RALEIGH — Nine distinguished North Carolinians are the latest recipients of the prestigious North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor the state can bestow. The categories are fine arts, literature, public service, and science. The winners were recognized during ceremonies at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Cary on Nov. 27.
Honorees this year were Dr. Viney P. Aneja and Dr. Darrel W. Stafford, both for Science; Dr. Jerry C. Cashion, former N.C. Chief Justice Henry E. Frye, former N.C. Chief Justice Burley B. Mitchell, Jr., and Charlie Rose, all for Public Service; Dr. Jan Davidson and Rosemary Harris Ehle, both for Fine Arts; and Dr. William Leuchtenburg, for Literature.
Presenting the awards were Governor Mike Easley, First Lady Mary Easley and Lisbeth C. Evans, secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources. An awards committee chaired by Jack Cozort selected the recipients from nominations submitted by the public. Other committee members were Nick Bragg, Jean W. McLaughlin, and Hal Crowther.
Created by the General Assembly in 1961, the North Carolina Awards have been presented annually since 1964. More than 200 outstanding North Carolinians have been selected as recipients from citizen nominations from across the state.
SCIENCE: Viney P. Aneja
“Industrial agriculture is a very effective and efficient way to feed large populations, but no one has really studied the impact of agriculture on air quality,” says Dr. Viney Aneja, a scientist at North Carolina State University. “With our many products and the fact that we have agriculture throughout our state instead of just in one area, North Carolina is really an excellent case study in terms of agricultural air pollution.” Aneja, a scientist of international distinction, has made significant advances in the field of agricultural air quality. For his pioneering contributions to environmental science, Viney P. Aneja receives the North Carolina Award for Science.
Aneja, a native of India, earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering at North Carolina State University. Aneja conducted and supervised research for General Electric in New York and Northrop Service in Research Triangle Park. In 1987 he joined the faculty of the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State, where he has developed an exceptional research program in agricultural air quality that is recognized worldwide. In 2001 he was also appointed Professor of Environmental Technology in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.
Aneja’s expertise is sought frequently from the public and private sectors both near and far. When a hazardous materials warehouse burned in Apex in 2006, he spoke to local and national media about the potential risks. He was appointed to the Hazardous Materials Task Force, created by Gov. Michael F. Easley to study the rules and regulations governing such facilities. Aneja has served as lead scientist for state and national government studies. Similarly, he has delved into environmental issues with colleagues and governmental officials in Australia, France, China, Germany, Japan, India, Israel, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
Aneja has contributed profoundly to technical literature, having published more than 140 scientific papers, 112 book and conference proceedings chapters, and two books. He holds five United States patents. He frequently organizes and chairs symposiums at national and international meetings and serves on the editorial boards of international scientific journals.
He has served as a member of the North Carolina Progress Board and the Technical Advisory Committee on North Carolina Environmental Defense and as director of the Air and Waste Management Association. In 1998, the latter presented Aneja with the Frank A. Chambers Award, the organization’s highest honor; and, in 2001, he received its Lyman A. Ripperton Award for distinguished achievement as an educator.
Much of Aneja’s work has focused on the science that is critical to making important decisions on environmental policies in North Carolina. Recently he has concentrated on the contributions of animal feeding operations to air quality, an innovative field of inquiry with major consequence in the eastern part of the state. His research on atmospheric photochemical oxidants in the Appalachians and urban North Carolina has clarified the role of long-range pollutants in the formation of acid rain and the resulting damage to the trees that frame North Carolina’s incredible mountain vistas, as well as ozone pollution in the cities.
Viney Aneja lives in Raleigh with his wife, Poonam, and their two children.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Jerry C. Cashion
Historian, teacher, mentor—Jerry Cashion long has been the person to turn to with questions about North Carolina history. One colleague commends his “passion for historical accuracy, meticulous documentation, and absolute integrity.” Another points to his “immense stature as a teacher” and the “firm and fair hand” with which he presides over meetings of the North Carolina Historical Commission—“always the gentleman.” For a career dedicated to the truth and an unwavering sense of allegiance to the Old North State, Jerry C. Cashion receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Cashion credits his fascination with history and his dedication to all things Tar Heel to his upbringing in Iredell County. Of special interest from an early age was nearby Fort Dobbs, the lost fortification erected by frontier settlers as a defense from Cherokee attacks. Though raised in Statesville, he spent much time on the family farm, property he still owns, prompting coworkers to nickname him “The Squire.”
In 1958 Cashion enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he acquired bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in history. His dissertation addressed the Cherokee during the period preceding the American Revolution. His mentors were William S. Powell, the prolific author and teacher, and Hugh T. Lefler, the legendary classroom teacher. Cashion assisted Lefler with textbook revisions and classroom duties.
As a graduate student he taught popular courses on North Carolina and United States history. Among his students was future Governor Michael F. Easley, whose friendship he values to this day. In 1974 Cashion received recognition for outstanding teaching. After moving to Raleigh he taught undergraduates at North Carolina State University.
A mark of Cashion’s steadfastness has been his dedication to his fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta. Cashion is an admirer of Civil War governor Zebulon B. Vance and their portraits hang together at the UNC fraternity, a chapter which Vance helped establish. Known as “Pop” Cashion to his brothers, he long served as adviser to the group and has established a scholarship for members.
From 1974 to 2000 Cashion was Research Branch Supervisor of what is now the Office of Archives and History in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. His work for the agency began while he was at UNC and has included reports ranging from Fort Butler in the west to Polk Birthplace in the Piedmont to Halifax in the east. He supervised work on scores of reports by researchers in his office and long administered the State Highway Historical Marker Program.
Cashion has served Archives and History and broader cultural interests in North Carolina by involvement with the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, America’s 400th Anniversary Committee, Friends of the Archives, National Register Advisory Committee, Kellenberger Historical Foundation, Carolina Charter Corporation, Southern Historical Association, North Caroliniana Society, and Historical Society of North Carolina.
He received the Christopher Crittenden Award for preservation of state history in 1999. Governor Easley appointed him chairman of the North Carolina Historical Commission in 2001 and reappointed him in 2007.
Cashion, whose late wife Rita also worked for Archives and History, lives in Raleigh and dotes on his two grandchildren.
FINE ARTS: Jan Davidson
Jan Davidson has been called “North Carolina to the bone.” His contributions to understanding Tar Heel arts and culture are extraordinary and far reaching. Since 1992 he has served as director of the John C. Campbell Folk School, founded in 1925 at Brasstown in Clay County in the southwestern corner of the state. The school has been revitalized due in large measure to his vision and hard work. For his lifelong commitment to performing, collecting, and serving as a focal point for folk life interests, Jan Davidson receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
For Davidson, it is the noncompetitive nature of John C. Campbell that sets his school apart: “A lot of schools are set up to sort people out. We are set up to bring them together. It is important to have some places in this world where life is not a contest.” The school has become an incubator for small businesses and has developed into a strong economic development partner in the region, providing steady, year-round jobs with good benefits.
Each year the John C. Campbell Folk School offers some 850 classes to more than 3,000 students, sixty percent of whom are return visitors. Students, who are for the most part adults, take courses in art forms such as blacksmithing, basketry, weaving, music, storytelling, and writing. Craft schools exist across the region, but the institution founded by Olive Dame Campbell and Marguerite Butler is a folk school, based on the Danish folkehojskole.
Davidson’s path to Brasstown came with detours, though his singular focus lends an air of predestination to his route. Born John Allen Davidson Jr., he is a native of Cherokee County, just a short distance from Brasstown. As a teenager he was a disc jockey at WCVP in Murphy and introduced the Beatles to the community. He followed his muse to Chapel Hill, where at night he played in a rock band called the Southern States Fidelity Choir. In his daytime hours he completed undergraduate studies in English and a master’s degree in folklore.
In 1975, the Southern States Fidelity Choir collaborated with the Red Clay Ramblers on the musical Diamond Studs. Davidson spent the better part of that year in New York City performing eight shows a week off Broadway. After Diamond Studs, he worked in Washington as an aide to Sen. Robert Morgan, followed by a five-year stint as a visiting artist in the public schools and community colleges across North Carolina.
Davidson accepted a position as curator of the Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University in 1983. A project on blacksmithing developed into his dissertation, which he completed as part of a Ph.D. in folklore, history, and museum studies at Boston University in 1992. Davidson started work at Brasstown the same year.
Davidson’s allegiance to North Carolina has translated to service on a number of levels, from the local chamber of commerce to Western North Carolina Tomorrow to the Southern Arts Federation. Since 1996 he has been a board member of the North Carolina Arts Council.
Davidson and his wife, Nan, live in Brasstown and are the parents of two sons and a daughter.
FINE ARTS: Rosemary Harris Ehle
Rosemary Harris Ehle’s work in theater, film, and television made her a citizen of the world; but, for many decades, she has chosen to call North Carolina home. She has supported the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem since 1967, serves on its Board of Visitors, and is proud of her honorary doctorates from the School of the Arts and Wake Forest University. In a career spanning more than fifty years, she has worked with some of the most distinguished personalities of stage and screen. For her contributions to the arts and in recognition of her extraordinary acting career, Rosemary Harris Ehle receives the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Born in Ashby, Suffolk, England, Ehle grew up in India where her father served in the Royal Air Force. She was educated in England and graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with the Bancroft Gold Medal. Her first theater job in London was as an understudy in The Gay Dog! at the Piccadilly Theater, where her primary responsibility was caring for Nellie, the greyhound with the leading role. Her talent was soon recognized, and she was invited by Moss Hart to come to New York and perform in his new play, The Climate of Eden. The press dubbed her “the most beautiful girl on Broadway.”
Ehle made her London debut in 1952 in The Seven Year Itch. She spent one season at the Bristol Old Vic, playing Elizabeth Proctor in the British premiere of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, followed by Desdemona, opposite Richard Burton, in Othello, and Cressida in Tyrone Guthrie’s production of Troilus and Cressida at the London Old Vic. In the 1960s Ehle joined Laurence Olivier’s Chichester Theater Festival(later the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain), where she played Ophelia, opposite Peter O’Toole, in Hamlet and Ilyena, opposite Laurence Olivier and Michael Redgrave, in Uncle Vanya.
On Broadway in 1966 she created the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter and received the Tony Award. Besides her classical roles, Ehle has performed works by such notable playwrights as Neil Simon, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee.
Ehle’s television credits include the miniseries Holocaust, for which she won a Golden Globe, and Notorious Woman, for which she won an Emmy for her portrayal as George Sand. Her films include The Boys from Brazil, Beau Brummel, Hamlet, Tom and Viv (earning her an Academy Award nomination), and Sunshine (with her daughter Jennifer Ehle and opposite Ralph Fiennes). Most recently Ehle has enjoyed popular acclaim as Aunt May in three Spiderman blockbusters.
In 1967 Rosemary Ehle married author John Ehle, a North Carolina Award winner in Literature. They live in Winston-Salem and Penland and were delighted to see their daughter, Jennifer, attend the North Carolina School of the Arts. Rosemary Harris Ehle continues to act and has just finished performing in her first one-woman show, Oscar and the Lady in Pink, at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. Now a grandmother, she wishes there were more Shakespearean roles for women of her age. She is not telling her age—“A woman who tells her age will tell anything,”she jests.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Henry E. Frye
A rigged literacy test spelled defeat for Henry Frye in his first attempt at registering to vote. The year was 1955. Frye, at the time a college graduate accepted to law school, ultimately convinced the chairman of the board of elections that he was indeed literate, and he was finally allowed to register. The watershed incident figures prominently in a life dedicated to providing unbiased administration of and equal access to government services, especially the justice system. For his groundbreaking achievements in the state legislature and on the North Carolina Supreme Court, Henry E. Frye receives the North Carolina Award for public service.
Frye was born in 1932 in the Richmond County community of Ellerbe to Walter A. and Pearl Motley Frye. Initially interested in agriculture, he attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, where he later changed his major to biology with a double minor in chemistry and air science. An Air Force ROTC cadet, Frye was called to active duty shortly after graduation. He served for two years as a munitions officer with stints in South Korea and Japan. He worked briefly in a chemical laboratory in New York before returning to North Carolina in 1956 to get married and attend law school at the University of North Carolina.
In 1968 Frye became the first African American elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in the twentieth century. He served in the House of Representatives until 1980 when he was elected to the state Senate. As a legislator, Frye participated in a review of the state’s criminal justice system and promoted election reform. Coinciding with his legislative career, Frye founded Greensboro National Bank in 1971 and served as president of the company for ten years. In 1983, Frye was appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court. His appointment as chief justice in 1999 made him the first African American to lead the state’s court system.
When he retired from the bench in 2001, Frye joined the practice of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey and Leonard in Greensboro, where he focuses on appellate advocacy, mediation, and commercial arbitration. He played a vital role in organizing the 2003 National Conference on Preventing the Conviction of Innocent Persons, which led to the creation of the Institute of Forensic Science and Public Policy in Greensboro. Among Frye’s recent honors and awards are the 2006 American Judicature Society Justice Award (shared with his wife); the 2007 John J. Parker Award, the highest honor bestowed by the North Carolina Bar Association; and a 2006 Citation for Distinguished Public Service from North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry.
The tenets learned in his childhood in rural North Carolina have served Frye well in a lifetime of promoting justice and pursuing civil rights. “I learned the value of working together with others, how to repair things, and how to build things,” he says. “I learned that if you told someone that you would do something, it was important that you do it and not let people down.”
Henry Frye lives in Greensboro with his wife, Shirley Taylor Frye. The couple have two sons and three grandchildren.
LITERATURE: William E. Leuchtenburg
William Leuchtenburg, scholar of the presidency and professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the nation’s leading authority on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In addition to his skills at research and teaching, he is known for the beauty and clarity of his writing. As he says, “Writing is its own justification, the way a beautiful day is, or eating a peach. There is a feeling of joy when you have done something well.” For his lifelong dedication to the historical profession and the public realm and his manifest respect for readers and the written word, William E. Leuchtenburg receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Literature.
Born in Ridgewood, New York, in 1922, he demonstrated his flair for scholarship early in life. By the age of twelve he was tutoring other students and earned enough money for a solo bus trip to Washington, D.C. This trip to the nation’s capital set the stage for his lifelong interest in government. As a teenager he found his hometown in Queens so “stultifying” that he regularly walked across borough and bridge into “enticing” Manhattan to spend one nickel at a drugstore soda fountain and another on the return ride home on the subway. In 1939 he was “drawn, like a magnet, day after day”to the World’s Fair in neighboring Astoria.
After undergraduate studies at Cornell University and completion of a Ph.D. at Columbia University, Leuchtenburg taught briefly at Smith College, New York University, and Harvard University before settling into a thirty-year career in the history department at Columbia. Like his friend, John Hope Franklin, he was lured to North Carolina by the National Humanities Center and served for 20 years as a Kenan professor at UNC-Chapel Hill before retiring in 2002.
The author of more than a dozen books on twentieth-century American history, Leuchtenburg is best known for The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (1958), widely used in courses, and the prize-winning Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (1963). His recent works include American Places (2000) and The White House Looks South (2005). He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Mellon, and Woodrow Wilson Center fellowships.
In his presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1991, Leuchtenburg (who also has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the Society of American Historians) assessed the relationship of the historian to the public realm and recounted his own lifelong involvement outside academics—from marching in Selma alongside Martin Luther King Jr. to election night commentary on network television to testimony before Congressional committees. He repudiated those who wish to politicize the profession: “Those who insist that history is worthwhile only when it offers solutions to current problems reveal a hostility to the very nature of the historical enterprise.”
At Columbia and Chapel Hill, Leuchtenburg shepherded scores of graduate students, many of whom today are leading American historians. One, William Chafe of Duke University, commends his mentor for “the model he has presented to all of us of how to research tirelessly, argue fairly and tenaciously, and write gracefully and elegantly.”
Leuchtenburg, married to wife Jean Anne since 1984, has three grown children and lives in Chapel Hill.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Burley B. Mitchell, Jr.
A reflective Burley Mitchell said upon his retirement in 1999 from the post of chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court,“I know that it is the office I hold that is important and not me as a person. We who hold public offices must remember that the people entrust them to us and that we should return them to the public in better shape than when we took them.” For his profound interest in making the state’s legal system more efficient and effective, Burley B. Mitchell Jr. receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Mitchell believes that his greatest legacy may be his authorship of the decision in the landmark case that established that every child in North Carolina has the right under the state Constitution to receive a sound, basic education in the public schools. Born in Raleigh in 1940, Mitchell was a rebellious youth who was not particularly interested in education. He left Broughton High School to join the Marines at age fifteen. A routine security check revealed his age after he completed boot camp.
Mitchell returned to high school only to drop out again at age seventeen. He joined the Navy and served four years in the First and Seventh Fleets in Asia. The experience taught Mitchell the value of an education, which he pursued with vigor when he returned to North Carolina. He graduated from North Carolina State University in 1966 and from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1969.
He served as an assistant attorney general and as a district attorney for the Tenth Judicial District before becoming a judge for the North Carolina Court of Appeals. His judicial career was put on hold from 1979 to 1982 while he served in Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.’s cabinet as Secretary of Crime Control and Public Safety.
In 1982 Mitchell was elected associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was elevated to chief justice by Hunt in 1995 and served in that capacity for four years. Having completely cleared the backlog of cases, a first in the 180-year history of the state’s highest court, Mitchell felt as though he could retire from the bench prior to the end of his term.
His active retirement from the public realm has included promotion of efforts to improve the level of professionalism in the law and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment programs. Mitchell now heads the appellate advocacy and government relations groups at Womble Carlyle Sandridge and Rice, PLLC&—North Carolina’s biggest law firm and one of the largest in the Southeast.
During his career, Mitchell has served on numerous boards and commissions including the Governor’s Crime Commission, the North Carolina Courts Commission, the North Carolina News Media-Administration of Justice Council, and the Board of Trustees at North Carolina State University. The awards and recognitions are many for Mitchell, who is admired by lawyers and lay people alike.
Burley Mitchell remains in his hometown of Raleigh with his wife of forty-five years, the former Mary Lou Willet. The couple have one daughter and two grandchildren.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Charlie Rose
“I believe that there is a place in the spectrum of television for really good conversation, if it is informal, spiritual, soulful.” And so it is that every weeknight Charlie Rose gathers in his Manhattan television studio the powerful and the prolific, the trendsetters and the tech savvy, the award winning and the aspiring. For his skill at enlightening viewers on topics ranging from foreign policy to the frontiers of science to box office returns, Charlie Rose receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
The only child of Charles Peete Rose Sr. and Margaret Rose, Charlie Rose was born in Henderson in 1942. His father usually could be found wearing a visor at the back of his general store; the family lived upstairs. A baseball player in high school, Rose completed undergraduate studies and law school at Duke University.
An internship in the office of Sen. B. Everett Jordan sparked his attraction to politics. However, after relocating to New York, he soon found that the law and the business world were not for him. Journalism drew his attention; and, in 1972, he landed a job as a weekend television reporter.
In 1974, Rose began a long affiliation with Bill Moyers, collaborating on a number of PBS programs. A short stint in Dallas-Fort Worth led to a talk show on WRC in Washington, D.C., as well as acclaim for his interviewing skills. In 1983 CBS hired Rose to host Nightwatch, an overnight showcase for the North Carolinian. The Charlie Rose Show premiered in 1991 with national distribution two years later. He kept his own show while also serving as a correspondent on 60 Minutes II.
Rose, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has been honored with the Emmy and the Peabody awards. Over his round wooden table each night Rose engages guests that include presidential candidates, magazine editors, Nobel Prize winners, museum curators, and musicians. His enthusiasm and skill prompted Esquire magazine to write, “Charlie Rose brings a Southern civility to the most intelligent tête-à-têtes on TV. His table has become an island where savvy channel-surfers put ashore each weeknight … an essential gloss on the media, politics, sports and culture.”
While working in Syria in March of 2006, Rose experienced heart problems. He made his way to Paris, where he underwent surgery for mitral valve repair. His program had one of its high points in June 2006, when the host returned to the air after heart surgery for a reunion with Moyers and a discussion of mitral valve surgery.
While contributing nightly to the national discourse, Rose has never forgotten his North Carolina roots. He returns often to visit friends, attend sporting events, or lend his voice to a worthy cause. For instance, he was among the first to pitch in on fundraising for a new public library in Henderson. North Carolina connections are often noted on his program, whether in an interview with Durham writer Reynolds Price or a talk with actor and fellow Henderson native Billy Crudup.
Rose lives in Manhattan and maintains a second home in Vance County.
SCIENCE: Darrel W. Stafford
“If the genetics revolution had a front line, it would stretch through Darrel Stafford’s cramped lab at UNC,” so noted the Raleigh News & Observer in 2004 about his work. Darrel Stafford of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been at the forefront of research into blood coagulation for fifteen years. For his world-class advances in understanding the essential details of how coagulation works and how it can be regulated, Darrel W. Stafford receives the 2007 North Carolina Award for Science.
Born in 1935 in Parsons, Kansas, Stafford was raised on a farm and took up his earliest studies in one room schoolhouses in Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. Just out of high school he worked for the railroad; but, in 1953, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps for a three year tour of duty, the bulk of which was spent in Japan.
Stafford earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Southwest Missouri State College in 1959 and a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Miami in 1964. After a year as a post-doctoral fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, he assumed a professorship in the Department of Biology at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he is also a joint member of the Department of Pathology.
Early in his scientific career Stafford concentrated on marine biology and isolated a pure gene from sea urchins. A paper he authored in 1976 on DNA purification has been cited in the scientific literature 2,637 times. He has authored 138 publications to date. A 1984-1985 sabbatical in Heidelberg, Germany, where he came to know others in the field of molecular biology, was a boost to his work.
Stafford, who became interested in blood coagulation through his interactions with Dr. Roger Lundblad and Dr. Harold Roberts, is best known for his work on two enzymes of the vitamin K cycle, gamma glutamyl carboxylase and vitamin K epoxide reductase. Warfarin, or Coumadin®, had been discovered at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Warfarin inhibits the enzyme vitamin K epoxide reductase and became widely used for anticoagulation after it was prescribed to President Dwight D. Eisenhower following his heart attack in 1955. Currently forty million Americans are prescribed Coumadin® to reduce the risk of clotting and consequent strokes and heart attacks.
In 1991 Stafford and his team of researchers cloned the gene for gamma glutamyl carboxylase. In 2004 Stafford and his colleague, Tao Li, made international news when they identified the other enzyme of the vitamin K cycle, vitamin K epoxide reductase—the target of warfaring. The breakthrough, hailed on the cover of the scientific journal Nature, did not come easily, as the gene was one among 190 candidates and the discovery came to light only after hundreds of laboratory hours. As a consequence of Stafford’s work, doctors can better regulate patients’ treatments, since every patient on blood clotting medications responds differently.
In July 2007, Darrel Stafford received the Distinguished Career Award at the XXIst Congress of the International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis in Geneva, Switzerland.
Stafford has five children and seven grandchildren. He is married to Dr. Sheue-Mei Wu. They live in Carrboro.