University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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ROMY STORY (1882 -1907) ■% VHEX the University opened last September, there was noticeable among students and faculty an air of anxiety and foreboding. A stranger could have detected at once that something disquieting had happened or was impending. Groups of students might be observed asking, with troubled faces, whether any news had been received during the day. The final message came at last: Romy is dead. Romy Story was born in Aho, ' atauga county, Xorth Carolina, December 12. 1882, and died at his mountain home September 13. 1907. He was an onlv son, and his parents determined that their boy should not go through life fettered by ignorance and handicapped by lack of opportunity. But to educate him meant years of self-denial and deprivation. For him it meant a long and toilsome path- way, separation from home, and perhaps failure in the end. But there was no hesitancy or half-heartedness on either side. Romy showed at an early age the will power and the unswerving loyalty to an ideal that in later years did much to make him the man he was. His early school days were not brilliant. It always took time for Romy to relate himself to new surroundings and new duties. But when he had once found himself in a new position, his progress was steady and uniform. There was never a backward step in anything that he undertook, and his development was not merely intellectual : it was moral and physical as well. In every school that lie entered, his physical prowess made him a hero among his fel ' .ow-students : his industry, perseverance, and increasing efficiency won for him the growing esteem of his teachers ; and his high sense of honor, his mingled gentleness and strength of character, made him loved and admired by all who came into close relationship with him. After attending the public and private schools of the neighborhood, Romy entered Aaron Seminary in Mitchell county. In the fall of 1899 he entered Watauga Academy, now the Appalachian Training School. During the four years spent here, writes the Superintendent, no one ever made a suggestion to him as to his deportment. He was never absent from roll-call, and never shirked a single duty. He did good work as a student, and his influence was very helpful to the school. He organized the baseball team and soon became its captain. In the games with other communities he almost always won, and won fair. His teachers told him about the University, encouraged him to go, and helped him to plan. He was a great fellow, strong alike in body, mind, and character. He entered the University in September. 1903. A study of his academic record here shows slow but perceptible progress for the first two years. But