Mary Garber: Interview #2

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[Begin Tape 1, Side A]

Gentry: I'd like to center on your early career as a sportswriter. Where we left off last time, you had just gotten back into sports after being in the newsroom for a while. And the war had ended and the men had come back. So it was quite a different thing, wasn't it, when you started covering sports full-time with the men being there?

Garber: Oh, it was an entirely different situation because all of a sudden, instead of being one of several women working in sports jobs and different other assignments, I was the only woman in the whole area doing sports. And it was just a completely different situation. Then I was working under the leadership of Carlton Byrd who had come back after flying a fighter plane in the war, so I had to make a lot of changes in what I did.

Gentry: Now, how big was the Sentinel sports staff at that time?

Garber: The Sentinel sports staff was Carlton Byrd and me. And that was it.

Gentry: For how long?

Garber: Until the two papers were consolidated.

Gentry: Until the seventies then?

Garber: Into the seventies, yes. And we divided the work by Carlton doing what he wanted to do and then I did everything else.

Gentry: That's quite a load for two people.

Garber: It was a lot of work for two people but it was a great opportunity for me because it gave me a chance to cover a wide variety of topics, it gave me a chance to get a lot of experience that I wouldn't have gotten if I'd started in under the set-up that we have now where everything is very structured and definite assignments are given out and everybody has little pigeon-holes into which they fit. I had a chance to really try my wings and do pretty much what I wanted to do.

Gentry: What did you cover most in those years?

Garber: Most of it was high school sports. The Sentinel which was an evening paper circulated just within Winston-Salem and Forsyth County and so we covered just the high schools within Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. And as I remember, there were about twelve or fifteen high schools. And I covered them very, very closely.

I used to visit every school at least once a week and go to either football or basketball practice, as the case might be, and I'd usually start out early in the afternoon and go by the school. I knew most of the coaches' teaching schedules and if they had a vacant period, I'd try to go by and hit them during their vacant period and then we could go in the teachers' lounge and talk. It gave me a chance to get to know the coaches better and to pick up on all the different things they were doing. If I couldn't get to see the different ones,

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wearing a sweatshirt right next to my body, then putting my regular shirt and jacket over it, I could keep my body fairly warm. And I wore a knitted cap which kept my ears warm. But there was no way that you could write and keep your hands warm because you had to wear light mittens or you couldn't write. And you couldn't wear fur-lined boots because you couldn't run in them. So my feet were always cold and my hands were always cold and I never figured out a way to solve that problem.

Gentry: Was that the era where you got your trademark of your knit cap that everybody talks about as your trademark?

Garber: I guess so.

Gentry: It was really a matter of keeping warm.

Garber: It was just a matter of keeping warm. I didn't worry much about how I looked or anything because another thing you've got to remember, in those days women didn't wear pants. I wore a skirt.

Gentry: You wore a skirt and did all that?

Garber: Right. Because women didn't wear pants in those days.

Gentry: I didn't think of that.

Garber: Right. And I remember one year—I think it rained every Friday night all fall long. And so I would come home after work on Friday and I had an old skirt and a pair of old beat-up shoes and some wool socks and a sweatshirt. And I would put those on because I knew I was going to get soaked again that night. Then when I'd come home that night after the game, I'd just take them off and hang them on the line and put them back on the next Friday. And at the end of the season, I'd just open up the trash can and throw all of them—the shirt, the skirt, the shoes, the socks, everything into the trash because they were absolutely unusable.

Gentry: When did you start wearing pants?

Garber: Actually you didn't start wearing pants until—I'd stopped running the sidelines by the time we started wearing pants.

Gentry: Great.

Garber: I would give anything in the world to be able to dress as I do in Reeboks and slacks. It certainly would have been a whole lot more comfortable.

Gentry: Oh, yes. When I talked to your publisher and some of your colleagues about those early years, they said you had an extraordinary rapport with the high school students and really got down to their level more than anybody. And how did that develop? How did you get so close to the kids?

Garber: I don't know that I got down to their level or anything like that but I genuinely liked the kids. And I got to know them. As I say, I would go to practice and I would talk to them and they would talk to me. The kids were my friends just as the coaches were. And I realized that even though a kid might be 6'2" and weight 250 pounds and tower over me, he was still just a kid and he had all the doubts and all the concerns and all the questions in his mind that any kid growing up has. And I think that was one reason why I tried to be as gentle as possible with them because it was just so easy to hurt them and there was really no reason to hurt them. That didn't mean that you always had to say everybody had a great game. A player understood if he missed the extra point and lost the game, he knew that I had to write that John Jones missed the extra point. But you didn't have to belabor him about it. And you didn't have to say that Bill Smith played a poor game.

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Gentry: You were sometimes called to do things during the high school games that no male sportswriter would have done, weren't you? Like I heard once you sewed up a player's pants?

Garber: Oh, yes, I was. I went to a high school—this was Johnny Frederick's. I went to a high school basketball game one night and Johnny was sitting there and he had a pair of basketball pants. And I mean they were ripped from the top to the bottom. He said, "Mary, could you sew these up for me?" Well, in the first place, I don't know how to sew, but I felt it was perfectly safe for me to say, "Sure!" because where would you find a needle and thread in a basketball gym? So I told him, "Sure, if I just had a needle and thread, I'd be glad to do it." Johnny said, "Well, I've sent for one." And pretty soon two kids came back and they had gone to a house in the neighborhood and told the lady they were on scavenger hunt and they had to have a needle and thread and she'd given it to them.

High school gyms were not really well-lighted. The lighting was kind of dim. But I finally got the needle threaded and started sewing. And they were not very nice stitches. I was trying to get the hole mended, I didn't care what it looked like. And while I was sewing away, the girls' basketball game was going on and a pass got away from one of the players and hit me and knocked the needle and thread out of my hand and the pants on the floor. And I thought, "Well, I'm saved now." But those boys crawled under the stand and found the needle and thread and gave it back to me. Then Johnny sat on one side and the boys sat on the other side and knocked all the other errant passes away. And I finished the sewing and gave the pants to the boy.

I've never had such a horrible game in my life. I was so afraid every time that boy went up for a rebound, I could just see my stitches ripping and he being exposed in all his glory. But I'm proud to say that the stitches held and I hope his mother sewed them right when he took it home.

Gentry: That's amazing. Are there any other things you did for the teams?

Garber: Oh, yes, I used to make cookies for the children at Christmas. One Christmas I made crying towels for all the coaches. I just got plain cloth dish towels and stenciled them in the different colors of the schools and "Crying Towel for Coach" whatever the coach's name was. That made a big hit. In fact, I saw a coach just a few years ago and he said, "You know, I've still got that crying towel."

Gentry: Boy, that was probably in the forties or fifties.

Garber: That was back in the fifties, it wasn't in the forties. It was in the fifties, I guess.

Gentry: That's great. And that was just an idea you had.

Garber: Yes. But it was a strange relationship I had with the kids. I think they really liked to have me around and, as I say, I had fun with them. Several years ago this man came up to me and he said, "Do you remember losing your rain hat out at Rural Hall?" Well, I didn't remember. But he said, "You did. You went off and left your rain hat on the bench at the baseball practice field." And he said, "I took it home and I still have it." Now, we're talking about something that was twenty-five to thirty years ago. Can you imagine anybody picking up somebody's rain hat, a yucky old rain hat.

Gentry: Did he save it for you?

Garber: No, he wanted to keep it.

Gentry: As a souvenir.

Garber: As a souvenir.

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Garber: That helps you a whole lot. Another man stopped me one day and said that he wanted to thank me for giving him a chance to go to college. You know, I didn't know where in the world I'd ever helped him to go to college. But he said that the stories I had written about him had helped him to get a basketball scholarship and he had graduated from college. I don't know whether it's so much that the kids have any particular warm feeling for me but I represent a very wonderful time in their lives. High school sports give kids a chance to get some recognition, it gives them a chance to feel good about themselves, to be part of a group, to get respect among their peers. And it's a marvelous, marvelous time in their lives. They connect me with that and that's why they like me so much.

Gentry: Do you think your being a woman had anything to do with that? Or was it just a personality?

Garber: I don't think being a woman had anything to do with it. I think a boy could have done the same thing. It's just a question of letting people know that you're interested and that you care about them and that you're there to give them any help you can give them.

Gentry: Obviously, it meant a lot to them.

Let's talk a little bit about the black schools, particularly in the forties and fifties when segregation was at its height. Was anyone covering these black high school games?

Garber: I don't think so. We had students in each high school who served as correspondents. We paid them to call in games. We did the same thing with the black schools. The only difference was that our staff members did cover white high school games. We did not do that with the black schools.

When I started covering high schools, I felt that all the schools should get coverage. I felt that black parents were just as interested in what their children were doing as white parents were. I felt black kids worked just as hard, and there wasn't any reason why their games should not be in the paper. I started covering Atkins, which was the black city high school. They played their games on Friday afternoons after school. And I would go there to write about the games, as I did with the white schools when they played Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

And it was a rather unusual way to cover them because the principal of Atkins didn't think it was right or seemly for me to sit in the stands so he arranged for me to watch the games from the music room. The music room overlooked the football field and he had three high stools that he would pull up by the window and if it was warm we would open the windows and if it was cold we would close the windows. And the principal, Mr. Carter, and John Watson Moore who was the superintendent and I would sit up there in the music room and watch the games.

I remember one time Atkins was playing for the state championship. The Atkins band was just out of this world, they were so good. When they had the half-time show, the visiting band took so long that there wasn't time for the Atkins team to do their show. The kids were so disappointed. So Mr. Moore, who was a very nice person, sent down word to the band director that if the band members would not mind, he was very disappointed that he hadn't seen the show and he would be most appreciative if they would be kind enough to stay after the game and do their show for him. And he said he felt sure that the people who were at the game would like to see it, too. There were expressions of appreciation on those kids' faces because they'd worked so hard. So when the game was over, we all stayed and the players sat down and watched the show and all the fans stayed and they put on their half-time show for them. I thought that was such a considerate thing for that man to do. He was a diabetic and I know it was very hard for him to stay the extra time because he had to eat at certain times.

Gentry: Well, before you came along covering these games, were black sports relegated to the Negro page or whatever you called it?

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and they were from Cleo Wallace who at the time was football coach at Winston-Salem State. One of the floor nurses was in my room at the time and she said, "Who sent you those flowers?" And I said, "Coach Wallace from Winston-Salem State." Well, her eyes practically bugged out of her head. And she asked, "Do you know Coach Wallace?" And I said, "Yes, I do, he's a very close personal friend." The word went all up and down the hall that that lady in 402 knows Coach Wallace and Coach Wallace is a friend of hers. And I want you to know—I don't believe if George Bush went to the hospital, he would get any more service than I got. All I had to say was, "I would certainly like to have a cup of coffee," and boy, they'd go make it and bring it to me.

Gentry: Because he was a prominent coach?

Garber: No, because he was black and most of them were black.

Gentry: Oh, they were black, too, okay.

Garber: It gave me a status that I would never have had without it. And I told Cleo about that and he said, "Well, I'm glad I did one good thing for you, anyhow."

Gentry: You came from a prominent family and you know, prominent families generally have black help. So your parents, did they feel the same way about blacks as you, just sort of color blind?

Garber: No, I think my parents because they were brought up a generation ahead of me were different, but I think my mother had the attitude that you treat all people decently and fairly and that you are kind and considerate of all people. And I think a lot of that rubbed off on me. This is just something I have always felt. I don't remember ever feeling any other way. I always have accepted people for what they are because it's my philosophy that everyone in the world can do something better than I can do it, and everyone in the world can teach me something I don't know. That's true of any people, anywhere, at any time.

Gentry: It's a great attitude. Now, how did the black coaches treat you. They were very friendly towards you, weren't they?

Garber: Most of them were. There was one who was a basketball coach at Atkins. And he and I had a little problem. He was never rude, he was never unkind, but he just sort of kept me at arm's length. And I tried everything but I couldn't get through to him. So I went to Bighouse and I talked to him about it. And it was interesting because the young man who was the coach—I'd known his father who had coached in another high school in the western part of the state and we'd been good friends so I couldn't understand why I couldn't get through to this guy. So I told Bighouse about it and asked him what I should do. And he explained to me that the young man was very shy and that he just couldn't get used to working with a white lady. And he said, "If you will just continue to do as you're doing and be patient, he'll come around." And it was about a week later that I went over to the school and went by his classroom and we started talking. We covered the basketball that we needed to cover. Then we just started talking about things in general, nothing very spectacular. And all of a sudden, I looked at my watch and it was quarter to six. There was not a soul in the school but he and I. And he looked at his watch at the same time, he said—

Gentry: You had been talking for hours?

Garber: Right. We had been talking for about two hours. And he said, "Gosh, we'd better get out of here." So we left and ever after that, he was one of my best friends, he went out of his way to help me, he was just one of the nicest coaches I've ever known. And he went on and coached in college and we were always very, very good friends.

Gentry: You probably covered him again then.

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Garber: Right. Why embarrass a kid and make him look bad? That doesn't accomplish anything. And I'm certainly not going to say, "That's not the way you're supposed to talk, you're supposed to say it this way." But I figure if they tell me what they want to say and then I correct the English and put it in good form, maybe they'll learn from it.

Gentry: Sure. Sure.

Garber: I remember one coach—and this was Tom Cash—I asked him one time for a statement after a game. And he said, "I can't think of anything, but make up something for me and be sure I show good sportsmanship and use good grammar."

Gentry: That's great. Did you?

Garber: No, I didn't make it up. He told me what I wanted to know. He was just being funny.

Gentry: Now, you and David Lash have a tennis tournament named after you.

Garber: Right. There's a group of black men who had the Winston-Salem Sportsmen Club. They used to get together and meet at the black YMCA and pick football games and do anything that a sports club does. During the early years of high school sports, all the white schools had athletic banquets and the schools would pay for them or the parents would bring food. But the black schools had no way to do that, there wasn't any way that they could have football banquets or basketball banquets or any of the things that the white schools did. So the Sportsmen's Club decided that they would have a banquet each year for the black athletes. You had to be a varsity athlete, stay out for sports all during the year, and the kicker was you had to make a "C" average in your studies. They had it over at the YMCA and they usually had some prominent black athlete come. They had Jim Brown one year, they've had really outstanding people—so it was something the kids really wanted to do.

And one year David said to me, "The boys want you to come to the banquet." Well, if you're a high school writer, you go to so many banquets that the last thing you want to do is go to a banquet. And this particular banquet was on April the 19th which is my birthday. So I said, "David, thanks very much but that's my birthday and I'd like to be home with my family that day." And a couple of days later he came back and said, "The boys are very disappointed. They want you to come to this very much and I know it's your birthday but please come, they will be so disappointed." I couldn't figure out why in the world the boys would be disappointed because I couldn't imagine why they would care one way or the other whether I was there. Jim Brown was going to speak and that was important. But I didn't want to offend David and I didn't want to do anything that was wrong so I said, "Okay, I'll come." When I got there, they gave me an award for sportswriter of the year. And they were so delighted that they had put something over on me, that I didn't have any idea about it. They just got the biggest kick out of that.

The tennis tournament was started by the Twin City Kiwanis Club, a black organization. The Sportsmen also established a Winston-Salem-Forsyth County high school sports hall of fame on the grounds that college players get in halls of fame and professional players do but there's no place that recognizes kids who are outstanding just in high school. And so this has been set up by the Sportsmen's group and it's been going on now for—oh, I think about thirteen years. Carl Eller and Happy Hairston and I were among the first inductees.

Gentry: Oh, that's great. It's a good idea.

Garber: It is. It's a real good thing and it's nice every year they take in some players and these guys come back and it's just fine to see that almost every one of them have been successful. The group they took in last year, one of them was the director of students at a university, another one was a lawyer, another one was an

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Now, several of them came up and said, "Mary, what happened?" They were confused. I went down on the bench where the Atkins players were and those kids were terrified, some of them were crying. They couldn't understand how it had gotten out of hand so quickly.

So I talked with David Lash, the coach. Then I went over to the North players and they were the same way. These were just frightened kids. It's something that had started with you-push-me-and-I-push-you and then you-hit-me-and-I-hit-you and it just got out of hand. I had gathered all the notes I needed and started walking to my car. All of a sudden I looked around and David Lash was beside me. And he said, "Mary, I'm going to walk you to your car just in case." So he walked me to my car, saw me into my car and saw me drive away.

I came home the back way through the white section of town and I had no problem whatsoever. But Luix went through the ghetto area which you had to go through to get to the Bowman-Gray stadium and his car was riddled with rocks. We got together the next day and we both agreed we were scared to death. He was black and he was scared and I was white and I was scared. But that was really the only time that I remember anything really getting out of hand. And after that, they set up an interracial committee to see what could be done to straighten out situations like that. As far as I know, we never had anything like that again.

Gentry: So now there really isn't a problem, no obvious problem.

Garber: Not really, no. I mean, you're always going to have some prejudice.

Gentry: There are no such things as white schools and black schools now, they're all completely integrated.

Garber: Yes, they're all integrated. And of course, you're always going to have kids who make problems. I know one time we had high school basketball games over at the coliseum. And one night over there, there was a black kid who was just really being obnoxious and making a lot of trouble. The police didn't know what to do. Bighouse was there. Bighouse went over to him and put his arm around the boy and talked to him for a few minutes and the boy nodded his head and turned and walked out the door, just as quietly as he could be. I went up to Bighouse and I said, "What did you say to that kid?" And he said, "I went over to him and I said, 'You've had too much to drink, haven't you?'" And the boy said yes, he had. Bighouse said, "And you know what you're doing? You're ruining a good time for a whole lot of kids, black and white, by the way you're acting. Don't you want to go home?" And he said, "Yes, I do." And he went home. I don't think anybody in the world could have handled that situation but Bighouse.

Gentry: Of course, Bighouse was about six foot seven.

Garber: Yes, he's a big guy. But the thing was he was quiet and he gave the kid a way out. He didn't say, "You're a bad, nasty boy and you ought to be locked up in jail." He just let the boy know that he was doing a thing that was hurting other people and that that was not the right thing to do.

Gentry: I'll bet he's very good with his students.

Garber: He was good. He was very good. He's an amazing person. I was in his office one time and a young man came in and he said, "Coach," and asked a question. Well, I could understand the young man very well. Bighouse said, "I can't hear you." And so the boy repeated the question. And Bighouse said, "I still can't hear you." And the boy kept raising his voice and speaking louder and louder. And Bighouse kept saying, "I can't hear you." And finally Bighouse said, "I can't hear you and I won't hear you until you take your cap off when you come into the house." So the boy took off his cap and asked the question and Bighouse answered it and he went out.

Gentry: Oh, that's funny.

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So I came back home and I had talked with Leon Dure who was the managing editor and he wrote to the athletic directors at what they called the Big Four which is Duke, Carolina, State and Wake Forest and said that it was up to the Winston-Salem Journal/Sentinel to decide who they sent to cover the game and that when they turned me away, they were turning away the Journal/Sentinel, not me. And of course, all the athletic directors didn't want to get involved in an argument with one of the biggest papers in the state so they all agreed that I could sit in the press box. And I never had any trouble after that.

Gentry: You were never thrown out of the press box again?

Garber: No. No.

Gentry: Then didn't you wear a badge for years that said "No Women and Children Allowed in the Press Box."

Garber: Oh, yes. Of course, in every press box you wear a tag which shows that you're entitled to be in the press box. And it's like your ticket to the game. But most of them, even up until a few years ago would say women and children were not allowed in the press box. At one time, it said women, children and pets. I don't know why they dropped the pets but I wore the tag with women and children and so did several other women sportswriters.

Gentry: And nobody ever protested?

Garber: What difference did it make? It didn't make any difference. Women were still in. If they wanted to use up their old tags that said women and children are not admitted, it didn't bother me. I suppose I should have objected but I didn't.

Gentry: And then you had a problem, didn't you, with having no women's bathrooms in the press boxes for years?

Garber: Oh, yes, for a long time—up until just the last few years, there were no women's bathrooms in the press box. And when I had to go to the bathroom, I'd have to wait until half-time and run down and get in the line at the women's restroom in the regular arena and sometimes you had to move fast to get back. But now almost all the press boxes have separate men's and women's restrooms or sometimes they have co-ed and men and women use the same one.

Gentry: Were you accepted by the male sportswriters in the press box in those early years?

Garber: Nobody bothered me. Now, I understand that some of the women who are covering sports now have been called very ugly names and been treated very nastily by some of the men in the press box.

Gentry: Now?

Garber: Yes.

Gentry: Still?

Garber: Still.

Gentry: I'm speaking of the forties and fifties.

Garber: I never have had that problem at all. They didn't pay any attention to me. We just sort of sat next to each other and didn't have much to do with each other. About the only time that I remember was I was

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Garber: No. No. Because you've got to remember that up until the seventies there was no civil rights law, there was nothing that made the papers say that they could keep me. And so I didn't want to cause any trouble, I didn't want to do anything to be an embarrassment to the paper. So I was very careful in what I did and I tried to walk the straight and narrow. I think it was probably a good idea.

Gentry: Is that what you'd call your Jackie Robinson philosophy?

Garber: I guess so because Jackie Robinson was breaking in at that time and he was playing with the Dodgers. And he had to take a whole lot more than I ever had to take because people weren't that ugly to me as they were to him. But he learned to keep his mouth shut and to mind his own business and do his job and he was accepted. And I felt that if he could take all the things he took, I could certainly take what little I had to take. There was very little of it.

Gentry: Didn't a black Wake Forest player once give you some good advice about things like that?

Garber: Yes, he did. His name was Robert Grant and he was one of the first black players to play for Wake Forest. And of course, he had to take a lot of the stuff that anyone breaking a line does. We were talking one time and I was asking him how he had adjusted to being the first black player. He said one of the most important things was to not look for discrimination. He said, "You'll find enough of it. There will be enough discrimination that is true without you getting upset over something that doesn't mean any harm." And I found that that was a really, really good piece of advice. I tried whenever something upset me to think whether this was really important to my job or whether the person who did it really meant to hurt me. And to be sure that the things that I got upset about were really important and not just something that was part of my ego.

For an example, when I was kept out of the press box, Leon Dure helped me with that. But when I was kept out of the Southern Conference Sportswriters, he said he would have no part in interfering with that because that was up to the men whether they wanted to take me in or not. He said, "That has nothing to do with your job." And I realize now that it was just an ego thing, I wanted to be accepted and it hurt me because I wasn't accepted. But it really wasn't that important. I think that's one of the hardest things a woman sportswriter has to learn. Some things are important, some things aren't. If you waste your energy and strength getting upset over things that just hurt your ego, you're never going to get anywhere.

Gentry: I suppose through the years you've faced a lot of petty little prejudice.

Garber: Yes, and even though you know it's not important, it does hurt you. I know one time I was covering a football media thing up in Boone. We went to lunch and all of us were going down the line. I got in line to go down to the cafeteria and the lady at the cafeteria stopped me and said, "Ma'am, you're going to have to go someplace else because this is just for the football people." I mean, she never asked me if I was with the football people, she never did anything—

Gentry: She assumed you weren't.

Garber: She just assumed that I wasn't.

And then I went into a press conference at Carolina and the man on the gate let every man through and when I came through, he checked my credentials. These are unimportant things, they don't mean a thing but they are really annoying.

Gentry: At the time they hurt, though.

Garber: They don't really hurt, they just make you mad.

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carried my bag into the hotel for me. It was a tiny, little bag, just a little overnight canvas bag. It wasn't heavy. But I thought that was strange—here they give you all this flak all the way down and then they carry your bag for you. And then that night at the Clemson dinner, the jokes continued. Helen and I totally and completely ignored them.

Gentry: They were doing that for your purpose.

Garber: Oh, yes, they were doing it just to see if they could embarrass us. And we paid no attention to them whatsoever. And even Charlie Pell who was the coach said, "Mary, this isn't right." And I said, "Don't pay any attention to them, they're just trying to see if they can embarrass us." Then by the next day, we went back to Duke. They sort of let up. And at lunch that day, Helen and I sat down with them and they made no move to stay away from us or anything like that. At Duke that night there were no dirty jokes, there was nothing, there was just a perfectly normal meal and nobody gave us a hard time at all.

And the next day we finished up at Carolina, we were sitting on the grass by the fieldhouse there waiting for the bus to come and pick us up. And one of our chief tormentors was sitting next to me. And I said, "Now, come on, it really wasn't so bad having us along, was it?" And he looked at me and said, "No, you all done good, you can come back any time you want to." I thought, "Hoo-ray, we have finally made it."

But the funny part about it is we stopped covering the ACC tour after that.

Gentry: This was in the eighties, right?

Garber: Yes. It was just a few years before I retired. I don't think Helen ever went back, either. But at least we know we can come back if we want to. You know, a lot of times when you are the only woman in the place, they start swapping stories. One of the times that I really was embarrassed, I was at a high school coaches' clinic. One of the speakers told an off-color joke. The joke was okay, that didn't bother me at all. All the men laughed and I did, too. But he was the secretary for the National High School Federation and the North Carolina high school federation man got up and went to him and explained that there was a lady there. Well, he stopped and he said, "I am sorry, I have just been told that there's a lady present. I apologize for that story, I am very sorry."

And every man in the place turned around and looked at me. I thought I was absolutely going to die. If he had just left the thing alone and paid no attention to it whatsoever, it wouldn't have been embarrassing. But when he apologized and 250 men turned around and stared at me, my face was just as red as it could be. And I'll never forget Wilbon Clary, he was the coach at Children's Home. He sat next to me and he reached over and patted my shoulder. He made me feel so good, as much as if to say, "Hey, don't let it get you down."

Gentry: In all those years of being the only woman sportswriter in the region, how did you compete with men and work around the problem of not getting in the dressing room to get interviews?

Garber: In a lot of ways, I think it was easier then than it is now because even though there's supposed to be equal access and women can go in the dressing room, some places won't let you in, some places will, and some places you have to go to an interview room. You really never know what the situation's going to be. I knew that I could not go into the dressing room so I learned to work around it. And I did it in various ways. When I was working on the evening paper, it really wasn't a problem. I had to wait forty-five minutes or an hour and that was annoying but it wasn't an impossible situation. I would tell sports information directors what players I wanted to talk with. I found afterwards when I compared notes with other women who were covering sports that they did the same thing. I always asked for more players than I really wanted to talk with because you could always count on at least one and maybe two of them slipping out the back door without talking to you because they were tired. I mean, they'd played and they'd answered the same question nine thousand times.

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Garber: No, no, no. What Bones did was to have his coach's conference outside the dressing room—at that time, all the coaches had their conferences after the games in the dressing room. And I couldn't go in there. So one day Bones said that that was not fair and he promised me that he would always have his press conference outside the dressing room. And once he started it, all the coaches did it.

But one particular game, Carolina and Wake Forest had a big fight. And so, you know, people were milling around outside. And there was no way Bones could come out and I understood that. But he stuck his head out the door and he said, "Give me a minute and I'll fix it up so you can get in." And at the time, the Wake Forest dressing room was divided into two sections. And the boys dressed in one area and it was kind of like a meeting room in the other. And he said, "You can come in here on this side and the players know you're coming and they won't come walking in here without any clothes on."

So I went in there and he had his press conference. And I'll never forget the looks on faces when I came out with all the men writers from the dressing room because they thought I'd probably been in there with them but I really hadn't.

Gentry: So the only time you really got in was probably in the seventies, then, the time in the shower.

Garber: The time in the shower, of course. But one of the first times I got in was—I think it was '74, I'm not sure, but it was the year that State won the national championship. This was the finals of the ACC basketball tournament. State had won and there was a TV crew in the State dressing room taking some films. So of course the boys had to stay dressed. And Eddie Biedenbach, who was the assistant coach at State, came to me and said, "You've always wanted to get in the dressing room. Now you can." So I went in and he said, "Now, when the TV crew gets through, you're going to have to leave because the boys are going to be changing." And I said, "Just tap me on the shoulder and let me know when they get ready to go."

And I had plenty of time to talk to the players. When the TV crew was through, Eddie tapped me on the shoulder and I got up to leave. And Monty Towe was sitting by the door. And as I started out, he said, "I'm sure glad you got into the dressing room." And on the spur of the moment, I reached over and gave him a big hug and a kiss. And all of those State boys really laughed—Monty was so embarrassed. I didn't mean to embarrass him.

Gentry: And you had a few friends helping you. Didn't you have a door guard named John Baker?

Garber: Yes, that was at State. The guy on the State football dressing room door was a man named John Baker. He was built on the same lines as Bighouse. I was down there one time and he wanted to know who I was and I told him. And he said, "Little lady, you can have a bad time because you can't go in the dressing room." And I said, "That's right." He said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do for you. You come down early after every one of the State games and I'll slip you into the coach's room where they have the post-game conference and you won't have to go through the dressing room. If you want to talk to any players, you tell me and I'll see they don't get out the door till they talk to you."

So I would go down about two or three minutes before the game was over and we'd stand by the dressing room door and watch the end of the game. And then as soon as the game was over, he would unlock the dressing room door and let me go in the coach's room. It was really nice because in late November it gets cold and I was sitting there nice and warm and cozy and everybody else was standing outside waiting for the ten-minute cooling-off period to be over so they could come in. And then I would tell Mr. Baker what players I wanted. And every one of them would come by because he wouldn't let them out the door.

One time I was sitting in there waiting, Dave Buckey who was the quarterback had had a big game and everybody wanted to talk to him. Mr. Baker came to the door and says, "Have you seen everybody?" And I said, "Everybody but Dave Buckey." And he says, "Well, he hasn't gotten past me but I'm going to go get

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cooling-off period, everybody would be admitted to the dressing room and the guys would take precautions to stay dressed or put towels around or something like that. And the women could be there for fifteen minutes and then they'd have to get out. And never in all the time that I covered basketball after that, never was I asked to leave, I always had plenty of time to do what I wanted to do. There was never any problem.

Here's something that I really don't understand. I don't see any reason why when a player goes into the shower he can't wrap a towel about himself or put on a bathrobe. He doesn't have to walk around without any clothes on. And just last year, I did the Winston-Salem State-North Carolina Central when Bighouse was shooting for his eight hundredth win. And he didn't get it but I went to the Winston-Salem State dressing room. I wasn't really working but I just wanted to see Bighouse. And when I got in there, I found that the players were getting undressed so I just backed out. And Buddy Taylor who's the trainer at Winston-Salem State saw me and he said, "Don't leave, we'll take care of that." And he spoke to the boys and they all put towels around themselves before they went to the shower. And I thought it was a very considerate thing for them to do because I know it was probably some trouble for them. But they don't have to go through all that sort of stuff. It can be worked out if people just try and work together and help each other.

Gentry: Did any other male sportswriters support you back in the days when you never could get in there and nothing was working?

Garber: Oh, yes. There was a sportswriter for the High Point Enterprise named Bill Currie. And when I got thrown out of the press box and from the sportswriter's association, he wrote a scathing column saying that this was utterly ridiculous and this was not 1850 or anything like that but it was time things were changed. And I appreciated it very much. He and Scoop McCrary, who worked for the Lexington paper and I had what we called the Evening Paper Aide Society in which we would pool information and try to help each other. We had a lot of fun doing that.

Gentry: Well, after like thirty or forty years of not getting into the locker rooms and working around them, how did you feel when you finally got in? It was no big deal or—

Garber: No, it has never been a big deal. I remember one of the first times I went into a locker room was during the NCAA playoffs and I think it was Temple. And the Connecticut sports information director was helping me, he was getting quotes. And finally he stuck his head out the door and he says, "Mary, everybody's dressed, come on in." So I went in. And there were crowds of people around them. I didn't know the Temple players. Once they got the uniforms off, I couldn't tell one from the other. And somebody up front would ask a question. I couldn't hear what he said and I couldn't hear the boy's answer. And I thought, "Golly, ding, to think I spent all my time wanting to get into this place. This is worse than waiting outside."

Gentry: You had it all worked out.

Garber: Yes.

Gentry: I mean over the years.

Garber: The only problem was when you got on the morning paper you really didn't have time to wait and it really was a pressure situation then. And women have to have equal access. They just have to, that's all there is to it.

Gentry: Do you know what year equal access came about? When women got equal access to the locker room?

Garber: I don't remember. Seventy-something.

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Garber: I don't think so. I think I could probably go anyplace but as I say, you always run into the possibility that somebody is going to try to keep you out. Of course, there are certain rules and regulations that are set up for everybody. For instance, in covering tennis at the U.S. Open or at Wimbledon and places like that, writers are not permitted, not men or women are permitted in the dressing room. The players are brought to an interview room and the player's required to come but never are writers allowed down on the court or are they allowed in the dressing room in tennis at any time. And that's everybody. That's men and women.

Gentry: Do you think the young women sportswriters coming in during the last decade of equal access, have it much easier than you did getting their story?

Garber: They probably have it easier getting their stories but I think that they may have even more problems than I did because you get into this conflict of regulations being made for equal access and the interview rooms and people are not being allowed in the dressing room under certain situations. Unfortunately, a lot of the male sportswriters blame that on the women and they don't ever stop to think that they wouldn't like it if it happened to them. They think that the women are trying to start something and they've been very ugly to some of them. And I think sometimes the women have a really tough job.

For instance, Dale Murphy who used to be with the Atlanta Braves felt so strongly about women not being in the dressing room that he refused to talk to anybody if there were any women in the dressing room. Well, you know, that makes it awfully hard on the guys and it makes it awfully hard on the woman who's just in there trying to do her job.

Gentry: So how did they handle it?

Garber: That's just the way he does. He won't talk when there's a woman in there.

Gentry: So the women have to stand out.

Garber: So the women have to either get out or he won't talk. I mean, I respect it if that's the way he feels but—

Gentry: Is he the only one like that?

Garber: I'm sure there are others. Some of them have just been real nasty about it, they really have. But it's just a tough situation. And then, of course, there are so many women now. At least when I was doing it, I was the only one—if there was going to be anybody messing up, it was going to be me. And I had a chance to try to straighten it out if I did mess up. But now with so many women covering, some of them don't do a very good job. And it's unfortunate that whereas if John Jones is a big jerk and nobody likes him among the sportswriters, then John Jones is a big jerk. But if Mary Jones is a big jerk, then all women sportswriters are big jerks and that's just not fair.

Gentry: No.

Garber: Because Mary and John can be jerks by themselves and that doesn't have anything to do with—I remember right after John Lucas was coming back from his trouble with drugs and he thought that he'd like to get back to playing tennis. He came to Tanglewood which is a park near here and a tennis tournament we had. And it was the first time that he had come out in public since his drug rehabilitation. I'd known John since he was ten years old and I was and I am very fond of him. So I was looking forward to seeing him. And a young lady from one of the Washington papers came down. When John came in, he had his wife with him. We both walked up to her and I gave John a big hug and he introduced me to his wife. And the young lady from the Washington paper said, "John Lucas, the last time I saw you, you were in the Washington Bullets dressing room and you didn't have any clothes on." Well, of course, poor John was so embarrassed to have something

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Gentry: You were elected president?

Garber: I was president and served a term. Just about everybody who stays in the organization gets to be president one time or another.

Gentry: Well, not if they don't like you.

Garber: Oh, I don't know. I think just about everybody gets to be president.

Gentry: It's a huge organization?

Garber: Yes, it is.

Gentry: Are there many women in it?

Garber: Helen Ross is in it now. She's from the Greensboro Daily News and she's in. I don't know whether Lisa's in it or not.

Gentry: Just two or three women?

Garber: There are not that many women covering sports in our area, there're still just a few. I don't know how many women there are in it now since I have—in quote, unquote—"retired," I don't go to the meetings any more. Once you retire, you get to be a lifetime member. You don't have to pay any dues. I'm a lifetime member.

Gentry: Now the other big organization was the Football Writers?

Garber: The Football Writers. And they barred women. They were the ones that kept me out of the press box. They had a national rule that women aren't allowed to sit in the press box. But that sort of faded away and in 1965 I wrote and asked them if I could join and they said yes. And so I sent my dues and I've been a member ever since.

Gentry: It's a national organization?

Garber: It's a national organization. And I've served two terms on their board of directors. I never did anything but I served on the board of directors.

Gentry: Did that make you feel good when you finally broke in?

Garber: It sure did, it sure did because all of those things show that you have been accepted as a full-fledged sportswriter and that they're not concerned about whether you're a man or a woman.