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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. September 1947
   Chapel Hill Cora Bomar joins the Chapel Hill elementary school faculty

   When the Chapel Hill schools opened in September 1947, Miss Cora Bomar was listed among the teachers of the elementary school under principal Mildred Mooneyhan. She had come to North Carolina that year.

3. 1948
   Appointment, election or service · Orange County The county board hires supervisors of instruction for its Black and white schools

   The board decided to hire supervisors of instruction and chose Norma Snipes for the Black schools and later Cora Paul Bomar for the white schools. In 1955 the state ended Snipes's position under a rule of one supervisor per hundred teachers, and she went to teach at Efland-Cheeks.

4. 1949-1951
   Appointment, election or service · Orange County Cora Paul Bomar serves as instructional supervisor of the Orange County schools

   Librarian and teacher Cora Paul Bomar was the county schools' instructional supervisor from 1949 to 1951, with building school libraries as her main charge. She left in 1951 to become school library consultant for the State Department of Public Instruction.

5. 1949-1951
   Founding or opening · Efland Efland Elementary School sets up the county schools' first centralized library

   Under supervisor Cora Paul Bomar, Efland Elementary turned two empty classrooms into one library: local men took out the partition, painted and built shelves, Bomar classified the books, and Mrs. Turner Forrest, one of the teachers, ran it as teacher-librarian. When Irene Pender took over in 1951 it was still the only centralized library in the county schools.

6. 1951-1970
   Appointment, election or service · Orange County Irene Oliver Pender becomes instructional supervisor of the Orange County schools

   After Cora Paul Bomar resigned in 1951, the county chose Aycock School teacher Irene Oliver Pender as supervisor. She led the drive for a centralized library in every elementary school and ran the federal NDEA and ESEA materials programs until she retired in June 1970.

7. February 1951
   Efland Visiting Japanese educator-librarians tour the Efland school library

   A group of Japanese educator-librarians hosted by the UNC School of Education visited the Orange County schools under the lead of helping teacher Cora Paul Bomar. They asked to see the Efland school library, built the year before by community volunteers, after reading her article on it in North Carolina Education.

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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.