Chairman: Why we love Carolina

By John P. Preyer

Our Vice Chancellor of Development, who did not attend UNC as a student, told me after a recent fundraising trip that how donors and alumni feel about Carolina is unique in his experience. He described it as, and I quote, “an almost irrational love of the place.”

Why is that? All of us on this board know many of the reasons why: the common ground of the friends we made, the great classes we took, the terrific professors we had, and, of course, the fun we had … and the even more fun some of us had. But that is only part of it for me.

After several years of working in Washington, I started a North Carolina business doing environmental restoration work with a co-founder I had been in school with here, along with four other partners of various ages, three of whom also had gone to school here. Six people, and five of them Tar Heels.

One day I got a call from a woman I had known at Carolina but had not seen in several years. She had just returned from a ladies’ trip with a group of her best Carolina buddies, and she thought that I might hit it off with one of them. I thought, “Oh no, this is a blind date set-up and will be a total waste of time.” But I appreciated the gesture and promised I would follow up and take her friend to dinner. And so I did, showing up at my date Joanie’s house on Kenan Street — and, as you’ve likely surmised by now, I wound up marrying her. The real surprise is that our matchmaker friend did the same thing with three other couples, all UNC alumni.

Joanie and I moved across Franklin Street to Glenburnie Street to a house that had been vacant for six months. The yard was a total wreck. So I’m dragging limbs and dead shrubs out to the street one day and I see a well-dressed man walking toward me. He says, “John, is that you?” and I respond: “Kimball, I can’t believe it — you look exactly the same.” Sure enough, it was my English 86 and English 95X professor, Kimball King, and it turns out Joanie and I had bought the house directly across the street from him and his wife, Hattie.

Kimball invited Joanie and me over that night for a glass of wine, and that began 10 years of some of the happiest times of my life, spent with our Carolina neighbors. We shared countless dinners together, even Thanksgivings. And when our second child was born, they came over to stay with our then-3-year-old — it was just wonderful. I’d like to thank Trustee White and Trustee Jones for agreeing to help me create an endowed professorship in Kimball’s honor.

For those who don’t live in Chapel Hill, let me tell you what life was like living close to campus. I’ll give you a typical day in the summer when our children were young. We’d load up the double baby jogger and get our dog, Tenney, and then walk the couple of blocks to campus and head straight for the Graduate School so Tenney could jump in the fountain out front to cool off.

We’d then continue to the Student Union and to Alpine Bagel to get our breakfast. Alpine Bagel has been in the news recently, and I want to commend the brave actions of the staff there when faced with potential violence. I’ve been going there the past 15 years, and the only thing better than their bagels is their customer service.

Over the years, this routine progressed to our children eventually scootering or riding their own bikes. So if it sounds like the University campus was like a playground for us, you’re exactly right. It was, and to this day, it still is.

We don’t often hear or discuss this much publicly, but one of the most obvious reasons why UNC is such a special place is the sheer beauty of the campus—it is truly spectacular. That is something we need to maintain, as it is one of the University’s greatest assets.

Each and every one of us on this board, through our own experiences, has a shared love for this extraordinary University. It’s why we are serving here in the first place. It’s why we willingly volunteer an extraordinary amount of time and effort for our beloved alma mater. And it’s the motivation that I hope will drive us all to do the best we can over the next year to help keep The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a national leader in higher education.

Meanwhile, may we all keep loving Carolina almost irrationally.