As three of the candidates for the Democratic party nomination for Governor ramp up their campaigns, I decided to check the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection to see if I could find photos from their college days.

Lieutenant Governor Walter Dalton received his B.S. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971. This photo is from the 1971 Yackety Yack.

 

Former U.S. Representative Bob Etheridge graduated from Campbell University in 1965. This photo, from the 1965 Pine Burr, is one of many of “Bobby” Etheridge, who was the Senior Class Vice President, a member of the Honor Court, and a star on the Campbell basketball team.

 

State Representative Bill Faison graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an AB in 1969, overlapping with Dalton by a few years. This photo is from the 1969 Yackety Yack.

This photo, from the 1959 Pine Burr, shows Gaylord Perry, one of North Carolina’s greatest baseball players, and a member of the Campbell College (now Campbell University) class of 1960. The Hall of Famer, a native of Williamston, N.C., is probably baseball’s best-known spitballer (his 1974 autobiography is called Me and the Spitter: An Autobiographical Confession). I wondered whether it was the folks at Campbell who taught him the illegal pitch, but according to Perry, he didn’t learn how to throw a spitball until 1964.

Early issues of The Golden Bull, the student yearbook from Johnson C. Smith University, are now available on DigitalNC. One of North Carolina’s early jazz bandleaders is pictured in the 1930 volume. Campbell Aurelius Tolbert, known professionally as “Skeets” Tolbert, grew up in Lincolntown, N.C. Tolbert’s professional career spanned the 1930s and 1940s, first as a backup musician and then as the leader of a group called The Gentlemen of Swing. The Gentlemen of Swing toured the east coast, and had a few of their songs captured on film, one of which, “No No Baby,” is available on YouTube.

Tolbert lived in Charlotte again in the late 1940s when he taught high school music before moving to Texas, where he lived for the remainder of his life.