Eight of the members of the Morehead-Cain Class of 1979 at the Morehead-Cain Foundation on September 7, 2024.
In 1974, a dozen women became the first female Morehead-Cain Scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the same year the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, granting women the right to open a bank account without a husband’s signature.
This past fall, eight members of the class of 1979 reunited to celebrate their 45th anniversary. During their visit, they shared memories and insights with current scholars at a coffee chat. Afterward, they sat down with Catalyze co-host Allyson Horst ’27 to reflect on their groundbreaking experiences.
We’re sharing these conversations today in honor of Women’s History Month.
Music credits
The episode’s intro song is by scholar Scott Hallyburton ’22, guitarist of the band South of the Soul.
How to listen
On your mobile device, you can listen and subscribe to Catalyze on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. For any other podcast app, you can find the show using our RSS feed. You can let us know what you thought of the episode by finding us on social media @moreheadcain or you can email us at communications@moreheadcain.org.
Episode transcription
(Allyson)
Welcome to Catalyze. I’m your host, Allyson Horst from the class of ’27. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the first women scholars to graduate from the Morehead-Cain Program. This morning, scholars had the chance to hear from eight members of the class about their Carolina experiences. I asked a few of the women to share for Catalyze about what it was like to be pioneers in Morehead-Cain’s history.
(Joan Templeton Perry ’79)
My name is Joan Perry. I graduated in 1979, and I am now a pediatrician in Eastern North Carolina.
(Jenny Burns Petitto ’79)
Formal name is Virginia Burns Petitto, MD. I am known by Jenny, and when I was here, I was Jenny Burns.
(Karen Cress ’79)
I’m Karen Cress. I am a proudly part of the class of 1979, and I am currently the manager of special projects at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, and I’m also an opera singer.
(Mary Sherrill Mallory ’79)
My name is Mary Sherrill Mallory, class of 1979, and I’ve been the hospital clinical pharmacy coordinator in Statesville, North Carolina.
(Julia McMillan Cline ’79)
My name is Julia Cline. I have a PhD in social psychology.
(Katie Ziglar ’79)
My name is Katie Ziglar. I graduated in 1979, and I am title-less at the moment because I’m between jobs. I just left the directorship of the Ackland Art Museum, where I was for eight years, and I’m looking for my next museum directorship.
(Elizabeth Dooley Bell ’80)
Elizabeth Bell. I am chief of anesthesia for the Salisbury VA Health Care System.
(Debbie Weston Harden ’79)
I’m Debbie Weston Harden. I am a lawyer with Womble Bond Dickinson here in North Carolina.
(Allyson)
What did it feel like to be a pioneer at the time? Did you know you were making history?
(Elizabeth Dooley Bell ’80)
I didn’t necessarily think of us as pioneers because, I guess to me, there wasn’t an identification as a scholar. They didn’t make much of an effort to get people together or to identify as a scholar. We had the check days, and they had a dinner at the end of the year, but there wasn’t a feeling that you were necessarily so much of an identified group. At that point in history, pretty much everything that was happening was new. Women only got the ability to open a checking account in their own name in 1974. We graduated high school in 1975, and the first thing my mother said was, “You have to open your own checking account.” There were all these things that were happening right then. It wasn’t so much of an idea of being a pioneer as much as, “Oh, you have to do these things that weren’t available before and get yourself established.” I really didn’t think of it much more than that. It didn’t really dawn on me that it would be much more than that.
(Jenny Burns Petitto ’79)
When we came to interview, we knew there were no women scholars in the Program, and so we knew we were pioneers, but it didn’t really register, I don’t think. We were very excited, and very excited when we got chosen. After we got here, in the first year or so, there were definitely men who would approach us at parties or whatever or classes and would accuse us of having stolen their scholarship. That was a little off-putting, and we had to swallow it and deal with it. But we realized pretty quickly that we hadn’t stolen anything from anybody, that we were selected based on the merits of who we were and what we’d done and what we hoped to do.
(Karen Cress ’79)
I know that we are regarded as the twelve who broke the glass ceiling, the twelve pioneers, and maybe in a way we were, but I think the true glass ceiling breakers are all of the thousands and millions of women back in the seventies who were marching and advocating for women’s rights that eventually resulted in the passage of Title IX, which in turn changed this program. We happened to be the lucky twelve who got to stand on their shoulders and actually walk through the door. I think the true challenge was from the women’s lib-ers who fought the good fight. We were a little on the young side to be women’s lib-ers, but we reaped the benefits of their sacrifices and their hard work and their loud voices. And look at what we’ve accomplished. Look at the eight women who are here today: three practicing doctors, an extraordinary lawyer, a PharmD pharmacist, an amazing writer, a director of art museums, and then little old me who is working at a nonprofit organization, but who brought in $3.6 million for AIDS research just this last year through managing our planned giving program, and also being an opera singer.
That’s an extraordinary cadre of, I think, amazingly accomplished women who won the scholarship. To go from twelve women out of a class of fifty-four getting the scholarship, to looking out at the sea of faces today and seeing that more than half now are women is a testament to the fact that we do belong here. We are deserving of this scholarship. We are the future leaders of this nation. And that’s exactly why this scholarship is so incredibly important for both men and women, and I’m very excited to see that there’s parity now.
(Allyson)
What was the biggest challenge that came with being one of the first women Morehead-Cain Scholars?
(Joan Templeton Perry ’79)
Well, obviously, the greatest challenge was not to let anyone down. Always playing in the background of my mind was the fact that I did have this title. I had been blessed in this way with this amazing resource, and I wanted to live up to every single possible expectation that they had for me. But more than finding that a barrier, I actually found it to be very good guidance because knowing what the Foundation stood for gave me some boundaries for knowing what the expectations were and what they thought I could accomplish. So it gave me a little extra confidence, I think, actually, probably a lot of confidence that I otherwise wouldn’t have had.
(Karen Cress ’79)
For me, the only thing that I experienced as a challenge came not once I had gotten the scholarship and became a Morehead Scholar. It was in the interview process, and it was at the local level when an older gentleman hit me with a question of, “Well, why should we be giving you this scholarship when you’re just as likely to maybe not even graduate and decide to get married and have children? Why shouldn’t this scholarship go to a man who will really use it?” So it was me coming back to politely challenge that mindset is really the only challenge that I faced, and my challenge back to him was, “Well, respectfully, you’re assuming that I’m going to get married, and I don’t see that really happening because I’m a high school senior who’s never dated because all the guys are scared of me. So I really don’t see that happening. Women are as intelligent, women are as ambitious, women are as goal-oriented, and women are as capable of being the leaders that you are looking for, and by not giving women the Morehead scholarship, you’re missing out on 50 percent of the population who could be the future leaders that you’re wanting to develop.”
(Allyson)
If you could go back 45 years, what advice would you give to your younger self, and why?
(Julia McMillan Cline ’79)
I would tell myself to slow down maybe and take a year off and find out what I really liked because I was so used to doing things well and doing many different kinds of things well and doing whatever anybody asked me to do because I was bright, and I was capable of doing a lot of things. I didn’t know exactly what was most important to me. So I came to school expecting myself to do well at everything, just the way I had when I was in high school and all the years of my life previously, and I expected myself to like everything. And I did pretty much like everything in all my classes, but I didn’t know which ones really struck my heart. And that’s what I would have told myself to do, was to slow down and figure out what things really touched my heart and would give me enough emotional oomph to get through and study and be happy with when I graduated.
(Allyson)
What were your initial thoughts when you found out you were accepted as a Morehead-Cain Scholar? What did that mean for your community?
(Katie Ziglar ’79)
Well, it was utter disbelief. I remember the letter was coming, and I knew it, and I got home from school, and my little brother, who was six years younger, had written me a note, “KATIE,” in very big letters, “Katie, you got the Morehead.” Then he wrote in small letters underneath, “letter, period, is on your bed.” At first, I thought I had gotten it, and I was very excited, and then I had to go open it. That was a hard thing to do, but I got a great surprise. I was thrilled and very excited. I think, for my community, my high school had not had a Morehead scholar for quite a while, so it was really great to do that again and to be able to be one of the first women, which people were just floored because women had never been part of the program up to that point.
(Debbie Weston Harden ’79)
Coming into my senior year, I had no idea that I could even be a candidate because women had never been permitted to be applicants. I was very fortunate to have a strong committee chair in Duplin County, and he was very frustrated. He had never had a scholar out of our county. And so he allowed me and then guided me to learn about the depth of my community. So through his wisdom, I attended County Commissioner meetings, I attended Board of Education meetings, I visited with three or four of the predominant employers in the area and really got an understanding of the fundamentals of the politics and economics of my very limited county. And it was thrilling to take that through the regional and then to central [committee interviews]. Very intimidating to be at the finals with all of these talented people from across the U.S.
I was the first selected from my county, and I was very proud. And for me, it helped shape my entire life. The Morehead Program not only offered, of course, four years of college, but five terrific summer programs, which helped me choose and eliminate potential careers, choices in life, and exposed me to different situations and perspectives that I do not believe from a rural North Carolina county that I would have gotten by merely attending a university or college elsewhere.
(Allyson)
What legacy do you feel you and your peers have left for future generations of women scholars in the Program?
(Mary Sherrill Mallory ’79)
I hope that we have left with the confidence of embracing challenges, especially in new situations that may mean uncharted waters. I would say that we would encourage all the future scholars to take those chances to make those dreams come true, but also to remember that how we pursue those dreams is sometimes even more important than the dreams themselves. I think if we can learn to, and this was a lesson I’ve had to learn over time, if we can learn to see other people as people, to treat them as human beings, with a lot of grace and kindness and generosity, that maybe we’ll be successful not only in what we accomplish, but how we get there.
(Allyson)
How have you seen the role of women within both UNC and Morehead-Cain evolve since you were a scholar?
(Elizabeth Dooley Bell ’80)
The Foundation didn’t really know exactly what to do with us. I don’t think it was really very intentional taking women at first, and I don’t think everybody was on board with it, but it was during that time, and I think there was even a lawsuit threatened at that time. My initial interview at the county level, I recall that I came in to a room that had a horseshoe-shaped group of businessmen. When we came and they had the initial dinner, it was very cute because they just handed out copies of Uncle Mot’s speech because, apparently, he talks about watching out for women because they just want to get ahold of you and your money, and you don’t want to marry early, and that thing. That was cute. They all had a little scramble there about that. They were definitely uncomfortable and not sure what to do with us. They sat us each at one table. There was a room full of young men and older men, and then us, the lone representatives. It was an odd experience there. But it just is so nice now to see that they really have taken it to heart. You see not just lots of really involved young women, but also people of color. It’s just an entirely different Foundation than when we first joined. It just looks really like people who are involved and excited to be here. It’s very encouraging for somebody like me, worried about the future.
(Katie Ziglar ’79)
In our period, women were not necessarily entering the workforce as much as they are now. It’s a very big change. A lot of the professional schools at Carolina had very few women. In fact, going even further back, my dad was a dentist in the class of 1964, and he had one woman in his class whose name was Cynthia. I still remember because as a small child, I was here from age two to age six, I worshipped Cynthia, and I always asked him about her. Now, the dental school is more than half female, same thing with the medical school, same thing with the law school. I think it’s only [the] business [school] that is predominantly male and not by a huge margin. So that’s changed tremendously. And we’ve got women working full long careers in the workforce, even with children or not.
(Allyson)
Can you share a pivotal moment in your undergraduate experience as a Morehead-Cain Scholar?
(Joan Templeton Perry ’79)
So Allyson, rather than share a pivotal moment, let me just tell you what the Foundation meant to me during so many pivotal times. Because coming to this campus, never having even visited a college campus prior to coming as a freshman, well, actually as an interviewee, Finals Weekend, I found the Foundation to be my home. So on many occasions, with tears, with problems, I would come through those Foundation doors, and always between Mrs. Perry and MebanePritchett, they would have an answer to my problem. So to have a home here that, pardon the pun, was foundational for me was really more than pivotal to my experience at Chapel Hill.
(Allyson)
What is your favorite Carolina memory?
(Jenny Burns Petitto ’79)
In general, it was the friends that I made here. I think if you made me pick one, there’s so many wonderful memories, but my best friends were Morehead Scholars. My best friend was Karen Stevenson. My boyfriend, through all of undergraduate, was another scholar, Greg Michaels. Again, we would run into the other scholars, and it was, again, organic. We had a camaraderie, and it was always fun to talk to other scholars, if we were in class or in labs or just hanging out. That was my favorite memory was really the friendships that I made when I was here.
(Mary Sherrill Mallory ’79)
In general, I would say friends, friends, friends, and just incredible opportunities and fun in Chapel Hill, especially with our Morehead friends. One particular instance that stands out is when we went to the Cat’s Cradle to listen to a musician who was unknown at that time, and as it turns out, it was Bruce Springsteen. What an opportunity, only in Chapel Hill.
(Allyson)
Thank you for listening to Catalyze. I’m your host, Allyson Horst, from the class of ’27. And those are a few of the members of the first class of women scholars in the program. You can let us know what you thought of this episode by emailing us at communications@moreheadcain.org or by following us on social media @moreheadcain.
