You never know what you’ll hear in this business, but it’s frequently entertaining. So it was when my colleague Mary Schulken got an email from a reader unhappy with her column noting that former UNC President Bill Friday and former UNC President C.D. Spangler were going to drop by UNC Charlotte to tell the faculty about their reservations on a proposal to create a football team at UNCC.
Among other things, the reader said:
“These Chapel Hill men have no idea what Charlotte is capable of. Charlotte is unique to the rest of the state in many ways. If we wanted the opinion of someone from another part of NC, we would have asked for it. Having men like Spangler come here and look down on us with a patronizing attitude from out-of-town is an insult and a joke."
That’s interesting, isn’t it? Dick Spangler an out-of-towner? Who knew?
Perhaps the reader is from somewhere else and doesn’t know. But Bill Friday himself was reared next door in the Gaston County town of Dallas and knows his way around this part of the state as well as any North Carolinian.
And Dick Spangler, of course, lives in Charlotte, grew up in Charlotte, is the son of a Charlotte builder, built his own businesses into one of the country’s most impressive fortunes in Charlotte, maintains a home in Charlotte, chaired the school board in Charlotte, goes to church in Charlotte, gives money to charities in Charlotte...the whole deal. He has a home in Chapel Hill, too, but he’s as Charlottean as you can get.
