BillLindau

SCC's small-college atmosphere makes alumnus feel right at home

From The Moore County Independent, Dec. 14, 2006; to be republished on a Web site for Sandhills Community College alumni
BILL LINDAU
SPECIAL TO THE INDEPENDENT
I may be a dyed-in-the-wool Carolina fan, but if Sandhills Community College still had a basketball team and took on UNC, I really would have a hard time choosing sides. The University of North Carolina is a fabulous school, but I've always felt more at home at Sandhills, in the years after I got a B.A. from UNC as well as the years before.
There's a debate about North Carolina's community colleges that really gets my goat. Some people think they ought to provide more technical and vocational programs and less of a college transfer program. Let the kids who want to go to a four-year college or university find one rather than hang around at home. On the other hand, a larger college away from home can make an 18- or 19-year-old feel lost in a crowd, and you can't beat the smaller number of students or the smaller ratio of instructors to students.
Whatever side wins out, I say, keep Sandhills just the way it is.
Last year, with some extra weekday time on my hands, I decided to try my hand at a new art form. But the two-year-college closer to my hometown didn't have the courses I wanted, so I enrolled at Sandhills and took a voice class. The two neighboring schools would've been cheaper, but neither of them had any music or creative writing programs. Then in the spring, I took piano. I learned an awful lot from both Frances Wilson, the voice instructor, and Jennifer Thomas, who taught me piano. Even though I wasn't working toward any degree, they were among the best courses I ever had. Each had only eight students at the most in each of the classes, and I think everybody benefited from the individual attention they received. You don't find that much of that same closeness in too many larger academic institutions.
SCC was chartered in 1963 and officially opened in October 1965. It's known as the first community college in North Carolina to offer a college-transfer program. Here's something I didn't know about this school: It was first located in downtown Southern Pines. It moved to its present campus, on Airport Road between Whispering Pines and Pinehurst, in March 1966.
I went to East Carolina straight out of high school but withdrew before my sophomore year. It's a great school, but I didn't feel so much at home there. After a year and a half off from college, I finished up my second year and got an Associate in Arts degree from SCC. I took courses under Mack Israel, Mack Trent, Haskell Duncan, Page Shaw, Terry and Mary Ann Weaver, Rick Lewis, Terrell West, Ruth Bondurant and Bob Nowell.
Of these, Rick Lewis is the only one remaining on the staff. He chaired the English Department when I went there, and he continues to chair the department that encompasses English, literature, writing and other language arts.
I knew Lewis before he came to Sandhills. Shortly after he graduated from UNC, he taught English at Pinecrest High School for about three academic years.
I met Ruth Bondurant again during Thanksgiving week, when the Sandhills Jewish Congregation hosted an interfaith Thanksgiving service. Members of the McDonald and Jackson Springs Presbyterian churches came to it; Bondurant was at Jackson Springs. I took tennis under her in the college transfer program and conditioning under Terrell West.
Both Bondurant and West are pretty big in the local tennis world. West served as the club pro at Seven Lakes, and coached the Pinecrest tennis program for a few years. When I wrote for the old Citizen News-Record of Aberdeen, I covered quite a few of the tennis tournaments he ran, including a senior tournament at Seven Lakes and a long-running junior tournament that took place mostly in Southern Pines. Eventually he left Moore County to work as a club pro in Raleigh. Late last month, Bondurant told me he is now working in the western part of the state, in the northern foothills I believe.
Man, I miss them both.
I took creative writing under Page Shaw, first for college credit, then as a Continuing Education course. I took it for a total of five quarters, until he left. The continuing ed class was full of regulars. You could take it as often as you liked as an adult ed course. We had all varieties of talents, including several published poets.
Mary Belle "Peg" Campbell was one of the more accomplished poets. She also taught creative writing herself many years later. Bill Byrtus has taught it in recent years. I've taken classes under both of them. I honestly think Page Shaw's course is where I really honed my writing skills. The stories I wrote for the class to critique wouldn't look like much now, but I did get one published years later.
Sandhills had an earlier form of a Mack attack: Mack Israel and Mack Trent. I studied music appreciation and piano under Israel and took a course in philosophy and religion in 20th-century America, a course Trent co-instructed with Haskell Duncan. I didn't take up music again for about 30 years after I taking Israel's classes, but a lot of his instruction came back to me last year.
My friends who first went to Sandhills gave Trent rave reviews for his outspoken, joking style. I don't believe I ever saw him in a bad mood. One of my friends once said any of his history courses should be a graduation requirement. He also taught skydiving lessons on his own.
The college continues to thrive, and it has some quality instructors in about all of their departments. I knew two other retired instructors from Pinecrest: Sue Williamson in chemistry and Lafayette Reddick in social studies. I also met a current instructor when she was at Pinecrest -- as a student. Laura Hill (nee Davenport) joined the faculty soon after she received her degrees. She herself is the daughter of a former instructor, Reynold Davenport.
It's a small world at Sandhills Community College, and that's the way we like it. There's been talk of making it a four-year school and adding dorms. No way. That would take away the school's unique character, one that continues to bring me back.

Labels: Newspaper columns

posted by Bill Lindau @ 5:01 PM