Governors’ Papers
2011-08-10 - by
The Department of Cultural Resources put on a nice lovefest for the presentation of Governor Hunt’s fourth volume of papers Tuesday. Governor Perdue was in excellent form, and the Southeast Raleigh High School vocal ensemble was outstanding.
(One bit of news was missing from Under the Dome’s account: Governor Hunt said he had talked to Governor Jim Holshouser, and they agreed that the legislature should restore funding for the Teaching Fellows, the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching and the Governor’s School. Note: this was in the print edition of the N&O, but I couldn’t find it online.)
Why, you might ask, are these papers being published more than a decade after Hunt left office? There’s a good answer: It was a painstaking and time-consuming task to go through the more than 1,000 public addresses that Hunt made during his fourth term – and pick out the most important. And put them into context. And provide biographical information on every person mentioned.
Which gets to my main point: the value of these published papers – not just Hunt’s, but all Governors. Because there has been talk of eliminating the published papers to save money.
History buffs should rebel. Yes, the volumes are dry. But there is no better single source to get the flavor and the facts from the times.
Leaf through a volume and you see what was important, what seemed important and what turned out not to be so important.
Hunt told a story that makes the point. When he was preparing his first State of the State Address in 1977, he pulled down Terry Sanford’s papers and read that, in 1960, only half of North Carolina’s public-school students graduated from high school. (Today, that rate is 78 percent, which is both incredible progress and still too low.)
So let’s keep the published papers coming. And let’s hear a big shout-out to the department for publishing them and, especially, to the editors: Jan-Michael Poff and William Harris Brown.
Governors’ Papers
2011-08-10/
The Department of Cultural Resources put on a nice lovefest for the presentation of Governor Hunt’s fourth volume of papers Tuesday. Governor Perdue was in excellent form, and the Southeast Raleigh High School vocal ensemble was outstanding.
(One bit of news was missing from Under the Dome’s account: Governor Hunt said he had talked to Governor Jim Holshouser, and they agreed that the legislature should restore funding for the Teaching Fellows, the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching and the Governor’s School. Note: this was in the print edition of the N&O, but I couldn’t find it online.)
Why, you might ask, are these papers being published more than a decade after Hunt left office? There’s a good answer: It was a painstaking and time-consuming task to go through the more than 1,000 public addresses that Hunt made during his fourth term – and pick out the most important. And put them into context. And provide biographical information on every person mentioned.
Which gets to my main point: the value of these published papers – not just Hunt’s, but all Governors. Because there has been talk of eliminating the published papers to save money.
History buffs should rebel. Yes, the volumes are dry. But there is no better single source to get the flavor and the facts from the times.
Leaf through a volume and you see what was important, what seemed important and what turned out not to be so important.
Hunt told a story that makes the point. When he was preparing his first State of the State Address in 1977, he pulled down Terry Sanford’s papers and read that, in 1960, only half of North Carolina’s public-school students graduated from high school. (Today, that rate is 78 percent, which is both incredible progress and still too low.)
So let’s keep the published papers coming. And let’s hear a big shout-out to the department for publishing them and, especially, to the editors: Jan-Michael Poff and William Harris Brown.