RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley and First Lady Mary Easley today presented 10 North Carolinians the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor the state can bestow. An awards committee selected the recipients from nominations submitted by the public. The categories included fine arts, literature, public service and science.
“These awards are our most prestigious civilian honor and are given to those North Carolinians whose contributions to the state are enduring and truly significant,” said Easley. “We are fortunate to live in a state with so many outstanding individuals who, through their leadership, their talents and their time, have helped make North Carolina a better place to live.”
Created by the General Assembly in 1961, the North Carolina Awards have been presented annually since 1964. More than 230 outstanding North Carolinians have been selected as recipients from citizens’ nominations from across the state.
The 2008 N.C. Award winners are:
SCIENCE: Maurice S. Brookhart
Versatile, creative, internationally recognized—these are some of the terms used to describe chemist Maurice S. Brookhart. Admired as a teacher and mentor, Brookhart (or “Brook” as he is known to his friends) has brought to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and to the state distinction for his advances in organometallic chemistry and polymerization. For his rare gift for developing fundamental chemical insights and then transporting them into the realm of commercially viable industrial technologies, Maurice S. Brookhart receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Science.
“I grew up in a very tiny town in the extreme western edge of Maryland, in the Appalachian Mountains,” says Brookhart. “In those days you could go down to the drugstore and buy chemicals to make rocket fuel . . . of course I made rockets and set off explosions and basically messed around with chemicals.” Brookhart’s path led from budding chemist to William Rand Kenan Professor of Chemistry, via graduate study at UCLA (Ph.D., 1968).
Brookhart and his group, primarily graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, carry out research in the general area of synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry. Notably, Brookhart, in his work in Kenan Labs on the Chapel Hill campus, has been mentor to some of the best chemical minds, academic or industrial, in the world. The major thrusts of his work in recent years have been the development of late transition metal complexes for olefin polymerization and the incorporation of bond activations into catalytic cycles.
In layman’s terms, he has developed fixes for complex unsolved problems and devised solutions with numerous practical applications. For example, Brookhart discovered one of the building blocks of Nylon-66, a thermoplastic resin with wide use in automotive, electronic, and industrial components. The scientist, with 230 articles and 28 patents to his credit, has worked closely with E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company that had funded part of his lab work. Brookhart’s stellar research has moved forward entire fields of inquiry and opened new doors to important industrial processes. Colleagues commend his clear critical thinking and rank him as an experimentalist of the highest order.
In 2001 Brookhart became a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious recognition available to American scientists. He has lectured in Poland, Turkey, Canada, Chile, Germany, South Africa, and France, where the University of Rennes presented him an honorary doctorate. His visiting professorships have included stints at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, Oxford University, and the University of Marburg. In 2002 he was the Royal Chemical Society Centenary lecturer. Brookhart served as editor of Organometallics, the premier journal in his field, from 1990 to 1996, and received major awards in 1992 and 2003 from the American Chemical Society.
Brookhart regularly teaches introductory organic chemistry classes, often the challenging honors sections. Known for his sense of humor and easy-going attitude, he brings to undergraduates a firm but supportive style. In 2001 he received the campus’s major classroom teaching excellence award.
Maurice Brookhart and his wife Mary live in Chapel Hill.
LITERATURE: Charles Frazier
‘’He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the leap of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast prospect . . . It was to Cold Mountain he looked.’’
Charles Frazier looked to what he knew best—the mountains of North Carolina—to write his first novel, Cold Mountain. The epic masterfully evokes the Appalachians of the nineteenth century. With his much anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons, Frazier again crafted a story rich in the heritage of western North Carolina—a heritage that is intertwined with that of the Cherokee Indians. For extraordinary achievements that have immersed millions in the state that he reveres, Charles Frazier receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Literature.
Charles Robinson Frazier was born in Asheville on November 4, 1950, to Charles O. and Betty Frazier. He graduated from Franklin High School, where his father was the principal and his mother was librarian and administrator. Having been, as Frazier himself has admitted, “a great reader of junk,” he was introduced by a friend to some of the better works of American literature, and he was hooked. He went on to earn a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. from Appalachian State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. While completing his dissertation Frazier taught at the University of Colorado in Boulder. From there he traveled widely and co-wrote a Sierra Club travel guide to the Andes region, published in 1985.
In 1986 Frazier returned to his home state, taking a teaching position at North Carolina State University, where his wife Katherine also had been hired as a professor. During that time he researched all aspects of mountain culture, folklore, and natural history. He knew that he wanted to write a novel but was unsure of the precise subject. He had a moment of clarity when his father recounted a story of their great uncle, a Confederate soldier who deserted, leaving his hospital to return to his home at Cold Mountain. Quitting his teaching job to stay home with his daughter, Frazier spent more time writing. The resulting book, based loosely on the family legend and more firmly rooted in the wider Appalachian heritage, was on the bestseller list for sixty-one weeks and won the National Book Award for fiction in 1997. Cold Mountain was adapted for a film, released in 2003 to wide acclaim.
Frazier’s much anticipated second novel, Thirteen Moons, was published in 2006. The protagonist, Will Cooper, was modeled after William Holland Thomas, a white man who became Cherokee chief in 1839 and who organized a Confederate unit comprised of Indians in 1862. Spanning almost the entire nineteenth century, the novel draws upon extensive research into language, traditions, and natural history. Frazier recently helped launch the Yonaguska Literature Initiative to preserve and teach the disappearing language. The group’s first project was the translation of Thirteen Moons into Cherokee.
Charles Frazier lives in Asheville with his wife Katherine.
FINE ARTS: Gerald Freedman
Gerald Freedman, Dean of the School of Drama at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts since 1991, is known worldwide for his innovative directing and production of some of the world’s greatest plays. He has had tremendous influence on students and actors who credit him with shaping their careers. For his continued dedication to North Carolina’s students of the dramatic arts and in recognition of his remarkable career as a director and educator, Gerald Freeman receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
Freedman is a legendary figure in American theater, with an impressive career that spans more than fifty years. He has touched many lives through his stage work and his teaching, and conveys his enthusiasm to those who work with him. His love of craft, inspiring instruction, creative spark, wisdom, and belief in his students have brought him international recognition and respect.
A native of Lorain, Ohio, Freedman was born in 1927 and grew up in a home where he enjoyed art in all forms, especially painting and music. At Northwestern University, he majored in Speech/Drama and Music and remained at the school to earn his M.A. in drama. In 1982 he continued his education, attending the Oomoto Institute in Japan to study Japanese Classical Arts.
In the early 1950s Freedman launched his career in New York’s off-Broadway theaters, and in 1960 he began an eleven-year association with the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theatre. In his first year with the festival, he won an Obie Award for directing The Taming of the Shrew. Freedman was the director of the rock musical Hair when it debuted in the Public Theater in 1967. In all, he directed thirteen Broadway plays and thirty-four off-Broadway plays.
In the 1970s Freedman taught at the Juilliard School of Drama, during which time he and two colleagues adapted Eudora Welty’s novel The Robber Bridegroom for the stage. It remains one of his favorite productions. In the 1980s Freedman became artistic director for the Great Lakes Theatre Festival in Cleveland. He continued in the position, in fact, for six years after he moved to North Carolina to head the drama department at the UNC School of the Arts. Between his regular jobs and his continued occasional work in New York, Freedman in the 1990s made frequent flights along the triangle defined by Winston-Salem, New York, and Cleveland. In 2000 he became the first American to direct a play in the replica Globe Theatre in London.
Freedman has mentored and directed countless performers and theater professionals including Hal Holbrook, James Earl Jones, Kevin Kline, Julie Harris, Stacy Keach, and Olympia Dukakis. Award-winning actor Sam Waterston wrote of him, “I think you could look far and wide and not find another man of the American Theater who has shown himself, over such a long and varied career, more fruitful and constant in his contributions to his profession, and the wide world.”
Gerald Freedman lives in Winston-Salem.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Ann Goodnight
Ann Goodnight is an incomparable advocate of visual arts and education. She has a distinct vision that enhances the quality of living in our state. Everyone who visits the North Carolina Museum of Art reaps the benefits of her work. For her dedication to education reform and art appreciation, Ann Goodnight receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
A native of Lillington, Goodnight began studies at Meredith College in 1963. While in Raleigh, she met Jim Goodnight, a senior at North Carolina State University (NCSU). In 1966 the couple married, and she transferred to NCSU, from which she graduated in 1968. For a time, the growing family lived on graduate student wages in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. In 1976, Jim Goodnight and three co-workers from the statistics department at NCSU founded SAS (Statistical Analysis System) in Cary. The lives of the Goodnights were changed forever.
After staying home to raise their children, Ann Goodnight turned more of her attention to SAS, where she is presently director of communications. She selected all of the art on the SAS campus in Cary and shepherded the design of the nearby acclaimed Umstead Hotel, that features works by North Carolina artists. Her eye for art does not stop at work or the hotel, however. She has assembled a collection of museum quality paintings that are intended to be a gift to the North Carolina Museum of Art in the future. Her more immediate contribution to the Museum of Art was her effort toward the development of the 164-acre Museum Park, exploring environmental and ecological art, on the site of the former Polk Youth Prison. As president of the board of the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Goodnight spearheaded the effort to demolish the abandoned prison facilities in order to create the art park.
In 1997 the Goodnights and John Sall, SAS co-founder, and his wife, Ginger, founded Cary Academy on the outskirts of the corporate headquarters. The college preparatory school merges traditional education with emerging technology. Ann Goodnight also championed a major bond issue to fund desperately needed school construction and renovation in Wake County. Her co-chair in the bond campaign, Bill Atkinson, recalled, “She is passionate about the things she believes in. She is very giving of her time and energy. . . she is a humble, caring, giving person.”
An active and influential leader, Goodnight serves on a variety of local and state boards. In July 2007 she became a member of the Board of Governors for the University of North Carolina system and remains a key board member at Cary Academy. About her philosophy she says, “It is true that I am active in many projects and organizations, but you will see they all revolve around a common theme—significant improvement and enhancement of our community and our state.”
Ann Goodnight and her husband, Jim, live in Cary.
LITERATURE: Margaret Maron
The pride of Johnston County, North Carolina, Margaret Maron, once wrote short stories exclusively. But she mustered up the courage to tackle the novel form after discovering in an 1897 cookbook this advice to young brides learning to bake bread: “Be not daunted by one failure nor by twenty. Resolve that you will make good bread and do not cease striving. If persons without brains can accomplish this, why not you?” Since that time Maron has produced twenty-five novels, translated into more than a dozen languages. For introducing readers from Prague to Bangkok to Tar Heel places and traditions and serving through her prose as an unofficial ambassador for North Carolina, Margaret Maron receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Literature.
Born in Greensboro, Maron and family moved when she was very young to her mother’s “two-mule tobacco farm” in Johnston County. She attended the Woman’s College in Greensboro, then transferred to UNC-Chapel Hill, but gave up her formal studies after meeting naval officer Joe Maron during summer employment at the Pentagon. They married and lived in Naples, Italy, before settling first in her husband’s native Brooklyn.
Home beckoned for Margaret Maron and the couple moved to her farm. There she threw herself wholesale into writing, first penning stories published in magazines such as McCall’s, Redbook, and Reader’s Digest. As she moved into the longer form, she began two series, one featuring Sigrid Harald, a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department, and the other Judge Deborah Knott, set in fictional Colleton County, North Carolina. Maron describes the latter series as her “love letters to North Carolina.” Subsequent books have featured Harker’s Island, the Jugtown region, the High Point furniture market, and the Blue Ridge mountains. It is not uncommon for visitors to the state to arrive armed with her books as travel guides.
The Deborah Knott series began in 1993 with Bootlegger’s Daughter, the title descriptive of the lead character. The book won every major prize in the mystery genre, an honor never duplicated before or since: the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Anthony Award for Best Mystery Novel, the Agatha Award for Best Traditional Novel, and the Macavity Award for Best Novel. More awards came soon thereafter, and in 2004 included the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the highest award for a North Carolina writer regardless of genre.
In the realm of mystery writers, Margaret Maron, the internationally renowned author, is the queen of the ball. She was a founding member of the Sisters in Crime, a group she has served as president as she has done for the American Crime Writers League and the Mystery Writers of America. Maron is generous with her time and advice, taking part in literary and cultural groups at the local and state level. She supports charities for underprivileged children and abused women. During the Bicentennial she prepared a play about the history of Johnston County.
Margaret and Joe Maron live on her family farm in Pleasant Grove Township of Johnston County.
PUBLIC SERVICE: James G. Martin
Governor James G. Martin reflected on his two terms as North Carolina’s chief executive—“Being governor of a state is the best job in politics in the United States. No question. . . . It invigorates you.” He credited his positive outlook to the people of North Carolina, noting “the great reservoir of good will” for the office. Martin’s personal “era of good feeling” coincided with the second term of President Ronald Reagan, and both men derived much of their personal popularity from the economic successes of the 1980s. For moving the Tar Heel State forward with major accomplishments in education, transportation, and economic development, James Grubbs Martin receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Few individuals came to the state’s highest elected post with a more unusual life history and career track. Other governors have been born out of state, as Martin was in 1935 in Savannah, Georgia. Others have been the sons of preachers. Martin combined both. He was raised in Winnsboro, South Carolina, by Presbyterian minister Arthur Martin and his wife, the former Mary Grubbs. But none has brought to the office an earned doctorate (the 1957 Davidson College graduate completed a Ph.D. in chemistry at Princeton University in 1960) or moved directly from a science classroom to a career of public service culminating in the governorship.
While a new teacher at Davidson College, Martin took note of the absence of a viable two-party system and agreed to be sponsor for the Young Republican Club. In 1965, he became a county commissioner, rising to chair the Mecklenburg board. In 1972, as Republicans won the races for governor and U.S. Senate, Martin took the U.S. House seat representing the Ninth District. In six terms in Congress, he was recognized for his expertise on food additives and toxic waste. He was the first elected official to receive the American Chemical Society’s Charles Lathrop Parsons Award for outstanding public service by an American chemist.
Martin then set his sights on the Executive Mansion and was elected in 1984. A goal, unrealized during his term, was the gubernatorial veto. But Martin laid the groundwork for the measure, approved in 1996, to correct what he viewed as an imbalance between branches of government. While Governor Martin differed with the legislative leadership on a host of issues, he nonetheless worked with lawmakers to adopt the Basic Education Program and increased teacher salaries.
Governor Martin counts as his hardest decisions those involving death sentence cases. He held true to his promise to see I-40 completed to Wilmington and boosted industrial development by reducing business taxes. He launched major campaigns against infant mortality and substance abuse. During his eight years in office, Martin laid the groundwork for subsequent political changes, taking pride in building a “stronger, more competitive, healthier two-party system.” After leaving the governorship in 1993, he became vice-president for research for Carolina HealthCare System in Charlotte.
James Martin and his wife, Dorothy, live at Lake Norman.
FINE ARTS: Alexander M. Rivera Jr.
(NOTE: MR. RIVERA PASSED AWAY OCTOBER 23)
“I had no idea I was involved in the making of history. To me, it was just another day on the job.” So says Alexander Rivera, pioneering photojournalist with lifelong ties to North Carolina Central University. With the passage of time, more and more people have come to recognize Rivera’s work, images he captured as a working member of the black press covering the civil rights movement. For the witness he has borne and the outstanding visual record he has produced, Alexander Rivera receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Fine Arts.
A native of Greensboro, Rivera was born on October 4, 1913, the son of Dr. Alexander Rivera Sr. and his wife, the former Daisy Irene Dillard. His father, a dentist, at fourteen fled the racial violence that shook Wilmington in November 1898. In Guilford County, he took a leading role in the affairs of the NAACP, hosting the African American elite who traveled to the Piedmont. The elder Rivera expected his son to follow his trade, and Alex Jr. enrolled at Howard University with that goal. But the need to earn a living during the Depression led the young Rivera to seek employment with the Washington Tribune, a black-owned weekly, where he covered the historic appearance of Marian Anderson on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.
Rivera left Howard but his father had other plans. The elder Rivera counted James E. Shepard, president of what was then called the North Carolina College for Negroes, as one of his patients. Dr. Rivera persuaded Dr. Shepard to enroll his son at the institution in Durham. Shepard offered Alex Rivera a scholarship provided that he organize a news bureau. During World War II the budding journalist, who had worked briefly for the Norfolk Journal and Guide, served as a naval intelligence officer. In 1946 he was lured away to serve as southeast correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier.
Based in Durham but using the Pittsburgh paper as a national platform, Rivera travelled across the South, often at personal risk, to cover the nascent civil rights movement. He investigated notorious lynching cases in South Carolina and Georgia in 1947 and 1948. He documented discrimination experienced by families in Clarendon County, South Carolina, parties to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954. Rivera recalls that one of the most outrageous examples of injustice he witnessed was the prosecution of a young black man in Yanceyville, North Carolina, for the “reckless eyeballing” of a white woman. In Lumberton, Rivera was detained for photographing segregated toilets behind a theater. In 1957 he was invited by Vice President Richard Nixon to travel to Ghana to cover ceremonies marking its independence from Britain.
In 1974 Alex Rivera returned to North Carolina Central University to serve as public relations director, a post he held until his retirement in 1983. His work in 1996 was the subject of a documentary, Exposures of a Movement, and the North Carolina Museum of History in 2008 opened an exhibit of his photographs. Rivera passed away on Oct. 23, 2008, at the age of 95.
PUBLIC SERVICE: Dean Smith
A lifelong proponent of human rights, Dean Edwards Smith has championed racial equality both on and off the basketball court. He has lived by and shared his unwavering moral principles and positive outlook. In thirty-six seasons as the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Smith built an exemplary program and led the Tar Heels to two NCAA championships, thirteen ACC Tournament titles, eleven Final Fours, and 879 victories. For his lifetime of educating and guiding youth and for his steadfast support of social justice, Dean Smith receives the 2008 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
Smith was born in Emporia, Kansas, on February 28, 1931. Both of his parents, Alfred and Vesta Edwards Smith, were teachers, while Alfred also served as the coach of the football, basketball, and baseball teams at the local high school. Foreshadowing his son’s career, the elder Smith integrated the 1934 Emporia High Spartans, applying his personal belief in human rights at a time when the athletic associations disagreed. Alfred Smith led that team to the Kansas state championship. Dean Smith looked to teaching and coaching as a career because he says, “in addition to being very good people, my parents were also deeply happy ones.” He attended the University of Kansas on an academic scholarship and eventually won an athletic scholarship as well, playing football, baseball, and basketball. On the basketball team, Smith was coached by the legendary Phog Allen and was the reserve guard in 1952 when the team won the national championship.
In 1961, after only a few years of assistant coaching, thirty-year-old Dean Smith was offered the head coaching position at the University of North Carolina. Taking over a team under restrictions due to a recent recruiting scandal, Smith was determined to manage his organization strictly by the rules. His first years were difficult, as witnessed by Smith’s being hanged in effigy from a tree outside of Woollen Gym in 1965. Undeterred by such displays, Smith went on to be one of the most successful and respected basketball coaches of all time. In recognition of his coaching expertise, he was tapped to lead the 1976 United States Men’s Olympic basketball team—a team that won the gold medal.
Smith was taught to value every human being and to believe in what his father termed the “human family.” In Chapel Hill he took a stand against segregation and in 1966 was responsible for signing UNC’s first African American scholarship athlete, Charlie Scott. More recently Smith has been involved in the campaign to eliminate alcohol advertising from NCAA events. He has long been an active opponent of the death penalty.
Among his accolades Smith has been named National Coach of the Year four times; was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame; received UNC’s first Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement; won the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage; and was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1997.
Dean Smith lives in Chapel Hill with his wife Dr. Linnea Smith. He remains dedicated to family—his children, former players, former coaches, and, indeed, the whole “human family.”
PUBLIC SERVICE: Fred and Alice Stanback
Fred and Alice Stanback are galvanizing forces in the land conservation movement in North Carolina. Having generously supported protection and management efforts ranging from the rich mountain landscapes to the fragile coastline, the Stanbacks invested in the state’s present and future. For perpetuating a legacy of environmental stewardship, Fred and Alice Stanback receive the 2008 North Carolina Award for Public Service.
The Stanbacks, he from Salisbury and she from Raeford, both graduated from Duke University, he in 1950 and she in 1953. Fred went on to the Columbia School of Business in New York before joining the family business, the Stanback Company, known for its headache powders, in 1952. He grew up appreciating the natural environment, and now he and Alice Stanback work tirelessly to ensure that future generations can do the same. The Stanbacks remain steadfast in their commitment to environmental conservation, taking the time to research and understand the issues and working to address some of the state’s principal ecological concerns.
The Stanbacks have helped to protect some of North Carolina’s most treasured recreational and natural areas, including Chimney Rock, part of Grandfather Mountain, Jocassee Gorges, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, Uwharrie National Forest, Shining Rock Wilderness Area, and Bullhead Mountain State Natural Area. Each has served on boards and councils for organizations such as the North Carolina Nature Conservancy, Southern Environmental Law Center, Land Trust for Central North Carolina, Catawba College, Duke Cancer Center, and the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment.
In the 1990s the Stanbacks helped establish the Center for the Environment at Catawba College in Salisbury. The Center, itself a model of environmental sustainability, educates students and the public. Fred Stanback said about the program,“. . . it’s important to protect resources like the air, the water, the trees, and a teaching center like the one at Catawba can help train tomorrow’s leaders about why this is important and how to do something about it.”
Through Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, the Stanbacks offer stipends for more than 100 environmental internships each year. The students provide staffing for conservation groups while gaining practical experience. The organizations, the students, and, indeed, the citizens of North Carolina all benefit from such a collaboration. Furthermore, the Stanbacks funded a partnership between the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke Cancer Center. Researchers from the two areas are working together to investigate links between environmental toxins and cancer.
Through their environmental initiatives, Fred and Alice Stanback seek to have a perpetual impact on the citizens of the state. D. Reid Wilson, Executive Director of The Conservation Trust for North Carolina, says, “Their unparalleled generosity and dedication to preserving the state’s beauty and ecological sustainability is a model for other North Carolinians, and will be a legacy for generations to come.” Committed to making life better for others, they have made our state a better place to live.
Fred and Alice Stanback live in Salisbury.