Skip to content
Orange County Public Library (opens the library’s website in a new tab)

Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

Search and filters

Search and filters · 1 active
Navy Pre-Flight School
Clear all
Vertical timeline Timeline overview

10 dated events and 1 storyline match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–11.Back to highlights

Earliest first. Scroll sideways, or use the arrows.

10 dated events and 1 storyline
1942Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  2. The Navy B-1 Band lives in the Community Center

    Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill

    With the community center unfinished for lack of funds, the town lent it on May 22, 1942 to the Navy as quarters for the B-1 Band, the Black musicians of the Pre-Flight School. The Navy, not the band, finished and equipped the building, and the band lived there from that summer until the town regained it on October 24, 1945.

    Subject: Hargraves Community Center · Navy Pre-Flight School

  3. Governor Broughton welcomes guests at the commissioning of the Navy Pre-Flight School

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    The dinner program for the commissioning of the Naval Aviation Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill on May 23, 1942 has Governor J. Melville Broughton offering the welcome, and Josephus Daniels giving greetings to the Navy Department representatives and to Commander O. O. Kessing. The school trained 18,700 pre-flight cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945.

    Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

    People: Josephus Daniels · Oliver Owen Kessing

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  4. Navy Pre-Flight School operates at UNC

    Storyline · 10 events · Chapel Hill

    Commissioned at UNC in May 1942, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School trained 18,700 cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945. Cadets ate in Lenoir Hall and drilled in a Navy-built armory that opened in 1943. George H. W. Bush trained there as a cadet, Gerald Ford taught there, and Ted Williams played on its baseball team.

    Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

    People: Ted Williams

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  5. The Navy B-1 Band serves at Chapel Hill

    Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill

    The B-1 Band, 44 Black musicians sworn in at Raleigh on May 27, 1942 as the first African Americans to serve in the Navy at general rank, played for the Navy Pre-Flight School at UNC from July 1942 to April 1944. Barred from campus housing, they lived in the new Black community center on Roberson Street, now the Hargraves Center.

    Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

    Subject: Hargraves Community Center · Navy Pre-Flight School

  6. The Navy Pre-Flight School's armory is completed near the campus tennis courts

    Construction or physical change · Navy Pre-Flight Armory, near the tennis courts, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    A semi-prefabricated armory and rifle range designed by Archie Royal Davis for the Pre-Flight School was finished near the tennis courts, a short walk from Navy Hall. It was a separate building from the NROTC Armory.

    People: Archie Royal Davis

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  7. Navy Hall opens as the Pre-Flight School's visitors' entrance and cadet lounge

    Founding or opening · Navy Hall (later Jackson Hall), UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    Designed by Archie Royal Davis and first drawn as a temporary office and hostess building, Navy Hall opened in March 1943 with offices for the Pre-Flight School and recreation rooms for cadets; the public was invited in on March 21.

    People: Archie Royal Davis

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  8. Governor Broughton speaks at a Pre-Flight School graduation in Kenan Stadium

    Publication, speech or performance · Kenan Stadium, Chapel Hill

    Broughton and UNC president Frank Porter Graham both spoke at Navy Pre-Flight School graduation exercises in Kenan Stadium on June 2, 1943.

    Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

    People: Frank Porter Graham

    Subject: Kenan Stadium · Navy Pre-Flight School

  9. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

  10. Chapel Hill celebrates the end of the war with Japan on Franklin Street

    Naming or commemoration · Franklin Street, Chapel Hill

    As the news spread that evening, townspeople, students and Pre-Flight School cadets filled Franklin Street while the campus bells rang and the fire siren sounded. Revelers draped the trees with toilet paper and lit a bonfire in the central block, and a policeman who tried to put it out was pushed aside.

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  11. UNC holds a farewell assembly for the Navy Pre-Flight School

    Closing or ending · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    As the war ended the university held a formal assembly to say goodbye to the Pre-Flight School; Chancellor R. B. House had told the Navy that any peacetime Navy program should fold into the NROTC and the regular degree.

    People: R. B. House

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  12. The old Pre-Flight Armory reopens as a Scuttlebutt snack bar and bookstore

    Construction or physical change · Navy Pre-Flight Armory, near the tennis courts, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    Instead of razing it for a dormitory, the university turned the Pre-Flight School's armory into a second Scuttlebutt, a soda fountain, bookstore and student hangout in the lower quadrangle.

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

  13. The university tears down the old Pre-Flight Armory on the day it was to meet student defenders

    Closing or ending · Navy Pre-Flight Armory, near the tennis courts, UNC campus, Chapel Hill

    University officials bulldozed the former Pre-Flight Armory, then the Emerson Scuttlebutt, on the same day they were due to meet students petitioning to keep it, and did not come to the meeting. The administration said refreshments would move to the Monogram Club.

    Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

Suggest a correction to an entry →

A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

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.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026