Friends of the UNCG Libraries

It is with great sadness that we inform you of the death of our colleague Mr. Robert Bixby , who passed away on Friday, October 26, 2012 after an extended illness. Rob was an employee of the University Libraries working as a Digital Imaging Technician in Jackson Library since May 2009. Rob joined UNCG in April 2003, and worked for the Center for Youth, Family & Community Partnership as a Computing Support Tech II prior to transferring to the University Libraries. His obituary can be found online at: http://obituaries.news-record. com/obituaries/news-record/ obituary.aspx?pid=160734518  

We have recently learned of the death of retired historian Richard Current, who taught at UNCG for many years. Dr. Current was one of America's leading historians, with a particularly strong reputation for his work about Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Current served as head of the Department of History and Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1955-1960, and was a University Distinguished Professor of History at UNCG from 1966 to 1983. His papers are in the UNCG Archives and are described here . See his obituary from the Washington Post here .

We join readers, writers and others in mourning the recent death of Doris Betts.  Doris, who attended Woman's College, was a giant in the literary community, and her accomplishments have been chronicled in obituaries all over the country, some of which are linked below.  We have little to add to those tributes except to echo them, and to express thanks for what she meant to the world of reading and writing. She spoke to the Friends of the Libraries here at the annual dinner in 1963.  Doris was fond of telling folks that she once got herself locked into the Jackson Library during her time as a student here, so as to spend the night alone with the books of the writers she most admired.  Now that we are open 24 hours a day 5 days a week, that task would be harder today, but we salute the love of literature that led Doris to break our rules in that fashion so many years ago. We hope her night was spent profitably.  May she rest in peace. New York Times ...

The University Libraries join with the campus and the literary community in mourning the death earlier this week of Robert Watson, a member of our faculty from 1953 until his retirement in 1987. Bob activated the MFA Writing Program at UNCG in 1964, and founded the Greensboro Review the next year. His papers are in our Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections. Here is his obituary .

Bill Snider, former editor of the Greensboro News & Record, died in late January at his home at Well-Spring. Along with his wife Flo, Bill was a long-time member of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries, and his papers reside in our Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. A native of Salisbury who came to Greensboro in 1951, Bill was an editor of the Greensboro newspaper during the turbulent 1960s, and together with several others formed a group that his friend and colleague Ned Cline called “the core that held Greensboro together during the civil rights era.” Bill was one of the last of this group to pass away, and he retained his concern and love for the people of Greensboro and of North Carolina long after his retirement from the paper in 1982, writing books and columns in the Sunday edition. With Bill’s encouragement and support, the News & Record has been a long-time friend of the UNCG Libraries, helping recruit journalists and other speakers f...

Poet Eleanor Ross Taylor, 1940 graduate of Woman's College, has died. She was the author of six books and published numerous poems in literary journals over a fifty year career. The widow of author and former UNCG faculty member Peter Taylor, she died December 30 in Charlottesville, VA. Some of her papers are in the Hodges Special Collections Department of the University Libraries at UNCG. For more about her life and career, see http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/03/2894402/poet-eleanor-ross-taylor-dies.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/eleanor-ross-taylor-poet-of-womens-lives-in-the-south-dies-at-91/2012/01/10/gIQALoIdpP_story.html