (such as those found in) folk tales
and ballads and applying them in different
areas.”
Artistic metaphors crop up, not only in
festivals and legends, but in yards. Baldwin
marveled at the creativity of a retired farmer
who filled his yard and garden with windmills
he crafted out of old bicycle wheels. He was a
quiet but friendly man. The windmills, she
said, were his way to greet the community as
it passed by on the road in front of his home.
Another man used an elaborate outdoor
Christmas display to raise money for the local
homeless shelter. “Sometimes words fail me
to describe how articulate the connection is
between the symbols these people are creating
and what they do with them,” she said. •
A
s Karen Baldwin put the finishing
touches on a book for the University of
Mississippi Press, she half-heartedly chastised
herself. The book was supposed to be an
overview of coastal North Carolina folklife, but
the chapter on community festivals had gotten
out of hand. It called for another book.
Certainly material isn’t lacking. For the
past 20 years Dr. Baldwin, an award-winning
folkorist and associate professor of English, has
haunted festivals throughout eastern North
Carolina. The Ayden Collard Festival. The
Newport Pig Cooking. The Blessing of the
Fleet in Hobucken. The Fourth of July
celebration in Whortonsville. The Core Sound
Decoy Festival on Harkers Island. The Herring
Festival in Jamesville. The Mill Creek Oyster
Festival. She has watched some spring to life
and others transform. Seen through her eyes,
these festivals represent more than the obvious
good time. They are symbolic conversations
about community values. “The idea of a festival
is to create a ceremonial space that’s separate
from daily happenings so things out of the
ordinary can go on,” she said.
Take the Newport Pig Cooking. Sure, it
raises money for the volunteer fire department
and the Girl Scouts. And sure, the food —
Reflected
values
Dr. Karen Baldwin, associate professor of English
The war to end all wars also brought
an end to a way of life in the one section of the
North Carolina Sandhills. Claiming the
pressing needs of the war effort, the federal
government in 1918 asserted its power of
eminent domain, bought out scores of often
unwilling families and established Camp
Bragg, a U.S. Field Artillery training center.
Over the next 60 years, more land was taken.
Today Fort Bragg encompasses more than
200 square miles.
But what of the families forced off the
land? “There are still people who feel very sad
about that loss,” said Dr. Lorraine Aragon,
visiting associate professor of anthropology.
“It was their ancestral home, and no money
could replace that. Others, often those who had
17 • SPRING 2000 •
moved out of the
area, said it was a
good thing. The
land was very
poor for farming.
[Eviction] often
got them to areas
with better
educational
opportunities or
where they could
find other ways to
earn a living.”
Aragon
recently
completed a
project detailing
the recollections
of people whose
families once
lived on land now
occupied by the
military base.
Funded by the
base and the
Army Construc-tion
Engineering
Research
Laboratories, the
project was
intended to help
the base
archaeologist
pinpoint sites of
historic or prehistoric value. The Army also
plans to make a report of this pre-military
history available to the public.
As part of her research, Aragon
conducted extensive taped interviews with 24
former residents or their descendants, ranging
in age from 50 to 105, and talked with many
others. She led her subjects through as much
detail as they could remember from their own
lives and family stories. “One African-
American woman still remembers where the
foundations of her house and the buildings
were and where the fields were,” Aragon said.
“Her family had owned hundreds of acres, paid
for by profits from working turpentine. They
had bought it from a white family that probably
owned thousands and thousands of acres.”
She found distinct differences in the
way the region’s major ethnic groups looked
back on their history. “For Highland Scots,
the point of pride was how their ancestors
came from foreign places and conquered this
land that was so difficult,” she said. “Some of
their genealogical records go back quite far.
They know which ancestor came on the boat,
which island in Scotland he came from and
what he did here.”
For African-Americans, stories as well
as family records begin in 1865. The pride is
in freed ancestors. “It was often not stated, but
it was where they began,” Aragon said.
“Great-grandfather was a freed slave who
was able to buy a piece of property or enter a
profession, or he was a preacher or a postman
after the Civil War.”
Native Americans focus on the present.
Their ancestors had viewed the Sandhills —
a territory disputed by North and South
Carolina — as a good place to hide from an
oppressive white government. “They were
often dispersed, pushed about, hiding in
forests,” she said. “You get a sense of
tremendous disruption for a long period of
time. Some didn’t even know which group
they belonged to, Tuscarora or Lumbee. They
often pushed aside the question and said just
being Native American is what was
important.”
For the Army, the project is a commu-nity
service venture and a reconnaissance
mission. Before it can develop new tracts of
land within the base, federal law requires that
it document any sites of historical or cultural
significance. Aragon’s report will help guide
the search.
Some of the richest archaeological
evidence may be found where the stories of
the ethnic groups cross. A ridge running east-west
divides the base into two drainage
basins. Buffalo trails once followed the ridge.
Native Americans followed the buffalo trails
to hunt and trade. Later, Europeans took the
same paths and eventually turned some into
plank roads. “So you have this layering and
layering,” Aragon said. “In talking with the
archaeologists, they say, coincidentally,
they’re finding sites along the ridge.” •
Sandhills
memories
Dr. Lorraine Aragon, visiting associate professor of anthropology
• SPRING 2000 • 18
D estiny must have laughed when Louise
Toppin met her first opera star. Edgar Toppin, a history professor at
Virginia State University, had taken his young daughter backstage after
a performance of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors to meet his
colleague. Willis Patterson was still in costume as one of the kings.
“He said hello in this very deep voice and scary costume, and I
went screaming in the other direction,” Dr. Louise Toppin recalled.
Try as she might, Toppin couldn’t run away from opera. Today,
this professor of voice is also a coloratura soprano — the highest of the
highs — performing in such venues as New York City’s Lincoln
Center and Barcelona’s Licieu Theatre. In August, after a performance
at the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh, she flew to Sweden to sing the
role of Bess in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. That was followed
Coloratura soprano Louise Toppin, at top and right in the blue dress,
performs the role of Mary in Highway One with the Longleaf Opera in Durham.
Louise Toppin never meant to be a singer,
but talent will out. Today the soprano’s performance
schedule takes her around the globe.
DT H E R Ei L Uv C T aA N T
19 • SPRING 2000 •
C o n t i n u e d
immediately by performances in the role of Mary in William Grant
Still’s Highway One with the Longleaf Opera in Durham and the title
role in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha with the Roanoke Opera in
Roanoke, Va. In April of 2000, she will sing the title character in the
world premiere of Luyala, a role composer William Banfield created
for her, and she’s booked for China in 2001. She has studied with the
best — Phyllis Bryn-Julson, George Shirley, Joan Sutherland, Elly
Ameling.
“Louise’s talent ranks up there among the highest,” said tenor
William Brown of Jacksonville, Fla., who performs with Toppin in a
revue of popular music called A Gershwin Party. “The only reason
she’s not Kathleen Battle is because she didn’t get to (conductor)
James Levine first.”
To sit and talk with Toppin on a rare day off, you’d have no idea
of her international reputation. On-stage her first syllable fills the
farthest reaches of the theater, yet in conversation she speaks softly,
reluctantly. Instead of costumes and glitter, she dresses casually,
leaning toward shorts and bare feet in warm weather. The suitcase-size
black bag she carries everywhere — with Daytimer, cell phone and
anything else needed to keep her organized and moving from place to
place — threatens to create back problems.
The last thing she wants is another injury. Two years ago, as she
rushed down some stairs on the way to celebrate her birthday, she
tripped. Friends found her in a daze and rushed her to the hospital. The
injuries — sprains, cuts, bruises and loose teeth — forced her to cancel
five months of performances. She missed only one week of school, but
each day left her exhausted. She would teach and sleep, little else.
Now, she’s back at full throttle. She performs on the road almost
every weekend and arrives at each rehearsal in full command of the
music. For Toppin, learning the music means not only memorizing
her part, but researching past performances, the composer, the period
of history and more. While performing one score, she learns the next.
“She gobbles new music like a vortex,” said George Shirley,
the longtime Metropolitan Opera star and
Toppin’s former teacher. Her voice, he
said, has a “pristine, pure, lyrical quality and
is always highly enjoyable because of the
purity.”
Because performing is only part of her
life, Toppin runs nonstop from dawn to well
past dusk. When in Greenville, she doubles up
on lessons with students. Into scattered
moments, she squeezes time to record and
produce CDs and concerts for Videmus, a
nonprofit organization she heads; to organize
events for the Pitt County Arts Council; and
to direct subscription sales as president of the
Pitt County Chapter of the North Carolina
Symphony Society.
Toppin considers this an easy schedule. Her track record explains
why. She completed her college course work in three years, staying a
fourth year only to give a senior recital; earned two master’s degrees
over the next three years while teaching school to support herself; and
in the following three, finished a doctorate that normally takes five years
while also teaching at two universities. “A 13- to 14-hour day doesn’t
faze me in the least,” she said. “That gives me 10 whole hours for
myself, one hour for exercise, one hour for devotional....”
Four days after returning from an extended road trip, she still had
no food in the house. A year after moving into her first home, furnish-ings
remained scant, not even a piano. She had no time for shopping,
she said, and as for the piano, well, she has a Steinway grand in her
office, and, with perfect pitch, she doesn’t need one to practice singing
at home.
For relaxation, she goes to movies or turns to her collection of
Disney videos. Peter Pan is her favorite. Or she may kick back with a
murder mystery or one of several biographies. Last fall, she was
alternating among books about Christopher Darden (assistant prosecutor
in the O.J. Simpson trial), Billy Graham, Patti LaBelle and Luciano
Pavarotti, and she had just completed a biography of Louis XIV.
Toppin’s schedule demands that she be organized, and she makes
the same demand of her students. “My students know exactly what
they’re to do,” she said. If they can’t work independently, if they aren’t
willing to practice on their own and to research their music, if they can’t
be prompt, she recommends they seek another teacher. Working with
Toppin requires dedication and flexibility.
For those who make the extra effort, Toppin gives as much or
more in return. During a late-afternoon master class, she looked ready
for the stage in a black dress and orange sweater and praised the
students who had dressed for the parts they would perform for the class.
Then she questioned, coaxed and demonstrated technique as the
students honed their performance skills. “Can you believe she did that?”
she asked the class after quizzing one student. “There are 25 different
notes in this piece, and she’s psyched out
over one note.”
After class, a half-dozen students
gathered round. “She’s my mama, my
friend,” said Nicole Sonbert, who has
studied with Toppin for three years. “She’s
not just a teacher. You can go in her office
and cry for an hour if you need to, and
unless she absolutely has to be somewhere
at a certain time, she’ll stay there with you
as long as you need her to be.”
Charles Oakley nodded. “I had one of
those days today,” he said. “I just transferred
here this year, and I was thinking I didn’t
belong.”
• SPRING 2000 • 20
And the music? “She goes out and looks for music others aren’t
doing,” said Kenneth Tice.
“She’s the repertoire queen,” Sonbert added. “And she works
with you on every detail. She’s really concerned about making sure
you can sing it correctly.”
Toppin’s old teacher can only shake his head. Shirley called her
one of the most impressive students he has ever had. “It has always
amazed me that she is able to carry on a successful performance career
and a successful academic career, to teach as many students as she does
while carrying administrative responsibility and extracurricular work,”
he said. “I admonish her to pull it back. She’ll do so for a short period,
but then she speeds back up. It’s in her nature to need to be very busy.”
Into a life of such rigor, a little weakness must fall. For Toppin,
it comes with a peanut center, milk chocolate layer and candy coating.
She eats peanut M&Ms by the pound. Colleagues tease her. Students
begging leniency dangle them before her. Word has even reached
audiences. After one standing-ovation performance in Atlanta, the
entire front row presented her with bags and bags of M&Ms. She took
her second bow munching on candy.
Toppin never meant to be singer. She never meant to be any kind
of musician, but talent will out.
Her mother, Antionette, who taught English at Virginia State,
could sing and play. Her father could do neither, but loved music.
Recordings of Beethoven symphonies and Tchaikovsky concertos
filled the
Toppin
home, and
the parents
took their
three children
to concerts
by the
Richmond
Symphony,
the Virginia
Opera and
jazz greats
such as Duke
Ellington,
Count Basie
and Sarah
Vaughan.
Piano lessons
began as soon as the children were old enough. Louise, the youngest,
learned to play as a 5-year-old by tagging along to her siblings’ lessons.
By age 9, when her formal lessons began, she was playing Beethoven
sonatas. At 10, she played hour-long recitals from memory. Still, she
never sang, except around the house and in the church choir.
Music was fun, not her future. In high school, she won prizes in
calculus and
physics. She
wanted to be a
cardiologist and
entered the
University of
North Carolina at
Chapel Hill with
an eye toward
medical school.
That the
university also
had a strong
music program
meant she could
continue her work on piano, just for fun. Her first real push came when
she mentioned to her father how much she enjoyed the piano lessons.
“He has never interfered with our choices, any of them,” she said.
This time was different. “He said, ‘You’d make a wonderful doctor,
but God has given you talent as a musician. You can help people with
what you do with your music. I think you ought to seriously consider a
career in music.’ ”
Over the next few years, she turned toward singing one reluctant
step at a time. After talking with her father, Toppin did change her
major to music, but in piano, not voice. She sang in the Carolina choir
only because it was required of all music majors and — encouraged by
Donna Deese, who would later recruit Toppin to ECU — took her first
voice lesson in her senior year.
When Toppin headed off to the Peabody Conservatory, it was to
earn a master’s degree in piano. Her goal: to become an accompanist.
On the side, she joined the school’s prep opera, which gave non-voice
majors an opportunity to perform. Phyllis Bryn-Julson, a voice teacher
Toppin considered one of the best, heard her in the prep opera. If she
could gain admission to the master’s program in voice, Bryn-Julson
volunteered, she had a teacher. So Toppin taught herself an audition
program — with selections in German, French, Italian, Russian and
English — and was on the way to a second master’s. Her plan was to
become an accompanist and opera coach. “I did the whole master’s
degree never expecting to be a singer,” Toppin said. “I wanted to be the
best vocal coach I could be.”
To improve her on-stage acting, a teacher referred Toppin to
Shirley, who was known as the acting tenor. It was Shirley who gave
her the necessary push toward singing and a doctorate in voice. “I felt
like I was hearing my father all over again,” Toppin said. Still uneasy
with her prospects, she pushed herself through the doctoral work in
three years. “I said to myself, if we’re not going to get a job anyway,
let’s go ahead and find out we’re not going to get a job so there’s still
time to go back and get a bachelor of science and go to medical
school.”
Toppin requires dedication and flexibility
in her students, but gives as much or
more in return.
Toppin with her co-star in Highway One,
Bill McMurray. While performing one role,
she is learning the next.
21 • SPRING 2000 •
BENCHMARKS OF LOUISE TOPPIN’S CAREER
Validation came early, when she made it to the fifth round of the
1990 Munich International Competition. Years earlier, Jessye Norman
had won the competition and begun her ascent to stardom. “When I got
to the final round, I freaked,” Toppin said. “Up until then, my attitude
was, I’m going home at any minute. At that point, I was a novice
singer. I was competing with people who had 15 or 16 years of
singing. I had only been studying four.”
Talent paved Toppin’s way, but shyness erected a major
roadblock. As a student, she was terrified of performing in public.
Working with her teachers wasn’t much easier. She recalled her early
lessons with Shirley: “He worked and worked, and finally he said,
‘You have to look in my direction at some point.’ That’s how bad it
was.” Even now, at receptions after performances, she’s likely to find a
quiet corner where she can observe instead of mingle.
Although Toppin may have inherited musical talent from her
mother, the family knows it is her father she most resembles, both
in appearance and in habit. He has published 12 books of African-
American history and is working on three more. “He’s very industri-ous,”
his wife said. “He says he knows how to sleep fast.”
Her brother drowned in an accident at 17. The rest of the family
remains close. Toppin visits her sister, an accountant, and her family in
California. Her parents often travel wherever she does. They came to
Greenville when she interviewed for the ECU job in 1990. They flew
to Prague when she sang there, to Colorado for the Aspen Music
Festival, to Atlanta for Metropolitan Opera auditions. For a Videmus-sponsored
concert in Canton, Ohio, Edgar Toppin joined his daughter
on-stage, presenting the history behind the works she performed.
For Toppin, Videmus is a mission more than an activity. Pianist
Vivian Taylor founded the Boston-based group in 1986 to promote
recordings and live performances of music by African-Americans,
other minorities and women. When Taylor retired in October 1997,
Toppin was named the new artistic director and president. Her goal is
to broaden the audience for classical music by embracing all cultures.
“All of the arts have been seen so long as elitist,” she said. “They really
can be enjoyed by everybody. This is a way to open their eyes.”
• Finalist, Munich International Competition, 1990.
• Leading roles (Silverpeal and Goldentrill) in a Kennedy
Center production of Mozart’s The Impresaria, 1992.
• First prize district winner and regional finalist, Metropolitan
Opera Auditions, 1994.
• Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall, 1995.
• Begins touring production A Gershwin Party with Leon Bates
and William Brown, 1996.
• Named artistic director and president, Videmus, 1997.
• Release of first orchestral CD Paul Freeman Speaks Volume II
with the Czech National Symphony (Albany Records),
1998.
• First performance as Bess in a full production of Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess in Sweden, 1999.
• Release of Fare Ye Well, her first recording as a producer,
1999.
• World premiere of William Banfield’s opera Luyala with
Toppin in the title role, 2000.
She knows firsthand the difference it can make to feel included.
She pulled out a record album of Aida from her parents’ old collection.
The cover shows Leontyne Price with her hair in an Afro. “I remember
looking at the cover and being fascinated because this was something
I had not seen (in person),” she said. “We would go to the Virginia
Opera and the Richmond Symphony, and what I didn’t see were any
black artists, and here was this woman on the cover. It let me know this
was a possibility.”
As a shy
student appearing
in her first operas,
Toppin welcomed
the costumes and
role-playing. “I felt
I could be someone
else and people
weren’t staring at
me,” she said.
Those who know
her wouldn’t want
Toppin to be
anyone else. They
describe a cheerful,
smiling daughter.
An industrious
pupil. An honest
and loyal friend.
“She’s someone you’d want in a boat with you if you were out in the
ocean,” singing partner William Brown said. Even those who have met
her only in passing find her impossible to forget.
When Toppin visited the University of Michigan to audition for
admission to the doctoral program, the deep voice of her father’s
former colleague rose from the faculty. “Toppin?” Willis Patterson
said. “That’s a Toppin all right, but I don’t know which one. Are you
the one that ran away from me?” •
Toppin takes a day off work in September 1998
to visit Louis XIV’s home at Versailles while in
Europe to present concerts and record a CD
with the Czech National Symphony.
B i c y c l e h e l m e t s g e t
• SPRING 2000 • 22
If the Pitt County Safe Communities
Coalition needed a poster child, a baby from
Ayden would be a top contender.
Last spring the coalition helped the Ayden
Police Department conduct a “rodeo” to
promote bicycling safety and handed out free
bike helmets. One helmet went to an 11-month-old
child who rides in a back seat while mom
cycles. Within hours of the rodeo, mom had an
accident. “The child’s head hit the railroad
tracks,” said Officer Kelly Guard, Ayden’s
community policing coordinator. “The helmet
saved that child’s life.”
Chalk up another victory for the Safe
Communities Coalition, which has made
bicycle safety its No. 1 issue, and for the
coalition’s sponsor, the Eastern Carolina Injury
Prevention Program.
A joint effort of the ECU School of
Medicine and Pitt County Memorial Hospital,
the Injury Prevention Program seeks to stop the
flow of accident victims into emergency
departments throughout eastern North Carolina.
At Pitt Memorial alone, 13,000 people a year
— one-fourth of all ER patients — come in as a
result of car wrecks, bicycle accidents, falls,
hunting mishaps and all the other unintentional
ways human beings hurt themselves. “In the
spirit of real health and medicine, we need to
keep those people from being injured,” said Dr.
Herbert G. Garrison, professor of emergency
medicine and director of the Injury Prevention
Program.
The program’s approach consists of
research, demonstration and service. “We take
what we know works, apply it and see if it
makes a difference,” Garrison said.
In the four years since it was organized,
the program has received nearly $2 million in
external funding to conduct its work. Its
projects cover a range of behaviors:
• Pitt County SAFEKIDS Coalition.
This affiliate chapter of the National
SAFEKIDS Campaign distributes national
campaign materials and conducts child-safety-seat
clinics and other interventions.
• Project Replace. Working with the
Governor’s Highway Safety Commission, the
program gave away 2,400 child safety seats to
replace those in automobiles destroyed in
the 1999 flood. The seats were distributed at
clinics where proper installation was taught.
The project ran from Oct. 1 through the end
of the year.
• REACT. The Rural Enhancement
of Access and Care for Trauma Project was
funded by the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration to devise and test
treatment standards and training to further
reduce deaths of patients being treated by
rescue squads and emergency departments
in eastern North Carolina. Before and after
measurements show a decrease in deaths,
but Garrison declined to assign the project
full credit. During the same period, he
noted, the ECU School of Medicine
graduated many emergency room
physicians who stayed in the area to
practice.
• RID. The Reduction of Impaired
Driving Project, funded by the Carolinas
Medical Center, helped conduct a study of
procedures to identify alcohol-impaired
drivers seen as patients in emergency
departments and to refer them for treatment
of alcohol dependency. The results are
being analyzed.
• CAPTAIN. With a grant from the
Duke Endowment, the program is running
nurturing courses for families in Pitt,
Greene and Martin counties. The program
is called CAPTAIN, for Child Abuse
Prevention Through Advocacy, Interven-tion
and Nurturing. More than 230 families
have participated and 150 volunteers have
been trained to work with other families to
prevent child abuse.
• Teen Suicide Prevention. This new
project is designed to encourage teenagers
to ask for help when they feel depressed or
stressed.
The Safe Communities Coalition
provides another case in point. In 1996, the
National Highway Traffic Safety Adminis-tration
sought local organizations to test the
theory that the best way to reduce traffic
injuries is to get broad partnerships of local
people involved in analyzing the problems
HARD
a b i g p u s h i n a n e f f o r t
HATS
t o r e d u c e i n j u r i e s i n
ONLY
e a s t e r n N o r t h C a r o l i n a
23 • SPRING 2000 •
and devising solutions. The Eastern
Carolina Injury Prevention Program won
one of four grants to set up a national
demonstration under the acronym PISCES,
for Pitt Initiative for Safe Communities
Evolving Successfully.
Garrison hired a project coordinator,
Jennifer Smith, and pulled together a
coalition of about 60 individuals represent-ing
health care, rescue squads, law
enforcement, human services, business,
traffic engineering, the legal community,
the insurance industry, parents and the
community at large. Together, they pored
over local accident data, examined existing
injury prevention programs and targeted
bicycle safety as their top priority.
While it’s too soon to determine how
much the coalition has affected injuries
showing up in the emergency room, it can
boast that:
• Three Pitt County municipalities —
Greenville, Grifton and Ayden — have
passed laws requiring bicyclists age 15 and
younger to wear helmets along public roads.
No other county in North Carolina can say
as much.
• It has given away or sold at a
reduced cost more than 600 helmets.
• More than 1,000 children have
participated in bicycle safety schools and
events, such as the Ayden rodeo.
• Surveys in Greenville showed that
helmet use rose from 7 percent to 20 percent
during the first year the helmet law was in
effect. In a nearby community without a
helmet law, helmet use went from zero to
7 percent during the same period.
A study in the New England Journal
of Medicine reported that helmets reduce
the risk of head injury 85 percent and of
brain injury 88 percent. “Helmets won’t
prevent accidents,” Garrison said, “but they
will prevent the injuries that are most likely
to kill.”
Although focusing on bicycle safety,
the coalition has not ignored other ways to
reduce accidents. It lobbied successfully to
establish a Safe Driving School, operated by
Pitt Community College, as a sentencing
alternative for drivers charged with speeding at
least 15 miles an hour over the limit. Approxi-mately
250 people have gone through the
school. A follow-up study will assess whether
the graduates were any less likely to be charged
with later traffic violations. The coalition also
has applied for a state grant to install audible
crosswalk signals for the visually impaired.
Dr. Carolyn Crump and Robert
Letourneau of the Injury Prevention Research
Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, brought in to assess
the project, were so impressed they nominated
it for the Allstate Insurance Safety Leadership
Award Program. And other groups —
representing Craven and Wilson counties, the
Marine Corps and Bowman Gray Medical
Center — are calling Greenville to ask how
they can follow suit.
“In some communities you can’t even get
everyone in the same room to have a conversa-tion,”
said Sarah Minges, a consultant to non-profit
organizations who serves on the coalition
and on the Governor’s Highway Safety
Commission. “But here we bring everyone in
and respect everyone’s expertise. Dr. Garrison
has a talent for bringing out the best in people.”
Crump and Letourneau watched the
coalition evolve over its two-year start-up and
are detailing its record in a report to the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administra-tion.
It was particularly telling, they said, that a
survey of coalition members showed that three-quarters
reported being “very” or “extremely”
satisfied with their involvement and 97 percent
said they felt the coalition had been “very” or
“extremely” effective in getting things done.
As the grant period ran out at the end of
1999, the coalition’s members vowed to
continue the work and began drawing up papers
to establish a non-profit organization. That’s the
kind of result Barbara Sauers, who oversees the
Safe Communities program for the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration, wants
to hear. “Coalitions are challenging,” she said.
“You have to find ways to keep them alive and
vibrant. One of the pleasant aspects of the
Greenville project is that they’ve been able to
address and overcome turf problems.” •
In the 16th century, Erasmus opened the eyes of the world
to a new way of thinking. Today, an international team
of scholars hopes to open the eyes of the world to Erasmus.
Renaissance
• SPRING 2000 • 24
Few people have had so profound
an influence on modern thought while
remaining virtually anonymous as the
16th century Dutch-born Erasmus. This
theologian, educator, author and adviser to
popes and kings left behind a legacy that
continues to influence the Western world.
He helped launch the Reformation,
introduced a new approach to education
and changed forever the way Christians
read the New Testament. Yet of his writings,
only the satirical work The Praise of Folly is
likely to be found on library shelves, and
for name recognition, he pales alongside
such contemporaries as Martin Luther and
Henry VIII.
Soon, however, Erasmus may get his
due — or at least some portion of it. About
100 scholars from around the world are in-volved
in a project to translate 90 volumes of
Erasmus’ literature and letters from Latin
into English, complete with annotations ex-plaining
historical and literary references.
The University of Toronto Press project —
called the Collected Works of Erasmus — is
predicted by one reviewer to become “one of
the century’s great scholarly achievements.”
“At one time, Erasmus
could be read because Latin
was more
widely
known,” said
classics pro-fessor
Dr.
Charles Fantazzi. “Until recently, at least
those who taught the Renaissance and theol-ogy
could read Latin, but now the language
is not known by many people, so it’s very
important to make these works available, not
only for the knowledge of his period in his-tory,
but of our own.”
Fantazzi serves on the project’s execu-tive
and editorial boards. He also has had a
hand in translating and annotating four of the
40 volumes that have been released so far,
including the Handbook of the Christian
Soldier, with two volumes of correspon-dence
in preparation. The work is rigorous,
he said. The board demands accurate and
elegant translations. “Erasmus wrote very
good Latin so he must be rendered into
equally good English,” he said. “We insist on
a readable presentation for the ordinary
reader.”
edge talked with Fantazzi to learn more
about Erasmus, who was both literally and
figuratively a Renaissance man.
EDGE: What was Erasmus’ greatest
single achievement?
FANTAZZI: Without question, his work
on the New Testament, including an edition of
the Greek text, his own Latin translation and
annotations on the text, which took up almost
as much space as the Latin and Greek texts
put together. It was a huge success, going
through five editions. Erasmus’ Greek text
was the first ever published and became the
basis of the received or standard text, which
remained unchallenged for three centuries. It
lies behind the King James Version of the
Bible. His Latin version was also published
separately and was widely disseminated. It
was the basis of Luther’s German translation
and other Protestant translations.
EDGE: Still, his texts were not without
controversy, were they?
FANTAZZI: Erasmus was fiercely at-tacked
for daring to tamper with the sacro-sanct
Latin version of the Bible known as the
Vulgate, or common version, which was at-tributed
to St. Jerome. But, as Erasmus
pointed out, Jerome himself had corrected
previous Latin versions of the New Testament
by comparing them with the original Greek
manuscripts, just as he did. He contended that
the text of the Vulgate then current was not all
by Jerome and contained many scribal errors.
As for the divine inspiration of this version, he
quoted Jerome’s own words in a letter to a
certain Desiderius: “It is one thing to be a
prophet, another to be a translator.” The theo-logians
of Paris and Louvain were particularly
irritated by all this because their explanations
of doctrinal matters were based on the form of
the Vulgate then in use. Erasmus was thus
undermining their authority.
EDGE: The encyclopedia calls Erasmus a
Christian humanist. What does that mean?
FANTAZZI: Humanism was a scholarly
movement of the Renaissance period that redis-covered
classical Latin and Greek literature.
Erasmus thought — just as earlier church fa-thers
like Jerome and Augustine did — that
there was a true link between pagan and Chris-tian
wisdom. One could read Plato and Cicero,
for example, and take what was good in them
and harmonize it with Christianity. So Christian
humanism is just that, using pagan classics to
help us understand our Christian beliefs and
live a Christian life. Erasmus believed that just
reading these works could make you a better
Christian. He once said that reading good
books is more beneficial to the soul than food is
to the body.
EDGE: Erasmus lived at the time the
Reformation was ripping apart the Catholic
Church. Where did he stand in this struggle?
FANTAZZI: He was right in the middle
of it because he was trying to convince the
pope, the cardinals and other high officials of
the church to be more understanding instead of
punitive toward some of the reformers, espe-cially
Luther. He wanted reconciliation, to keep
the church together. At the same time, he knew
the church needed reform. Although he dis-agreed
with Luther on some points, particularly
on free will, he admired him as pious and well-meaning,
but in the end Luther’s intransigence
became intolerable to him. Erasmus is con-stantly
saying that he realizes how bad things
are getting and isn’t sure where it’s going to
end up, but he often comments, “I think I see
the hand of God in all this.”
The church, of course, didn’t listen to
Erasmus. Many of the prominent theologians in
Paris and Rome thought of Erasmus as a heretic
and a sympathizer with Luther. Erasmus
thought they were using this as an excuse to put
down his ideas about humanism by connecting
the study of the classics, what he called “bonae
litterae,” or “good letters,” with religious rebel-lion.
He was right in this, but they were never
able to condemn him for anything heretical.
25 • SPRING 2000 •
Man
C o n t i n u e d
Erasmus of Denmark, Musée du Louvre, Cliche des Musées Nationaux
• SPRING 2000 • 26
EDGE: Where did he see the need for
reform?
FANTAZZI: Erasmus attacked the
church as an institution with its empty ceremo-nies
and manmade laws like those on fasting,
clerical celebacy, divorce and the granting of
indulgences. His philosophy of Christ stressed
a personal and direct relationship with God,
rather than mediation by sacraments. In his
new interpretations of scriptural passages, he
undermined church teachings. He explained,
for example, that when John the Baptist ex-horts
his followers to repentance, the Greek
word used, “metanoeite,” means a “change of
heart” and has nothing to do with penances
handed out in sacramental confession.
Erasmus had no use for the superstitious wor-ship
of relics, saying that there were enough
relics of the true cross in circulation to fill a
cargo ship. His trenchant wit and biting satire
won him many enemies.
EDGE: In terms of his theology, did
Erasmus have a continuing influence?
FANTAZZI: Most Catholics saw him as
subversive, but his approach to the reading of
the Bible had a profound influence on the Prot-estants.
He applied the scientific study of phi-lology
— the study of language itself — to the
Bible, which previously had been something
sacrosanct, not subject to philological interpre-tation.
He sought to unite learning and piety.
He said it was not sufficient to be pious. You
have to cultivate the mind, to study in order to
understand the message of the Gospel. He
also wanted to get away from the minute dis-cussion
of the fine points of dogma and make
Christianity more genuine, a lived Christian-ity.
He said you should not only learn the
Bible, but put it into practice.
EDGE: Were all of his books religious in
nature?
FANTAZZI: He published both reli-gious
and secular books. After the New Testa-ment,
he wrote paraphrases of all the Gospels
and Epistles that made those books more un-derstandable
to the common person. These
were later translated from Latin into the ver-nacular
languages so that everyone could have
access to them. In the Church of England, the
English version of his paraphrases of the Gos-pel
and Epistle for the day had to be posted
outside the door every Sunday. His Handbook
of the Christian Soldier, a guide to true piety,
was also important. It was translated immedi-ately
into the vernacular languages and had
great influence, especially in Spain.
He also wrote fine poetry — in Latin, of
course. Everything he wrote was in Latin.
Even his letters may be regarded as models of
good Latin style. And he published a couple
of reference books that became very popular.
One was De Copia, or The Foundations of the
Abundant Style, which was a textbook on how
to write good Latin. Shakespeare was brought
up on it. And he published a book of about
4,000 adages that he collected over many
years. Probably no other work of Erasmus had
such a profound impact on European culture.
Most of the sayings still in use today come
from this compilation, such as “a flash in the
pan,” “to have one foot in the grave,” “to
break the ice,” “to blow your own horn.”
Erasmus gives the origins of all these sayings
in Greek and in Latin and adds his own com-mentary,
which sometimes becomes a full-fledged
essay.
EDGE: Erasmus was an educator, too.
Was this an important aspect of his work?
FANTAZZI: Erasmus is regarded as one
of the greatest figures in the history of educa-tion.
He was the chief spokesman of the new
learning in the north of Europe, where he estab-lished
the educational principles of the Italian
humanists. He did this through a series of
manuals that touched on every aspect, theoreti-cal
and practical, of education — curriculum,
methods of study, pedagogy and the training of
the teacher. These had a great diffusion
throughout Europe during his lifetime and after
his death. He reformed the teaching of Greek in
his brief career at Oxford and Cambridge. He
was instrumental in the foundation of the Col-lege
of the Three Languages in Louvain, which
added Hebrew to Greek and Latin as the lan-guages
to be taught in the study of the Scripture.
It is often said of Erasmus that he laid the egg of
the Reformation and Luther hatched it. But he
also laid the egg of a whole new type of educa-tion,
and it was hatched by his many disciples.
EDGE: A large portion of the Collected
Works of Erasmus will consist of the transla-tions
and annotations of his letters. Why are
they so important?
FANTAZZI: It’s often said that his letters
are, without comparison, the best documenta-tion
we have of the intellectual history of the
first half of the 16th century. He traveled
throughout Europe and had contacts with all the
leading princes and prelates of his time. He
lived at various times in England, the Low
Countries, Germany, France, Italy. He corre-sponded
with such potentates as Pope Leo X,
England’s Henry VIII and King Sigismund I of
Poland. All of them wanted Erasmus to take up
residence in their country. He also wrote to
fellow scholars all over Europe so that one can
now follow in his correspondence the historical
and political events of the time. Erasmus often
said that his writings would give a more accu-rate
picture of him than any artistic likeness.
The letters are the most intimate portrait. •
“Erasmus wrote in very good Latin so he
must be rendered in equally good English,”
says Charles Fantazzi.
The abundance of colors (top)
indicates excessive electrical
activity in a stutterer’s brain.
With frequency altered feedback,
the activity drops to near
normal levels (bottom).
their brain, compared with a fluent
person. Specifically, they display
Beta band hyperreactivity, and it is
most pronounced in the posterior-temporal-
parietal electrode sites.
The researchers also looked at
what happens to those signals
under experimental conditions.
They found significant changes.
When stutterers heard their
electronically altered voices,
not only did their speech improve,
but their brains’ electrical signals
looked more like those of fluent
people. They showed less activity
on the right side of the brain and
more on the left.
Altogether, this boils down
to a new theory of the cause of
stuttering. Perhaps it’s not a motor
control problem after all. Instead,
Rastatter suggested, the signals
from the right side of the brain are
overloading the neurological pathways and thus interfering with the
left side’s ability to send out clear messages.
With their technology proven, the researchers’ next challenge is
to make it practical for everyday use, which means shrinking it to the
size of a hearing aid. For this, they’ve teamed up with the College of
Engineering at North Carolina State University. They anticipate a
first-generation prototype by August 2000. The team has applied for
a grant to field test the device with hundreds of adults and children
in Pitt County who stutter.
The therapy also may prove useful for other communication
disorders. Rastatter, chair of the department, said trials with dyslexic
children have produced dramatic improvements in reading and
comprehension.
For Kalinowski, whose experiments with digital signal process-ing
launched the team’s current line of research, the success has
brought personal as well as professional satisfaction. He knows
firsthand the frustration of stuttering, even after 190 hours of speech
therapy. Recalling one therapist, he shook his head. “She thought
I didn’t know how to speak,” he said. “I know how. It’s just that the
system breaks down.” •
27 • SPRING 2000 •
The 17-year-old boy was too stunned to smile. “How did
I do that?” he asked. What he had done was simply to read aloud,
clearly and fluently. Behind a glass wall, his parents wept. They
had never before heard their son speak without a severe, agonizing
stutter.
For most of his life, a 55-year-old Raleigh man had avoided
speech as much as possible. But when he donned headphones in a
laboratory at the School of Allied Health Sciences, his stutter
disappeared. He could speak without embarrassment.
For these individuals and millions like them who stutter,
researchers at ECU now offer the hope of fluency. Drs. Michael
Rastatter, Joseph Kalinowski and Andrew Stuart of the Department
of Communication Sciences and Disorders have demonstrated that
slight alterations in hearing can bring dramatic improvements in a
stuttering person’s ability to speak clearly. They recently received a
patent on a device that may one day extend this laboratory-borne
fluency to the outside world.
Stuttering afflicts an estimated 2 to 3 percent of the world’s
population. The cause is unknown. Numerous therapies have been
tried through the centuries, but none has shown significant, long-term
effectiveness. Currently the dominant therapy involves slowing
the stutterer’s speech, on the theory that the underlying problem is
one of speech motor control. The ECU experiments, on the other
hand, enable stutterers to speak clearly at both a normal and a fast
pace. Success also has been measured in telephone conversations,
one of a stutterer’s most difficult challenges.
The scientists use a digital signal processor — similar to the
sound board and headphones musicians use in a recording studio —
to alter the speed or pitch at which a stutterer hears his own voice.
It’s called altered auditory feedback. With as little as a fraction of a
second’s delay or a half-octave change up or down, the stutter
lessens and often disappears completely. They have tested their
methodology with more than 300 stutterers. Fluency improved
between 50 and 100 percent in nearly all cases.
“And it happens just like that,” Rastatter said with a snap of
his fingers. This speed, combined with the degree of fluency, told
Rastatter and his colleagues that something other than speech
motor control accounted for the improvements.
To learn more, the researchers looked inside the brain itself.
Using quantitative electroencephalograms, they have studied the
brain’s neurological signaling during speech in fluent persons and in
stutterers. The left side of the brain controls language functions.
Stutterers, however, show excess electrical activity on the right side of
Hope for F l u e n c y
Patented device may eliminate stuttering.
• SPRING 2000 • 28
The noise never stopped. For three
weeks, the pounding, squealing, grinding of
the truck-mounted drill accompanied Dr.
Catherine Ann Rigsby day and night. The
walls of her tent afforded little protection
from the roar or from temperatures that
dropped below zero every night. Fortunately,
the souvenirs made the whole trip worthwhile.
The souvenirs were eight 50-meter cores
from the Altiplano, or High Plain, of the
Bolivian Andes. The cores will help Rigsby,
associate professor of geology, interpret
more than 40,000 years of climatic history.
This history in turn may help us better
understand how the buildup of greenhouse
gases is likely to affect future global climate.
The need to improve climate models
drives the project. Human activity has
resulted in significant increases in the
amount of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases being released into the
atmosphere, and there are short-term
indications of resulting global warming. If
this continues, sea level could rise as the
polar ice caps melt, and severe drought could
overtake the U.S. grain belt, just for starters.
On the other hand, higher temperatures and
resulting evaporation could set off a
cascading effect that shuts down such warm
water currents as the Gulf Stream and sends
northern latitudes into another ice age.
“Even the best models we have for
predicting climate change are not very
accurate,” Rigsby said. “Some say the
Clockwise from top:
In the Bolivian Andes, a glacier once
filled the curving valley still discernible
in the hills behind the drilling rig.
Drilling cores reveal layers of
sediment that will help unravel
40,000 years of climate history.
“A lot of sand tells you this was
a shoreline,” Catherine Rigsby
says about her coring samples.
Through hindcasting, cores from the Bolivian Andes
may yield clues to future global climate.
The treasure of the A l t i p l a n o
Photo by Catherine Ann Rigsby
29 • SPRING 2000 •
temperature will be higher, and
some say lower. So what the
scientific community wants to do is
something called hindcasting. We
find out all we can about major
episodes of climate change in the
past, and then we use the known
information to test the models and
in that way figure out which are
most accurate.”
So far, most of the evidence
has been gathered from ice cores
taken from the poles. Rigsby and
others now seek to correlate the ice
core data with information from
equatorial regions. It will be a vital
component of any climate change
model. The tropics collect most of
the Earth’s heat from the sun and,
through a combination of heat and
water vapor, power the planet’s
atmospheric circulation.
In the Western Hemisphere,
this search leads to South America.
Because erosion has washed
evidence of the ancient past from
the Amazon River basin, Rigsby is
concentrating her research on an
area about 12,000 feet up in the Andes
Mountains of Bolivia. Here, a stable
geologic history has left a thick and
continuous record of sedimentation and
vegetation. Rigsby hopes to chart how lakes
and rivers on the Altiplano grew and shrank
through the ages — telltale evidence of
fluctuating precipitation.
Four years of preliminary studies paid
off in late spring 1999, when the National
Science Foundation awarded her a three-year,
$300,000 grant for a large-scale
research effort. The timing gave
her only three weeks to assemble a team
and equipment for field work during ECU’s
summer break, which coincides with
Bolivia’s winter. Despite a limited knowl-edge
of Spanish, a remote location and
extreme cold, she pulled together the
monthlong expedition, which included three
weeks of camping and round-the-clock
drilling in the now-dry valley floor. By
September, she was back in Greenville
analyzing the first set of cores.
In her lab last fall, she pointed to the
different colors of sediment. ��These cores
show the transition between lake and river,”
she said. “A lot of sand tells you this was a
shoreline. Where there’s an abrupt shift
from sand to clay, we know the environment
has gotten wetter. The clays were deposited
in ancient lakes.”
Colleagues will help her tease out other
vital pieces of climate history. Radiocarbon-dating
will attach dates to the different
layers of sediment. Salt content will tell the
rate of evaporation. Plant and animal
remains will reveal the temperature range.
All together, these cores should contain a
40,000-year record of the climate in a key
area of the planet.
Rigsby plans a second drilling
expedition for summer 2000. “I know it
sounds exotic, but this field work has global
implications,” she said. “It’s important for
understanding climate change, and for
people in places like coastal North Carolina,
climate change could have a big impact in
terms of rising sea level.” •
• SPRING 2000 • 30
Into the often rancor-ous
debate over fisheries regu-lations,
ECU scientists have
inserted more harmonious
sounds: the burping, purring
and drumming of amorous
fish. These sounds — or, more
precisely, the information they
provide on spawning — are
guiding efforts to preserve
several valuable but dwindling
coastal species.
For more than a decade,
fisheries managers on the East
Coast have noted dramatic
declines in the harvest of weakfish, spotted sea trout and red drum,
important species for both commercial and recreational fishing. The
1998 commercial catch in North Carolina, for example, was only half
that of 1989. The declining catch and other indicators tell state and
federal fisheries managers that they need better regulations to protect
these species from overfishing and to allow their populations to recover.
A necessary element in any recovery plan is protection for the fish
during spawning season. To design these regulations, the managers need
to be able to identify more precisely when and where the fish spawn.
That’s where the ECU scientists enter the picture. Led by Drs.
Joseph J. Luczkovich, Hal J. Daniel III and Mark W. Sprague, they have
used the mating calls of male fish to create a timetable and habitat chart
for spawning activities in a large section of the Pamlico Sound. “We’re
not the first to record fish sounds, but we are the first to apply them to
management issues,” said Luczkovich, associate professor of biology and
associate scientist with the Institute for Coastal and Marine Studies.
In doing so, they’ve shown managers a way to identify spawning
habitat that is simpler, less time-consuming and more accurate than any
previously used. Before, managers would collect eggs and estimate the
time and place they were laid. Or they would catch fish and estimate their
readiness for spawning based on the weight of their reproductive organs.
State and federal agencies have taken note and are citing the team’s work
as they draw up plans for red drum restoration and for coastal habitat
protection, according to Dr. Louis Daniel, executive assistant for federal
councils with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.
The ECU method builds on existing knowledge of fish behavior and
the laws of physics. Male fish “vocalize” during mating by contracting the
muscle along their swim bladder, an organ that also allows them to ad-just
their depth in the water. Different fish make different sounds. While
the red drum attracts his lady love with a knocking sound, the spotted sea
trout creates burps, and the weakfish purrs like the rotors on a helicopter.
These sounds, unlike light, travel through the murky waters of the
Pamlico Sound.
“If something makes a sound, you can learn a lot about that object
by measuring the sound,” said Sprague, assistant professor of physics.
“Loudness can give you information about distance and the number of
fish.” According to Daniel, professor of biology, you also can learn
something about the size of the fish from the frequency, or pitch, of its
sound production. Big fish produce sounds with a lower pitch, and small
fish produce higher-pitched sounds.
But eavesdropping on fish in such a large body of water presented a
real challenge. How could they do it economically? Answer: with a little
ingenuity and some off-the-shelf equipment. Armed with Radio Shack
talking alarm clocks and microcassette recorders, they built sonar buoys
that they program to turn on and off at certain times. They could set the
buoys out, then come back the next day to collect them for analysis.
Early experiments confirmed that fish spawn only at night and
showed the scientists they could get maximum information on a one-hour
tape by recording for two minutes every half hour for 12 hours.
Back in the lab, a student would log the fish sounds, aided by the alarm
clock’s announcement of the time of each recording. Eventually, such
tedious work will be turned over to a computer.
The team also collected fish eggs from the buoy sites and took those
eggs back to the lab for positive identification. (The eggs of these species
are practically identical to the naked eye.) Mitochondrial DNA analysis
verified that the species the scientists heard were the ones spawning.
Another important finding was confirmation that red drum spawn in the
estuaries. Previous models had located their spawning habitat only in the
open ocean. The egg collections revealed something else, too. The louder
the fish sounds on the tape, the more eggs were laid. “The physics
predicts the biological measurements almost perfectly,” Sprague said.
Some incidental discoveries proved almost as interesting. On many
recordings, the scientists picked up the mating sounds of yet another
species, the silver perch. “Sometimes the sound would be quite loud, and
all of a sudden it would go quiet,” Luczkovich said. “Then we’d hear a
dolphin’s whistle.” The dolphin, which possesses the best sonar in the
natural world, has a distinct taste for silver perch. An experiment in the
marine lab at Beaufort confirmed the scientists’ suspicions. The fishes’
mating sounds were giving their location away to predators.
“We think we’re the first to record the sounds of sex and death in
the sea,” Luczkovich said. •
Love songs of spawning fish point the way to better management plans.
Sounds f i s h y
A sample of the sounds Joe Luczkovich and his team
collected with their homemade sonar buoys may be
heard at http://croaker.physics.ecu.edu.
Photo by Johnathan Bascom
31 • SPRING 2000 •
As soon as the war ended, they
would return home and life would be better.
Through three decades of exile, that thought
sustained Eritrean refugees eking out an
existence in the hot, dry lands of eastern
Sudan. Their opportunity came in 1993,
when the civil war in Ethiopia ended and
Eritrea gained its independence, yet the
anticipated floods of repatriation never
materialized. Today, 300,000 Eritreans
remain hunkered down in the dusty poverty
of a land n