Well, I was surprised, really, that Josephine agreed to leave Atlanta. I
think if I were confronted with that decision today, it would have been
far more difficult. Josephine was very submissive, and very cooperative,
because of her mother. Her mother, whatever John Wesley Dobbs said, that
was it. Occasionally, she would rise up. And Josephine was just sweet.
Whatever she thought that I wanted, she just fell in line.
And she could not come to Durham, when Mr. Cox came by Atlanta in the
fall of '45, and said, "Bill, I need you in Durham, and I'd like for you
to be there the first of the year." We were expecting Wesley in April,
the eighteenth. Well, you know, at that time, women didn't move after
four, five, six, seven months. And so I came up—she had been through
here once—she said, "Bill, if you think that this is going to help your
Page 81 career, and it's the best thing to do, we'll
go." I came up here and bought a little house over here (it was right
after the war period, and I bought this lot—I thought I could build, but
I couldn't build because the material hadn't started coming back on the
market), so I bought a little house for under 3200 dollars. I said,
"Sweetheart, we don't have any place to put a washing machine." We had
all these babies, and at that time, you had a roller washing machine—you
don't remember that. But she said, "we could put it in the living room."
So, she didn't come. And she was very submissive.
Josephine in the last twenty-five years—we've been married forty-five—in
the last ten or fifteen years, since she got involved in public life,
and this matter of the feminist movement and the matter of taking charge
of your life, and being recognized as a person—she's changed.
Fortunately, I changed. And really, she's a far more beautiful person
because of her attitude. She doesn't back up at all. She's very nice,
and very polished, but don't you step over her rights, as a woman, as a
person. She's very much involved in the equal rights movement here in
North Carolina, and that's one thing that's attracted her to Governor
Hunt. He was in favor of passing the Equal Rights Amendment—but you'd
never pass it in North Carolina. We needed three states, you remember,
for the amendment. But she was in that movement.
And so, she came—to answer your question, I got away—we came, really,
with a great deal of enthusiasm and drive, and determination. I was a
North Carolina Mutual person through and
Page 82 through.
My father worked for the company fifty years, the only job he ever had;
I came along. And I had come difficult times at North Carolina Mutual: I
wasn't a part of the family, but you know the history of that. So I had
to negotiate that system, and really, was denied some of the greater
opportunites that I could have had, because of the family situation. But
I swallowed that, because I felt that the institution was bigger than
any one person. Fortunately for North Carolina Mutual, it was a mutual
company, it's not a stock company where you're passing on the equities
to this generation, that generation. So I was sold on North Carolina
Mutual, and I came up.
Now when we got ready to retire, we thought about Atlanta. We got two
boys in Atlanta, Josephine has a sister in Atlanta, and all. And we
decided we didn't want to go back to Atlanta, we wanted to stay in
Durham… The opportunites here are so great: we got involved, Joseephine
is involved—I'm not a politician, I support her, but I'm involved in
appointments.
In other words, working for governmental agencies.
You take the airport. That's one of the most fascinating assignments I've
ever had. I spoke today at the Durham board of realtors on the RDU
development. We've got two hundred billion dollars worth of projects
going on up there right now, developing the American hub, American
Airlines—you ought to go by and see it. We're spending a hundred and
thirteen million dollars to develop a hub for American Airlines.
Piedmont is expanding its operations. We're putting in another cargo
building, we're putting in a post office, we're putting in a catering
service—
Page 83 two hundred million dollers, and I'm
involved in it. I get thirty-five dollars per meeting, when I go. but it
is the most fascinating thing that I've been involved in since I've been
in Durham.
A year ago, we didn't even know that American Airlines would have its hub
here. They announced July 2nd that they had decided to put the
north-south hub at Raleigh-Durham. And that was just a memorandum of
agreement. We had to work up the agreements to support the commitment,
which dealt with the financing, the leasing, and the construction. And
we did all of that between July and November, and went to the market and
sold a hundred and fourteen million dollars worth of bonds, in
twenty-four hours. And we used what they called "facility." Special
facility bonds—they had never been sold in North Carolina. We had the
revenue industrial bonds, but they had never issued in North Carolina
facility bonds. But they had used them in some other places, the law
permitted it. And in North Carolina we have an unusual situation because
the local government commission handles all of the public debt financing
in the state. Years ago—maybe a hundred years ago—they had problems with
small municipalities defaulting, and the credit of the state. So now, if
you're going to issue any debt, public debt, the local government
commission has to get involved in it and certify and work with the bond
council. And we did that all last summer and went with the bond.
To be involved in something like that, and Josephine is involved in the
county commissioner's. She didn't tell you that they brought their first
black county manager and she was
Page 84 involved in that,
and involved with the school superintendent, and both of them are doing
very well.