Southeast Forsyth Wins History Bowl Championship
Students from eight middle schools from across the state competed head-to-head in the
North Carolina History Bowl State Championship on May 16 in the auditorium of the
Archives and History/State Library Building in Raleigh. Southeast Forsyth Middle School
of Kernersville defeated West Craven Middle School ofNew Bern in the finals. Dr. Jeffrey J.
Crow, deputy secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources, and Sara Powell, repre¬
senting the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
co-sponsors of the competition, presented awards to the winning team.
Throughout the school year, teams of eighth-graders have been competing in regional
history bowls sponsored by various state historic sites. For the championship series,
regional winners participated in paired matches, in which teams of four students and one
alternate answered questions from a moderator. The members of the victorious Forsyth
County school, coached by teacher Andrea McGuire and sponsored by the Charlotte
Hawkins Brown Museum and Alamance Battleground, were Matthew Smith (captain),
Jason Atkinson, Alexandra Kosrnan, Brandon Ramirez, and Gus Ramirez.
The other regional winners that participated in the state championship were Central
Middle School of Gatesville (sponsored by Historic Edenton); Harnett Central Middle
School (Bentonville Battleground); Harris Middle School (Duke Homestead and Bennett
Place); Rugby Middle School (Fort Dobbs); Brawlev Middle School (James K. Polk
Memorial and Reed Gold Mine); and Aurora Middle School (Tryon Palace).
Obituaries
The Office of Archives and History lost a great leader
and friend when fomier state archivist Thornton W.
Mitchell died on May 14, 2003. The son of Thorn¬
ton W. and Elizabeth Grinsell Mitchell, he was bom
on March 24, 1916. He was educated in the public
schools of Lima, Ohio, and South Pasadena and Los
Angeles, California. Mitchell attended Stanford Uni¬
versity, where he completed bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in history. His pursuit of a doctorate in his¬
tory took him across the country to Columbia Uni¬
versity, where he studied under historian Allan
Nevins. When Mitchell completed the Ph.D. degree,
the year was 1941 and, as he recalled, “Young able
bodied men were not being hired as teachers.”
That nudge away from the academic realm
launched a truly remarkable career in archives and
records management that commenced onjuly 1,
1941, with Mitchell’s first job at the National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Following service in the United States Air
Corps as an administrative officer from 1942 to 1944, Mitchell returned to NARA as a
records appraisal officer. He established the NARA Pacific Region office in San Bruno,
California, and then worked briefly in Illinois and Ohio before, in 1961, accepting the
position of assistant state archivist/ records center supervisor for North Carolina. In 1973
Mitchell became state archivist, a position that he held until his retirement in 1981. He
also served as acting director of the Division of Archives and History for seven months in
1974.
Dr. Thornton W. Mitchell, 1916-2003.
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