Bonnie Ethel Cone - Charlotte Center For The University of North Carolina

Charlotte Center For The University of North Carolina

In 1945 Cone went to Washington, D.C. to work in the Naval Ordnance Laboratory as a statistical analyst, studying mine detection reports. She returned to Charlotte a year later to resume teaching at Central High and also signed on as a part-time instructor in engineering math at the Charlotte Center of the University of North Carolina, a night school housed in Central High to serve World War II veterans going to school on the GI Bill of Rights. A year later, at the urging of Dr. Garinger, she gave up her high school teaching job to become director of the Charlotte Center. In that role she became acutely aware that the Charlotte area lacked sufficient higher-education opportunities, not only for returning war veterans but also for many high school graduates who could not go away to college. The nearest public college was more than 90 miles (140 km) away and our area was just not being served, she said.

She established a reputation as a motivator of students. Eternally optimistic and a tireless worker, she wouldn't let a student give up on education, even though he or she might be working full time and going to school at night. She had a way of focusing her attention on each student individually and making each of them feel that what happened to them was important. Among them were men and women who went on to successful corporate and professional careers, including one young man, Steve Mahaley, who became a brain surgeon, and another, William Disher, who became chief executive officer of Lance Inc., and a third, Ken Harris, who became an insurance executive and mayor of Charlotte. Hundreds of other Charlotte area men and women credit their success to Bonnie Cone, saying, "She wouldn't let me quit." Her motto, engraved on a ceramic tile that was always on her desk, said: "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do, and what I ought to do, by the Grace of God, I will do." - quote of Edward Everett Hale

In addition to directing the Charlotte Center, she continued to teach and supervise the school's testing program, regularly putting in 18-hour days. When students asked what kind of vitamin pills she took for energy, she replied, "You're my vitamin pills." She made a strong impression on younger students too. C. D. Spangler, Jr., later to become president of the University of North Carolina, recalled growing up in Charlotte's Myers Park Baptist Church, where Miss Cone usually sat in the pew in front of the Spangler family. Dick Spangler said he learned to follow the worship service by watching Miss. Cone. He said his mother told him to stand when she stands and sit when she sits. The church later elected Miss Cone as its first female chair of the Board of Deacons.

As president of the University, Spangler often went out of his way to pay special tribute to Bonnie Cone and to inform the rest of the state about what she had done for higher education in Charlotte. When the tide of returning veterans ebbed, The University of North Carolina sought to close the Charlotte Center, but Bonnie Cone insisted that its services were still needed, if not for returning veterans, for hundreds of young men and women who could not go away to college. She looked for ways to make it a permanent institution. When obstacles appeared, which was often, she would say, "This too shall pass." Of those who sometimes stood in the way of the center's progress, her worst epithet was, "That booger."