Category: Uncategorized

By Blake Weaver

Jazz music plays while patrons argue among themselves about which flavored butter to order. College students sit next to professional athletes and blue-collar workers sit next to their city leaders. Dame’s Chicken and Waffles really doesn’t have any boundaries, even with a six-foot distance between tables.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia because of the history of the food and the music that we espouse and those two are married together,” Damion “Dame” Moore, co-owner of the restaurant, said. “At the end of the day, we want everybody to come here and experience. If you can learn something from it or share something with someone else, it’s all to the good.”

Even with over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Durham County and mandatory masks, the Durham location keeps their tables full during rush hours. The same holds true for the Cary and Greensboro locations. The three have also pivoted to include a heavy focus on take-out. While there were growing pains abound and problems to be solved on how to go about practices like packaging food, the team eventually worked out simple solutions. Moore said these were good problems to have.

However, the food industry is one of the largest economic victims of the pandemic. Restaurants were forced to close their doors and refocus, or even reimagine, how they would continue to serve food. Dame’s was not immune to that challenge.

Dame’s expansion into Chapel Hill

The brand was originally set to open a new location on Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street, replacing the unit that [B]Ski’s had previously occupied. To Moore and co-owner Randy Wadsworth, opening in Chapel Hill was a no-brainer. The team believed their product had a proven, strong appeal to the demographics on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus that would expand into the greater Chapel Hill area.

Moore remembers college students coming into their Durham location when they opened in 2010, checking in on MySpace and Facebook, and being followed by even more students who did the same thing. Word-of-mouth advertising was the lifeblood of the restaurant back then and students obliged.

When the opportunity to take the recently vacant unit presented itself to the team, they knew they could handle it. Dame’s took ownership of the spot in January and originally looked towards a grand opening in either April or May. The concept would be noticeably different than their three sit-down locations, given the shotgun-style layout. In a space where they would have to pivot to a faster service model, the location would give them direct access to the UNC-CH campus and an undergraduate population of just under 20,000 students.

COVID-19 expansion setbacks

The team then decided to pause the expansion after the nation began shutting down and UNC-CH ordered students to return home.

“Come March, when the pandemic is full blast and people are leaving campus, we didn’t know what was going on in the world, so there was no need to open it now. So that ran its course and then you fall into the whole thing where now we’re in the summer and no one is really on campus,” Moore said. “Do you open and try to make it through the summer or do you pull back and see what happens?”

Moore thinks it was one of the team’s smartest decisions to not open at that time. When his team began looking at Chapel Hill, and up until the team decided to pause their new expansion, they felt it made no economic sense to try and rush things.

He looked at the recent closings of Medici, Lula’s and Lotsa Pizza, all at the main intersection of Franklin Street. All premium products in a market saturated with cheaper alternatives.

Moore and his team have considered the instability of Franklin Street’s restaurant market and they are not looking to simply rely on just their established product and brand.

This won’t be the brand’s first foray into a comparably faster service model. In 2015, the restaurant opened a quick service location on Duke’s Central campus named “Dame’s Express.” While it was difficult maintaining the nuance of the brand with the altered restaurant style, Moore believed that utilizing a different technique was a great experience.

“I do think that our brand has strong appeal. I do think we are a proven concept in this market and that people value it. I have fairly good confidence that our team will be able to execute at a high enough level to exceed expectations and do well in that market,” Moore said. “It also doesn’t hurt that we have a catering ability.”

Meanwhile, the three sit-down locations continue to serve guests both in-house and through takeout. Dame’s is also partnering with Durham Delivers, a food delivery service that pairs local restaurants with community members to make deliveries to designated areas. The service works to help restaurants avoid the high costs of food delivery services.

Moore anticipates the Chapel Hill location doesn’t have long before opening, as the physical aspects and inspections wrapping up and the administrative work is not far behind. He is delighted by is the patience and support his team has seen from the Chapel Hill community while they take their time getting the location up to Dame’s Chicken and Waffles’ high standards.

Edited by Natalia Bartkowiak

By: Brian Keyes
Staff writer

Physical therapy wasn’t for Scott Oliaro, he knew that much. His friends and colleagues sing his praises, pausing during an interview to make sure you recognize just how great he is. How he’s uncommonly communicative and empathetic with the UNC athletes, coaches and staff he sees every day.

But 26 years ago, just months after finishing a brief career playing American football all the way out in Finland, UNC’s current Associate Director of Sports Medicine found himself working in a physical therapy clinic before entering UNC’s graduate school for athletic training.

Sure, the basics of physical therapy are the same as athletic training. One works with people to help regain their range of motion, flexibility and strength. Asking “does it hurt when you bend your right knee? How about the left one? Can you flex both legs for me?”

However, physical therapy wasn’t Oliaro’s passion. He didn’t want to see people walk on their feet, he wanted to see people sprint and fly through the air. When Oliaro played football at Cornell, he had to work every day for months to come back from a strained hamstring. Those moments gave him energy; physical therapy didn’t.

At the clinic, Oliaro once treated a football player who tore several ligaments in his knee. He wasn’t expected to return to football after his surgery, but he worked countless hours with the athletic trainers and on his own to regain the speed and strength he once had. Not only did that player get back on the field, but he also played multiple years in the NFL.

It was athletes like that made Oliaro realize his true calling. He enjoyed watching athletes work back from injury to pursue their dreams. Unfortunately, these individuals went to athletic trainers, not physical therapists.

“People weren’t always as committed to doing the work and putting in the effort to getting better,” Oliaro said 27 years later, reflecting on how he knew physical therapy wasn’t for him. “So I wanted to work with people who were as committed as I was.”

When Oliaro switched professions, no one questioned his credentials and experience, He holds Cornell’s record for single-game rushing yards and remains seventh all-time in career touchdowns. Additionally, Oliaro was inducted to his alma mater’s hall of fame, won an Ivy League championship at Cornell in 1990, and was twice named to the All-Ivy second team.

“I think that’s incredibly important when you’re dealing with kids,” UNC head field hockey coach Karen Shelton said about Oliaro. “Nobody wants somebody that hasn’t walked the walk.”

Weathering Storms 

Ask a random athlete what makes someone a good athletic trainer and they might tell you their trainer needs knowledgable or communicative. Ask Mario Ciocca, the Director of Sports Medicine at UNC, what makes Scott Oliaro a good athletic trainer? His willingness to weather storms. Literally.

Oliaro would take it upon himself during hurricanes or weather-caused university shutdowns to tell his staff to stay at home and check that they were safe before heading to the Stallings Evans Sports Medicine Center to treat the athletes who still had to go through recovery.

“It’s just little things like that,” Ciocca said. He then quickly corrected himself. “Actually that’s a huge thing.”

Oliaro’s other virtues are small tasks but are all incredibly important to build trust with a coach and their players. He texts the men’s golf team words of encouragement while they’re at a tournament and he comforts a field hockey player when he has to deliver the news that she tore her ACL.

“He’s invested in the people that he’s close with, he wants them to be successful, he wants to help,” Andrew DiBitetto, the men’s golf coach at UNC, said. “It’s pretty simple, he’s just an incredible human being.”

Coronavirus Confusion 

Last Sunday, Oliaro was covering a field hockey practice as the team’s head athletic trainer, a position he’s held since 2007. It was a brisk morning, a nice reprieve from the sweltering North Carolina heat and humidity that UNC athletes know all too well during the first days of fall training.

The practice is a brief respite from the confusion that has become Oliaro’s job for the past six months. Working with athletes as an athletic trainer is all about knowable — what was their range of motion before an injury? What about after? Are they able to lift the same amount of weight?

When COVID-19 came, it made Oliaro and the rest of the sports medicine department’s job incredibly difficult. There is no cure or vaccine and the long term effects of the virus are inconclusive.

At that first practice, the feelings of confusion, worrying and vulnerability were present since back on March 13, when the United States declared COVID-19 a national emergency.

Oliaro thinks back to how he would have handled this pandemic had it struck back in his playings days.

“Not well,” he freely admits.

According to Oliaro, he would have felt cheated like something was stolen from him. These thoughts help him understand just how hard this has been for his athletes.

“It’s difficult,” he said with a sigh, taking a moment to collect his thoughts.

“When you get calls from kids who aren’t feeling well or have tested positive, to try and talk with them to make sure they’re ok, try to manage them from a health and safety standpoint, as well as a mental health standpoint.”

Sports at UNC are still happening, for now. Football started last Saturday and the first game of the season for field hockey was on Sunday.

Is he scared? UNC’s Associate Director of Sports Medicine won’t say for sure. He’s unsure about what’s coming next, when the pandemic will end, and what the world will look like when it does.

For now, he’s trying to control what he can, keeping the focus on the athletes who depend on him to keep their bodies strong. So, he tries to keep his spirits high, and with another sigh, he soldiers on into the unknown.

Edited by: Luke Buxton

By Ruth Samuel

Beneath the red, white, and blue diamond-encrusted crown lies the trailblazer who paved the way for Black kids in cowboy hats, long before Lil’ Nas X.  21-year-old Ja’Dayia Kursh became Arkansas’ first Black rodeo queen in 2017.

“I didn’t grow up on a ranch or with horses. I just had a dream,” Kursh said. “I did everything in my power to make it come true without help from family.”

With a father who is incarcerated, a cosmetologist mother, and five other siblings, Kursh had to work and raise her own funds to rent her first horse. Now, the “Classy Black Cowgirl” with over 12k Instagram followers is signing partnerships with Wrangler.

“My family always said, ‘She’s different. She’s always the one that’s doing something crazy.’ But they were supportive more than anything,” Kursh said.

Her Journey Started Early

At six years old, Kursh was sexually assaulted. After grappling with depression and anxiety for months, Kursh’s therapist handed her the reins to her freedom.

She brought Kursh and her mother, Nishawn Horton, to her ranch. The six-year-old had her first bumpy ride on a glossy chestnut mare named Sunshine.

“[Her therapist] said, ‘this is a 1500-pound animal. If you can control this horse, you can control anything that comes your way,’” Kursh said.

She then started riding in the Pony Express with youth amateur group the Arkansas Seven, making appearances at parades and festivals.

At age 13, she wanted to try out for the Old Fort Days Dandies, a premier traveling drill team. Her mother is her biggest fan. But, when her baby Ja’Dayia — “my chocolate” — wanted to compete, she was concerned.

Horton said, “No, we’re not going to do this. A Black girl has never done this. You’re going to get hurt. When I saw her in the arena and there were about over 1000 people, I was nervous and just in shock. One minute I’m excited, the next I’m praying, ‘God, don’t let her fall.’”

Wearing a hot pink top, a glittery silver vest, and Old Fort Days Dandies chaps, Kursh charged out of the white gates atop her steed, Queen. She won over the hearts of spectators at the Barton Coliseum, igniting so much pride in her own family members.

Her great-aunt Anita Faye remembers being overcome with joy the first time she attended one of Kursh’s shows.

“It was an emotional roller coaster for me, to see [my nephew’s] baby doing good when he should be out, happy to see her ride and everything,” the 57-year-old said. “I feel like my prayers have been answered as far as that child is concerned.”

Racism and Haters 

However, not everyone loved Kursh. She was the target of countless racist “jokes” from her own teammates. The prestigious veneer of the 41-year-old rodeo dynasty she was once obsessed with was completely shattered.

Kursh remembers one time she left her helmet at home, so the owner of the arena lent her a yellow construction helmet.

“One of my teammates’ brothers took a picture of me and he posted it on his story, saying that I looked like a Negro Bob the Builder,” she said.

Incident after incident, Kursh was told to “let it go” and to be the bigger person. From being taunted with the n-word, referred to as a monkey, and ridiculed in private group chats, Kursh’s Dandy “Sisters” isolated and abandoned her like an orphan. Despite coaches’ dismissal of her complaints, it never dimmed her light.

Financial professional Mike Tuttle said, there was a maturity about her that was beyond the kids she was with. He first met Kursh during the summer of 2015, when the Dandies headed to his five-acre ranch in Lindale, Texas for a competition.

“It was just one of those matches made in heaven,” Tuttle said. “Sometimes you just out of nowhere meet someone and know you’ll be connected to hip forever.”

He was drawn to her talent as a drill rider and was shocked to learn what she endured in the troupe.

“My first reaction was anger, number one. What would possess anybody to be so cruel to somebody for no reason?” Tuttle said. “By nature, I always root for the underdog. Immediately I told Ja’Dayia, I’m all in.”

The 70-year-old ended up paying for a semester of college at the University of Arkansas, where Kursh is majoring in criminology with a minor in journalism.

She Persisted, and Won.  

Horton remembers hearing the words: ‘‘2017 Rodeo Queen of Coal Hill, Ja’Dayia Kursh.”

“I promise you, I heard myself scream,” she said. “Before people were looking at the field, they were looking at me because of how loud I was screaming.”

Though it was hard for Horton to raise Kursh as a single teen mother, she has always been one of her daughter’s loudest supporters — and the only woman she can drive 45 minutes to for home-cooked lasagna each Sunday night.

Kursh didn’t even know that she was the first Black rodeo queen in Arkansas until 2 years later in 2019. She was a senior in high school, just doing something that she loved. Apart from her rodeo queen title, Kursh was the first girl in Fort Smith, Arkansas to play varsity football at Northside High School.

“There were so many times that I wanted to give up Rodeo Queen and just want to quit, but I know that I can go to Miss Rodeo America,” Kursh said. “For me, I just want to be remembered as someone that never allowed someone to mute her.”

Edited by Jackie Sizing 

By Amelia Keesler

CHAPEL HILL – It was a Friday morning in June. The rising college senior sat in the comfort of her Honda CR-V. She pulled down the sun visor and adjusted the mask that covered the lower half of her face. Her reflection had changed.

Hair above her eyebrows.

A mustache for her forehead.

Bangs.

A socially defined hallmark of self-doubt. A physical manifestation of internal calamity. Or in this case, quarantine boredom.

Across the country, school closures, remote learning, and quarantined isolation have redefined the American college experience. An experience typically marked by self-discovery, experimental whims and newfangled independence. The “best four years of your life,” for many university students, now spent in the depths of childhood bedrooms, forced to find new outlets for self-expression.

For some UNC-Chapel Hill students, this meant getting a new haircut.

“This past week alone, I have had 3 requests for bangs,” Darian Thornton, a hairstylist in Chapel Hill, said. “I think everyone is feeling the quarantine effect.”

The quarantine effect: A desperate attempt to find oneself in isolation by taking scissors to baby hairs, bleach to untouched roots, and pastel dye to virgin locks. A desire for change that is both overwhelming and temporary. An impulse that often finds its source in something more authentic than aesthetics.

“They say they need a change, that they need control,” Thornton said. “Hair is the first thing we go to when we need that sense of autonomy.”

Michelle Li, ‘20: The Vibrant-Tinted 180   

UNC-CH senior, Michelle Li, first dyed her hair a year ago during her semester abroad in Morocco. Her silky black hair was aqua blue, then bleach blonde, then lilac purple. She returned to school last month with a full head of cotton candy pink hair dye.

Li started bleaching her own hair in May after her summer internship was canceled, and she was forced to move back home with her parents in Boca Raton, Florida.

“I was feeling really down, really unmotivated,” Li said.

Before quarantine, Li spent her spare time with her camera, pressed against the front barricade at Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro’s live music venue. She captured artists mid-high note. Snapped silhouettes of packed arenas overflowing with strangers.

Cat’s Cradle closed in March, the same month the university ceased operation. The same month Li moved home.

“When COVID-19 happened, I recognized how much I valued my creativity even more, and I wanted to find an outlet. Dying hair has allowed me to do that.”

Li started posting her transformations on YouTube. Her first video, titled, “I dyed my hair again *I did a full 180* (with good music),” gained traction from her high school friends who started asking for their own product-induced renewal. She introduced a mask-required hair service in the familiarity of her high school bathroom. She hoped to give her friends a similar sensation of self-discovery, even if it came from a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“In the hair dying process, you learn to love it and love yourself. It’s not about the hair color, it is about the newness, the difference, the feeling.”

Emma James, ‘21: The Mentally-Stable Bang Bob

“I spent all spring and summer in my childhood bedroom getting over health issues,” UNC-CH senior Emma James said. “It felt like the time to chop everything off.”

James medically withdrew from her spring semester due to chronic migraines. She spent the previous semester in Florence, Italy. The last time she was on campus, she was 19.

“When I got back to school, I picked up some kitchen scissors, walked into my bathroom, and walked out with bangs.”

At some undetermined moment in history, bangs, impulsive bangs, became a sign of existential crises: a marker of post-break up reinvention, a hint of crippling loneliness.

James’ scissor impulse spurred from a persistent struggle of physical exhaustion. Headaches that coerced her into the depths of her bedroom until the late afternoon. Pounding sensations that kept her from singing. Light sensitivities that dismissed her exercise routine.

A physical battle manifested into a mental battle, taking the form of curtain bangs. Curtain bangs, which became more than new facial topography. A symbol of growth, an excitement for what’s to come, a clean slate.

“In quarantine, we’ve had to step back and reflect on who we are. Cutting your hair can really be a weight lifted,” James said. “I wanted this year to feel super authentic with myself.”

Luke Collins, ‘22: The Curly Bleached Crisis 

Luke Collins had never altered his hair. No dye, no bleach, no unnatural chemical had ever touched his thick, brown, curly locks. Until a week ago.

“The last three months have been the most terrifying, but also most revelatory times of my life,” Collins said. “I felt like I had lost my sense of self, and my sense of creativity.”

Like so many others, Collins, a rising junior at UNC-CH, was left with the option of moving back to his hometown, into a bedroom he was not allowed to decorate.

He called it his “gay crisis.” An impulse inspired by pop celebrities and social media phenomena. A dramatic change provoked by domineering male presences in his home. A bottle of silver undertone purchased out of a desire for control.

“Something so seemingly small can be such a driving force in how we can relate to the inner parts of ourselves,” Collins said. “When I changed my hair color, I felt like I really had ownership over my body, a feeling I felt I lost as a child. It was like a huge weight lifted off of me, the weight from the last couple of months was being stripped away.”

 

The rising college senior, nestled in the comfort of her Honda CR-V, folded the sun visor back into place. She picked up her phone to a text that read, “You got bangs, and I feel like I have to ask, are you ok?”

To which I answered, “I feel lighter.”

Edited by Alana Askew

By Korie Dean

Elise Tyler immediately saw the for-sale sign outside of the dilapidated Colonial Inn. The building’s exterior, once painted an almost blinding white, had faded into a dull gray after decades of neglect. Sections of siding were rotting, and some of the inn’s windows were boarded up.

Tyler had felt drawn to the two-story antebellum inn since she moved to North Carolina from Cape Code in 2007.  She often spent evenings at Tupelo’s Restaurant, a now-closed downtown dinery where her roommate at the time worked. She said she would glance up West King Street and stare at the nearby inn, captivated.

After 10 years of admiring the inn from outside, Tyler had a chance to enter. She saw the inn’s owner standing on its cobblestone front porch, and he let her walk through the building.

Tyler said the inn’s lobby only had natural lighting, which seeped in through its original windows.  Paint and 1950s-era wallpaper fell to the floor in flakes. The water-stained ceiling sagged in a pronounced “U” shape as if it were smiling. The green carpeted floors were soaked with 20 years of moisture from the caved-in roof. This filled the room with the stench of mildew.

“It was in complete disarray, and I was totally, completely in love with it,” Tyler said.

She envisioned a bride standing on the original handcrafted wooden staircase. She pictured a group of old friends laughing in a state-of-the-art event space, celebrating their long-awaited retirement. In the next room, young professionals could unwind after a long day’s work in a swanky, moody bar.

Tyler said she did not know if her dream was possible. Could the building be repaired? Could she find others to help her?

Getting help and overcoming obstacles

Determined to make her dream a reality, Tyler assembled a team that shared her fearless vision.

Justin Fejfar, a structural engineer, drafted plans while his wife, Sunny Fejfar, researched the inn’s history and picked out decor. Reem Darar, a general contractor, brought her expertise for historic preservation. Majority investors Joe and Emily Goatcher, provided financial support, along with nine minority investors.

And Tyler, now the inn’s general manager, led the project with a fiery passion. She said the team members fit together so perfectly it felt cosmic.

After eight months of planning, including attending hours-long meetings to convince town leaders that their dream was possible, the team broke ground.

They still encountered problems. Subcontractors refused to enter the inn because of reported ghost sightings and asbestos. COVID-19 delayed the project’s completion for weeks.

Through it all, they became a family, Tyler said.

We’ve had to rewrite some of the course of our lives to make this happen,” Tyler said. “That creates a very strong bond.”

A rich, forgotten history

When Tyler first entered the Colonial Inn in July of 2017, the building was merely a sad relic of the former heart of Hillsborough’s tourism industry.

Although the founding date featured on its iconic mid-20^th century marquee cites 1759 as the inn’s founding date, historical records suggest it was built in 1838. The inn hosted countless weddings, celebrations and Sunday lunches throughout its almost 200-year history.

Union soldiers ransacked the building after the Civil War, stopping only when they saw the owner’s wife display her husband’s Masonic apron from the balcony – a silent cry for mercy.

And while there’s no proof that former President George Washington was among the inn’s earliest guests, this story is a centerpiece of local lore, passed down by generations.

The inn closed in 2001 after its owners ran into financial trouble. The owner who followed them promised to renovate it, but he let the building fall into disrepair.

Private citizens and community groups tried to save the inn throughout the years, but in 2015, the Town of Hillsborough declared eminent domain and charged the aforementioned owner with demolition by neglect.

When Tyler’s team placed an offer of more than $850,000 in 2018, the inn officially changed hands.

From the beginning, the team wanted the inn to reclaim its place as Hillsborough’s front porch. They envisioned a building where lifelong residents could relive nostalgic memories and tourists could relax after a day exploring the historic town.

Every decision, from paint colors to light fixtures to the font on the new marquee sign, was made with the community in mind.

“There was no reason to do this whole thing if it wasn’t consistent with what the community needed,” Tyler said.

Tyler’s team likely won’t be the last to own the building.  Nevertheless, a long-awaited renovation, coupled with the inn’s surviving 19^th-century architecture, has cemented its staying power in the heart of Hillsborough’s downtown for years to come.

Realizing a dream

Today, Darar is crouched down, giving a last-minute scrub to the blue and gray ornamental rug in the bar area of the soon-to-be operational inn.

“Stop stepping on the rug!” she tells Tyler. “I’m going to have to bring my Hoover in here.”

After three years of planning and construction, it’s staging day.

The owners are putting finishing touches on the 28-room boutique hotel and event space. Soon, florists and caterers will fill the halls as photographers document the final stages of the multimillion-dollar renovation. The inn looks quite different now.

In the lobby, sapphire-colored velvet booths glisten under gold lights, bringing a modern touch to the traditional structure. The original oak floors beneath are freshly mopped, no longer covered by mildewed carpet. The event space, which had to be rebuilt from the ground up, is covered in white and gold marble tile.

The space is ready for a bride and groom’s first dance under crystal chandeliers.

A few missing floor vents, small trails of sawdust and stray power cords make it clear that the inn is still a construction site – but Tyler and her team are almost done.

Looking through 8,000 renovation pictures taken on her iPhone, Tyler says she can hardly fathom that they’ve made it this far. Next month, the inn’s doors will open to the public for the first time with a large celebration.

The power was turned on last month, lighting up the inside of the neoclassical structure for the first time in two decades and illuminating three years of hard work.

Tyler’s husband drove up to the inn late that night.

He said he saw the inn’s warm, glowing light pouring out of its original windows onto the street. And like the beacon of hope Tyler dreamed it would become that fateful day three years ago – the inn welcomed her husband inside.

Edited by Ellie Heffernan

By Jared McMasters

When COVID-19 sent UNC-Chapel Hill classes online and students packing up to return home in March, Eddie Williams was worried for the future of his restaurant.

Williams, the owner of Time-Out Restaurant, helplessly watched many of his customers disappear, returning to their hometowns. His restaurant on East Franklin Street began to suffer from the financial burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic which have forced countless small businesses to permanently shut their doors.

“Things really started to plummet,” said Williams.

With his life’s work on the line, Williams realized his best option was to keep the restaurant’s food consistent and the homely atmosphere alive. Time-Out is famous in the area for being open 24/7 for the last 42 years. He knew that if he could show his customers that their favorite establishment for Southern comfort food was not changing, then he had the opportunity to survive.

He spent nearly every waking minute at the restaurant.

While everyone else was sleeping, he would enter the restaurant’s black wooden doors at 4 a.m., starting his days before the sun was up.

If he was lucky, he would get to leave at 6 p.m. before the dinner rush started. If he was not as lucky, he would not come home to his wife, Valerie, until almost 9 p.m.

Time-Out is a “labor of love” for Williams. His unmatched work ethic is the reason why he still mans the cash register and serves customers after more than four decades.

“I’ve had to put it into a different gear,” he said. “And I didn’t even know I had another gear.”

It always goes back Chapel Hill

 Williams and his wife have always been part of the Chapel Hill community.

His father, Jack Williams, was a sports information director for the University in the early days of the Dean Smith basketball era. Eddie grew up running around press boxes, eating dinners with Smith’s family and going on beach trips with the Tar Heel football coach at the time, Bill Dooley.

He met his wife in the halls of Chapel Hill’s Guy B. Phillips Middle School when he was in eighth grade and she was in the seventh. Three children and six grandchildren later, the couple remains inseparable.

“I’m Chapel Hill through and through,” Williams said, sitting in one of Time-Out’s wooden booths along a wall of windows and UNC-CH memorabilia. “We bleed Carolina blue.”

During his former years working at his uncle’s old restaurant, River View Steakhouse, he fell in love with the Western-style sizzling steaks and the pizza tavern in the back.

He knew he wanted to make his own mark on the restaurant industry and figured there was no better place to start than in his hometown.

Within a year of graduating from UNC-CH, he married Valerie and opened Time-Out in its original location, on Franklin Street where Target is now. His father-in-law called him crazy for growing up so quickly.

“Now that I’m a father-in-law, I’d have thought the same thing,” Williams said. “But I knew I could outwork anyone.”

 His loyal customers

 Williams understands the never-ending struggle to meet customers’ standards because you’re only as good as the last time somebody ate there.

“Making people happy gets in your blood,” he said. “The fact that they choose you and your food makes you feel connected to them.”

For Williams, it is rewarding to hear the praises of longtime customers, like Cliff Butler, who have been coming to Time-Out for generations.

Butler started dining at the restaurant over 30 years ago when his nephew worked as a cook for Williams. He swears that taking home a Time-Out honey biscuit, drizzling it with half-and-half, smearing a thin layer of butter on top and microwaving it for 30 seconds has been the source of his energy for the last three decades.

“It’ll change your life,” he said.

About 15 years ago, though, the restaurant occupied a more sentimental place in Butler’s heart.

He and his wife were in desperate need of a turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner, so Butler picked up the phone to call Williams, the one man with a restaurant he knew would be open to serve him.

Later that evening, Butler drove up to Time-Out’s curb. Williams handed him a roasted turkey with stuffing and gravy cooked to perfection. The bird was so hot that the steam could be seen in the cold air, and Butler almost dropped it while loading it into his car.

He has recommended Time-Out’s turkeys to his friends ever since.

Even for customers who appeared later, like Mike Roach, it did not take long to realize Time-Out’s uniqueness.

Roach’s son saw Time-Out make an appearance on the Travel Channel’s “Man v. Food” show when he was in middle school about 12 years ago and begged his dad to take him to the diner.

They each ordered the chicken and cheddar biscuit featured on the show, and the cheese “unbelievably” melted in their mouths.

The traditional Southern cooking and welcoming environment instantly made them feel at home.

“I think Eddie and his team are just genuine,” Roach said. “He just cares about people. I’ve seen him just talking to customers that he knows because he’s friends with everyone.”

Even when Time-Out was forced to move next to the post office on the western end of Franklin Street in 2014, the comfortable atmosphere remained the same. When they checked out the new location, the father and son were amazed by all the photos of former UNC-CH star athletes lining the restaurant’s Carolina blue wall.

Black and white photographs of Kenny Smith making the timeout gesture with his hands by the entrance and one featuring Michael Jordan leaning against his first Mercedes-Benz in the Granville Towers parking lot caught their eyes. Roach knew that Williams was not the type to fall for celebrities, so all the photographs had to be on the wall because the ones featured truly loved the owner and his food.

“He’s an establishment in the community,” Roach said.

A case of Déjà vu

About two weeks after students left Chapel Hill in the spring, business began to pick back up at Time-Out and has continued to ever since.

Steadily, Time-Out saw a flow of regulars returning to the restaurant, like Clayton, a friend of Williams’ who picks up a to-go box of scrambled eggs, toast and a large half and half tea around 9 a.m. every morning.

Sales returned to normal, so Williams never had to cut anyone’s hours or lay off any of his employees; he did not think he would have even had the heart to do it.

For him, it felt like the community was rallying around a staple of the area.

“People know we’re open 24 hours a day, so they know they can come in,” said Cheryl Lee, Williams’ assistant. “He’s never locked his doors to turn people away.”

Now, Williams experiences a repeated turn of events as students leave campus again this fall. However, his faith rests in the values and cooking that have kept his business alive for over 40 years to continue to make a difference through these difficult times.

“A man told me one time, ‘Just take something simple and do it the best that you can,’” he said. “I think I’ve done that.”

 

Edited by Sarah DuBose

By Anna Pogarcic

Savannah Pless, first-year

Savannah Pless probably spends about eight-hours on her laptop each day. She goes between watching her online classes and doing her homework, rarely leaving her desk.

Usually, a first-year at UNC-Chapel Hill like herself would be spending their first few weeks of classes getting lost on the main campus in a sea of brick buildings, or signing up to join too many clubs and instantly regretting it. Instead, she’s doing her first year of college at her home in China Grove, North Carolina, more than 100 miles away from Chapel Hill.

She’s not the only student who isn’t on campus this year due to the pandemic, but she does feel that she has extra hurdles. On top of being a first-year, she’s the first person in her family to go to college. Every day has brought new twists during the last few months, and she never knows what to expect.

About twenty percent of the class of 2024 are first-generation students like her, and no matter what year they are, this year is testing their strength. All of these students are trying to find their footing, but many of them feel like they’re scaling this mountain alone.

Pless always thought about going to college, even if she didn’t realize it at the time. She remembers being as young as 10 years old and helping her father feed calves on the family’s farm. From that moment she knew she wanted to work with animals for the rest of her life.

However, going through the application process was mostly trial and error.

“I really didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to about the application process or what I should be going through, or even what career I was pursuing or what I wanted to do,” she said.

College websites were a puzzle; even when she could find the application, she didn’t know how many essays she had to write, how to seem like the perfect candidate, or when to apply. By the time she had applied, was accepted, and committed to UNC-CH, it was late April. North Carolina was approaching 600 reported cases, and people were still saying it would all be over soon.
Before she knew it, Pless was doing orientation virtually. Move-in day for her consisted of changing the color of her bedroom from purple to teal. Not a bright or neon blue, but one that will help her focus.

Those teal walls surround her as she tries to balance her classes, assignments, and her professor’s preferences. But it’s not the difficulty of the classes that worries her most, it’s the thought that she’s missing out.

Aside from one person from her high school that also goes to UNC-CH, she hasn’t had an opportunity to make any friends, meet new people, or do any of the traditions that come with being a first-year, like convocation.

“I’m sure they’ll do them at a later time, so I’ll eventually get that experience, I hope,” she said.

Abbas Hasan, junior
For Abbas Hasan, a first-generation junior at UNC-CH, those experiences made the university feel like home. Without them, he doesn’t even feel like he’s in Chapel Hill, even though he’s living in his off-campus apartment.
When he toured the campus as a high school senior, he noticed the trees right away. In Dallas, where he grew up, he mostly knew pavement and gray buildings, but Chapel Hill was overflowing with greenery. He didn’t think it was possible to live somewhere like that.

It took him a semester and a half to feel that he was finally adjusted once he moved here. Aside from the fact that he was several states removed from his family, students tore Silent Sam down on his first night on campus. His parents were on the plane to Texas when it happened, and they didn’t stop texting him for days once they landed.

With social unrest, hurricanes, and a water crisis happening all while he was trying to figure out how to adjust to a new place, make friends and decide on a major, he felt like everything was coming at him all at once. He felt like it couldn’t get more complicated than that.

Then, when he finally had a solid friend group and declared an American studies major, the pandemic sent him back to Texas in March. He still feels lucky because at least he’s not a first-year while he’s doing virtual college.  “The way that I made friends and connected with this university would have been impossible to do,” he said.

But some students are trying. Melanie Krug is the president of the First Generation Student Association, which provides resources and community building opportunities to students each year. What usually would be game nights or speaker events with food are now happening on Zoom, which she said isn’t the same environment.

“They don’t really get to have that click moment with each other, either,” she said. “One of my favorite things at events (is) when people end up sitting down next to each other and talking and they’re like, ‘oh, where do you live?’ to ‘what floor are you on? Oh, no way, what’s your major?'”

First-years are always eager to make friends, she said, and her organization encourages people to get to know each other so they can at least wave if they cross paths on campus. Those little moments can’t happen now, and that can be isolating for anyone, let alone a student who has no support system going into UNC-CH.

“Carolina is about the space and the people and the buildings,” Hasan said. “It’s not this idea, it’s something you work for.”

Kamryn McDonald, resident advisor

Kamryn McDonald is a resident advisor in the first-generation residential learning program at Hinton James Residence Hall. She said many first-generation students are vulnerable now that they aren’t on campus and can’t get these experiences outside of their family setting. Many of them don’t have a supportive environment at home, or they may struggle to build confidence.

“I worry that if you don’t have some foundational relationships with people that are really important to you and that you trust, or that you don’t have a faculty member that voices support for you, I can see why you wouldn’t want to stay or why college wouldn’t feel right to you,” she said.

She remembers staying up late with her suitemates during her first year at UNC-CH, playing card games, and talking. Every Sunday, they would get brunch at Chase Dining Hall, and she would order vegan banana french toast because it’s sweeter than regular french toast. That community helped her get used to the university, and that’s what Pless and Hasan miss the most.

 

Edited by Aashna Shah

By Anne Tate

After UNC-Chapel Hill first-year student Fiona Wallace learned her roommate at Granville Towers tested positive for COVID-19, she experienced a chaotic 24 hours of quick decisions, poor communication and increasing uncertainty.

Fiona spent over two hours in the coronavirus testing line at Campus Health Services after she frantically made an appointment for a COVID-19 test. Students waited for so long that staff brought them water.

When Fiona reached the front of the line after her first hour of waiting, she was redirected to the regular Campus Health entrance. She was not the only one turned away from the designated coronavirus testing line.

“I figured I’d go somewhere separate from the kids going to their physical therapy appointments,” Fiona said.

The transition into on-campus quarantine.

That same day, before receiving her results, Fiona stripped her bed and packed as much as she could carry – two weeks’ worth of clothes, food, bedding and school supplies – and moved to Craige North Residence Hall, UNC’s on-campus quarantine dorm.

After she realized UNC only provided three, 16-ounce bottles of water a day, Fiona’s roommate dropped off her Brita filter.

For Fiona, the quarantine dorms offered little more comfort than the pack of “Lunch To-Go” tuna UNC provided for dinner. The hallways were filled with an eerie silence, void of people. Every afternoon, she had to guess when her three meals for the day were left outside of her door – no one ever knocked. She showered twice a day, just for fun. Fiona was lonely; she spent a lot of time looking out the window at people walking by on the street below.

Occasionally, the silence was broken.

“Sometimes, you could hear people crying,” she said.

One day, Fiona heard voices outside of her door. She looked through the peephole and saw a group of staff dressed in hazmat suits cleaning out the room across the hall. She felt like people were afraid of her, and she didn’t even know if she had COVID-19 yet.

Another time, a friend of Fiona’s, who was also quarantined in Craige North, developed a 101-degree fever. He had no medicine, so she left a Tylenol wrapped in a paper towel outside of his door.

Fiona had no human interaction for four days – and it would have been 14 if she hadn’t tested negative. 

“If I kept doing that, my mental health would have gotten so much worse,” she said. “I thought, ‘I can’t be alone like this.’”

Fiona knows students who actively avoided the quarantine dorms.

“I know so many people in Granville who definitely had symptoms, but their suitemates didn’t want them to get tested because they didn’t want to get sent home or moved,” she said. “Some people were mad at my roommate for getting tested.”

Fiona thinks there are more cases than what’s been reported because some people are ignoring their symptoms and not going to Campus Health.

A UNC senior felt similarly – she didn’t trust UNC to provide adequate food or psychological care in the quarantine dorms.

When she went to Campus Health for a COVID-19 test, she lied and said that she had her own bathroom so she could quarantine in her off-campus house.

“I was so afraid to get sent to the quarantine dorms,” she said. “I heard someone got a pack of edamame as a meal.”

A freshman has a nomadic first month at UNC.

First-year Lucas Schroeder took the P2P to Craige North after being tested for COVID-19 at Campus Health. After two days in quarantine, he received his results – positive. That day, he moved to Parker Residence Hall, UNC’s on-campus isolation dorm.

“It was frustrating to repack all of my stuff and strip the bed and move again. It was a hassle and felt kind of pointless,” Lucas said. “I wasn’t even in contact with anyone in Craige.”

After his second move, Lucas’s strategy to pass time was to sleep the hours away. He woke up at 1 p.m. every day, did schoolwork, watched movies and went downstairs to pick up his food bag, labeled with his room number. He rarely saw anyone.

“I want to be at UNC, and it’s been a great time up until I got sick,” he said. “But I can’t say I’m too surprised that this is how it went. I think we all knew that when we signed up, so I’m not upset at UNC. I’m more upset that we’re still handling COVID as a society.”

After his isolation, Lucas plans to go home to Charlotte for a week and then move to Ocean Isle Beach with his friend. When he gets to his final destination, he will have moved five times in the first month of his freshman year.

Designated quarantine space becomes limited at UNC. 

To add to the confusion of the coronavirus procedures, and feelings of isolation, UNC sent sophomore Claire Perry to an off-campus hotel to quarantine.

When UNC informed Claire she’d be moving to a hotel, she was concerned – she said it seemed weird.

“I had been following the dashboard and knew that technically it said they had spots left in isolation and quarantine,” Claire said. “I was like, wow. Obviously, they’re sending me to a hotel because they don’t have spots left or they’re reserving a couple spots for some reason.”

After checking in at the hotel front desk, she was led to a conference room and given one day’s worth of food. She said there were a lot of people around who weren’t students. Her quarantine was among regular hotel patrons.

For three days, Claire binged Avatar: The Last Airbender, was not productive, and only left her room once to go to the ice machine. She packed her own food because she saw posts on the UNC Reddit page about the quarantine meals. One of her few interactions was with an employee at the hotel front desk – she called to tell him UNC forgot to deliver her meals that day. Claire said she felt isolated and lonely, but that she felt lucky for her outside resources and support.

Above all, she was scared of what would happen if she had the virus.

“I was trying to distract myself,” she said. “I didn’t want to think about it because I have asthma and knew that if the test was positive, I could have a really bad experience. While trying not to think about it, I tried not to think about anything.”

Claire updated a thread on Twitter about her quarantine experiences throughout her stay. She wanted to use her platform to advocate for herself, and other students.

“It was kind of an impulse,” she said. “It ended up getting a lot more reception than I thought it would, which was really overwhelming.”

After getting the call that her results were negative, Claire left her quarantine room and was faced with an unmasked man in the elevator. He told her she could get in. Claire said she’d wait for the next one.

When Claire reflected on her experience, she felt like most of UNC’s coronavirus efforts were geared toward damage control – and that shouldn’t have been the approach. She thinks things may have been different if UNC wasn’t one of the first universities to reopen.

“We were a leader in all the wrong ways,” she said.

Edited by Makenna Smith

By Michelle Li

String lights on and aromatherapy candles lit, she climbed up to her lofted bed. Her fingers brushed side-to-side over the trackpad, navigating over the same button on the laptop screen. To go to Washington D.C. next semester or to not go? She sighed, wary and unsure, then fell back and stared into the popcorn ceiling. 

At the base of her decision lied two distinct paths – one with music, one without. “Would that make you happy?” “If not D.C., then what?” 

She thought about being 10 and starting voice lessons, doing musical theater workshops and opening for Walker Lukens at Motorco Music Hall at 16.

“The answer became so clear to me,” said the now 21-year-old. Brushing over the trackpad again, she exited the page this time, closed her laptop and let it sink in. 

She made her choice. 

Rachel Despard was a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill when she decided to pursue music full-time instead of studying public policy in D.C., and things haven’t been the same since. 

Despard is one of a handful of students at UNC-CH who plan to pursue a music career after college. Now as a senior, she dreams of recording and performing her music, and so far she is accomplishing exactly that. 

Building the band

She put a band together the semester she would’ve attended the policy program. Some members were high school friends and others she met through organizations, events or class. The original band included herself and five other guys: Andrew McClenney, Arvind Subramaniam, Kauner Michael, Evan Linett and Bryton Shoffner. They would soon become her best friends. 

Ken Weiss, a professor at UNC-CH who previously worked in the music business (Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young) and Fleetwood Mac), believed in Despard. The gold and platinum award winner quickly became her mentor. At one of their daily meetings Despard was restless, anxiously awaiting a response to a venue booking email. She was eager to share her deep, introspective lyrics beyond her close circle and bring them to the stage, but she’d never booked a show before. 

“You walk in there and say you want to play the gig,” Weiss advised.

So that’s exactly what Despard did.  

Standing below the red awning outside of the music bar down West Franklin Street, Despard phoned her close friend. She needed reassurance, somebody to hype her up before walking in. Entering the sticker-covered, teal-painted music bar, she asked to speak with Stephen. Just a first name she received from Weiss, nothing more. 

“Oh yeah, I am Stephen,” Stephen Mooneyhan, the owner of Local 506 at the time, said. 

“Hey, I would like to play a gig here,” Despard said, confidently, “with my band.” 

“Have you sent us a booking email?”

“Yes, two weeks ago,” Despard said. 

Sure enough, her name came up through the hundreds of emails. After playing her music samples Mooneyhan responded. “Okay, it sounds good. We will have you booked for April 6th.” 

Three emails, two iPhone recordings and one visit later, Despard and her new band delivered a striking first show at Local 506. They’d sold 76 tickets. 

That was less than a year ago, and her band has gone on to play larger shows, opening for Dissimilar South at Cat’s Cradle just weeks later. In a short time Despard became no stranger to the local Triangle music scene, growing loyal listeners. Her indie sound with jazz roots gained the attention of folk-rock singer Sharon Van Etten. 

As every day passes she is closer to achieving her dreams.

“The mission of her artistic development is hers to manage and she is the one best suited to do it,” Weiss said. “She has grown to understand the influence she can have in making things happen for herself.” 

Despite her parents’ and friends’ hesitations with her decision to diverge from public policy and “traditional forms of accomplishment,” she persevered.

“You know, it takes guts to do that,” Subramaniam, often playing the role of manager in Despard’s life, said. “There are so many people who, day in and day out, do something they hate because they feel like they should, or it’s the ‘responsible’ thing to do.”

“You don’t make a lot of money obviously, and that’s fine, but you also don’t have to be like a starving artist making just $30 a night at one gig. There are a lot of ways to supplement income and it’s really just the nature of music,” Despard said. “At first when I made the decision I always qualified it with ‘Oh I’m also going to do arts administration or have this other thing.’ Now I just say, ‘I’m doing music. Take it or leave it.’”

When life gives you lemons, make an EP

Feb. 23, Despard launched a fundraising campaign to record her first EP with her band. Within the first day of the fundraiser, she raised over a third of her $3,500 goal. Despard hopes to raise the full amount of funds by April when they will begin recording with Grammy-nominated producer Jason Richmond (The Avett Brothers, Sylvan Esso, Kate McGarry and more).

The EP is the culmination of a year’s work of writing and arranging with her current band members (original members McClenney and Subramaniam, along with Olivia Fernandez, Jakob Bower and Ben McEntire).

In the EP Despard tells a story about the arc of a relationship—from being swept up with love, to the downfall and personal rebuilding that follows, but a few weeks before Despard was set to perform some of her new songs, a relationship in her life fell apart. 

“That was a really hard time for her, and because I’m her best friend, it was a really hard time for me,” Kelsey Sutton, Despard’s longtime friend and college roommate, said. “The week before her performance we road tripped to the beach. We got to the ocean and I was like, ‘We have to jump in, we have to cleanse you of all of this.’”

Screaming profanities from the chill winter water, they buried themselves in the sand and watched the night sky—a perfect refresh and reset.

“She had all these incredible songs about her relationship, and she re-dedicated them to her friends. It showed her strength, grace and her ability to continually be true to herself,” Sutton said. “They still touched on that time in her life, but were still true in the present. We were in the front row cheering her on, making eye contact. She was glowing singing those songs.”

Songs that could have just become bittersweet continue to celebrate her love for people in her life. Much of Despard’s music speaks to the human condition while simultaneously reflecting her own life.

Following graduation, Despard has her eyes set on Nashville, TN, in hopes that the professional artist and music community will help motivate her next project.

“If she’s on world tours and sold-out shows, great, and if she’s not, also great, because I will be proud to know Rachel as someone that brings music into people’s lives on a daily basis, and doesn’t listen to the hate, but focuses on the passion and drive that has already gotten her so far,” Subramaniam said.

Edited by Maya Jarrell

By Julia Masters

After 72 years, Dave Mason Jr. had forgotten the name of the discount store — one of the only places black people could try on clothes — but not what happened in the basement.

Mason, tired of shopping, remembered the quarter his father gave him. He scrambled downstairs to the basement’s luncheonette where a dollar could turn into 10 hot dogs in a matter of minutes.

At 5 years old, he thought nothing of climbing onto the barstool while he anxiously waited for his lunch. He noticed people were staring and began to wonder why, but stayed seated.

“Dave, Dave, we’ve been looking everywhere for you! You’re not supposed to be over here,” his mother said, clearly concerned.

“Why not? I just want a hot dog,” he replied.

“You’re not supposed to be over here because you’re colored,” she said.

“Well what’s colored?” he asked. 

When they got home, his mother explained that people of his complexion were not treated the same as lighter skinned, namely white, people.

That moment would stick with Mason for years.

‘I can’t believe you’re here’

On Feb. 28, 1960, 17-year-old Mason headed to the M&N Grill after the sermon ended at St. Joseph’s church. He met eight of his friends and classmates from Lincoln High School — Chapel Hill’s all-black school.

After the Greensboro Four, a group of North Carolina A&T students, staged a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter earlier that month, conversations near the rock wall at the end of Cotton and McDade Streets became more serious.

“The rock wall was a place that we as teenagers used to gather, and we would talk about various subjects, some of them I cannot mention,” Mason said laughing. “But we did have some very serious conversations as well, and one pertained to how we were going to go about attempting to desegregate Chapel Hill.”

They decided to start at the Colonial Drug Store owned by John Carswell, or “Big John.” Big John lived on Church Street, a street divided between blacks and whites. He knew everyone in the black community since they accounted for most of his business.

“He was a good guy. He just didn’t want black folk to sit down in his establishment,” said Clayton Weaver, who was 11 that day. Big John used to deliver medicine to his house on Cameron Avenue on his way home.

Mason’s brother had a kidney problem, so his family was always in the store to pick up prescriptions. Mason also made frequent stops for “the best cherry Cokes that you would want to have.”

That’s why Big John was shocked when Mason and his companions marched in to Colonial Drug Store and sat down at his booths and barstools.

“I was feeling joyful, needless to say I was somewhat anxious, but the main thing I was thinking about was the way I was mistreated when I was five years old,” said Mason.

“Mason, I can’t believe you’re here,” said Big John. “Does your momma know you’re here?”

Mason said nothing, but stayed seated.

That day, nine high school students, known as the Chapel Hill Nine, staged the first civil rights protest in Chapel Hill.

‘Speaks to the best of Chapel Hill’ 

Sixty years later, their names — Harold Foster, William Cureton, John Farrington, Earl Geer, Dave Mason Jr., Clarence Merritt Jr., James Merritt, Clyde Douglas Perry and Albert Williams — would be inscribed into the rectangular structure depicting old photographs and news-clippings that sits atop a metal base covered in slate on West Franklin Street.

Chicken wire buckled over the smooth aluminum panels bolted outside Franklin Street’s West End Wine Bar. Durham artist Stephen Hayes, sporting denim on denim, crouched down with a power tool to study the structure he was to finish in a few days.

The idea to commemorate the civil rights history of Chapel Hill was sparked by Danita Mason-Hogans, Mason’s daughter.  She met with Mayor Pam Hemminger who created the Historic Civil Rights Commemorations Task Force in 2017. The task force made a civil rights timeline, trading cards with facts about the local movement for K-12 students and proposed the idea of a marker to honor the ones who started it all.

“This marker speaks to the best of Chapel Hill and the values that this community really cares about,” said Molly Luby, special projects coordinator at the Chapel Hill Public Library.

The town asked Durham native Hayes, who teaches sculpting at Duke University, to create the marker.  His work centers around the way black bodies are seen, in hopes of changing the way he’s viewed as a black man.

Until the town contacted him six months ago, Hayes had never heard of the Chapel Hill Nine.  After meeting with the living members of the group, Hayes realized creating the marker was more than just the logistics of fusing acrylic onto aluminum.

“Art is about exposing those ideas, to get people thinking, to get people to understand something,” Hayes said.

‘Go ahead and make the change’

On Feb. 28, 2020, Mason walked out of the West End Wine Bar wearing a black sport coat and peach boutonniere.  It was the second time in 60 years he’d been inside that building. After shaking some hands, he sat in a foldable chair and watched the commemoration ceremony.

Sixty years ago, he sat outside that same building as David Caldwell, a black police officer, took down his name and informed him that Big John reserved the right to press charges for deciding to sit in his restaurant.

Two or three days after their sit-in, it was clear they’d set a movement in motion. White and black students joined their cause. Picketing and sit-ins became a common occurrence until 1964.

“There were many arrests made; we did not experience the violence they had in Alabama, thank God, but we did have violence,” Mason said. “We had people that had ammonia thrown on their face. We had one woman who had the audacity and was so vulgar that she stood over one of the protestors and urinated on him.”

One day in July 1960, five months after the sit-in, Mason was at his then-girlfriend’s house — now his wife — when his father called and told him the police were asking for him. Mason finally confessed to his parents what had happened earlier that year.  The Nine hid the sit-in from their parents and adults in the community for fear that they would lose their jobs.

All nine were arrested, charged and convicted on the grounds of trespassing, as Big John decided to press charges when they returned to stage further protests.

Mason and the others appealed their case — a decision that changed their lives and not just because they didn’t go to prison.

The day of his appeal was the same day as his examination for the military. Mason was determined not to go to Vietnam — something that troubled his father, a WWII veteran.

“Daddy, I am doing this because of what you told me,” Mason said.

“What do you mean, ‘what I told you?’” his father asked.

“Well, you have been telling me ever since I was 13, if there was anything that I felt strongly about and actually believed in, to stand up for it; don’t give in,” Mason said.

Segregation laws are gone, but Mason notes that racial inequities still exist in Chapel Hill. 

“We never ever thought about being honored, and I know that sounds strange. Our desire and our hope still right now is that young people will be inspired by the action that we took, just as the actions that the students took in Greensboro were inspired by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King was inspired by Gandhi, and Gandhi was inspired by God,” Mason said.

“We just hope and still hope today that the younger generation can see things that need to be changed and go ahead and make the change.”

 Edited by Claire Ruch and Hannah McClellan