Dr. Harley E. Jolley

Professor Emeritus, Department of History

Author of The Blue Ridge Parkway
and
“That Magnificent Army of Youth and Peace”: The Civilian Conservation Corps in North Carolina 1933-1942

Recipient of The Order of the Long Leaf Pine, 2008
Interviewed by C. Robert Jones
Professor Emeritus, Department of Theatre Arts

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Harley; son, Stuart; grandsons, Sam and Johnathan; daughter-in-law, Jackie, taken at Harley’s 90^th birthday celebration on campus July 15, 2010

An early photo of Harley, Betty and Ben

a young Harley Jolley

Emmett Samms and Harley Jolley

Two Mars Hill legends

Harley Jolley 2016

CRJ: Oh, golly.

HEJ: While I was home, Japan was bombed, Japan surrendered, and I wired the commanding officer to please send me my discharge.

CRJ: So that was it. Gosh, the timing was just perfect then. In the intervening years, because you had those various intense experiences in Pearl Harbor and in France, have you gone back to those places to visit?*

HEJ: No, I haven’t. I made political arrangements for my congressman to send my family over and they had a great, great, great tour helped by Hickham Field officials, and they had a marvelous tour of where I had been. Stuart has been back, of course, several times, but I have no real desire to go. I would like to go back to France, that sort of thing, and I am looking into that for possibilities.

CRJ: Where were you in France?

HEJ: I started at Normandy Beach, all the way up into Paris. I had three great weekends in Paris, that sort of thing, then finally on up to the large city called Nancy, France, which is right at the German border and that’s where I was stationed when the war ended.

CRJ: Those were great places to be as far as the cities that people would want to visit in France. Not a fun time to be there in a war, of course.

HEJ: Let me tell the story that has interest for me and I hope for my listeners. I was walking down the street in Nancy early one morning on April the 12th. I saw a very old senior citizen Frenchman walking down the street, tears just running down his cheek. I touched him and said, “Pourquoi ? What?” He said, “Il est mort, il est mort. He’s dead.” I said, “Qui?” He said, “FDR.” And that’s how I learned of Mr. Roosevelt’s death.

CRJ: From a Frenchman on the street.

HEJ: Crying … Amazing. That’s history for you.

CRJ: That is history and that is wonderful history. I had an occasion to meet Marcel Marceau several years ago, and he was a child in this period in the very same area you are talking about. He said that for him he would always love the United States because the United States had come in and had saved France. And he said that often today people forget.

HEJ: Oh, they forgot very quickly.

CRJ: So you had a chance to observe. Did you feel that the French, when you were there, were they appreciative that the United States had come in to help France? Did you get a sense of that?

HEJ: They were delighted we were there and were very kind to us. But, when the Battle of the Bulge stopped, they boarded all the windows, they left the streets, and they were not speaking to us. They feared the Germans were going to win the Battle of the Bulge and come back and shoot them for collaborating. But, when the Battle of the Bulge was over, the windows opened and the streets were freed and we were back in business. C’est la vie. C’est la vie.

CRJ: And probably for them that was a very real method of survival. They had to think about survival.

HEJ: Let me tell Kristie [Hollifield, the videographer] the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in the way of womanhood. In France when the war was over, the local French rounded up the collaborateurs who had collaborated with the Germans and shaved their heads and marched them down the street. Again, that’s history.

CRJ: What did they do with those collaborators?

HEJ: They turned them loose. They were shamed. Nobody wanted anything to do with them then.

CRJ: Since you are one of the few people we would know locally who was at Pearl Harbor, for example, . . . has anybody come back when doing history books and documentaries, and talked with you about your time in the war? Has that happened?

HEJ: Not a great deal. I’ve been interviewed a couple of times, not really of any stature or any depth.

CRJ: I was so fascinated when I was doing some research about you to discover that after you got out of Appalachian and you did your masters in Tennessee, that you came here immediately. There was no time in between.

HEJ: Again, I had good mentors who knew what was going on academically. And knew Mars Hill very, very well, and knew about the vacancy, and knew the basic buttons to push to get me in the door. So, I was delighted to have a job.

CRJ: Tell me about Dr. Blackwell [Hoyt Blackwell, then President of MHC]. We all knew him, of course, but what was he like when you first met him?

HEJ: Charming, charming, charming. He was charming and always so extremely polite. So very polite. For years I taught in the classroom right immediately adjacent to his office so I taught him a lot of history.

CRJ: (laughter) There was no way he could know you were not doing a good job. When you came to the campus, were you, and I asked this question to somebody else, was it a sense of culture shock coming here because it was so small and isolated?

HEJ: No, no, not at all. Remember, I came out of rural Caldwell County, so …

CRJ: Yes, so this was not unusual to you.

HEJ: Coming out of Knoxville, of course, this was a change of pace. But, I was looking for a job, not the grocery shopping.

CRJ: Okay. (laughter) We know you, of course, through your work in these wonderful things that relate not only to Appalachia but to the region. What was your focus in history when you were studying? What kind of history were you planning to teach? What was your focus there?

HEJ: I began at Appalachian as a math major. I had a wonderful math teacher. And then entered a class with a former navy man who was just fresh out of the navy, WWII as I was, and he was an absolutely out-of-this-world, outstanding professor. Every third word was a cuss word, but boy could he teach! Never a note, never a note, never a reference, and they were just beautiful, beautiful lectures indeed. I became his study man, I became his aid, and I observed how he did his thing. He would come into the office before class, take out his notes and go through them, then walk out the door. Notes stayed behind him.

CRJ: It was all in his head.

HEJ: So I tried to emulate him and tried my best to be as good a teacher as he was. I never made it, mind you.

CRJ: Oh, you did make it! In fact, when I first came here to teach, one of the first things I heard was some students talk about being in your history class, and they were talking to each other about how much fun it was, that you had turned history into a vivid experience. Someone was talking about, “Oh, he jumped up on the desk!” And then someone else said, “Well, he was impersonating (I think it was Louis XVI) and we really knew who Louis XVI was by the time we got out of that class.” When you came here, the school was obviously a two-year junior college. What levels of history were required in those days for the students?

HEJ: Everybody was required to take what was called World Civ–World Civilization. That was absolutely required for everybody. And then most of them took an American history course, so those were the two.

CRJ: So you probably taught both.

HEJ: Oh, yes.

CRJ: Everybody taught both. In the 1960’s, when the college began to move to senior status, I know you went off to school and did your doctoral degree, but were you here then when the transition occurred? In other words, were you here when the department, the history department was built? How did that happen? From the junior college to senior college status, how did you know what courses [to offer]?

HEJ: Again, we, as any standard senior college, had a catalog to go by.

CRJ: Oh, you just looked at other schools.

HEJ: Okay, we’ll need this course, and this course, this course, we’ll have to have a course in historiography–this was built in for our history majors–and we’ll need a world civ, of course, we’ll need some European and some colonial. And I was teaching a western history by then, so those were the ways they were developed. Basically as needed at the time, as we enlarged.

CRJ: How soon was it after the department got going that you began to think in terms of courses in Appalachian studies?

HEJ: That came much later. That came basically through the formation of the Appalachian Consortium which I had founded.

CRJ: I was going to say, I knew you had done that. Could we digress for a moment and talk about the Consortium? We’re a little bit out of sequence here, but I know the Consortium was formed in the 1970’s, wasn’t it?

HEJ: The chancellor or president of East Tennessee State was Art DeRosier. Arthur, was working with Bill Plemmons, the president of Appalachian, and Cratis Williams, the chancellor or vice-president at Appalachian. We sat down and devised a consortium which blossomed and grew and became very, very influential in our region for several years. I regret that it has died and needs reviving.

CRJ: Let me ask you about it. I was very much aware of it and the good work it was doing, and I know you all had your Consortium Press, for example. Am I not right in saying that part of the reason for its forming was that foundations who wanted to give money to colleges were getting duplicate requests and the Consortium helped it to …

HEJ: We had much more power as a …

CRJ: Yes, as a group …

HEJ: Numerous agencies varying from the forest service, park service, the junior college, the senior college, all those, and then as we became one unit we had a much better chance of getting support. And we did.

CRJ: Why do you think it died, Harley?

HEJ: Let me be honest. Poor leadership.
And, I think, total unawareness of what it was doing by the Appalachian State leadership. That is my frank opinion, I may be totally wrong, but that’s what I think.

CRJ: I suppose it’s true with anything that is formed that it depends so much on leadership changes, if other leaders pick up [the ball.]

HEJ: It became very expensive for Appalachian. They hosted it. They provided a secretary and so forth. On the business side of it, it was expensive. But, nevertheless, the overall benefits far overshadowed those expenses.

CRJ: I would think so. And they were the only state school in it at first, weren’t they?

HEJ: Right.

CRJ: And, of course, that’s probably why they took it, because they had state money which the smaller schools didn’t have …

HEJ: Leadership was good at the time. Plemmons, Williams–impossible to beat. They were just dynamic and had a sense of region.

CRJ: They had visions, too.

HEJ: They had visions. Cratis Williams was a Kentucky boy. Plemmons was right out of Buncombe County over here. They were very much aware of what their heritage was and wished to share it.

CRJ: I know the first time I heard about Mars Hill College was when I was in college and my sense of it, based on the student who was a graduate talking about it was that it was a small Baptist school in the mountains and that it was very conservative. And it seemed the focus was on the Baptist heritage to the exclusion of other possibilities. Am I to understand that the Appalachian Consortium indeed opened up the possibility that the school was looked at for its Appalachian heritage?

HEJ:    No, it was much broader and that was one of the benefits of the Consortium.   And the ability to meet with other agencies on our campus and share their and share our desires, our wishes, our vision, our hopes, our  “Hey, let’s do this together!”  It made all the difference in the world.

CRJ:    I’m sure it did.  Is there any move to get it back?

HEJ:    I hear underground movements that are very good.  I just wish them good luck.

CRJ:    How much did Mars Hill contribute to the consortium?

HEJ:    Mars Hill gave its fees, but its leadership was the major contribution.

CRJ:    And that would have been during the era of Dick Hoffman and Dr. Bentley.

HEJ:    Right.  They were supportive of it and very conscious of what it was they were supporting.

CRJ:      Well, I hope, like you, that it will come back.

HEJ:    There’s a possibility, particularly when you look at the overall range of what it really was, not the miserable expense for one year, you know.

CRJ:    Let me jump to another subject which relates to all of this.  When and how did you first meet Betty Cornett?

HEJ:    Appalachian State is a marvelous place for matchmaking as most colleges are (laughter).  I came to Appalachian State fresh out of the military in 1945, September 1945.  I enrolled as  enrollee number 500.   Now they have something like 16,000, but anyway. . .

CRJ:    Appalachian State Teacher’s College …

HEJ:    It was Appalachian State Teacher’s College at that time and it was being flooded as I came.  Right behind me came a whole flood of GI’s eager to get an education.  It was quite a place to be.  And, the second semester there enrolled a young lady who had left Mars Hill because she got sick and went home to West Jefferson, North Carolina.  She decided she would go back to school and attended as a music major, and Appalachian had a good music department, so she came to Appalachian.  We both had a mutual friend who was a neighbor to me and wound up as a missionary up in Ashe County.  That friend told her about Harley Jolley and to watch out for him.  In the evenings after class and so forth we would all go up to the local gymnasium and chat, all in that territory, and we began chatting.  And the next thing you know we were riding bicycles together, and the next thing you know it was Christmas time. You know that’s good, and that started it off.

CRJ:    So you were already married then when you came here or had you …

HEJ:    Oh, no, no, no, no, no.  I left Appalachian and Betty was, of course, one year behind me.  I graduated in 1948 and she graduated in 1949.  In 1949 I left and was at the University of Tennessee for my master’s degree and in the fall of 1949 I graduated there with an M.A. and came here as a university teacher.

And then she got a job teaching in Winston-Salem and I told her where I was and what I was doing and so forth, and teased her about this being her old home town country and finally, in December 1949–as you remember ’tis the season to be jolly.’  So I asked her if she’d be Jolley.  (laughter) …  We got married on Christmas eve.

CRJ:    You did?  On Christmas eve!  Did you ever think you’d have to give two gifts at Christmas?

HEJ:  No problem, no.  We both enjoyed the gifts.  Double, double, double, double . . .

CRJ:    How long after you were married did the boys come along?

HEJ:   Two years.  Then Ben came along.  And thirteen years later came Stuart.  Stuart was my PhD baby.

CRJ:   And Ben is a Wachovia executive in Charlotte, is that right?

HEJ:   He’s senior vice-president in Charlotte for human resources and is a very, very highly respected young man and talented, and we know that.  When I determined my retirement, he was the one who determined what do I put how much money and how do I do this.  I had a built-in assessment therapist.

CRJ:  That’s wonderful that you had all that kind of good free help.  And his son was just graduated from Queens . . .

HEJ:   Queens College in Charlotte.  So I was the first of my family to go to college.  Now this is the third generation to go to college, which is marvelous.

CRJ:  Yes, they both went here, too, didn’t they, the boys?

HEJ:  Both received their Bachelor of Arts here.

CRJ:  Did you have any idea what they would be doing in their careers

HEJ:  Oh, no.  Stuart told me he wanted to be a history major and teacher, but Ben, his mom wanted him to become a doctor.

HEJ:    We finally got him into med school, the first top of his class, second year top of his class, third year top of his class, fourth year, then, “Dad, this is not for me”.  His mother about died.  Instead of just flat out leaving everything, he crossed the hall and picked up an MBA at Chapel Hill and immediately hit the banking business, so with his medical background, he was a perfect fit for human resources at the bank. And they’ve had a jewel ever since.

CRJ:    Incredible career.  That must have been very difficult for both Betty and for him.

HEJ:    It was rough.  It was rough.  He knew how much she wanted him to be a doctor, but it just was not for him.  We don’t know what changed his mind or what happened.  He tells me frequently, “I am so glad.” …

CRJ:     (laughter)   Well, he’s happy and that’s the important thing.

HEJ:    That is the key, yes.

CRJ:    How long before Betty came to teach at the college?

HEJ:    When we married, that was in 1949, she came to Mars Hill and got a job teaching in Asheville.  She taught there for a couple of years, then came here as assistant librarian.   She went to Appalachian for a master’s degree and had a professor Harley Jolley as one of her teachers.  From the home in West Jefferson to the classroom in Boone [was spent] trying to figure out what the questions would be.   Her classmates would come cozy up to her trying to evoke what the questions were.  That was hilarious, absolutely hilarious.  They gave me a rough time, but we all enjoyed it and had a great class.

CRJ:    I bet that was fun.

HEJ:    Then when she got her master’s in history, Dean Lee assigned her in his department.

CRJ:    So, in other words, you were both in the same department.  Was it unusual at the college to have two faculty people in the same department?

HEJ:    No, not necessarily.

CRJ:    Did Dr. Blackwell encourage you after you had been here for a while to go back for a doctorate or was that your own idea?

HEJ:    It was my own idea.  I knew from experience in the academic world that the union card and the only union card was a Ph.D.  Without it, I wouldn’t have had a chance.  It’s opened doors.

CRJ:    Tell me, what was it about Florida State that attracted you to go there?

HEJ:    Free tuition.

CRJ:    Ah!

HEJ:    I got, I applied for a scholarship and one of the professors down there, the man who was head of the department, was from Chapel Hill, taught at Chapel Hill, so he made sure I got the teaching assistant thing and finally wound up getting me a full scholarship, so all I had to do was go to school.

CRJ:    Did Betty go with you or did she stay here?

HEJ:    No, she stayed here and paid the bills.

CRJ:    So you commuted back and forth during that period.  How long did it take you to do that doctorate?

HEJ:    I think it was three years.  Yeah, in 1969 I had the degree in hand.

CRJ:    Did you know Dr. Moore (Dr. Robert Moore, President of MHC 1897-1938] at all?

HEJ:    C. Robert, I saw the man.  I saw him on the campus with his celluloid collar and knew who he was, but by the time I was coming in, he was well gone on the way to retirement and was seldom seen on campus.  So, I never had the personal experience of meeting with him or chatting with him.

CRJ:    And his wife also, I think, was very important in the business office here on campus.  You know, you are one of the few people who had the opportunity to know all the presidents in the 20th century.  We’ve talked about this and it’s amazing to me, that you find presidents who stay that long.  Dan Lunsford said not long ago that that era is long gone and nobody will do that anymore (laughter).   Did you teach Max Lennon during the time he was here as a student?  (nods)  So you got to know him.

HEJ:    Oh, yes.  And Lunsford also.

CRJ:    That’s right. Dan spoke about your teaching him.  He said he was terrified by what kind of exams you were going to give. (laughter)

What was it like?  You were here through two major administrations, Dr. Blackwell and Dr. Bentley.  What was the character, how were they different in feeling and way of doing things?

HEJ:    Dr. Blackwell basically was the administrator during the junior college portion, and as a junior college, we ranked extremely high nationwide.  Our graduates could go anywhere. They could transfer anywhere they applied, and they were highly respected.  I was debate coach for several years there in that period, we were a junior college but we were invited to senior college and won high honors, first place. Mars Hill did a great job.  I was totally unaware of what we were doing and thought it was just routine, but that was Dr. Blackwell’s era.  And then when Bentley came in we were just beginning, of course, as a senior college.  We have never reached the status as a senior college as we had as a junior college.  I regret that; I had high hopes, but the competition there is much greater.  We are surrounded by state colleges, we’re surrounded by universities, and it’s a rough go for a small, private school to make it nationwide.

CRJ:    I’ve heard that said before, that the status or the level of respect for Mars Hill as a junior college did not translate as easily going to the senior level.

HEJ:    No, no, it did not and we regretted that. We labored individually as faculty members to do our utmost best, but it didn’t ring any bells outside the region.

CRJ:  I’ve heard, when the students left here and they’d go, say for example, to Wake Forest, and the professors there would say, “Oh, he came from Mars Hill, he’s fine, he’ll be fine.” And they were given sort of a pass to know that they were not having to work as hard maybe as somebody else because they already had a very fine education.

HEJ:    They came to us willing and able and we sent them out even more willing and more able.

CRJ:    Let me ask you, you mentioned debate. One of the things that has been fascinating to me in studying Mars Hill College’s history is that in 1890-91-92, John White and Thomas Hufham, who were the leaders, movers and shakers in that day, formed the first literary societies here and they based them on the societies at Wake Forest because they [White and Hufham] had been at Wake Forest.  And, of course, when you first came here those societies were going strong.  What happened to them that they went away?  What happened?

HEJ:    C. Robert, one of the greatest losses for Mars Hill College was the loss of those societies.  They were dynamic, they were influential, they were builders of character, but for whatever reason they died, they were dropped and I’ve deeply regretted it ever since.  I watched the students in them, I watched their performance, I watched a variety of the experiences they had in the literary world … yet there is nothing on campus in terms of fraternities or sororities that comes anywhere close to doing what those societies did.  They were dynamic, they were absolutely influential all the way up …

CRJ:    I gathered that, and you and I had talked earlier when I was doing research on Treasures about the debate teams and how John Hough [founder of MHC’s Education Department] was one of your prized debaters.  I told him later on, he was pleased to know you had regarded him in that way.  The debate team was not a part of the academic program, was it?  That was extracurricular?

HEJ:    Extracurricular.

CRJ:    Did they come through the societies, was that how it happened?

HEJ:    The societies were the opportunities to do the debating in and that went very well.

But, as a junior college we should not have even been invited to the senior level, but the first year we won enough that they kept inviting us back and I was very well pleased.  But what amazed me was how many we wound up with in first place.  As I said, I was too dumb to realize hey, this is not usual.

CRJ:    How did you get interested?  You have to learn to be a great debate coach, You’ve got to know something.  How did you learn all that?

HEJ:    Well, basically I’m a news man, I’m interested in what’s going on in the world, and following the news you have to be aware of hey, this, this, this and that.  My first public speaking was done in the Sunday school class at Appalachian State.  And, my last is going to be right here, I think.

CRJ:     (laughter)  Oh, my.  I always enjoy when you get up and do scriptures in church on Sunday because I know we can hear.  And also there is going to be some aliveness in those scriptures.  That’s a great tradition, the debate tradition and you’re right, it’s not something that has endured nor is there any seeming interest in it.

HEJ:    Which is a loss.

CRJ:    I was thinking earlier that maybe what peeled it off was going to the senior college [status], but maybe what really killed it off was automobiles because people weren’t staying here on the weekends to have those Friday evening things.  They left and went away.

We were talking earlier about the Jolley family being in exotic places under unusual circumstances. I remember in 1989 the campus was horrified to learn that your wife and Jim Lenburg and that group of Mars Hill people were in Tiananmen Square when we were looking on the news and seeing a moving tank, and this young man was standing in front of it.

HEJ:    Yes, right in the middle of it.

CRJ:    Tell me about that.  When did you first hear about that problem

HEJ:    Again, this was when the TV issue, remember, was standard, and we were trying to find out where in the world was Betty. Where was Betty?  We couldn’t find out anything and finally it wound up that Stuart connected somebody with the state department and they told him where she was, that she was safe, and the next thing I know she was flying into Asheville returning home from that place.

CRJ:    Goodness.  So she was able, they were able to get those folks out very quickly.

HEJ:    And when she got to Asheville, at the airport, the first thing she did was reach over and kiss the ground, home.

CRJ:    Ah, back at home.

HEJ:    Back at home.

CRJ:    Well, I remember being so relieved, everybody was so upset here not knowing what sort of response the Chinese might have.

HEJ:    Well, it could have gone any way.

CRJ:    I was telling you of watching the Olympic games right now and seeing Tiananmen Square again.  It’s a whole different thing, isn’t it?

HEJ:    It’s a whole different world from then.

CRJ:    A very different world.  We haven’t talked about your writing, and we’re not going to talk about it a great deal because there is another interview planned for you to talk about your writing.  How soon in your work as a teacher did you realize that you wanted to be a writer as well?

HEJ:    That came later, as you remember. As a college teacher you had nine months of employment, much more and Lord help you (laughter), you know.  So I read in U.S. News and World Report in 1958 that the National Park Service was looking for historians, so I applied to the National Park Service and wound up as an employee, a seasonal ranger up in Waynesboro, Virginia.  I was stationed at a place called Humpback Rocks.  My post was, good gosh, 5.8 on the Parkway.  I had a marvelous, marvelous summer, and then each summer I went back to the Parkway and more and more I wanted to expand my education, I said okay. I did an article on the strike of the 1930s and I said I’ll do that for my dissertation, and they said do it on the parkway, so I decided to do the parkway as a dissertation and that’s where it began.

CRJ:    What a wonderful way to be led into it.

HEJ:    Right, right.

CRJ:    You were there.

HEJ:    Right there.  And had, you know, access  to places I don’t think the average hiker had access to …

CRJ:    How long were you doing the ranger service?  How many years did you do that?

HEJ:    Oh, twenty-five years.

CRJ:    My goodness.

HEJ:    C. Robert, those were some of the most enjoyable times of my life.  I miss the passion,

but, I miss even more those campfire services and seeing those eyes lighting up, and oh, what a feeling, what a feeling!  I miss that.

CRJ:    I’m sure.  You were talking to me the other day about the Parkway and the fact that it didn’t finish, it didn’t end, it was to go on further south than it did.  Is there any plan afoot to take it where it was supposed to be done in the 1930s?  Will that ever happen?

HEJ:    The idea when Senator Byrd and others spoke with FDR about the possibility, he said starting in Virginia or North Carolina was great, but why not begin up in Vermont and work it down to Georgia.  It never got off the ground.

In the 1960s, all sorts of preparations were made for it, environmental studies, master plan studies, and all this.   For twenty years it hung fire, and Georgia more and more flatly refused to approve it and in the end it was rejected.

CRJ:    So, it was because of Georgia, Georgia was the one–

HEJ:    Georgia was the source.

CRJ:    What was their reasoning for not wanting it to continue?

HEJ:    That’s what I’m researching right now.  I’m writing two new chapters to the Parkway  story [1] about the issue of tolls.  Eight times Uncle Sam has tried to levy tolls on the Parkway.  I thought that would be a good chapter.  [2] About the twenty-year-plus struggle for routing (The Parkway) around Grandfather [Mountain] which wound up with the Linn Cove Viaduct. [3]  And then he proposed the extension into Georgia, and that’s going to be a dilly.  I was amazed at the variety of protests, from a high school kid all the way up to the highest state official.

CRJ:    What was the rationale for the protest?

HEJ:    “We don’t need it!”

CRJ:    Oh!

HEJ:    I-75 was in process of coming through Georgia, leveling everything as it came through, and they said we only have one ridge and we don’t want to ruin that, we’ve only got one Appalachian Trail and we don’t want you to ruin that.  We don’t want it!

CRJ:    Talking about the tolls.  I had never heard that until you mentioned it.

HEJ:    Most people haven’t.

CRJ:    It would kill a lovely thing, it seems to me.  Why?  Is it because they wanted the money to help with upkeep?

HEJ:    Tolls were standard.  You go to a national park, you have a fee to pay.

CRJ:    Right.

HEJ:    The Skyline Drive which piloted the thing, on Skyline Drive you pay a fee to go in.  But, the extension from Skyline Drive to Smokey Mountain National Park was done with the idea, the way it was proposed, folks said, “We’re interested, but if it’s tolled we’re not interested.”  It was arranged through the federal government that we have a program whereby we can do the extension and make the Parkway without being tolled.  Provided Virginia and North Carolina would purchase the right-of-way and donate the land. The Federal Government would take over and construct the highway and maintain it. So they did.  I’m not sure it was ever legalized with more than a handshake.  So eight times Uncle Sam has decided to put a toll on the Parkway.

CRJ:    Will it ever happen?

HEJ:    It will come up again.  I think in the end it’s going to be this:  that those with license tags from Virginia and North Carolina will be toll free and others tolled.

CRJ:    Ah.

HEJ:    That’s what will eventually happen.

CRJ:    Would that be an acceptable compromise to that problem, you think?  It’s going to cost a fortune because then you’re going to have to have toll booths and such.

HEJ:    It’s ridiculous, C. Robert, to have 649 miles of rubber road and at every other junction have to have a toll booth to deal with.  I think they had 21 stations designed.  You won’t believe this.  They had stations put up, had men in uniform at the door ready to take the fees when North Carolina said, “Don’t!” And was successful.  I’m trying to tell that story.

CRJ:    Well, I’m so excited you’re going to do an update of your book called The Blue Ridge Parkway which is the sort of classic standard book for the whole Parkway.  There will be another lecture or rather interview to talk about that book.

Let me ask you, you mentioned a while ago the Civilian Conservation Corp and you were a part of that in the late 1930s.  Tell me, how did you get into the CCC?  How did that work?

HEJ:    It was part of Uncle Sam’s relief program.  Each state had relief agencies. When FDR put up the programs he said, okay, I want the relief agencies to do the recruiting for me and the army to take over and uniform the boys, to feed them, discipline, so forth, and I want the Interior Department and the Agriculture Department to provide jobs. …And each state then was allotted a number of enrollees based upon the total population for the state.  And each relief agency said, “Okay, we have a quota.”  Each county was assigned a quota and you could apply or somebody could recommend you.  I think somebody recommended me and I was accepted and wound up in a soil conservation camp, in Lexington, North Carolina.  And I was there planting pines by the hundreds of thousands.

CRJ:    Well, I know, I remember as a child seeing rows and rows of pines with a big sign that said, “Prepared by the CCC”.  Did you have to be a certain age to be in the CCC?

HEJ:    I think it was 18 to begin with and then finally set at 17.

CRJ:    So it was a works project thing by the government to help keep people–

HEJ:    It was designed as a relief program …

to help the land and help the man.  It did both.

CRJ:    And your new book is about the CCC.  I am one who grew up knowing about it, but there are so many people in the current generation who never even heard of it.

HEJ:    We had a camp up the hill.

CRJ:    Right here [in Mars Hill]?

HEJ:    Right here.  A camp first of all for young enrollees, and when Hoover was president, do you remember the veterans of WWI made a march on Washington asking for early payment for something due them and Hoover sent McArthur packing on them and drove them out of Washington?  Then FDR says, “Fellows, I’m going to set up some camps for you” so first of all he had the junior camp, and they made their camp in honor of the slave Joe [Anderson] here on the campus.  “Camp Joe.”

CRJ:    Where was it physically in town?

HEJ:    You know where the Ammons Day Care Center is?

CRJ:    Yes. [On South Main Street near the entrance to Duck Drive.]

HEJ:    The third house down, there about five houses, right there.  When the Veterans came, they quickly dropped the name “Camp Joe”  and named it “Camp Robert E. Lee.”

CRJ:    How long did the CCC program last?

HEJ:    It began in 1933 and ended very shortly after Pearl Harbor, in July of 1942. The war was its automatic death.

CRJ:    Everyone had to go fight in the war.  There was no question about that.  I know you continued to teach until what, 1991?  Did you find that your writing, . . . were you having to do it in summers or were you able to take a course or time off here and there to do writing, or was it always …

HEJ:    It was sandwiched in between.  Get my lecture notes together, get the classroom ready, and then any spare time I would edit, do some review or research on the Parkway or the CCC or whatever, it was very extended . . . over a long time.

CRJ:    I know you’re going to do an update of your Blue Ridge Parkway book, but what projects have you out there that have you very excited about the future?  Do you have other projects you are going to as a writer?

HEJ:    Yes, when I finish the revision of the Parkway, Woody’s Chairs [a well-known chair manufacturer in Spruce Pine] is giving me a rocking chair as part of my retirement program and I am going to sit in a rocking chair.

CRJ:    Good for you.  You know, I told Dr. Lunsford I was so disappointed that he [Arvall Woody] gave his collection of papers to UNCA, that I thought they really should have come to Mars Hill.  He made wonderful things, didn’t he?

HEJ:    He and I were the same age, have many memories of WWII, and we were hoping to maybe come together and visit our service over there in WWII.

CRJ:    That would be fascinating.  You were here all these years since the late 1940s, you’ve spent a whole lifetime in Mars Hill.  What do you think the College brought to you in the way of enriching your life?  What did it do for you?

HEJ:    I received repeated offers to go to other universities and teach.  An offer to go back to Appalachian, an offer to go to the University of Tennessee, and so forth.  I told Betty, I said, “Now we will get an offer to go to Honolulu and we’ll go.”  The offer came and as an army historian I evaluated it, thought of my two boys and thought no, let them finish school here, Mars Hill is a great community for the boys to grow up in, so I turned it down and I haven’t regretted it one bit.  I could have gone anywhere I wanted to basically, but my two boys, they got good community relationships and a good education here.

CRJ:    And Stuart is still here.

HEJ:    Oh, yes.

CRJ:    And probably won’t leave.

HEJ:    No intentions of it.

CRJ:    (laughter) I think that’s great.  If it brought that to you, what do you think is your legacy to the college?

HEJ:    I suspect stories about standing on conference tables.

CRJ:    (laughter) You heard that a lot, too, have you?

HEJ:    I’ve heard that, yes.

CRJ:    There were, when people talk about you, they always talk in a charming and gentle way, they talk about upbeatness, that you were a person who was energetic and made them think and made them look at things in a different way.  How would you assess yourself as a teacher?  You said you had a mentor, how did you take what he gave you and turn it into something that was totally yours?

HEJ:    I think it all comes back to the mentor.  He was such a dynamic personality and so forceful and so able and so dynamic, just to be able to follow in his footsteps was a joy for me.  You’ve got to realize, hey, your mentor, bless his heart, driving home from a basketball game skidded on ice and is now dead.  Now what do you do?  Perpetuate his memory by improving on his teaching.

CRJ:    And that’s what you did.  When students come back to visit you and to talk with you, what are the kinds of things they say?

HEJ:    Do you remember me?

CRJ:    (laughter) And then most of them I’m sure you do remember, don’t you?

HEJ:    I’ve been blessed in so many ways.  Many of my students became famous in their own right.  Most of my debaters did exceedingly well.  Steve Blackwell was one of my debaters Lacy Thornburg … Others are out there having become medical doctors, lawyers, and what not, and I am highly pleased with their results.  But, you know, looking across the board, I think that you don’t have to worry about me much.  I have to be aware of what I do wherever I am because, of course, wherever I am, a Mars Hill student is there, too.  Betty stepped off the plane in Shannon, Ireland, and [heard] “Mrs. Jolley!  What are you doing here?”

CRJ:    (laughter)  So you are international.  The Jolleys are international.  Betty was also an incredible human being and I enjoyed her very, very much.  Let me ask you one final question.  People talk about it and nobody seems to have come up with an answer that is definitive, what do you think is this thing that seems to permeate Mars Hill?  People are always saying there is something here, what is it?

HEJ:    I think part of it goes back to those societies.  It was a different social link that ordinary colleges had and we built on that.  Part of it goes back to the fact that our faculty, as a rule, were very conscious of their role as faculty and were very conscious that the students in those seats out there paid their bill, and we had, therefore, to be conscious of doing a first-class job and I think back over the years we’ve done a pretty good job.

CRJ:    So, if I hear you, you are saying that much of it had to do with quality and expert teaching so that students picked up on that and it was sort of like it fed back on itself.  There was an energy that came out of fine teaching.

HEJ:    A mutual respect.  When I had my orientation for my first classes, my comment always to them was, I promise you one thing and one thing only, when I come to you I will come with my best, otherwise I won’t come.

CRJ:    And you did.

HEJ:    And then, one little girl, bless her heart, one student said, “Mr. Jolley, I’ve a bone to pick with you.”  She said, “You may not be aware, but I am, that you wink at her but you don’t wink at me.”  I said, I forgot to tell you that I have a wink

that’s automatic, so that’s the way it is.

CRJ:   So that’s the way it is.  What a fun [time] we’ve had, Harley.  Thank you so much.  It was a great pleasure.  Thank you.

*Dr. Jolley did indeed return to Pearl Harbor, in 2016—on the 75^th Anniversary of the historic event.

Dr. Jolley died on November 23, 2020 at age 100. His obituary can be viewed here: https://www.blueridge-funeral-service.com/memorials/harley-jolley/4435951/obituary.php.