John D. Messick, Tar Heel of the Week

Article printed in the Raleigh News & Observer regarding John D. Messick. This and other articles may be found in the records of the Chancellor's Office, Record Group CH1050, Series 1, Scrapbook File, 1914-1978 in the University Archives.

Citation for this particular article is: Riley, Jack. "Tar Heel of the Week - John Decatur Messick," Raleigh News & Observer, October 29, 1950.

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East Carolina Teachers College can thank its mild-mannered president, Dr. John Decatur Messick, for averting riot at least once.

It happened when the college dedicated its new stadium last fall in a game with Cherry Point. Citizens with reserved seat tickets arrived to find students had come first and occupied all the reserved seats. As four or five thousand people milled around looking for seats, cheer leaders tried vainly to restore order and call the students out of the paid section.

Then President Messick stepped forward.In his characteristically mild, well-modulated voice he said, "If these people were your hosts, surely they would offer you a seat. Well, they now are your guests." The college president yielded his seats to visitors and stood to watch the whole game.The student body followed suit.

The incident, trivial as it was, demonstrated ECTC's regard for its executive.Students have learned that he's on their side, and harmony and good will are a marked factor in a school which has had trouble with some of its presidents.

Tall and Erect

Dr. Messick strikes an imposing figure around which legends already are being built. Tall and erect of carriage, he possesses an arresting voice and serene eyes. Students call him "sharp" in appearance, but he has one touchy fault--sparsity of hair.When Daniel Keegan, an art student, modeled a bust of him, the president hinted it might do with a few more strands of hair.Keegan complied and--thanks to the addition--the bust now graces the college library.

Dr. Messick has made progress as well as friends at the Greenville college.When he arrived in September of 1947, there were 1,382 students. Today there are 1,858.Extension enrollment has grown from scratch to 331.Summer school has grown from 567 to 1,312 in four years.Last spring, the school conferred 312 bachelors' and 82 masters' degrees.

The new president is taking his school to the people in terms of tangible training, and the result has been a growing demand for college education in his section.

Emphasis in this teacher college has been both upon quickening the student's perceptive powers and preparing him to pass along better instruction to his students in the public schools.A new course in remedial reading has quickened the learning capacities of the more backward students.A speech pathologist now is eliminating many speech defects which would handicap teachers of the future.A guidance specialist has been made available to the students.

Striving for higher public school standards, East Carolina Teachers College has conducted workshops, institutes and conferences on testing, speech, reading, coaching sports, bands, public school music, exceptional children training, elementary science, high school science, language arts, fine arts, industrial arts, resource use education, home-making, parent-teacher problems, the ideologies of government, schoolhouse planning and building, business education, dramatics and higher education.

One-Teacher School

By virtue of contrast, at least, Dr. Messick is qualified to list the needs of public education. His own schooling began in a one-teacher school in Beaufort County just after the turn of the century. After four years, he felt "consolidation." He attended a two-teacher school. He finished the seventh grade in three-teacher school.

Meanwhile, however, he probably was gleaning more information from newspapers in his spare time than in the school, where he had quickly devoured the contents of the one-bookshelf library. His father ran a store and he helped.Meat and fish in those days were wrapped in old newspapers; but before John Messick ever permitted an old paper to go for wrapping purposes, he had read every word of it.

He was born November 9, 1897, at South Creek in Beaufort County.The village was located seven miles below Aurora. Since his day, it has lost the post office that once served the community of 500. Biggest source of revenue there was the big sawmill. Young Messick worked part of his time at the mil, on the farm or tallying lumber as it was loaded on barges headed north.

He was one of eight children of Jesse M. and Mary Flowers Messick.

He aspired to become the county superintendent of schools and spent part of 1914 in a business college preparing for such a career. He quit in 1915, however, to work in the store that served the sawmill hands and later to join his brother who was chief engineer on a steamship sailing out of Norfolk. After firing the boilers of the steamship from May 28 to Thanksgiving, he decided this was not the career for him.

Professional baseball and law loomed large among the careers he contemplated.Education ran a close thrid.In 1916, however, he decided to dedicate his life to Christian service.He enrolled at the church school at Falcon and completed the high school course in two years.

Having saved just $75 from his experiences as a steamship fireman, he was forced to work his way through high school. This he did by serving as an apprentice in the school's print shop.

He still had no money for college, so he spent his first year out of high school teaching. With these earnings and $400 borrowed from a minister, he enrolled at Elon Collge.He washed dishes and set tables to earn his board and spent his summers as an evangelistic singer and field worker to supplement his college cash.With another $400 lent him by a widow, he managed to complete the college course in three years and come away from Elong in 1922 with a Ph.B. degree.

Immediately he enrolled in summer school at University of North Carolina to begin graduate work.Since that day, he missed only two summers in school.

Began Teaching

The fall following his graduation from Elon, he began teaching at South River Consolidated School near Wade. A new building went up, the grounds were landscaped and the school won accreditation during his four-year stay.He commenced a night school for adults of the community who wished to learn to read, write and figure.

In 1926, he left Wade to become principal of the schools at Trenton in Jones County.His innovations there included organizing a community fair which drew farm exhibits fromaradius of 25 miles and offered the childrena merry-go-round.

From 1929, when he left Trenton, until 1935, he was superintendent at Spencer. Jobs seemed to descend upon him then.He obtained a release to work with Bobbs-Merrill and the Literary Guild book companies about the same time he was elected director of training schools for Florida State College for Women. He resigned this job before it began to return to Elon College. His alma mater made him a teacher, head of the education department, dean of men and dean of instruction. As if these were not enough, his activities included a weekly radio broadcast and service on half a dozen education associations and clubs.

During the summer, he continued his graduate studies and in 1934 won a Ph.D. degree from New York University. The next two summers he taught at Asheville Teachers College.

To New Jersey

In 1944, the State Teachers College at Montclair, NJ, called him as dean of instruction and administrative assistant to the president.He was serving at Montclair when East Carolina Teachers College invited him to become its president in 1947.

Dr. Messick and his wife--who was the former Magdalene Elizabeth Robinson of Washington, DC--are familiar to Greenville society and often entertain at the spacious cream-colored brick residence maintained for the college president. He is a regular attendant at the Methodist church and Kiwanis Club.

An old hand at the piano and at evangelistic singing, Dr. Messick enjoys stretching his voice, either in church or at club festivities.Once his attractive wife complained at his loud singing in church. Next time they arrived at the church door, he sent his wife and children ahead of him and told them he would sit alone where he could sing as loud as he liked.

The Messick children are Helen Margaret, an NYU graduate who taught music at New Hanover High School until she married Fred Willetts, Jr.; Mary Rosalyn Messick a Columbia graduate who teaches music in Raleigh; and Norval Robinson and John Albert Messick of Greenville.

Lover of Music

Dr. Messick's love of music runs almost to hero worship of topflight artists. When Lauritz Melchoir appeared for a college concert, the Messicks entertained 1,200 people at a reception in honor of Melchoir and his wife.The Melchoirs and Messicks wound up eating in the kitchen, and the Metropolitan opera star said he'd never enjoyed a meal more.

The lighter side of the social calendar, such as wedding receptions and thelike, scare the president away, and he much prefers to take in a shoot-em-up western movie in company with Knott Proctor or to slip away for goose shoting or fishing, in season.

Whatever the occasion, however, Dr. Messick proves adaptable.He operates in the same mild manner to quiet near-riots that he does in attending pink teas.

That poise, however, has been ruffled.It happened once at the tender age of 11.His gang usually treated their girl friends at a soda shop near their dance hall.On one eventful evening, for which young Messick had primed himself by taking dancing lessons and renting clothes, he met life's dismal moment at the soda bar.When his sweetie was full of pop, he discovered his pockets were empty.His sister's escort slipped him a dime just in time.He remembers the incident especially because his benefactor died of tuberculosis before he could repay the debt.

In his more recent and more dignified years, his serenity has been shattered, too.One such occasion involved trying to navigate busy New York City traffic in a balky car. It stopped dead twice inside the Holland Tunnel.After suviving the withering stare of a traffic cop, he got as far as the car tracks on Sixth Avenue when the car died again.When the same thing happened as he was crosing Fifth Avenue, the affable doctor abandoned the car to a mechanic and fled.

Travel, hunting and fishing attract him in season, but he declares that his work is so challenging that he never brings himself to devote his spare time to such diversion.

During the past 15 years, he has spent his spare time heading or holding office in almost every significant educational organizationin the State and many on a national level.He spent last summer in a University of Wisconsin workshop for teachers and college executives.

He has found time to publish two books:"Personality and Character Development" in 1939 and "School Boards:Their Powers and Discretions," in 1949.He still writes many articles for newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals.

"My philosophy of education," he states, "is to help provide the environment necessary to guide every student to select the life's work for which he is best fitted by aptitude and interest and to motivate him to develop his full potentialities mentally, physically, aesthetically, socially and spiritually, and to be a democratic citizen without bias or prejudice internationally, racially, economically and toward creeds."

They seem to like his philosophy in Greenville.