Storyline · 1972–2006
In January 1973 the Chapel Hill aldermen voted 4 to 1 to dismiss Robert Peck, town manager since 1961, after he refused to resign; Mayor Howard Lee cited two years of disagreement over how he ran the town. The town's purchasing agent resigned in his defense, and Chester Kendzior became town manager that June. In 1974 the aldermen reorganized the town administration under two assistant managers, and in May 1975 Kendzior resigned after Mayor Lee, for five of the six aldermen, asked him to go. Kurt Jenne, Eugene Shipman and David R. Taylor followed Kendzior as town manager from 1975 to 1982; Taylor left at the end of 1989 to head the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, and Cal Horton held the post from 1990 to 2006, the longest tenure of any Chapel Hill town manager.
In December 1972, at Town Manager Robert Peck's request, a Baltimore police major interviewed each member of the Chapel Hill Police Department about staff grievances, after a fall grievance hearing and the loss of more than seven men from the department. On January 17, 1973 the Board of Aldermen, meeting in special session, voted 4 to 1 to relieve Peck, town manager since September 1961, of his duties after he refused to resign. Mayor Howard Lee cited two years of disagreement over how Peck ran the town rather than any dishonesty, Assistant Town Manager Maryl Levine became interim manager, and Alderman Ross Scroggs, the one dissenter, said it was the first time he had been ashamed to be a member of the board. The town purchasing agent resigned later that month, defending Peck and charging that the administration spent money before it was appropriated. Chester Kendzior, who had managed two other college towns, took over as town manager on June 1, 1973. In October 1974 the aldermen approved a reorganization of the town administration under two assistant town managers: Police Chief William D. Blake, chief for 16 years, for public safety, and Kurt Jenne, director of urban development, for development and community services. After a February 1975 violation of the county landfill agreement Kendzior's work came under a three-month review, at the end of which, on May 16, Mayor Howard Lee, acting for five of the six aldermen, asked him to resign; only Alderman Sid Rancer backed him. On May 26 Kendzior handed in his resignation, citing professional differences, and the same day the aldermen approved annexing the northern Booker Creek area, ruling irrelevant a petition from its residents that faulted the board's handling of the manager's forced resignation. Kendzior left on July 31, and Jenne became interim manager.
On September 17, 1975 the aldermen voted unanimously to make Jenne, 31, the permanent town manager; he had been the town's first director of urban development and then assistant town manager. By January 1979 Eugene R. Shipman, interim manager since August 1978, had been appointed to fill the vacancy left by Jenne's resignation, and finance director Anthony I. Hooper was named assistant town manager. Hooper resigned effective February 27, 1981 to become town manager of New Bern. On June 1, 1981 Shipman, who had come to Chapel Hill five years earlier as assistant manager, resigned to become assistant city manager for operations in Kansas City, Missouri, effective June 30, surprising several council members, and Recreation Director Ron Secrist, whom he had recommended, became interim manager. On January 12, 1982 Mayor Joe Nassif announced that David R. Taylor, Tarboro's town manager since 1965, would take the post; Taylor, 44, an N.C. State civil engineering graduate chosen from about 130 applicants, took the oath of office on February 1, after Secrist's seven months as interim manager. On November 14, 1989 Taylor, town manager for eight years and a former president of the International City Management Association, announced that he would resign, effective December 31, to become chief executive of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, ending the chamber's 14-month search; assistant town manager Sonna Loewenthal was to serve as interim manager from January 1, 1990. In 1990 Cal Horton, the town's public safety director, took over as town manager after Loewenthal's months as interim manager. He retired in 2006 after the longest tenure of any Chapel Hill town manager, and at his request money raised in his honor went to a town award for employees who have given at least ten years of exceptional service, now the Cal Horton Service Award.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Edwin Caldwell, Jr. reviews a life in Chapel Hill politics in a three-hour Southern Oral History Program interview recorded March 2, 2001, by Oliver White. A skilled organizer, Caldwell worked in the campaign that made Howard Lee the town's first Black mayor in 1969, ran for office more than once without winning, and became a local political power. The conversation also covers race relations, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board and the Church of Reconciliation. Published online in 2006 in Documenting the American South.
Interview recorded June 21, 2000 with Rebecca Clark (1915-2009), a Black Chapel Hill resident, for the Southern Oral History Program at UNC. Clark, educated in Chapel Hill's segregated schools, describes working life under segregation and the economic discrimination she met in it. Topics also include Lincoln High School, school integration, and Howard Lee, elected mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969. Interview K-0536 in collection #4007.
Howard N. Lee's account of his own career, published in 2021 by the North Caroliniana Society with the society award given to him that year, together with tributes from Angela Lee, Valerie Foushee and others. Lee became mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969, the town's first Black mayor.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns III on the 1950 Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, in which Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, lost to Willis Smith after a campaign marked by race-baiting. Primaries, elections and race relations in the state are its subjects. Published by UNC Press in 1990, 356 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1991), The American Historical Review (1991), Journal of American History (1991), The Journal of Southern History (1992).
Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Warren Ashby's biography of Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), president of the University of North Carolina from 1930 to 1949 and later a United States senator. Published by Blair in 1981, x and 386 pages with sixteen leaves of plates and a bibliography.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1981), Journal of American History (1981).
Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).
The papers of Willie Person Mangum, 1792 to 1861, a lawyer, judge and United States senator from the part of Orange County that later became Durham County. Five volumes of correspondence published by the State Department of Archives and History beginning in 1950, arranged by date from 1807 to 1894, with illustrations, portraits and folding maps. A source for antebellum North Carolina and national politics, the Whig Party and the Mangum family.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1951), Journal of American History (1951), The Journal of Southern History (1953), Journal of American History (1953), The Journal of Southern History (1954), The Journal of Southern History (1955), The Journal of Southern History (1957), Journal of American History (1957), The American Historical Review (1957).
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Chapel Hill's town managers, 1972–2006.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/peck-dismissal-storyline-1972/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
