Well I was born and grew up in Henderson, North Carolina.
It's in Vance Co. It's about fifty-five miles north of Raleigh.
ell it was a wonderful place in which to grow up.
You'll notice that I don't like to end a sentence in a preposition.
Back in the 1950s when I grew up there
I thought it was the greatest place in the world,
and then later as I left and had a chance to live in other places I realized that while it was a good place to grow up
it didn't offer a lot of the things that I certainly have enjoyed since I've been at NC State and lived in Wake County.
But, you know, it's a small town, and not only that but,
as you would know, back in the 1950s it was a segregated society
and so all the African Americans went to separate schools, separate churches,
and I think about that a lot now because that's such an important,
or what we try to emphasize with our students here at NC State,
the value of welcoming everybody regardless of your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, or any disability that you may have.