Friday and Spangler, a different pair who matched at the top of UNC

When C.D. Spangler Jr., who died Sunday, took over as president of the what we now call the University of North Carolina system in 1986, he was following a titan — the legend, William Friday. Friday had been president for 30 years, and in that time had become one of the most prominent national figures in American higher education.

In 1986, the choice to succeed him seemed as different a person as anyone could have been. Dick Spangler was vastly wealthy, a Harvard Business School man. Those who were Friday’s most loyal friends couldn’t imagine Spangler, or probably anyone else, in the job. How could any successor run the university that was essentially the creation of Bill Friday?

Spangler could, and he did, and in what even some of their friends thought an unlikely development, he and Bill Friday became the closest of friends, particularly after Spangler had retired and the university faced some daunting challenges with funding and athletics. They talked often, once a week at least, and they came to find similarities despite Friday having grown up in modest circumstances in the town of Dallas in the North Carolina foothills.

(I knew Friday because my father worked with him for 15 years, and Bill became a sort of second father to me before his death in 2012; Spangler and I used to talk about university issues and political characters on the phone, when he was candid and blunt and funny.)

In truth, the bond between Friday and Spangler was in this modest view more one of character than anything else. They brought different skills to the same job and they were both successful. But their shared personal traits defined them.

Most notable: Spangler and Friday treated everyone they met the same. If they were in a room with students and wealthy donors and politicians, they were not looking over the shoulders of those students for more important people. They valued those students, and their parents of all backgrounds, as much as they did those of wealth and prominence. Spangler didn’t eat at the student dining hall in Chapel Hill every day for show. He wanted to know what the students thought.

And they never backed down from a fight when they thought the university’s values were at stake. Friday had political savvy as keen as any office holder — he “knew where the bodies were buried,” to use the old expression. Spangler had confidence and guts and wasn’t afraid of anyone and his opponents respected that.

Spangler used to tell a story about driving to Dallas (N.C.) shortly after taking over at UNC, and stopping in a country store. He got a bottle of Coke, some peanuts, poured his peanuts into the Coke, and asked the fellows at the store if they knew Bill Friday. Spangler: “Yeah,” one said, “If he’d stuck with it, he could have been a really great ballplayer.” That spoke much about Spangler’s character, I always thought.

In 2012, as a small group of friends gathered at Friday’s grave site to say their goodbyes, Spangler and his wife, Meredith, stood toward the back. After the service ended, I walked past the casket and reached up to touch it. Spangler was doing the same, standing beside me. He looked over, a little teary, as was I.

“It’s tough to say goodbye,” he said.

Yes, it was. And it is.

Jim Jenkins, the News & Observer’s former deputy editorial page editor, retired in January after 31 years with the newspaper.

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 11:47 AM.