My father went to NC State during the Great Depression.
I find that a lot of young people today don't know much about the Depression,
have no idea of its depth, what happened to people, what happened to families.
Just it's kind of, had a bad time, you know, a lot of people lost their jobs,
but they don't know how deep it was, how it really affected people.
My daddy had to work as a student to earn his room and board.
I guess the family had about seven children;
they'd all gone to college except one.
So I guess he got up the money for the tuition, which was very low at the time,
but he had to have a place to live and food to eat.
And so he worked in a boarding house,
right across Hillsborough Street.
Dean Cloyd, C-l-o-y-d, was the dean of students.
He was even there when I went in 1955. My daddy graduated about '32 or '33.
Dean Cloyd had a rooming house that students stayed in and paid for room
and my daddy would get up at 3:00 AM and peel potatoes
for whatever they were going to eat that day. It included potatoes. It was always potatoes. [Laughs]
So he worked a couple hours peeling potatoes,
probably then helped serve the breakfast because people at the boarding house had their meals there too.
So that's one of the things I really remember about him, working his way through college.