RALEIGH – Since 1964, about 250 North Carolinians have received the state’s highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award. Six outstanding North Carolinians received the award at the ceremony at the N.C. Museum of History on Thursday night. The North Carolina Award, the state’s highest honor, was presented by Gov. Beverly Perdue in the areas of Fine Arts, Literature, Public Service and Science. The award is administered by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
“The award celebrates creativity and innovation, two values which sustain our economy, our culture and our people,” said Gov. Perdue, “bestowed upon individuals whose contributions to out state are enduring and significant.”
GERALD BARRAX – LITERATURE
The life journey of Gerald Barrax has taken him from Attalla, Ala., where he was born, to Pittsburgh, Pa., where he moved at age 10, to Raleigh, N.C. where he worked and retired. He happened into poetry first by writing a response to a poem written for him by a teen-aged girlfriend, then after being introduced to the lush writing of Walter Benton in “This is My Beloved.” He joined the U.S. Air Force because of the G.I. Bill that paid for college. He discovered “The Poets’ Handbook” by Clement Wood in a used book store while stationed in Greenville, S.C. It changed his life.
Barrax began to study and practice the craft of poetry, and worked in formal structures such as sonnets, sestinas, and villanelles, putting himself through a three to four year apprenticeship on poetic forms. After the Air Force he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Duquesne University in 1963, and a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969. He became a visiting professor at North Carolina Central University in Durham in 1969, and taught American literature and poetry writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh from 1970 until retirement in 1997.
The job of the poet, says Barrax, is to tell the truth. He made that his life’s work, sharing his honest reflections in several major areas –love, God, music, nature, and death. He dismisses the angry polemics of many on race. He relishes the emotional and physical. He seeks answers on religion, regards music as the passion of his life, and puzzles over the interaction of man and nature. And over much of his work is the shadow of death. He is recognized as one of North Carolina’s most eminent and accomplished writers. He has published six books of poetry, and his book, “Leaning Against the Sun” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He has five children and eight grandchildren. He lives in Raleigh with his wife, Joan.
JOSEPH M. DESIMONE – SCIENCE
Perhaps it foreshadowed Joe DeSimone’s life’s work when he improved on the teacher’s explanation of pH and shared one that his high school classmates could understand. Since arriving at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990, he has been a wunderkind in chemistry and engineering. In September 2009 he received a Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health, worth $2.5 million over five years. He will continue current research in nanotechnology, mass producing particles in any size and shape for targeted cancer treatment. It could be transformative in the fields of medicine, photovoltaics, and robotics. Already his innovations have been applied in green manufacturing and nanomedicine; he has more than 120 patents approved and a similar number pending nationally and internationally.
Born in Norristown, Pa., DeSimone was awarded in 1986 a Bachelor of Science degree from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., a small liberal arts college that offered a polymer science course. He earned a PhD in chemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1990, and that year also accepted an appointment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the nascent polymer program in the chemistry department. He now holds distinguished seats in the UNC-CH departments of chemistry and pharmacology, and in N.C. State University’s department of chemistry and biomolecular engineering.
DeSimone wants science to solve the world’s problems, and believes in getting research out of the lab and into the marketplace. He co-founded Liquidia Technologies in 2004, which is developing nanocarriers for delivery of therapies to treat cancer and other diseases. His innovative work led to the National Cancer Institute awarding to UNC $5 million a year for each of five years. He has received many honors, and in 2005, at age 41, he became the youngest member named to the National Academy of Engineering and also was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was 2008 recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which many consider a step to the Nobel Prize. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife, Suzanne; they have two children.
BETTY RAY MCCAIN – PUBLIC SERVICE
The daughter of a country lawyer and a schoolteacher, Betty Ray McCain learned to tell stories and to meet people early in life. Those skills served her well, as she became a driving force in North Carolina’s arts, history and politics. She has held a wide range of largely unpaid positions for decades with energy and enthusiasm. A campaign manager for her friend Jim Hunt, McCain became the first woman chair of the N.C. Democratic Party and first female to serve on the N.C. Budget Advisory Commission. She has been a member of the party’s Executive Committee since 1971.
Born and educated in Faison, McCain attended St. Mary’s College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was awarded a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in music in 1952. In 1953, she earned a master’s degree in music from Columbia University. She put her arts training to work as secretary of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources from 1993-2001, where she advanced the department’s programs to legislators, business leaders, school children, and foreign dignitaries. She has served in leadership roles on boards and been an advocate for scores of arts and cultural organizations, including the N.C. Literary and Historical Association, North Carolina Symphony Society, Center for Public Television Trustees, Preservation North Carolina Foundation, State Capitol Foundation, UNC Lineberger Cancer Center, Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence, McCain Internet Empowerment Project, UNC Board of Governors, and many more.
Those who have worked with McCain attest to her “grace, wit, diligence and charm.” A deep love for the people of the state drives her to continue to provide dynamic leadership to dozens of civic groups today. That high regard is reciprocated as she has received five honorary doctorates and numerous awards from educational, charitable and civic organizations. Her husband of 49 years, John McCain, passed away in 2005. She lives in Wilson and has two children and five grandchildren.
HUGH L. MCCOLL Jr.– PUBLIC SERVICE
Hugh McColl descends from a line of bankers extending back to his great-grandfather, who in 1886 organized the Bank of Marlboro, in Bennettsville, S.C., where McColl was born and raised. After earning a business administration degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1957, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and became a troop leader. The combination of family background, education, competitive drive, and military discipline contributed to McColl’s becoming a transformative force in American banking.
When McColl came home after two years in the Marines, his father steered him to the American Commercial Bank in Charlotte, where the former lieutenant was hired as a trainee. In 1960, the bank merged with Greensboro’s Security National Bank and became North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) which grew to seven states with 826 offices. Thus began McColl’s ascent in national and international banking. In 1991, a NCNB merger created NationsBank; a later merger created Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte. The bank grew to $642 billion in assets and 5,000 banking centers. After retiring in 2001, he founded McColl Partners, a mergers and acquisitions firm, and the art consulting firms McColl Fine Art in Charlotte and MME Fine Art in New York City.
McColl believes in building the community, and convinced the National Football League to bring a team to Charlotte, then helped finance Ericsson Stadium. He speaks of corporate responsibility and the obligation to tackle social and economic problems. NationsBank invested $1 billion in downtown Charlotte and largely was responsible for changing the face of downtown. Under McColl’s direction, the bank helped spark revitalization of an uptown public housing project that had fallen into disrepair into a successful mixed income multifamily complex. His many contributions to civic and educational institutions, most notably Queens College, home of the McColl School of Business, and at UNC-Chapel Hill, where the McColl Building houses the Kenan-Flagler School of Business. Among his honors is being named one of the “25 Most Fascinating People” by Fortune, “Banker of the Year,” by The American Banker, and Chief Executive Officer of the Year by Financial World. He and his wife Jane live in Charlotte and have three children and seven grandchildren.
MARK PEISER – FINE ARTS
Chicago-born Mark Peiser attended progressive suburban schools and enrolled at Purdue University to study engineering, later transferring to the design program at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He worked as an industrial designer before deciding to pursue his dream of attending music school at DePaul University. Coincidence and a second hand leaded glass lamp led Peiser to consider working with glass, and to study at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. All these elements have found their way into his glass artworks that exhibit technical innovations, sculptural forms and singular beauty.
Peiser’s luminous, lyrical sculptures stretch the boundaries of what glass, or sometimes stone or bronze, can do. From small paperweight vases, each containing a perfect world of roads, trees and flowers within, to large vases and geometric forms, he refines each piece into the tight designs he favors.
He has remained in Penland since arriving in 1967, and became the first glass artist in residence that year. At the time glass was an unexplored art medium, so Peiser had to create skills, tools and techniques as he went along. Ingenuity and technical innovation are central to his art. His latest process is called cold stream casting, and involves drizzling hot glass from a second floor furnace into a rotating mold on the floor below. He has produced a unique and exciting body of work.
Peiser’s aesthetic innovations have had a tremendous impact on the art world, and take North Carolina to the forefront of the studio glass movement. He has shared his scientific and technical developments and helped to create a vibrant market for glass art. Internationally known, his work is in collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of American History-Smithsonian Institution, Lucerne Museum of Art, Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, and many others. He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and has received the glass world’s highest honors. He lives in Penland and has a grown daughter.
BO THORP – FINE ARTS
When Bo Thorp stepped onto her elementary school stage in her hometown of Columbia, S.C., she could not have imagined that she had found her life’s work. She attended Ashley Hall School for Girls in Charleston, where schoolmates called her “Bo” rather than her given name, Olga. She loved to act and began writing small musicals as a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated in 1956, and married law student Herbert Thorp that year. In travels to his assignments as a U.S. Air Force judge advocate, from New York to Morocco to Fayetteville, she likely learned lessons in perseverance that served her well later in her career. Thorp continued her craft. Over the last 42 years, she has built the Cape Fear Regional Theatre (CFRT) into one of the country’s best.
In 1962, the Cape Fear Regional Theatre was born as the Fayetteville Little Theatre, beginning operations out of the old Haymont movie house in 1963. As the theater’s artistic director, Thorp began to change the lives of those who performed and those who watched. A versatile and gifted actor in drama, comedy or musical theater, she is also a brilliant director, producer, and master fundraiser. She provides a cultural oasis in the sandhills region. Her presentations have engaged school children, addressed social ills, and sparked conversations. Plays from North Carolina artists, including Good Ol’ Girls, Lunch at the Piccadilly, Pump Boys and the Dinettes, and others, are fortunate to be produced under her eye.
Thorp is considered a force of nature in her hometown, a “go to” person when things need to get done. She keeps the cultural scene vibrant, and engages talent from the region and nearby Fort Bragg. CFRT is an economic engine for her community. She has shared all she has learned with the state’s professional community and is on the board of directors for the N.C. Theatre Conference. Her numerous accolades include the Order of the Long Leaf Pine from the State of North Carolina, the Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur from Methodist College, and others. She lives in Fayetteville and with her late husband has two children and five grandchildren.
For additional information on the North Carolina Awards call (919) 807-7389 or (919) 807-7256. The N.C. Department of Cultural Resources administers the award program and is the state agency dedicated to the promotion and protection of North Carolina’s arts, history and culture with information at www.ncculture.com.