Item Information
Title
Norma Berryhill, Class of 1925, in an interview with UNC Archives.
Description
Norma Berryhill, Class of 1925, in an interview with UNC Archives. Berryhill discusses her experience as a student in this oral history. Performed by Julia Gibson
Creator
PlayMaker’s Repertory Company in collaboration with the University Archives at Louis Round Wilson Library
Source
Interview with Norma Berryhill by Mary Friday, 9 March 1978 G-0010, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Series G: Southern Women (04007G), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/04007G/
Date
2021
Language
English
Identifier
Transcription
Norma Berryhill, Class of 1925, in an interview with UNC Archives.
People do not realize how different things are now. I was one of 98 coeds when I got to the University.
I lived in the Archer House during summer school, then in the Bryan House during regular school after the coed house burned. Margaret Jones was my roommate. My friends were a group of girls who were later Pi Phis: Frances Venable, Dorothy Greenlaw, Beverly Branson, Jane Toy, all professors’ daughters, except Margaret, who was from Charlotte.
When I got back the first day after the Christmas break, he came to the coed house, the old Archer House where the Ackland Museum is now, to see me. I went down and talked with him in the parlor. The coed house had 18 girls and one bathroom. The only way we could take a bath was to sign up for it and one’s turn did not come too often. I was sitting down talking to Reece when somebody upstairs called down and said, Norma, your time to take a bath has come.” I was so embarrassed I nearly died. I let that bath time pass.
I attended football games, which were always on Saturday afternoon. It was just an awful lot of fun in those days because the bleachers were small and low. The football stadium was Emerson Field, which is now built over. It was not a fraction of what the stadium is now. The big games were Virginia game and the state game. You would see people from your hometown, some of whom didn’t think they would run into anybody who knew them. It was fun to see how they behaved. I would go with a friend. I didn’t know the football players, but most of the girls did.
We had a room in the Archer House with no central heat, just a pot-bellied stove. Once we did not have any heat on a cold, cold day and we had to study in our rooms. We wondered what to do since we couldn’t sit in that cold room. So I said, “Margaret, put on a sweater, your warmest clothes, and your coat, tie up your head in a scarf, and come with me.” She evidently trusted me because she did just that. We went out onto the campus. In those days the grounds were not as well kept as they are now. There were all sorts of twigs and sticks under the big oak trees. We got out there, not meaning to be anywhere near the President’s office in the Alumni Building, but we were there under the big trees and he happened to look out the window. We had gone out to pick up sticks, and we looked like peasant women. It was late afternoon, not too far from dark. Dr. Chase looked out his window and said to his secretary, Claude Curry, “Who is that out there picking up sticks? Go out there and see what this is about.” Claude, who was someone I knew well, came out and said, “What are you all doing?” We told him we didn’t have any wood in our room. “Well why don’t you have any wood in your room? Where do you live?” We told him why we didn’t have any wood, and that we had the only room without central heat. He said, “Well, you take your sticks along and I’ll see what we can do about it.” Almost by the time we got the sticks going in our fire, Dr. Chase has a load of wood sent there and a man delivering it up to our room.
During the long rain, snowy winter, the mud in Cameron Street was terrible. Narrow planks had been placed across the road between Old West and Gerrard Hall for students to walk on. Once my foot slipped off the narrow plank and my shoe went down into the mud. When I pulled my foot up, the shoe was still buried in the mud and I had to go back to the coed house with one shoe on and one shoe off. A thousand years from now, when excavations take place to see what this civilization was like, they are going to find one shoe and they going to wonder what it’s all about.
People do not realize how different things are now. I was one of 98 coeds when I got to the University.
I lived in the Archer House during summer school, then in the Bryan House during regular school after the coed house burned. Margaret Jones was my roommate. My friends were a group of girls who were later Pi Phis: Frances Venable, Dorothy Greenlaw, Beverly Branson, Jane Toy, all professors’ daughters, except Margaret, who was from Charlotte.
When I got back the first day after the Christmas break, he came to the coed house, the old Archer House where the Ackland Museum is now, to see me. I went down and talked with him in the parlor. The coed house had 18 girls and one bathroom. The only way we could take a bath was to sign up for it and one’s turn did not come too often. I was sitting down talking to Reece when somebody upstairs called down and said, Norma, your time to take a bath has come.” I was so embarrassed I nearly died. I let that bath time pass.
I attended football games, which were always on Saturday afternoon. It was just an awful lot of fun in those days because the bleachers were small and low. The football stadium was Emerson Field, which is now built over. It was not a fraction of what the stadium is now. The big games were Virginia game and the state game. You would see people from your hometown, some of whom didn’t think they would run into anybody who knew them. It was fun to see how they behaved. I would go with a friend. I didn’t know the football players, but most of the girls did.
We had a room in the Archer House with no central heat, just a pot-bellied stove. Once we did not have any heat on a cold, cold day and we had to study in our rooms. We wondered what to do since we couldn’t sit in that cold room. So I said, “Margaret, put on a sweater, your warmest clothes, and your coat, tie up your head in a scarf, and come with me.” She evidently trusted me because she did just that. We went out onto the campus. In those days the grounds were not as well kept as they are now. There were all sorts of twigs and sticks under the big oak trees. We got out there, not meaning to be anywhere near the President’s office in the Alumni Building, but we were there under the big trees and he happened to look out the window. We had gone out to pick up sticks, and we looked like peasant women. It was late afternoon, not too far from dark. Dr. Chase looked out his window and said to his secretary, Claude Curry, “Who is that out there picking up sticks? Go out there and see what this is about.” Claude, who was someone I knew well, came out and said, “What are you all doing?” We told him we didn’t have any wood in our room. “Well why don’t you have any wood in your room? Where do you live?” We told him why we didn’t have any wood, and that we had the only room without central heat. He said, “Well, you take your sticks along and I’ll see what we can do about it.” Almost by the time we got the sticks going in our fire, Dr. Chase has a load of wood sent there and a man delivering it up to our room.
During the long rain, snowy winter, the mud in Cameron Street was terrible. Narrow planks had been placed across the road between Old West and Gerrard Hall for students to walk on. Once my foot slipped off the narrow plank and my shoe went down into the mud. When I pulled my foot up, the shoe was still buried in the mud and I had to go back to the coed house with one shoe on and one shoe off. A thousand years from now, when excavations take place to see what this civilization was like, they are going to find one shoe and they going to wonder what it’s all about.