He clearly recalled when Chapel Hill had only dirt streets, the town’s first self-service grocery, and when the outlines of Durham and Raleigh were visible from Gimghoul Castle. He watched Horace Williams ride by on his horse from the front porch of his mid-town home.
That was Chapel Hill as young Sheldon White first saw it when his widowed mother moved here almost 80 years ago. A careful hometown historian, Sheldon died here recently at age 93. He worked as a grocery store clerk, served five years in the Navy during World War II, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, and was a retired life insurance agent.Through all that, Sheldon dearly loved Chapel Hill and all its curious elements.
Franklin was “Front Street,” and Rosemary “Back Street” — where he grew up in his mother’s boarding house. He could recall every store in the one-block downtown business district – including one of the seven independent groceries, where he started part-time work at $2 a week.
Chapel Hill was a “caring place,” he said. “People looked after each other. Mrs. R.B. Lawson was the one-woman personal welfare department who checked the jail every morning. When people couldn’t pay their monthly bills the merchants tided them over until times improved. The reason that NC Memorial Hospital had to be built, it was said, was to fill in the gap when \Dr. Brack Lloyd died in 1949. The crusty, revered doctor once said “I take care of all the blacks and whites – and damn few faculty.”
–Of such are the vestiges of the vanishing village that Sheldon White watched and nurtured during his lifetime here.
