Editor’s note: We neglected to run this letter from our friend Roland Giduz in time for Hillsborough’s Hog Day festival, but its message is still clear. Here it is — with apologies for the delay.
It should be Hogg day
Everybody is happy about the occasion of the 25th annual Hog Day on June 15 in Hillsborough. It’s a fine celebration that has become the premiere festival in this Land of Orange.
But the sponsors are yet dreadfully missing the boat. It should rightfully and proudly also be celebrated as Hogg Day. By this homonym it would also recognize one of Hillsborough’s and North Carolina’s historically most important citizens – James Hogg.
Sadly, James Hogg, the patron saint of the nation’s first state university in Chapel Hill, continues publicly unrecognized for his remarkable foresight.
Hogg, a wily Scot immigrant, was an 18th-century merchant in Hillsborough. When the fledgling State Legislature sought a site for the University of North Carolina, it was Hogg who recognized what a boon this would be for Orange. He corralled donors of land and money in the farm community of Chapel Hill, and, like a latter-day industry recruiter, sold this as the site of today’s UNC.
Hogg has never been rightfully credited by the university as its significant academic sire, nor have the Hog Day promoters capitalized on this history.
It is a fact that more than 60 years ago Orange County farmers were one of the country’s leading producers of Poland China pigs. But worse than casting pearls among swine, today’s Hog Day folk fail to double this occasion by recognizing James Hogg.
Roland Giduz
Chapel Hill
Amazing
It was with utter amazement that I read of the $100,000 Getty Foundation grant to UNC-CH for historic preservation on campus.
Just last year, the university destroyed one of its significant historic buildings, West House, for no reason. West House and its garden designed by William Lanier Hunt was designated by UNC’s own historic preservationist, Paul Kapp, but the university repeatedly stated to the public it was of no historic significance until Kapp’s document was discovered in the State Archives. The university still chose to ignore the recommendation and to obfuscate over its historic significance.
Over 1,200 people, including chaired professors, preservationists, faculty, staff, elected officials and alumni begged the university to save this charming building. The university’s own Master Plan recommended it be placed on the corner of Columbia and Cameron. Positioned in that location across from the Carolina Inn, it could have served as a visitors center, providing information on campus events, maps and tours of the campus. Housing for visiting artists, scholars and faculty would have been another creative use and been welcomed by departments looking for accommodations.
What a lack of vision and imagination to simply tear down this treasure of our history that housed, among other distinguished students, Pulitzer Prize winning historian C. Vann Woodward, whose works are still used as textbooks throughout the nation. West House was built by the Tanner family, prominent in our state and benefactors of the university, but even their pleas could not save West House.
How ironic it is that the university would take money to do what it should have done all along — save its historic legacy.
Eleanor G. Kinnaird
Carrboro