February 8, 2006

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            “Their interest is not social programs,” Murchison said about the alumni association board. “They want to have more of a focus on some other things. I respect their right to want to do things differently,” Murchison said.

            Lawrence Perry, the chairman of the alumni association board, said Wednesday they plan to hire an interim director who will continue the programs now underway at the center.

            Perry said the interim director will help decide and the board will review what grant programs to renew in the future. The board, which meets in Wake Forest, will have its next meeting Feb. 18, though Perry said there could be some committee meetings before that. The board had not begun to advertise for the interim director’s position as of Wednesday.

            Murchison said Tuesday she decided to make her resignation public because word of it had begun to spread through Wake Forest. “I really wanted the announcement to come from the board,” she said, but the differences among board members – some of whom have asked her to reconsider – are the reason the board has not made the announcement. She will work through the end of February.

            The reaction in Wake Forest was shock and dismay.

            “Well, it makes me sick,” Mayor Vivian Jones said. “I just don’t think they realize what she has done for the center and what effect her leaving is going to have on their ability to do what they’ve been saying they want to do.”  

            “I’m just hurt to death,” Evelyn Jones said. She helped found the alumni association and is still a board member but has not attended the last two meetings because she had to attend to her brother in Maryland, who is ill.

             Evelyn Jones said Perry, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, “wants to change everything that we’re about.” She worries that the change in direction and leadership will erode the support of many people for the center.

            “Bettie has done a marvelous job,” Evelyn Jones said. “I don’t think there’s anybody else who could come in and do the job she’s done. I hope she will change her mind.”

            “This is terrible news,” Mark Fleming, the executive director for the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce, said. “She is DuBois. I just don’t think you can get any better than her. I don’t imagine anyone could do close to the job that Bettie does every day. The business community works well with her. She’s an outstanding spokesperson” for the center and the town, “a perfect ambassador. She is a class act.”

            Fleming said that everyone he had spoken to since hearing the news early Tuesday had the same reaction as he.

            Heritage developer Andy Ammons is a member of the advisory board Murchison set up. Ammons said Murchison had talked with him about finding space for the social programs now at DuBois, hoping to continue them.

            “I don’t know anyone who can get more accomplished with fewer resources,” Ammons said. “It’s amazing what she does with what she has to work with.”

            “I’ve honestly never met a woman more committed to an organization than her,” Lisa McLemore, a freelance writer, said. “She was always upbeat and enthusiastic about whatever topic we discussed. I’m losing a great resource and Wake Forest is losing a great community supporter.”

            Thomas Walters, a former town commissioner whose special passion is providing for needy children, asked what would become of the after-school tutoring program the Kerr Banks Family YMCA is sponsoring or the summer camp it funds.

            Barbara Massenburg, stunned by the news, asked what would become of the annual DuBois Jazz Festival. She is a director of the Wake Forest Cultural Arts Association which sponsors the festival with the center.

            Also unanswered were questions about the nascent school of the arts and whether The Road Less Traveled Theatre group would continue to find a home at DuBois.

            One of the alumni board’s goals has been to establish the National Rosenwald School Museum on the 17-acre campus.

            “One of the first things the new chair did was to fire the fund-raising firm we hired, Brad Thompson and Associates,” Murchison said. “So I am not certain if they have the resources to raise the $2 million for the project.”

            “They were never hired,” Perry said about the fund-raising firm.

            Murchison has been working hard to make the goal a reality. She said she had developed a lot of support for the museum throughout the country in the last year. It would be housed in the McElrath Building, which was built in 1926 with funds from the Rosenwald Foundation set up by Sears, Roebuck President Julius Rosenwald and an equal amount from the community. Only the brick walls remain since the building had to be gutted after the roof collapsed.

            “I will throw all my support – if they want it – behind it,” Murchison said about the museum plans.

            Murchison was named the director in December of 1998, shortly after the alumni association purchased the decrepit, abandoned campus from the Wake County school system. Since then, with the help of grants and assistance from the Town of Wake Forest, Wake County and individuals, the gymnasium and the former ag/shop building have been renovated. The town, besides helping with the renovations, provides all the utilities for the center and even replaces light bulbs.

            The members of the alumni association and its board are all people who attended or graduated from the DuBois School, which held its last graduation ceremony in the spring of 1970 before the schools were integrated in the fall, when the campus became the home of the Wake Forest-Rolesville Junior High, later a middle school. The campus was shut down in 1989 when WF-R Middle School opened on South Main Street.

            Murchison has been adding new programs and employees in the last three years. There are about 120 DuBois Center employees now. Most of the employees work off-site because of the limited space at the center.

            “The majority of the staff work in the mental health counseling department as counselors, case managers and mentors,” Murchison said.

             There are two teachers in the alternate school program run, and three counselor/advisors in the Hope Builders program which teaches job readiness. There are also people who work in the after-school tutorial program and in maintenance of the buildings and grounds. The alternate school program is funded by the Wake County school system for students who have been suspended from school. The Hope Builders program is for youth 19 to 21 who may need a high school degree or some technical training to get and keep a job.

            “I would like to know the programs will remain intact because I believe there have been some significant changes in the community due to some of the programming we’ve been holding,” Murchison said.

            She joked that her plans for March were to be “a desperate housewife, something I’ve never been.”

            It is hardly likely she will be at home enough to be desperate. She definitely plans to be active, but right now she is not sure in what direction.

            One of her goals is to complete her master’s degree in liberal studies at Duke. Also, Murchison is a member of several boards. “I’ll be able to give them more time.” She made a number of speeches last year – “I was on the lecture circuit” -- and this year she is already committed to speak at two statewide conferences.

            She can also spend more time with her family: her husband, James Murchison, and their children. Rene, 31, lives in Raleigh and telecommutes to a job in Atlanta, Ga. James III “JD” is 19 and a student at Louisburg College, and Carmen is 18 and attends Bennett College.

            Murchison, 52, was one of the first African-American students to attend and graduate from Wake Forest-Rolesville High School, transferring there from DuBois High in the 1969-1970 school year, a year before Wake County officially integrated its schools. “About nine or 10 of us went over based on our goals to go to college. The year before about three or four students had enrolled there already. So we were not the first black students to attend, but we did choose to go before we had to go.”

             She trained at Ringling Bros. & Barnum Bailey circus to be a clown, and worked at that trade to help pay her way through North Carolina State.

            “I’ve got a full life,” Murchison said. “I’ve devoted a lot of it to the center, and it’s been a labor of love. I’ve loved every minute of it.”