William Brantley Aycock ‘48, who began his career as a high school history teacher and became Kenan Professor of Law at UNC School of Law and chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during a period of tremendous growth and social and political upheaval, died Sat., June 20. He was 99. Read the full "In Memoriam" at alumni.unc.edu.
In an email to law school faculty and staff, Dean John Charles “Jack” Boger ’74 opened by listing just a few of Aycock’s tangible impacts on the school, including the William Brantley Aycock Lobby; Holderness Moot Court teams, a core extra-curricular activity initiated in 1951 by Aycock; and the plaque naming Aycock the inaugural Frederick B. McCall teaching award winner in 1967 – one of five McCall teaching awards he was eventually to receive during his time at UNC School of Law.
“No one, in sum, with greater or more lasting influence on this venerable institution in the past half century than our beloved teacher and chancellor, who last night, midway in his 100th year, died peacefully in bed after suffering a broken rib a week earlier,” said Boger. “His last gracious public outing was to the Law School Rotunda on June 5th to attend the announcement by Chancellor Carol Folt and Provost Jim Dean of the selection of Martin Brinkley '92 as Carolina Law’s 14th dean. Chancellor Aycock had taught Martin as a student, worked with him and Dean Judith Wegner in 1994-95 to craft the special Sesquicentennial Issue of the North Carolina Law Review, and stayed in touch with him thereafter. He remained throughout his long life deeply interested not only in faculty colleagues young and old and the staffers who loved him, but so many former students, alumni, and friends across the broader University and the State.”
“Many have lifted up bright tributes to this son of Selma, North Carolina, this North Carolina State College graduate and student body president who earned an MA degree in history at Chapel Hill and initially aspired to teach public school, who then served bravely in World War II, who returned to Chapel Hill at the war’s close to lead the great UNC Law Class of 1948 as its top student and law review editor-in-chief, who was invited even before his graduation to join the UNC Law School faculty, who served as aide to Dr. Frank Porter Graham on a United Nations-sponsored effort to bring peace in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, who was tapped in 1956 as Chancellor of the University, who served as the wise and courageous voice of free expression during the State’s infamous Speaker Ban controversy years, who hired Dean Smith and defended his young basketball coach during a rocky start as a bigtime ACC coach, who returned to the law faculty in 1964 and taught civil procedure, property, trust and estates, antitrust and federal jurisdiction full-time for the next 23 years, touching the lives of hundreds and hundreds of law students and others.”
Boger included two attachments that pay tribute to Aycock’s extraordinary life and accomplishments.
In a speech (
“Bill has surely battled on behalf of all of us,” said Wegner. “He’s pushed back ignorance, worked to assure educational access without regard to wealth, sought after fairness, campaigned for academic freedom, and held firm for the priorities of educational excellence when other interests held them at risk. He’s championed learning in its very best sense, and stood up for truth.”
A shorter tribute (
“Bill Aycock is a man in whose footsteps we all should aspire to follow,” the authors wrote. “He is our community's memory of the best that our law school has been and the greatness toward which we strive. . . For the law school family, Bill Aycock is nothing less than our citadel of truth – a living symbol of that same university citadel that he nurtured as faculty member and chancellor, and to which he has given his whole life. He embodies everything that has made the School of Law great: a passion for truth blended with uncompromising devotion to his fellow human beings.”
The North Carolina Law Review tribute, in turn, cites earlier celebrations of his life penned by other former UNC Law deans: J. Dickson Phillips, Jr., Bill Aycock in Law School, 64 N.C.L. Rev. 207 (1986) and Henry Brandis, William Brantley Aycock: There Are So Many of Him, 64 N.C. L. Rev. 211 (1986). Judge James Dickson Phillips, in a retirement tribute, retold a story about Bill Aycock, stemming from their times together in law school. He said:
One winter day we woke to find that we'd had one of our rare hip-deep snowfalls overnight. I looked out the window of my house on the Pittsboro Road on the south edge of town and went back to bed. In a little while my wife looked out and came back to tell me that she'd just seen Aycock walking up the middle of the road from his house three miles out, up to his hips in snow, heading for school.
Here was a man who the winter before, under the compulsion of war's circumstances, had been trying to stay alive and avoid frozen feet in the Ardennes, and who now under no compulsion but that of felt duty, was plowing through Ardennes-depth snow to go up and talk about "last clear chance," or the Rule in Wild's Case or something equally inconsequential over the long haul. ... As usual, his influence was felt. Under the compulsion of shame, I struggled out and up the hill, following the path he'd plowed.
-June 22, 2015