Johnetta Webb Spilman Tribute

The following speech is a tribute to Johnetta Webb Spilman, the wife and assistant treasurer to husband John Barham Spilman, University treasurer from 1911 to 1935. Mrs. Spilman served as a teacher prior to her appointment as assistant treasurer, and after her departure from ECU in 1935 was appointed to serve as North Carolina Unemployment Compensation Commissioner. Mrs. Spilman became Executive Director of the Pitt County Tuberculosis Association and in 1956, was named Greenville's Woman of the Year. In 1957, Johnetta Webb Spilman became the Executive Director of the North Carolina Mental Health Association.

This and other speeches may be found in the records of the Chancellor's Office, Record Group CH1050, Series 2,Subseries 3, Box 8, Folder 8 in the University Archives.

---

June 20, 1968

Many persons in our state would appreciate the opportunity to participate in the tribute to the great North Carolinian we honor tonight. In her dedicated and memorable span of productive work, Mrs. J. B. Spilman has crossed paths with the wealthy and the poor, with the cultured and the deprived, with royalty and the commoner, and with the child and the aged.

To all these persons she has become a symbol of action, of effort, of movement, of compassion, and of understanding.

For the lives that she has touched, for the causes she has eloquently espoused, for the sorrows she has shared, and for the successes she has motivated, Mrs. Spilman has a host of friends who attest to her contributions in so many areas.

My remarks, then, are not for East Carolina University, although our obligations are great to her; I do not speak for the Mental Health Association, although our admiration for her work here is enormous; rather, somehow, we feel that Mrs. J. B. Spilman represents mankind as a whole in her actions and deeds and it is in this spirit that we must pay homage tonight.

Mrs. Spilman, like Paul, feels “under an obligation to Greek and non-Greek.”

In her unceasing battles against the common enemies of mankind, she has fought those forces, both in nature and in society that would deny man his rightful birthright. Future historians may well place Mrs. Spilman’s name alongside the giants of the mental hygiene movement.

She exhibits the courage of a Phileppe Pinel who ordered the chains cast from the sufferers of mental illness, she shows the crusading spirit of a Dorthea Lynde Dix who insisted that hospitals instead of jails should exist for the mentally ill, and she has the sympathy and the compassion of a Clifford Beers in articulating the real feelings of a patient caught in the net of unreality.

Like Napoleon at Austerlitz, Mrs. Spilman knows that “Victory can only come where the enemy himself is located.”

In 1957, for example, she took the leadership of a small group of persons who had formed a State Association of mental Health in North Carolina.

Under financed, uncertain of direction, unsure of personal commitment, and unsophisticated in programming, Mrs. Spilman led this association to its present state of excellence, an association admired and respected throughout the mental health communities of the nation and world.

In accomplishing this near-miracle, Mrs. Spilman demonstrated her exquisite and eloquent leadership style.

As unhurried as the waters of the coastal plains of her Baptismal days, as simple and as functional as the lovely lines of the jonquils which cover the yard of her Greenville home, as pragmatic and direct as Paul when he reminded the Galatians of their stupidity, Mrs. J.B. Spilman works with people in ways that are good for them and good for society.

Mrs. Spilman’s life has not been without its moments of deep personal tragedy. She lost a devoted husband at a comparatively early age and one of her sons, Bernard W. Spilman, was a casualty of World War II. But Mrs. Spilman, in face of such adversities, retained her essential moorings.

Her obligations remained true to her children: J. B. Spilman, Jr. and Francis Facci; to her community, and to her church. Mrs. Spilman learned early what some people never learn, and that is that growth and development and heightened sensitivities can take place during periods of personal grief.

Always she has insisted on the essential sanity of man and the harmony of purpose between god and Man.

Several individuals in the 20th century have spoken with sincerity when the future of mankind seemed to be hanging in delicate imbalance.These persons: Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy all felt constrained to speak in behalf of those in society who were unable to speak for themselves. Mrs. J. B. Spilman, in both spirit and in person, has been a member of this group of humanitarians who spoke for civilization when the paths seemed uncertain.

We have said that Mrs. Spilman’s contributions are from various fields and that she is not limited to her Baptist church in Greenville which she loves so well;to East Carolina Universitywhere the Spilman husband and wife team labored so faithfully; or to the Mental Health movement in North Carolina.

But it is altogether fitting and proper that we pay especial attention to the activities of Mrs. Spilman during the last 12 years. During this time she devoted her organizational genius to a cause which, in 1957, had much sympathy but little financial support; a babble of voices but no set of sure objectives, and members with uncertain commitments.

Mrs. Spilman assumed the executive leadership role of the Mental Health Association in North Carolinaand it truly came to age and maturity under her guidance. In her calm and dignified manner, she placed on the agenda the unfinished business in Mental Health in North Carolina. She pointed out that mental illness was still the number one cause of disorganization of human life.

“Madness,” we were told, “severs the strongest bonds that hold human beings together,it separates husband and wife, mother and child, it is death without death’s finality and without dignity.”

Her voice was heard. Mental health has made tremendous strides in this state, and soon there is reason to believe that all who need help can receive it.

There is citizen awareness of mental health problems in this state, and it is an awareness that extends from Roper to Raleigh and from Chapel Hill to Cherokee.

These accomplishments of Mrs. Spilman would appear to reflect an arduous lifetime of work, but those of us who really know Mrs. Spilman think that she regarded it in a somewhat different light.

Perhaps the poet and prophet Kahlil Gibran says it best:

”You have been told also that life is darkness,
and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.”

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, it has been our privilege to honor a gracious lady and a dedicated citizen.

She has spoken with sincerity and effectiveness for so many needs in society, for so many unfortunate people, and she has acted in was that enrich the lives of all of us.

In a larger sense, then, it is not Mrs. Spilman alone who is honored tonight, we are all better persons for having known and having had associations with her.

I think we all may be able to respond better to the words of the prophet Isaiah as Mrs. Spilman has been doing for over a half a century:

”And I heard the voice of lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said Here am I. Send me.”