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

Page 15 text:

Adam A. Kluttz 1857—1926 A LTHOUGH Adam Alexander Kluttz practiced medicine for only a few months after he won his degree, and was known to the University and the village as a man of business, everybody always called him Doctor Kluttz. He was one of the old-timers — one of the men who dwelled here when Chapel Hill was a secluded and drowsy village where people drew their water out of wells, lit their homes with oil lamps, and drove about in buggies. There was about the place then an in- timacy, an air of peace and leisure, which has now long since fled. The village had the drawbacks of remoteness, but it had likewise the charm of remoteness. Through all of the changes that followed. Doctor Kluttz retained the qualities, of outward bearing and of character, that made him so perfect a part of the scene in the eighties and nineties. When he had become used to riding in his high powered car, anno domini 1926, he had the same deliberate, unruffled, whimsical ways as when he sold books and fruit and candy and toys and whatnot in the reigns of Battle and Winston. Toward the end of his days, having quit commerce, he took things easy. On balmy days he sat in a swinging chair on the front porch of his home and exchanged greetings with the passers-by. When it was too cold for porch life he sat by the fire in the living room. But he did not pass all his time thus. Only a few weeks before his death, to a friend who expressed envy of his leisure, he said he had worked in the garden three hours before the friend had eaten breakfast — and produced evidence from eye-witnesses. All manner of men — scholars, merchants, whoever it might be — found him congenial company. One of his frequent callers was Jack Lloyd from out in the country — and before Jack was out of the yard he would be holding conversation with the scientist, William C. Coker, or M. C. S. Noble or some other University professor. To a stranger he might give the impression of being a little stolid. But those who knew him best saw in him a ready under- standing and a lively humor; and something better still, a lovable nature. Louis Graves. ' 02.