A documentary highlighting the storied careers of North Carolina leaders and UNC School of Law alumni Bill Friday ’48, Terry Sanford ’46 and William Aycock ’48, among others, aired on UNC-TV Jan. 8.
“A Generation of Change: Bill Friday, Terry Sanford, and North Carolina from the 1920s-1972,” written and directed by Durham, N.C., filmmaker Steve Channing, celebrates the public contributions of a group of North Carolinians, most of whom were members of the same study group at UNC School of Law. Gene R. Nichol, Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC, served as executive producer of the film.
“I got involved with the project because I was lucky enough to be close with President Friday and Chancellor Aycock,” Nichol says.
Friday, Sanford, Aycock and others from N.C.’s own “greatest generation” led a time of dramatic change that established many of today’s institutions, including the state university system. The documentary covers the span of time from their youth in the 1920s to the election in 1972 and the birth of the two-party state in North Carolina.
“While numerous Carolina lawyers have gone on to make important contributions to the state, very few can match the collective public impact of a class that included Governor and later Senator Terry Sanford; UNC President Bill Friday; Chancellor and beloved UNC law professor Bill Aycock; UNC School of Law dean and later Fourth Circuit Judge Dickson Phillips Jr.; Bill Deas, the first chair of the UNC Board of Governors; and other outstanding leaders as well,” says UNC School of Law Dean John C. “Jack” Boger ’74.
The film explores how the state’s emerging leaders of the time were developed by the Great Depression and World War II.
“I think the fact that my generation came through that lacerating depression, many of us worked to get through college, walked right off that stage into World War II, by the time we came back here to law school at Chapel Hill, in one sense we were an old people,” Friday said.
For more information: http://generationofchangefilm.com/.
-January 8, 2015