Centennial Oral Histories:
Bill King

Luke Powery  0:19 

Hi, I’m Luke Powery here with Bill [William] King for the Duke Centennial Oral Histories Program. This is a great privilege, Bill, to be with you to learn more about Duke University. As I understand, you served as the university archivist for 30 years. And your family and you yourself have a long history with Duke. I was told that President Terry Sanford hired you as Duke’s first archivist. How did that come about?

William King  1:02 

Well, that is a fascinating story. The first institutional archivist in higher education — archives in higher education — was Harvard, which should be no surprise to anybody [laughs]. However, it was set up in 1939 at the 300th anniversary of Harvard. So, anniversaries and archives go together well. Duke appointed a committee in 1941 to create an archives. It wasn’t a priority. They got around to it in 1972. However, I like to say that World War Two got in the way. There were tumultuous times [that happened] through there. Several people on campus kept the idea alive, and when Terry Sanford became president, he found matching funds with the Shell Foundation. And with matching funds, they started it in 1972. And I was fortunate to be selected. I understand they were looking for — the prevailing view at the time was to hire a historian. The committee had recommended that in 1941 and then reviewed it again after the war, in maybe 1949, and stuck with the idea of hiring a historian. So, I had a PhD in history from Duke. Robert Durden, the Duke historian, was my mentor and dissertation director. That was fortuitous. They also wanted somebody with a Duke background. And this is interesting from the perspective of this centennial. My father was in the last graduating class of Trinity College in 1924, and my mother was in the first graduating class of Duke University in 1925. So I fit the bill.

LP  3:18 

You do. That’s great. Well as a university historian, and the archivist as well, can you say something about what moments in Duke’s history stand out as most pivotal?

WK  3:36 

Well, as a historian and archivist, I have a little broader perspective than just 1924 to 2024 [laughs]. The most pivotal, I would say, [was] 1890 when they moved to Durham and solidified the Methodist ties that had been established with Trinity College in Randolph County. It became an entirely different institution. That was an agricultural setting. Faculty farmed in order to have enough income to live. When they moved to Durham and — the Methodist ministers here in town were behind the move — when they persuaded Washington Duke to accept it as the philanthropic endeavor of the family, that changed everything. So moving to Durham is crucial. However, the president that they selected in 1890 came down from Yale. John Franklin Crowell. And he brought the prevailing new concept of a research university in America with him. He was studying sociology, which was a brand new subject. And when he got to old Trinity, he combined libraries and literary societies into one college library, set up a curriculum based on research in primary sources, had a reference desk where he helped students learn how to use the resources, and he actually sat on the reference desk as president for a while [laughs]. So that shifted the thought from 19th century memorization to 20th century forward research, which was based on a German model in Europe. So, that turn to curriculum and that move to Durham set in motion the creation of the university that we’re familiar with today.

LP  6:04 

Well, you’ve already mentioned two figures: Washington Duke [and] Crowell who came down [from Yale]. Who would be some other individual figures [or] luminaries that are significant in the history of Duke and making it what it is today?

WK  6:26 

Well, first of all, we now have a statue of Benjamin Duke on East Campus that was commissioned in 1999. I’m [as] proud of having something to do with that as [I am with] setting up the archives. Because we had the statue of Washington [Duke], we had the statue of James B. [Duke], and Ben was completely left out. And Ben was the most significant liaison between the family and Trinity College. He had children that graduated from Duke, from Trinity College. He lived in Durham. He married someone from Durham. He maintained a home in Durham [as well as] New York City throughout his life, when James B. Duke moved to New York City. So Ben now gets his due, and that statue says it. People ask, “Who is this man?” Or if somebody’s giving a tour, they say, “Here is [Benjamin Duke] because.” And then President [John C.] Kilgo is overlooked an awful lot. He was president for maybe 15 or 16 years. A long time.  [He] cemented the Duke Family to continue its presence.

Anybody that’s studying Duke history really needs to look at Crowell. We had our first Native American students during his tenure. Before 1910. We had our first international student from China. We had our first Jewish student. Trinity [was] a unique, very respected, reputable private school in the South. And that, of course, [was] created between 1890 and 1924. Two examples of that is [that the] Phi Beta Kappa -honor society] chapter was awarded in 1919. So, a lot of the building of Duke begins during “the Trinity in Durham” period. There’s a book called Trinity and Duke that really anyone should consult that covers that period. Professor John Spencer Bassett was probably the most influential professor in the history of the school. He carried on this research-based curriculum. Founded the Trinity College Historical Society. One little minor thing that separates Trinity that gets people’s attention today is with all the talk and controversy and legitimate concern and discussion about Confederate monuments in this day and time, John Spencer Bassett’s Trinity College Historical Society set up a town [and] gown civic lecture, or civic celebration. In 1902 or 1903, they selected George Washington’s birthday as the date of that annual celebration, in the face of all of this attention to the Confederacy. Trinity was a school with a difference, and proud of it [laughs]. And that’s just a minor but telling illustration.

Then, of course, William Preston Few was the president [from] 1910 to 1940. He transitioned the school into a university. Going forward, you know, there are a dozen [laughs]. Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans kept the family tradition going. There’s a Mary Duke in every single generation in the family, from before the Civil War to the present. The Duke Family History can get very confusing because they use the same name over and over and over again. I would say any dean and any librarian are very important in the transition and growth of the internationally and nationally known university we have today. Alumni Affairs. The first director was Charles Dukes — D, U, K, E, S — different name, no relation to the family whatsoever. Laney Funderburk [was] a contemporary of mine. I was the class of 1961, and Lanny was the class of 1960. [He] brought the Alumni Affairs program into a modern stance. Utilized speakers, utilized reunions, class reunions of a higher magnitude, organization with an advisory board that carried it into new territory, travel programs, affinity groups, Duke MasterCard to raise money [laughs]. I mean, there’s a tremendous — Duke [was] in a lot of transition from 1960 to 1990. A big period of transition. And so almost anybody that’s around — and Laney was there for 14 or 15 years — played a role. Jacki Silar, who was assistant athletic director, took the Title IX program and transitioned women’s sports clubs into ACC-worthy competition. A name that people would probably not think of, an avenue they might not think of, but she played a significant role in bringing that level to a higher competitive level.

If you want to talk about the desegregation [of Duke], two things are the most significant in our 100 years. One [was] solving an administrative governance problem, and one was desegregation. In 1961 and 1963. They operated simultaneously, and the president was [Arthur] Hollis Edens. And the faculty committee of three that really accomplished that doesn’t get much attention but [they were] Barnes Woodhall from the [Duke University] Medical Center, Marcus Hobbs [who was a] chemistry professor, and R. Taylor Cole [who was] the first provost [and who] was a political science professor. They were appointed by President Deryl Hart, just after Edens, to deal with the Board of Trustees to get the school desegregated. The board was the obstacle they — to digress for a minute, what the archivist does is help people do research and collect material for research. Melissa Kean, doctoral candidate from Rice University, walked in the door one day and said, “I’m doing a dissertation on the integration of private higher education in the South.” I’d been suggesting that topic to the Duke history department for about five years, and nobody had picked up on it. So she wrote the book Desegregating Private Higher Education in the South. It came out in 2008 [and was] on Rice, Tulane, Emory, Vanderbilt, and Duke [universities]. Duke was in the middle of that pack. They didn’t lead the pack. They didn’t bring up the rear. They were in the middle.

Every one of those schools had to convince their board of trustees to make a significant change. Easier in some, much more difficult than others. Not smooth in any of them. And we had a Board of Trustees that just was not willing to take that forward step at that time. So to break down that obstacle, these three men — Cole, Hobbs, and Barnes Woodhall — met with groups of Trustees. A small group in New York, a small group in Atlanta, a small group somewhere else. To convince them that the future depended on it. Federal money depended on it [laughs]. It was the history of the South, and the nation depended on it. It was needed and a proper thing to do. So that’s how they broke down the opposition, and these three men played a very significant role. Hollis Edens is kind of called somewhat of an obstructionist. He was not one to change things quickly. But for a year, I think when the board met, he would say, “Now we need to discuss the item of desegregation.” And there would be silence. And then he would say, “Okay, we’ll go on to this item.” He saw the need for it, but he also knew who was in charge, and that was the Board of Trustees [laughs]. So it took an effort, and it took a while, and Edens played his role by pushing. Behind the scenes, completely. And these three men, they kind of nicknamed them “Troika.” That was a popular term at the time based on the Russian term of three. So, they certainly merit significant attention. Then Sam [Samuel DuBois] Cook, the first Black faculty member. John Hope Franklin — a well-known, outstanding, top history professor — helped along that line.

[Former President] Nan [Nannerl] Keohane. We’re pushing all along [with the timeline]. One of my favorite stories is [that I was] walking down the second floor of the Allen Building hallway one day and there were electricians everywhere. There were wires everywhere. There were people working in the ceiling and the walls. And I said, “What on earth is going on around here?” And they said, “The new president communicates by email.” So they were wiring the administration building [laughs] for Nan Keohane’s arrival. So she’s definitely part of that transition. She will be recognized for raising money. You don’t do $2 billion campaigns and not change the institution — largest and most successful in the South. So there are lots of people. [Administrator] Tallman Trask had helped with more buildings on campus than [Duke architect] Julian Abele did in terms of utility and design and growth. So it’s an ongoing transition, and a tremendous amount of change. When I came to Duke as a freshman in 1957 tuition was $600. It was an “east of the Mississippi” school. We had a few [students] from the west. Now we have [students from] every state. Every two or three years we’ll get every state. We raised money to bring a student from Hungary to Duke during the Hungarian Revolution. The Student Government Association [did that]. He was one of a small number of international students. And now we have [around] 70 countries represented. Tremendous growth and change.

You ask about people, but one very important item in the history of the University is the physical plant. The actual design and building of the new University. And the name change. I’ve alluded to the name change, but to show you one reason for that [gestures] this is a pennant. The only one I’ve ever seen. You have to look at it closely, but the motto “Eruditio et Religio” is the same. Trinity College, in Latin is the same, but it says N-C. Trinity College, North Carolina. That’s very unusual in a seal. There were probably a dozen Trinity Colleges around the world, and President Few suggested that they name it Duke University [as] a new beginning. And so that gave rise to one myth that I think we’ve finally put to rest. The school is named after Washington Duke, by James B. Duke. He wanted it named after his father, and family. It was not named after him. He did not go shopping for a school that would take his money and change its name. That’s a myth. It’s often associated with Princeton. There’s nothing in the Princeton archives [and] there’s nothing in the Duke archives that gives any substance to such a story. So, the name change takes place for that reason.

Duke also gave $19 million to build two campuses, in addition to creating the family philanthropy [initiative called] The Duke Endowment, which we could spend a whole hour [talking about]. We’ll let Charlie Lucas talk about that. So, Duke selected his architect who built his statement house on Fifth Avenue [as a] gift to his wife. [It] was Horace Trumbauer of [his own] Philadelphia architectural firm, whose [specialty] was to build houses like this [in places like] Newport, Rhode Island, Fifth Avenue, Philadelphia. And so Duke gave the money, and Duke selected the architect. The architect selected the style. East Campus — what we now call East Campus – was the original Trinity College campus — was flat, and it was designed to incorporate older buildings. And so they built a Georgian style red brick campus. In that particular setting. The price of land went up. There wasn’t enough land to begin with. President Few had been horseback riding a mile or two west. He decided that that [area] looked like a possibility for our campus. They quietly bought up all the land, which we now call Duke Forest and the Duke campus. And people in Durham woke up to a headline one day saying [that the] new campus [was] to be located a mile and a quarter west. Another headline said [the] largest building permit in the history of the South [was] signed today. And so the Gothic campus was built in a place that had ravines [and] higher ground that lent itself to dramatic architecture. And so Julian Abele, the Black architect for Horace Trumbauer – with the chief designer and the firm of Trumbauer, and the designer of Abele – designed two campuses. [Then] the stock market crashed. This is during the beginning of the Depression. Duke got a tremendous amount of publicity for this building. Los Angeles papers, Chicago papers, New York papers, New Orleans papers — all showing photographs. Aldous Huxley the English author came [and toured] down here and called it the best example of Neo-Gothic architecture he had ever seen.

So the fact that the Duke money not only underwrote the transition but built new facilities in such a dramatic fashion propelled the school forward. Now, when West Campus opened the undergraduate men were located in West Campus and they carried on the name Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. The graduate schools, the law school, the professional schools, and the med[ical] school were all located on West [Campus]. The new Georgian campus was turned into a women’s college, for women only. It went from one dorm for women to eight dorms for women. Tremendous transition. Instantly successful because of the Dean — Dean Alice Baldwin. Baldwin Auditorium is named after her because of the administration [and] the support. It was a coordinate college. She favored co-ed college, but because of the geography and the proclivities of the men, they created a coordinate instead. It was called “the coordinate college with a mile and a half hyphen” between East and West campuses. Now, all the women could take courses on West and all the men could take courses on East, and that has always been the case. 20 minutes between classes is a bit odd, but they needed that time to get from one campus to the other to make classes.

Dean Baldwin’s idea of teaching leadership for women — now this is in the late 1920s and early 1930s in the South — was very popular. And there were mothers all over the South who wanted their daughters to get the very best education, but they didn’t want to send them too far North. North Carolina was far enough. There were Northerners who wanted their daughters to get a good education, but the weather was kind of bad. They wanted to send them South, but maybe not the Deep South. So the location [and] the creation of a women’s college [meant that] it was harder to get into the Women’s College than it was Trinity College. They graded on the curve, where everybody got the same number of As, Ds, Bs, Cs. You know, the bell curve. The men called the women “curve breakers” because they were smarter. And they would go into — and this literally happened, this isn’t just a story — men would go into class, and if there were too many women in the class they’d go to drop/add and go to another section that had more men than women. The Women’s College was a huge success. They had their own student government; they had their own judicial board; they had their own representative; they lived in the same dorm for four years. They did much of what Duke has been trying to recreate ever since. In the 1960s, it was an anachronism. People wanted a co-ed school, and women’s colleges were struggling, and the women students were insisting on change. Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, who was on the Board, said it was the most difficult vote she made as a trustee, to merge the Women’s College in Trinity College. So it has now receded enough into the background that people don’t really think about it. It’s a freshman college now.

Another thing archivists [do] is help students do their research and write. We had an honor student come in wanting to write a history of the demise — I’ll use that word, right — of the Women’s College. I said, “This is a too recent [history]. You have to have permission from the president to use the papers, so you have to write Terry Sanford.” So she wrote Terry, and I told her [that she was to explain that she was] writing for permission to write a history of the abolition of the Women’s College. So she did. She got a letter back from President Sanford saying, “You have permission to write a history of the merger of the Women’s College.” You didn’t get many things by Terry Sanford. And of course, it was a merger. People think of it as abolition, but that was a very important part of Duke.

I’ll tell you one more Terry Sanford story. He was the right man for the right time. He was controversial because he was a politician and had a public record. He was not an academician. And so — I’ve got stream of consciousness going here [laughs]. When his presidency was announced at a big meeting of the National Council of Alumni Association two people got up and walked out. Well, everybody understood. One, because [one of the people] had been a political opponent of Sanford, and he had no desire that Sanford be president of his alma mater. Nobody understood the other one. Twenty years later, someone asked the trustee, “Why did you get up and walk out?” He [had] become a trustee. And they asked him, “I’ve always wondered why you walked out when Terry Sanford was announced president of Duke.” And he said, “What do you mean?” “You walked out.” And he said, “Oh, I had to go to the bathroom.” For all these years, people had blamed him, when he was a solid supporter of Terry Sanford.

But Terry Sanford had listening sessions with students all around campus. And [he] had one in the lounge at the library. So I decided I’d go down and I’d see what took place in these. So there were about 20 students down there, and there was a young lady from Edens Quadrangle. You’ve got the main quad, and then you’ve got a lower level where Keohane Quad is now. It was a parking lot then. And then you’ve got a lower level where Edens [Quad] was built. So there were a huge number of steps for the students to take. And the last section from the parking lot up to the main quad was just a footpath. Well, as the rains came and went it turned into a muddy path. And so she said, “President Sanford, we need to have a paved walkway to be able to negotiate this path that we do two or three times a day from Edens Quad to the main quad.” So President Sanford said, “You know, this is a big university. A complicated University. And I’ll figure out what path to follow. But in the meantime, why don’t you go back to the dorm and get a petition signed by all the students that are willing that want this walkway, and bring it to me, and then we’ll get it to the right person that can accomplish it.” Well, about six months later, they were working on this walkway. And of course, Terry Sanford could have picked up the phone, called somebody, and said, “Bill, it’s necessary and it’s needed.” He got the students involved. He got a petition signed. He got them feeling like they had some influence, and that the president listened to them, and that this was their university and they could accomplish something. And this is just another example. He became known as Uncle Terry. One of the few people I know in the history of the school that got a familiar name. And for that to be given to a president is very, very unusual. Particularly one who was selected during the Vietnam [War] era of protest and when higher education was being turned upside down.

LP  36:32 

Sanford is such a significant figure, as you say, and there’s this phrase [of his] that people still [use] to this day — the “outrageous ambitions.” Why do you think that particular phrase still holds true here at the university? It has echoed down throughout history, and people still use it today. Why is that phrase so significant for the university, or what does it say about Duke?

WK  37:08 

You’re asking the historian, so I’m immediately going to say — it’s a memorable, catchy phrase that represents a school from 1890 forward. So, most people wouldn’t make that association [laughs], but the school always has been in transition. And been ambitious, and had a role in education and religion and service. “Eruditio et Religio,” [Trinity President] Braxton Craven adopted as a motto in the 1850s. President Few added “Service to Mankind” many times. So Sanford is articulating history, whether he knew it or not. From a historical perspective. He carried the step of Duke being well-known, particularly in the south, one step further into being well-known nationally. Like my class being an “east of the Mississippi” school to a national school. He appointed the first Director of Public Relations and Government Relations, [William] Bill Green, and later John Burness took that position. Bill Green instituted a program of sabbaticals for journalists, and you would have writers for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, [and] the Los Angeles Times come to [the] Sanford School of Public Policy for a month. They could do anything they wanted to do that month. All they had to do was just give a lecture. So they were free to do research on any topic they wanted to [and] utilize the Duke services. They were free from deadlines, daily deadlines. And suddenly you started having articles about Duke University appear in the Los Angeles Times, [the] Seattle paper, the Wall Street Journal. So Green and Burness carried that, and Sanford set that in motion. So “outrageous ambitions” is simply articulating the next step in Duke history and articulating the transition that we’re always going through. The next president will have a transition, any new leadership team has a transition.

LP  40:20 

That’s great. You’ve written two books — or more than that, but two that I want to ask you about in particular. One is If Gargoyles Could Talk, and the other more recent one on Julian Abele and the design of the university. You could speak to both of those. What inspired you to write these two in particular?

WK  40:52 

Well, If Gargoyles Could Talk is putting together maybe 50 articles. I wrote a monthly column on the history of Duke as archivist. When I became archivist, they were using the same dialog and the same design of all publications for 20 years. President [Douglas] Knight designed the new robes They were trying to get a new identity. So I persuaded one of the communications people to accept an article on history. Which is not easily accomplished sometimes. And so I made a point in every one of those articles to give some new information about the school. To emphasize Kilgo. To emphasize student life, the big band era. To talk about the building of the Chapel [and] the laborers that did that. To talk about what we learned about the design of the windows. To President Few’s inauguration in 1910, a very significant inauguration. People from all over the country came to see what this Trinity College was all about that they were hearing about. The rail line brought them into Greensboro. Ben Duke provided the transportation to get them from Greensboro to Durham. Presidents of Big 10 schools, northeast schools. That’s just another example of what the college was built on. I’m going too far afield here and losing my train of thought. But you’re asking? Somebody’s been around here for 60 years. [laughs].

LP  43:05 

No, you’re great. So, what inspired you to write those particular books?

WK  43:13 

So those columns, someone suggested that I put those into a book and so I did. It’s a quick way to get Duke history, because they’re all short. It’s not a monograph of 300 pages and 400 footnotes. There’s not a footnote in it [laughs], but every one of them is a solid history. I cite sources from time to time, and it’s an easy read. And I think people can learn a lot of Duke history by looking.  If Gargoyles Could Talk was a catchy title.

LP  43:51 

Let me ask you about the Julian Abele book.

WK  43:52 

The Julian Abele story is a fascinating story. The administration knew about Abele from the very beginning. Because people would work with a designer, and they would go up there and interview. They didn’t think that much about it, the fact that he was Black and that this was a Southern school. The chief designer worked at the home site anyway. That was the way things were done. The liaison, the face of the firm, was Horace Trumbauer. But the Abele story burst on campus in 1986. Susan Cook was his great grand niece. Her father was Julian Abele Cook. And she came to Duke and there was a protest against apartheid in South Africa. Students built some shanties up in the main quadrangle. And [it] was very controversial. Graduation was coming up, and people wanted to get rid of them for this weekend, and the students wanted them there as a statement in support of the poor Blacks in Cape Town. And so Susan Cook wrote a letter to the editor in the Chronicle saying, “My grand great uncle designed this campus. He was African American. He would support our cause of opposing apartheid, and we should not remove these.” Well, the Black students jumped on this immediately, and everyone — pretty much campus-wide — was learning that for the first time. And so that’s when [it became known, from] 1986 forward.

Now Abele, there are more questions about his life than there are answers. He left no personal papers, and the firm left no records. What people know about Julian Abele is basically [from] very little written resources, some correspondence, and oral history. Oral history can make as many mistakes sometimes as it can be accurate [laughs]. But we dealt with that over a 20-year period. It evolved and became much better understood. We did research at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the first Black graduate in the School of Architecture. Susan Cook told us that Julian Abele Jr. was still alive, and we didn’t even know anything about Julian Abele Jr. So the Friends of the Chapel group, that I was President of for a while, we decided we would invite Julian Abele Jr. to campus to see how he would react and how we would react to him. Because the prevailing story was that Abele never came south because of segregation, and he didn’t want to subject himself to Jim Crow [laws]. The family believed that very strongly. And so we invited [Abele Jr.] down, and he was thrilled to come down and walk around and see what his father had done. He was a charming man, and we established a rapport with the university. We invited him and his whole family back two more times. And then ultimately the main quad is named Julian Abele Quad. He lived into his 90s and was here at the dedication of that quad.

So I retired, went away for 10 years, [and] came back. Tallman Trask saw me in the quad [and] didn’t realize I was back. They’d had a committee to honor Abele. One of their recommendations was that they write a biography of Abele. He asked me what I thought about writing a biography. I told him I didn’t think anyone should write a biography [of him] because there’s not enough material to write a biography [laughs]. But there is enough material for telling what we know about his story and admitting that there’s a lot that we don’t know. And so a couple days later, Trask called me and asked me if I’d be willing to do that. And I said, “Sure, I’ve lived with the story for 25 years.” So he financed the book. I wrote it. It’s in the bookstore. Julian Abele and the Design of Duke University. And we subtitled it An Extended Essay. Now, I am convinced that he did come to campus. It was a story in the Black community in Durham for years that he had been here. And so it was oral history, and we just couldn’t substantiate it. But another author got interested in Abele and wrote an article that was published in the Smithsonian [Magazine]. She found some other corroborating information, and I am 99% sure that he came down with a colleague. They tried to check into the Washington Duke hotel. The colleague was accepted, and they told [Abele] that he could not stay there. He went and stayed with one of the leading Black families in Durham, which happened all the time. When musicians would come through [like] Duke Ellington [and] Louis Armstrong, they stayed in homes in the Black community, by and large because of the egregious segregation. So I’m sure he came. And you can’t design a beautiful Georgian campus and a majestic beautiful Gothic campus and not want to see your handiwork. And so in this book, Julian Abele Jr. was still alive. I say it’s easy to fudge — and I didn’t say fudge [laughs] — it’s easy to accept the story of the family that he never came. But there is oral tradition that he did, and that’s all I say in the book. But if people ask me now I say, “he came, and he visited the campus.” It’s just a sad part of the Southern story.

LP  51:46 

Let me ask you about the title of the book, and then I have one other thing I want to ask you. Why do you say extended essay as part of the title? What do you mean?

WK  52:01 

It’s more like a brief article. It’s a very sophisticated design. The book that explains it, and everybody who wants to know about Duke architecture ought to read William Blackburn’s The Architecture of Duke University, which came out in 1939. The Gothic campus has elements of Elizabethan style, elements of Medieval battlemented style, elements of late Elizabethian, a highly decorated style. It has five towers, no two are identical. There’s a tension in there between unity and diversity. And Blackburn spells all this out. He went to Philadelphia and he interviewed Julian Abele. It’s the only document we have that we can say somebody talked to the architect [himself]. And so it’s an extended essay in that it tells some architectural detail, and it tells some family detail, and it leaves out some things that ought to be left out, and it tells some things that need to be told [laughs]. But it’s not a biography.

LP  53:37 

Well one last thing I want to ask you, Bill, as the university moves into the second century, what are your hopes for Duke?

WK  53:51 

Well, I have some concerns [laughs] and some hopes. First of all, because of the Trinity College and the Woman’s College being separate schools among the entities of the professional schools, there’s always been an attention to teaching and student life. I think one of the distinctive features of the University is the attention to freshmen. Attention to [the] first year experience of being away from home. It was true in my year, which was quite different from today. So I would hope they would always continue to have full professors teach undergraduates, which is common here. And they would always be interested in this transition from away from home and from high school to college. Now, I am concerned about the cost. And I think everybody in private higher education ought to be concerned about the cost. Who knows what we’re going to be facing 25 or 50 years from now. But you have to be alert to pricing yourself out of your clientele. So that’s a concern. I feel very strongly about the motto “Eruditio et Religio.” I like the fact that this emphasizes learning and ethics, learning and knowledge and faith. [In] this day and time, do we ever need the element of ethics. And this motto is broad enough to encompass that [laughs]. It has been controversial through the years. It’s too church-oriented, it’s too Methodist-oriented. That’s part of our history that I hope we never forget. And I hope we stick with the motto. The shield is being played around with. Some things are being redesigned, but let’s keep “Eruditio et religio.” It’s an important, very important concept. And if they were to ask me what I would do, I would say, “We need an annual lecture on Duke history.” And I would name it the John Spencer Bassett lecture. It doesn’t have to be on what we’ve talked about today. I think that scares some people. A boring lecture on history. But the School of the Environment could do it one year, the Law School could do it one year, the Graduate School could do it one year. You could talk about student life one year. You could talk about women’s education. You know, don’t limit it to a chronological history. But pay attention to the accuracy of your institution and build on that. Use your outrageous ambitions correctly.

LP  57:25 

Bill, thanks so much. [It] has been a privilege to learn from you, and you are indeed our university historian. Thanks for your time.

WK  57:35 

I’ve been retired 22 years. I’ve told people I had 30 years to live with it every day, I’ve had 20 years to forget it [laughs]. I hope this will stand the proof.

LP  57:52 

Thanks again.