Well, He Did It Again: The Generosity of a Friend, Part IV

A few months ago, I wrote three sequential posts about a gift I received out of the blue from fellow Mayberry fan, Jimmy Phillips. My friend sent me the 1952 yearbook, Gohisca, from Goldsboro High School where Andy Griffith taught after earning his college degree. Keep in mind that I have not yet met Jimmy face-to-face. He is simply an extremely generous man who thought I would enjoy such a treasure. And he was right, of course.

We were recently preparing to go out of town for a trade show related to my wife’s business. Imagine my surprise when I received another Facebook Messenger inquiry from Jimmy making sure my address had not changed. Jimmy was sending me another package. I told him I would be out of town when it arrived but would have a neighbor put it inside a glass-enclosed sunroom on our house. He didn’t tell me what it was but did say it was over 70 years old. When I said the suspense was killing me, he responded, “Don’t you love a good mystery?”

When we returned from the trade show, I learned what Jimmy had sent. It was the 1947 University of North Carolina yearbook, The Yackety Yack, one of the years Andy was a student there. Andy enrolled at UNC in 1944 as a sociology major, a field of study he thought would be helpful to his plan at the time to become a Moravian minister. During his sophomore year, he decided he would rather major in music. The end result was he spent five years at UNC, graduating in 1949. Thus, this yearbook was from his third year at the university.

Whether he was technically a sophomore or junior as a result of changing his major, Andy was the president of the Men’s Glee Club that academic year. Just as he did when he became a teacher, he was going by “Andrew” even though his legal name was “Andy.”

When I contacted Jimmy to thank him yet again for his great generosity, I learned he had won the yearbook by bidding for it on an eBay auction. He made it a point to find the photo of Andy he knew it contained, then boxed it up and sent it as a gift. Jimmy also wrote, “I hope there’s something in it that will help your research. If not, it’s still a neat piece of Andy memorabilia.”

Though we have only “met” over the internet, Jimmy knows me too well. His gift definitely inspired me to dig into a curiosity I encountered when looking through The Yackety Yak. But that’s the subject of the next several blog posts.