Oral history interview with David Gwynn, 2018

Scott Hinshaw: Today is Tuesday, September 18th 2018. My name is Scott Hinshaw. I'm in the Alumni House with David Gwynn to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection. Good morning.

David Gwynn: Good morning.

Scott Hinshaw: I'd like to start the interview by asking you about your background. Can you tell me when and where you were born?

David Gwynn: I was born August 10, 1964 right here in Greensboro, specifically at Cone Hospital. There's photographic evidence of that, so.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay, excellent. Can you tell me about your family and your home life, what did your parents do?

David Gwynn: Okay. I did grow up in Greensboro, in Southwest Greensboro. My mom was a career employee of the Internal Revenue Service. She worked for 30 years there. At the end of her time, she was actually working in computer and facility security for IRS when she retired in 1985.

David Gwynn: My dad, there's a lot of things early on. He was a Greensboro fire fighter for a little awhile. Ultimately, he settled into the furniture finish 00:01:00industry. He worked for DuPont for about 20 years when they had a plant here in Greensboro. After that he worked for a couple different companies. His last job working with furniture finishers, I think, he was working for PPG in the early '80s.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. Cool. What schools did you attend?

David Gwynn: I went to Alderman Elementary School for one year then went to Vandalia Christian School for six very interesting years, Allen Junior High and Smith High School.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. Did you have any favorite subjects when you were in high school?

David Gwynn: I was a geography/history person, which kind of continued through the rest of my life as well.

Scott Hinshaw: You had some good teachers is that what?

David Gwynn: Oh yeah, definitely, it was a thing I was always interested in. Also, when I was in high school, I also took video production class. I really enjoyed that a lot too. I, at some point, thought I was going to go into broadcasting as a career. I'm kind of glad that didn't happen.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. When did you attend UNCG as an undergraduate?

David Gwynn: I was here twice as an undergraduate. I did the shifts or the segmented system. I was here from fall 1982 to fall 1984. The first time at which point I left for a while, I worked for about four or four and a half years. Then, came back in the fall of 1989, graduated in fall of 1991.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: Then, left again for a few years and came back and got my master's here in 2007 to 2009.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. First, we're going to focus on your undergraduate career. Can you tell me why you chose UNCG?

David Gwynn: I chose UNCG for the same reason a lot of people in the triad area choose UNCG. It was close.

Scott Hinshaw: Right.

David Gwynn: I could actually live at home while I was going to school, which I did. I did not live on campus here. I actually commuted. I lived in my parent's 00:03:00house while I was going to school here. Both times actually as undergrad because when I moved back, the idea was that I would find a place but I ended up just staying in their house.

Scott Hinshaw: It's a lot more economical that way.

David Gwynn: Yes, it is.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah.

David Gwynn: UNCG, I think, at that time was ... had a lot more of a local focus, it didn't have quite as broad as statewide and nationwide enrollment, they had some. Originally, I was planning to do broadcasting as a major. There was a reasonably good broadcast cinema program here at the time. It seemed like a good call at the time.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. What did you end up with as your major?

David Gwynn: I doubled majored in geography and sociology. In both disciplines, I concentrated in urban planning, urban studies. I also ended up with a psychology minor but that was basically just because I was a psychology major at 00:04:00one point early here. I only need to take one more course to get the minor so I figured I might as well.

Scott Hinshaw: Right, so why not. Yeah. Tell me about UNCG in the 1980s and early '90s what do you remember about it just layout what it was like.

David Gwynn: It was a lot different. Physically obviously, it was a lot different. It was a much more compact campus. A lot of places where there are campus buildings now. There were houses then. A lot of those houses were serving as campus buildings and campus offices at that time. There were still houses.

Scott Hinshaw: Right.

David Gwynn: Elliott Center, for example, was a lot smaller at that point. It was before it got gutted I think in the 2000s and extended. I spend a lot of my undergraduate time in Elliott Center as we'll get into later. There's no connector between Elliott Center and the library at that point while when I came back to Greensboro, the first time after they built it, I thought, "Wow, what a stroke of genius, why didn't somebody think of that a ton earlier?" Because it's 00:05:00always back and forth, why not make it easy to do it back and forth.

David Gwynn: It was a much smaller school. When I first got here, it was, we were still less than 20 years after UNCG went co-ed at that point. Which seem like a long time to me at the time, because it happened before I was born but that seems like no time at all now.

David Gwynn: It was a lot more woman-centric at UNCG at the time. The way I've said this a lot in the last couple of years, I hope this doesn't sound offensive in any way, there is not so much of a testosterone influence here at that point.

David Gwynn: There were still majority woman students here. Sports was not a thing that anybody really -- we have teams but nobody cared. It was not a big thing. When I got here, they had just introduced the Greek system at UNCG, which 00:06:00was controversial in some ways at the time. Yeah, that lead to one of the first controversies when I was here too was the first homecoming queen being elected at UNCG, which was controversial in its own way.

David Gwynn: It was a time of change for UNCG specially. That was becoming a broader population base and more male focused at the time. UNCG had the reputation when I came in, and it still does, that the G stood for gay. It was UNC Gay because a lot of the men who were here whether through perception because it was primary a women school or because of a lot of the programs. There were a lot of gay men here or a lot of people that were perceived as gay man whether they were or not.

David Gwynn: It was definitely a different environment. It was a smaller environment, I think, more people knew each other than.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Yeah, more compact, less people as well. You spend a lot of time in the Elliott Center, can you tell me a little more about that and what you did there, what kind of activities?

David Gwynn: Oh yeah, I was involved in a lot of student activities actually even before I was a student here.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: I was involved in the radio station, WUAG that was my primary area and was also pretty heavily involved in the Student Government Association here as well. With WUAG, I don't know if we want to do that now or if we come back to it later.

Scott Hinshaw: We can talk about it now, I was asking about it because you had said you're in there --

David Gwynn: At that time the radio station actually was in Elliott Center.

Scott Hinshaw: Was it? Okay, I didn't know it was there. Okay.

David Gwynn: It had been in Elliott Center since it was established as WEHL back in the '60s. It was on the third floor. The offices were right down the hall from student government. I spent much of my life in that hallway which I don't think exists in Elliott Center anymore. We had our little suite with the radio station student government and our own bathroom.

Scott Hinshaw: That was everything.

David Gwynn: It was very comfortable. I slept many nights on my couch in that area.

Scott Hinshaw: Let's go ahead and start talking about music and the music thing here at UNCG in Tate Street. Can you talk about maybe important places for music around UNCG or?

David Gwynn: Yeah, you have to understand at that point in North Carolina, you could drink at age 18 in those days. It was 18 for beer and wine and 21 for a liquor which never made any sense to me whatsoever but okay. It goes before the National 21 Drinking Age came in which I think was around '85 or '86.

David Gwynn: I was actually one of the last generations that could successfully drink all the way through that period and I did. It was a lot different in those days. I think in a lot of college towns, there was a lot more of a scene around colleges because younger people could actually go to bars and see bands. Bars 00:09:00could afford to do that because the younger people could drink as well. Being college students, they did.

Scott Hinshaw: Right.

David Gwynn: Usually to excess. There was a lot more music nearby right around UNCG in those days. The biggest club obviously and the most famous one of those days was Fridays on Tate Street which is where recently where the Subway and Leon's were. I think the Subway moved out and there's something else in there now and I forget what it is.

Scott Hinshaw: It changes often.

David Gwynn: Yeah. The Subway was there for like 30 years almost. Once it was gone, yes, that little area changes a lot. Fridays was an amazing place. It was this little pizza deli place by day and there's a really good roast beef sandwich if you ever went in there at lunch. It was kind of dark and grungy it had ... I think in the '70s it had been a place called Pizzaville, which actually was related to and started by the founders of Biscuitville.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay, great which is a Greensboro company, founded in Greensboro.

David Gwynn: Yeah. They branched out into pizza in a different way later on. By night, they had bands in there. I think starting probably in the early age, I remember knowing about the place when I was in high school, of course, I couldn't go because I wasn't 18.

David Gwynn: R.E.M. played there, '81ish -- I know there's actually a lot of -- There's a couple of really good bootlegs of R.E.M. shows from 1981 that you can find online when they're playing at parties. It was kind of one of their haunts, they played there a lot.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: In fact, they were pretty big by 1984 when Fridays closed. They actually made a trip up here and played closing night at Fridays.

Scott Hinshaw: Awesome.

David Gwynn: Which I didn't get to see and I'm really mad because I had agreed to work security at a Genesis concert the coliseum that night. I missed the final performance of R.E.M. at Fridays seeing Genesis. Not that I'm still bitter 00:11:00about that or anything but Fridays was great. Everybody played in Fridays. I saw the Violent Femmes there. I saw just tons and tons of bands, from local bands like Treva Spontaine and The Graphics, aka The Graphic.

David Gwynn: Why am I drawing a blank on lots of band names? This is sort of what I used to do. There was just tons of local bands. I worked at the radio station too. In a lot of cases, I always had comp tickets. I was always guest listed for a lot of these stuff too. For example, when I saw the Violent Femmes, I'd actually just interview them at the radio station earlier that day. When I came into the front door, actually, I can't remember if it was Gordon Gano or Brian Ritchie actually saw me at the door and came to the door and told the door 00:12:00got to let me in, which is cool.

Scott Hinshaw: Yes, yes.

David Gwynn: They weren't as big then as they are now. Everybody played at Fridays. It was a tiny little hole in the wall kind of club. It was much smaller than the Blind Tiger or anything like that now.

David Gwynn: There were other clubs on Tate Street too. The other big one during that time was the Nightshade Café, which was in the basement of a restaurant called Hong Kong House, which is now called Boba House. Because I'm all in the history of buildings, I will tell you that had originally been an Apple House Diner which was a local chain of diners here in Greensboro that actually featured prominently in Tate Street segregation in the early '60s. That's a whole different story.

David Gwynn: The basement has, I think in the late '60s, something called the Apple Cellar which was kind of a club then, a music venue, which I imagine all 00:13:00kinds of hippies doing weird things with lights in the '60s and '70s. By the '80s, it was kind of a dumpy little club in the basement called the Nightshade Café. That was where you would have maybe small or local acts, Eugene Chadbourne I know used to play there a lot.

David Gwynn: People may or may not know, he was very famous in people that are really into obscure music from the early '80s. He did things like play electric rakes. He was affiliated with a band called Shockabilly.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. There was a lot of cool, interesting, different music there as well, it wasn't even --

David Gwynn: Yeah, there were other venues around too that weren't so much band-centric like New York Pizza, which I think now has bands as well. They didn't have bands in those days. They did have really cheap beer on Tuesday and Thursday nights. A quarter draft and two dollar pitchers, you can imagine the high quality of the beer they were serving at that price.

Scott Hinshaw: College students though?

David Gwynn: Yeah, the fact that they were serving cheap beer actually made the pizza taste good. There you go.

David Gwynn: As we moved into the late '80s, I wasn't living here so I don't know so much about what the scene was at that point. When I moved back, there weren't -- drinking age was up to 21. Most of the musical venues in Greensboro were not specifically right around Tate Street at that point. There was a little club called The Edge I think which was in an old house, which is right about where the FedEx office is on Tate Street right now.

David Gwynn: When I was here earlier it was a restaurant called Mr. Rose Waters, but now it was -- They ripped out all the wall and it was made into a club. It's this alternative ravey kind of scene but in a little house in the late '80s, early '90s.

David Gwynn: Most of the facilities for music had moved downtown. There's this 00:15:00place like the Miracle House of Rock and Roll, the original SomeWhere Else Tavern which I think was on Freeman Mill Road. Other places like that.

David Gwynn: Another big venue when I was here as an undergrad that I really liked, I had a lot of interesting memories of was Secret Garden. It was downtown. The building is still there. It was this weird little place. It was a Chinese restaurant by day and the owner decided he was going to actually make more money with the place by night.

David Gwynn: He would have alternative music dance night. That was actually the first place I did club DJ gigs at because he had sort of a deal with the radio station. We'd send somebody over there and I did that several times. He'd also have bands in there. That was the first place the Red Hot Chili Peppers played in Greensboro. I got to be around for the interview with them at the radio station the day before too. This was I think 1984.

Scott Hinshaw: You still have your interviews recorded or transcripts?

David Gwynn: I got a couple. I've got one that I did with The Fleshtones. That was in Charlotte. One with the band called Male Model that just wonder -- and The Skunks which was kind of a well-known band from Austin apparently. They both just sort of wondered in the radio station one night when I was on the air. I said, "Sure, I'll interview." Because I did the Saturday night shift, yeah, then we usually play it on Saturday night. They just sort of pop in beforehand.

Scott Hinshaw: All right. We're already deep in your radio stuff, can you can tell me, back up just a little bit and tell me how you got involved with the radio station, the campus radio station.

David Gwynn: I'm not going to say, knee deep in the hoopla. I'm just not. I got involved in the radio station actually the summer before I started at UNCG. I've been doing broadcasting related stuff when I was in high school and was planning to get in UNCG as a broadcast center my major. I had a friend from high school. She had actually just found out that WUAG actually, at that point, they actually 00:17:00let non-students work at the radio station in the summer.

David Gwynn: She was doing a jazz show there, which was an odd thing for her. She suggested that maybe I should come by and talk to them. I came by one day and they said, "Okay, you want to start at Saturday night?" I'm like, "Okay, well, is somebody going to show me how to do this stuff?"

David Gwynn: I had a training session. I was trained by like this 15-year-old kid who was working there which was sort of odd too. I mean, obviously, he wasn't student either. He trained me a little more then basically they just left me alone to work my first night.

David Gwynn: I was really mad because at that point, WUAG was also running Greensboro Hornets Baseball Games. There was one that night and there was a rain delay. My first night on the air I was scheduled to go from 10:00 to 1:00 and I didn't go on the air until like 12:15. I only had 45 minutes and I was like, "I 00:18:00hate this."

Scott Hinshaw: Tell me about what your job there was like and what were the responsibilities?

David Gwynn: On my first year, I was just a DJ. There was a lot of turmoil going on at the radio station at that point anyway. A little background, a year before, this was back when I was still in high school but I was sort of following it and knew what was going on and heard a lot more about it later.

David Gwynn: WUAG had been broadcasting for years and years in the educational band which is 88 to 92 FM at the princely power rating of 10 watts. The FCC mandated around 1980, 1981 that radio stations had to up their power to a minimum of something, I think, it was still ridiculously low at that point like 250 watts or something like that.

David Gwynn: There were only really two frequencies in the educational band where that could happen at that point. The UNCG board of trustees, bless their hearts, sat on their feet or sat on their hands, I'm not sure what metaphor I'm meaning, you know what I mean. We didn't get one of the frequencies basically.

David Gwynn: There had been a lot of discussion up to that point about turning the student radio station into an NPR affiliate. That would be all news and public affairs and NPR stuff. When they couldn't get one of these two frequencies, A&T and Guilford College grab these two frequencies for WNAA and WQFS respectively. That sort of ended that dream for the Board of Trustees.

David Gwynn: In a way, it was kind of a good thing for the radio station because if they were only going to be able to stay low wattage like that, the board of trustees didn't care. They figured there weren't any fundraising opportunities 00:20:00around the 10 watt radio stations. They didn't care. What happened though is that they had to do a frequency change because they essentially had to find a frequency where they could operate at their 10 watts and not interfere with any other radio stations. They found that frequency at 106.1 FM.

David Gwynn: Then, there was a big branding marketing change as much the one as you can have with a college radio station. They signed on sometime in early 1982 as the Music 106. This was slightly before I got there. There were other things happening at the radio station around that same point though. At approximately the same time, the radio station had arranged what a lot of people called a sort of unholy merger with the broadcast cinema department at UNCG.

David Gwynn: Up to that point, it had been a purely student organization. Students work there because they were interested in music and there were some broadcasting students obviously work there. It was mostly about the music. That's why people wanted to work at the radio station. This merger with the broadcast cinema department meant that you could do internships and get course credit for working at the radio station, which definitely upped the level of professionalism a little bit but also brought in a lot of people who were not so much into the music. They were more into a commercial broadcasting phase.

David Gwynn: Along that time, there was a lot of antagonism between the music people and the broadcasting people who had vastly different visions for what the station should become. It was unpleasant there for a little while. The music people, and I was more of one of the music people, despite the fact that I was 00:22:00broadcast cinema major too. I was like, "What's the point of having a campus radio station that sounds like a top 40 radio station? We already have a top 40 radio station. Campus radio station needs to have a bigger mission than that."

David Gwynn: There are also a lot of people on campus that said, "Campus radio station doesn't play music that we like. They don't play popular music." Which I would respond two things. Number one, we are a campus radio station, we have a responsibility to do something a little different. You wouldn't listen to us even if we did play the music you like to begin with. Number two, we are a campus radio station but no radio station is licensed to a campus. A radio station is licensed to a community which means we have a broader responsibility to the community than just to the campus.

David Gwynn: I think I went a little past where you wanted to go there.

Scott Hinshaw: No, it's okay. I am curious how you get music selections at the campus radio station. Do you bring your own music? Do they have a library? How 00:23:00does that work?

David Gwynn: That goes to the next rational continuation of the last question actually is as far as my job -- in my second year at WUAG or at the end of my freshman year, basically, I became the music director for the radio station, which means I was responsible for all that. I was responsible for getting the music in, reporting back to the record labels how things were doing, et cetera.

David Gwynn: With campus radio stations, in those days, I don't know how it works now. Everything is different now. In those days, we actually work directly with the record companies and they would send us music. Because college radio stations, at that point even, were really big at breaking new music. That's what we did. We broke R.E.M., we broke the Violent Femmes, we broke artists even like Duran Duran, which was originally considered to be kind of an alternative artist at the time. A lot of the new wave stuff.

David Gwynn: It's interesting, a lot of the stuff that people associate with the '80s and think were some of the biggest hits of the '80s actually were never top 40 hits in the '80s. There were things that were mostly pushed out by alternative radio stations. That sort of became associated with the '80s but not a whole lot of people were listening to in the actual '80s when they were new. A big one, I think, about for that is Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes. There was no top 40 radio station in America that was playing Blister in the Sun.

David Gwynn: Now, it's on commercials. It's everywhere, et cetera. It was one of the only times I think in American pop music history where the alternative became the thing that people remember the era for even though it wasn't popular at the time. Back to music, I would work with record labels to get them to send us stuff. Then, we do what was called the playlist, which is what we would play 00:25:00which we send back out to the record companies to tell them what we were playing.

David Gwynn: One thing that happened musically with the station during that time is there was -- when I came in as music director, as also one of my best and oldest friends, Duncan Brown, came in as program director of the radio station. We both were in the middle, we were interested in the music, but we still thought it would be great if the radio station has a little bit more of a professional sound as well. I keep telling people, "College radio DJs are a weird thing."

David Gwynn: I've given lots of people advice on this over the years. Number one, you don't have to sound like you've been mainlining heroin before you go on air. You can sometimes sound excited or enthusiastic about the music you're playing. It's okay. In those days, before you go, you had displays of metadata displaying with your music. DJs would go in the air and they wouldn't talk for 00:26:00an hour. Then, at the end of that block, they back announce the last 47 songs they played.

David Gwynn: It was, "We played this and before that this, and before that we played this. Way back in 1967 when I started the set." It was awful. It sort of defeated the mission of college radio I thought too because people didn't know what they're listening to. It's hard to promote new music if you can't figure out what the hell it is.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Yeah. Did you have people calling in?

David Gwynn: We had actually a pretty good audience. I stand by our decision. We probably went a little poppier than college radio stations generally did at that time. But by doing it that way in a little more professional sound, I think we made things a little more accessible for the audience. We introduced a lot of people here to a lot of music that they wouldn't have heard otherwise, by making a little more accessible and digestible.

David Gwynn: Did we go too far off the deep end good poppy sometimes? Probably. 00:27:00We could argue most other college radio stations went too far on the other direction to the point where you'd be at the DJ's mercy for two hours. If you got a bad DJ, it was hell to listen to. Like 22 minute Prague rock songs from 1971. We formatted a little more tightly than a lot of college radio stations were doing.

David Gwynn: We thought we were building the radio format of the future that may even have commercial potential. I'm danged if we weren't right, by the '80s. There were basically commercials stations, basically the format that we've done at WUAG in those years. Obviously, they didn't do it by copying us, but we knew where we're going. WHFS in Washington or the Original Live 105 in San Francisco and KRXU in Los Angeles. They were basically doing the same format that we were 00:28:00doing at WUAG at that point.

Scott Hinshaw: It's awesome.

David Gwynn: Yeah. It made it more accessible. We tightened up a little. You asked about people brining their music too. We did a lot of people bring in their own music. We wanted them to check with us first so that they weren't brining in 22-minute Prague rock songs from 1972. We had certain DJs that were tended to be more inclined to let them go off format than others because they were doing great stuff.

David Gwynn: I remember a guy, he still lives here in Greensboro, did the greatest show probably that was ever on UAG. His name was Raymond Tucker.

Scott Hinshaw: That's cool. How many people did you have who were DJs? What was the --

David Gwynn: I would say probably 25, 30 maybe. We have executive board of about five or six people.

Scott Hinshaw: It's a pretty big operation really.

David Gwynn: Yeah. We were in one, two, three, four rooms in Elliott Center. 00:29:00Then, in 1984, we moved over to Taylor Building, which is another interesting story, which had been in the works for a long time anyway because that was probably where broadcast cinema was at the time too. Yeah. It was definitely a fairly big operation.

David Gwynn: We were fairly well funded. We cheated and did things like the 10 watt transmitter, sometimes we pump it up to 18.

Scott Hinshaw: Wow.

David Gwynn: We have pretty good signal coverage actually. You can go as pretty much anywhere in Greensboro. We didn't have coverage like A&T and Guilford College did because they got their frequencies and were able to go up to, I think, QFS was at 1900 watts at that point. I don't know what ANT station was at then. Then, we moved into Taylor Theatre and into much bigger facilities in 1984. That was a fun move.

David Gwynn: I look back and there's a Pine Needles' photo feature on the radio 00:30:00station move that was all shot during the day and it makes it look like I single-handedly moved the radio station, because apparently, I was the only person who showed up for the photo shoot. None of this was real. We moved most of those records in the middle of the night. Duncan and I. I remember one night, put in a complete overnight we were moving stuff back and forth from EUC to Taylor Theater, including furniture that we wanted that we weren't supposed to take out of Elliott Center because we liked it.

David Gwynn: Like my office couch. I will always have an office couch that I like. I still do here in the library. Yeah. I don't even remember doing that photo shoot for the Pine Needles either.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. It happened.

David Gwynn: I saw it for the first time, honestly, just a couple years ago when I was working -- when we were digitizing that here in the library. I'm like, "That's me. When did I do that?"

Scott Hinshaw: The facilities were nicer in Taylor?

David Gwynn: They were great.

Scott Hinshaw: Great equipment?

David Gwynn: Yeah. We had a big new control room. We had a nice production studio instead of the old crumbling acoustical pile on the walls, we had carpeted walls. Everybody had their own office. We had places to store stuff. Shortly after we moved, I became general manager of the radio station and had a much bigger office. It was kind of nice.

David Gwynn: There were some growing pains. I remember the first song we played after we moved in when we went on the air. It was a Saturday afternoon, we cut of off signal from Elliott and turned it on. Then, the first song we played was New Toy by Lene Lovich, which was perfect in those days for us to do. There are weird things. In Elliott Center there was a key check out system. You had to actually -- if you were there after the building closed you had to show them you had a key to get out.

David Gwynn: It was different at Taylor because you could get out but you couldn't get in. There were some weird issues with getting in and out of the 00:32:00building in the middle of the night. Generally, it was pretty nice once we moved over there. The last couple of years, they moved again now when they were in the Brown building into just this -- they have a whole floor now which is massive. I can't imagine why they would need that much space.

David Gwynn: When I went over there working with them on a project a couple years ago, they took me in the record room. The first thing I saw of course was two albums from 1984 with my handwriting on them from when I've reviewed them for when we played them on the air when they were new, which both excited and horrified me.

Scott Hinshaw: Do you still listen today, to the campus radio stations?

David Gwynn: I do. I do sometimes, yeah. Philosophically, I like it a lot more now because it's a lot more diverse. We weren't very diverse at that point in 00:33:00our concession, if you will, even the African-American students say that we have the jazz block every day from 6:00 to 8:00. I think back in horror, we were trying to format that the way we formatted all the other stations saying this is what jazz is. I get horrified at the way, I know a lot of us at the radio station were sort of whitesplaining what jazz is at that point. It just makes me cringe thinking about it.

David Gwynn: I like that the radio station is a lot more diverse now, a lot more different theme type shows. It makes it a little harder to listen to because you never quite know what you're going to get, which is interesting too. Sometimes, if what you get is not what you're interested in, you might don't want to listen for that long. Philosophically, I like the radio station a lot more than I liked it than we were there.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. That's great.

David Gwynn: It bothered me about the baby boom generation that was right before 00:34:00me. I'm starting to see the same thing with my own generation now. People who think that all new and interesting music stopped when they were 25 years old. Here's a clue, it didn't. Most of the stuff I listen to now actually is either from before I was born or from the last 10 years or so. Actually, I listen to a lot of Canadian Indie rock now. There's a different story too.

David Gwynn: I listen to a lot of new music. I still go see bands and listen to Ella Fitzgerald on the side too. Oddly enough, I can't listen to a lot of music from the early '80s anymore. The indie stuff I like but all that techno pop new wave stuff from the early '80, it's like fingernails on the chalk board to me now, even though it used to be so much of what we played in those days.

Scott Hinshaw: Is there anything you want to talk about the WUAG experience?

David Gwynn: I just want to say one last time with the microphone next to me, WUAG the Music 106.

Scott Hinshaw: Hurrah.

David Gwynn: Yeah. No. I miss it. Sometimes, I want to be a DJ again.

Scott Hinshaw: They might have guest slots.

David Gwynn: You never know.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. Do you want to talk about any conflict with SGA or broadcast cinema?

David Gwynn: We talked a little about that. There's sort of a conflict. The radio station had an initial -- before the broadcast center stuff had originally been funded and managed by a group called the University Media Board. At that point, there were three big student organizations over site groups. There's the University Media Board which oversaw the newspaper, Coraddi, which is the literary magazine, and the year book and the radio station.

David Gwynn: There was the EUC Council which holds a lot of the more social events that were handled at Elliott Center, that kind of thing. Then, there's student government which also oversaw more student-focused campus organizations, which we'll talk about probably a little more later when we get down to the Gay And Lesbian Student Association.

David Gwynn: Radio station was financed and managed through the University Media Board prior to the broadcast cinema merger. At that point, they set up something called the University Station Advisory Board or something that was part broadcast cinema people, part student representative. There's always some conflict between them and the University Media Board and the student government because you don't like to give up something you used to have control over.

David Gwynn: I remember at one point too, the radio station went to student 00:37:00government to ask for a fund for a special appropriation for something. There's a lot of discussion about, can we even do that now? I think ultimately, they did. I forget what it was for. It might have been the stolen records. There's a big stolen records issue in 1982. There's a DJ who actually apparently over Thanksgiving weekend just made off with tons and tons of albums out of the radio station.

David Gwynn: I remember that specifically because the program director of the radio station at that point and will remain nameless, but I hated her. I went to junior high, I didn't hate her in junior high but I hated her as the program manager of the radio station because she was awful. Accused me of it. I was like, "Don't even start." Because I had a key to the station because I was on air over the weekend. Eventually, that person was found and was arrested and we got a lot of the stuff back. We also, though, got some emergency money to buy a 00:38:00bunch of new stuff in the process too.

Scott Hinshaw: That's good.

David Gwynn: Which we could then use to buy new stuff rather than replace some of the stuff that was stolen.

Scott Hinshaw: You were involved with SGA as well, right?

David Gwynn: I was, pretty much from day one, just because I met all of the SGA people that summer before --

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: It was a big summer for me in general. I was going through a lot of changes. I ditched all of my high school friends that I didn't like and built this whole new circle of friends. Many of whom I'm still friends with at UNCG. Yeah. I was originally a town student senator. Committee-wise, I ended up at various points on the classification of organizations committee.

Scott Hinshaw: That sounds exciting.

David Gwynn: It was actually a very pivotal committee. You got to understand, kiddie politics at UNCG, we took this stuff so deadly seriously. It's embarrassing now how seriously we took this stuff. The classification of 00:39:00organizations was responsible for deciding what student organization student government will recognize and thus what student organizations they would fund with the neo black society controversy in the '70s. That had been the issue with them is that the classification of organizations committee wanted to strip their recognition because they thought they were too political or were limiting membership, et cetera.

David Gwynn: They played a fairly important role and would later play a big role with GLSA as well, the Gay and Lesbian Student Association. I was also on the appropriations committee. I sound like a good person if you have a campus organization because I was in a committee that recognized you and then on the committee that decided how much money you got after you get recognized.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. You said you met these people in the summer, what was going on, was this music related or?

David Gwynn: We were just all hanging out in the hall together pretty much, yeah.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: The student government people would come down to the radio station and say, "Can you play so and so?" because they got offices down the hall. The student government people generally tended to be interested in good music as well. We all got along and were really cozy there for a while.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. That's awesome.

David Gwynn: We play record frisbee down the hall with --

Scott Hinshaw: With not the favorite records, right?

David Gwynn: Yeah.

Scott Hinshaw: All right. Anything else about SJ you want to talk about right now?

David Gwynn: SJ was interesting. Again, we took it deathly seriously at the time. It was fun too. We had a page.

Scott Hinshaw: Oh yeah?

David Gwynn: Yeah. We would pass notes to each other during [inaudible 00:40:52]. The page would be running across the room giving people notes. They usually were not notes about anything other than some snarky comment about whoever was talking at the time. I still have a lot of those notes, they're fun 00:41:00to get back and read now. I would not share them with anybody because, yeah.

David Gwynn: I think we did a lot of things. Some of the big accomplishments we had during that year, we established what was called the Student Escort Service which actually would accompany students around campus at night to give a feeling of safety for example.

David Gwynn: We recognize a lot of organizations, the Gay and Lesbian Student Association being one of them. I was on classification of organizations committee when we did that recognition. Also, on the appropriations committee, that was not a universally popular decision as you might imagine, particularly here in the early '80s.

David Gwynn: UNCG at that time, there were a lot of gay students who was not 00:42:00really out, I guess, the way I was out even. I was pretty well out when I first got here.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. Let's go ahead and talk about that if you want to go on to that, and tell me what the environment was like for gay men during your time here. This is early '80s and '90s.

David Gwynn: Sort of closetty. I basically threw the closet door slammed behind me leaving splinters as I graduated from high school. I started telling people in high school. Basically, when I got to UNCG that summer, it was already a thing. It was like, you met me, it was actually kind of annoying. "Hi, I'm David, I'm a homosexual. Nice to meet you." I was a little obnoxious about it at that point.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. That's just something that you're comfortable enough with 00:43:00yourself and with the campus to be able to do that?

David Gwynn: Yeah. Because I was tired of this shit. I was unusual and that I was that out and open at that point. There were out people, I mean, this is the '80s, we're not talking about the '60s when people were being thrown in jail just for saying the word gay. It was a much more comfortable place than it had been 10 or 20 years earlier. It was not the place that it is now. Even I wasn't entirely comfortable with some aspects of things.

David Gwynn: I think, I was really intimidated by gay people when I was 18 or 19 years old. A lot of people I met sort of gave me [inaudible 00:43:51] I think it was because I'm bought in to the fact that they were all these bar hopping sex monsters because that's what you get told when you're growing up here at that 00:44:00point in time. It was a little pre-AIDS at that point. It was a thing but it was not a thing we were hearing about a lot for couple years here. I was sort of intimidated.

David Gwynn: I didn't go to gay bars for my first couple of years, even though I could have. To start with, I didn't want to. I still don't particularly like gay bars because they play crummy music --

Scott Hinshaw: I was going to say you were at the music bars, you were at the --

David Gwynn: Yeah. They play crummy music, they have expensive drinks. Until recently, they've always had awful, awful beer, Bud light might be the best you could go. Because "gay people don't drink beer", well, yeah, they do. Yeah. I went through a period where I went to bars a lot. A gay bar would never be my first choice of where to go when hanging out in town because it's kind of awful, most of them.

David Gwynn: I'm sort of intimidated by that scene. I was a person a lot of 00:45:00people sought out in those days because I was so open. Obviously, I was the person everybody came out to first. I can't tell you how many people I've been the first person they told they were gay just because I was out. I was there. I wasn't trying to be a role model. Lord knows, I wasn't a good role model even though I was trying to be.

Scott Hinshaw: That says something about you as a person too that they trust you and they feel comfortable.

David Gwynn: That is something about, yeah, the culture is like, Ooh my god, there's somebody that's out and open that I can talk to," because there weren't a lot of people. There were a couple of faculty members but they were having their own troubles at that point.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. I want to ask you about Kenneth Crump suicide in 1982, what was that like being on campus when that happened?

David Gwynn: I knew Kenneth Crump. He was actually a friend of mine. Actually, I 00:46:00vaguely remember that one of our woman friends had tried to fix us up at some point. We were like, "No, that's not going to happen. We are so not each other's type." He was a nice guy. He was in the circle of friends I hang out with.

David Gwynn: It was very surprising to me when it happened. I found about it the next day when I came onto campus. It was surprising. It was horrifying. I knew that there had been some problems. About a year before that, there had been a lot of issues in Strong Hall which was a freshman and sophomore men's dormitory at the time. There had been a lot of anti-gay issues going on there.

David Gwynn: As I remember, I think, he lived in Strong and had gone through that. I feel like he got a lot of harassment here at UNCG. I don't know that that's the primary reason that he committed suicide, but we'll never know. You'll never know why somebody commits suicide.

David Gwynn: I think that played into it. I think he had his own personal issues 00:47:00going on as well. I think the harassment he faced and probably -- I never really knew what his situation was with his parents. I don't know if that played into it or not. It was horrifying. It would be horrifying if anybody committed suicide on what was, at that point, a smaller campus where you knew people.

David Gwynn: You could walk by the library every day and see where they boarded up the window where we jumped out of it. That was a little awful. There were the odd person on campus that made jokes about it here and there. Generally, I think, it was handled fairly sensitively here in campus.

David Gwynn: If you read the accounts of the day, there's nothing mentioned about him being gay. In the Carolinian, there's one letter to the editor that references it. It was written by another friend of mine. There was not the outcry of this gay person was treated horribly on campus. I don't know if it's 00:48:00going to be the administration, they well not have known, I can't imagine that they didn't. The administration may not have known what was going on or that he was gay.

David Gwynn: It was an awful thing because he was a friend. We were tight good friends. We'd hang out. He was in a group I hang out with a lot. We talked a lot. I was surprised because I didn't know things were that bad for him.

Scott Hinshaw: That's often the case with people with suicidal -- you don't realize.

David Gwynn: Yeah. Unfortunately, one of the issues with depression is an inability to do anything about your depression.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Right.

David Gwynn: Been there.

Scott Hinshaw: I want to talk about discrimination, anti-discrimination activity aimed at the LGBT community that's taking place during this time. There's lots of things going on, there's the Cracker Barrel incident, the Greensboro City 00:49:00Council, UNCG's sexual orientation non-discrimination call battle. Any of these that particularly standout to you that you like to talk about?

David Gwynn: There are two kind of different eras for me. The first, the non-discrimination thing was early on for me. Actually, in 1983, I was one of the co-sponsors, we submitted a resolution to the chancellor requesting that UNCG add non-discrimination language to its, whatever you add non-discrimination language to at the time.

Scott Hinshaw: To the policy statements, yeah.

David Gwynn: Policy statements, yeah, exactly. Not surprisingly from Dr. Moran and Mossman, crickets, lots of crickets. We didn't hear anything back from that. Basically, it was not a thing that they wanted to do at that point. I knew that 00:50:00it did happen later on, there's controversy around it. It didn't happen when we requesting at 1983 because it was too sensitive.

David Gwynn: I do remember about a year maybe two years after we had recognized the Gay and Lesbian Student Association, there was a lot of controversy from one senator about their funding appropriation. I think this was 1985. It was starting in my last semester here the first time and then sort of came to ahead right after I left. There was a senator who was from Davie County, he was extremely conservative, he later became Jessie Helms' district campaign person. Confederate Veterans member. He was not a pleasant guy.

David Gwynn: He tried to hold up the appropriation via a lot of delaying tactics, by sort of trying to hijack the senate using profanity at some point using offensive language. He would actually came up for impeachment as a senator. That shows you how seriously we took our kiddie politics in those days. He ended up only getting reprimanded, he was not impeached.

David Gwynn: There's a lot of support. I imagine there was a lot of support for his position because there are probably a lot of people that didn't want their student activity fees going to fund to this perversion or whatever it was. Then, I left here and moved away, came back and came back to school in '89. There were different issues at that point. The whole AIDS thing had happened largely while I was gone. A lot of the activism or a lot of the discrimination was centered 00:52:00around that.

David Gwynn: Ultimately, AIDS became a very convenient way to excuse discrimination that you would have been practicing even absent AIDS. It's like, "Oh, we don't like gay people and now we've got this thing we can use against them because they're all diseased and they're going to kill us."

Scott Hinshaw: Right.

David Gwynn: It was very convenient at that point. Particularly as there was also a much more conservative tone to the country, thanks to the Reagan years.

Scott Hinshaw: Reagan years, yeah.

David Gwynn: Though oddly enough, he never mentioned AIDS until Rock Hudson got it. Don't get me started on that. There's other discrimination going on here too. The Cracker Barrel thing that you've mentioned, I'm sure we're all familiar with Cracker Barrel, the chain of eight meals for 7.99 billboards on the country. The Cracker Barrel country store. In, I think, late 1990 or early 1991, 00:53:00they fired one of their people for being gay. Then, very explicitly said that their employment policies permitted hiring only people who exhibited, and this is the quote, "normal heterosexual values."

David Gwynn: They weren't just discriminating other people. They were saying, yes, we discriminate. We don't want these fags in our restaurant. That didn't go over well. There were sort of new wave of activism happening at that point anyway in larger cities. That was when we were starting to see all the direct action groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation. Queer Nation had a chapter in Atlanta. Cracker Barrel had a lot of restaurants in Atlanta. Protests ensued. There were sit ins. It was big stuff.

David Gwynn: In fact, there were some suggestions that -- Atlanta, I think, had a non-discrimination policy in effect for their services at point. There were questions as to whether Cracker Barrel could even discriminate at Atlanta. Apparently, they were able to successfully. It's spread up here as well. There's the Cracker Barrel out in Wendover Avenue. We had a sit in there one morning. I'm not allowed to go to Cracker Barrel anymore because I did go to that sit in with a friend of mine from work.

David Gwynn: Basically, it was your standard sit in. You go in there, you sit. The way that was done at that point is you order something like a glass of water and say you're waiting for someone else to join you at your table. Pretty soon, they realize that they had a lot of people waiting for someone to join them at their tables, at their busy time, which is basically Sunday at noon. At that point, they asked us to leave.

Scott Hinshaw: You said we, was this part of ...

David Gwynn: It was a big organization. I forget the name of the group that set it up. I've got an article somewhere. I can look it out for you. There was an organized group that I was not part of. I knew about it. I was sort of a lazy activist. I would join and protest what other people established. I thought my personal life every day, my interactions were activism enough which is a good copout.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. You joined in on this to participate.

David Gwynn: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. We had the sit in then we had a picket outside afterwards. There were a lot of people. That was still when you were worried about being on the news and having your face shown holding an anti-gay picket sign. I've been through that before because I've done some Act Up stuff in Columbia, South Carolina where there's news coverage as well. It didn't worry me that much because I had a pretty good relationship with my parents at that 00:56:00point and who else was I going to worry about?

David Gwynn: It's like work, school, everybody knew at that point, I didn't care. My parents, it was a weird thing. I never had to come out to my parents. It's just one day we all realized we knew what was going on and moved on from there. We never had to have a conversation or anything, it's just --

Scott Hinshaw: Was that in high school as well?

David Gwynn: No. This was actually later on, I was in my 20s I think.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: Yeah. There was that. The Greensboro City Council thing also I think was around 1990 as I remember, I could be off give or take a year or two. The city council passed a non-discrimination, it was not a sweeping non-discrimination ordinance. It was just because Charlotte tried to do that a couple years ago and still wasn't able to and that's why it got us into HB2.

David Gwynn: It passed an ordinance saying that for our internal hiring practices, we will have a non-discrimination policy. Then, a couple days later went back and rescinded that.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah, with a pressure to answer.

David Gwynn: Yeah. There's a lot of activism, attending city council meetings and demonstrations about that as well too. I think those are the two big demonstrations I remember. We had a lot of benefits, that kind of thing. There's a lot of music involved and a lot of bands were doing AIDS. At that point, free speech benefit because there's a lot of issues just surrounding free speech in general.

David Gwynn: Not just pornography which is what a lot of people think about the free speech movement in the early '90s or free speech in general for students, that type of thing. I remember, there was one man I, for some reason, I'm thinking the dB's were at it, there's a big thing or I may be confusing that 00:58:00with the dB's reunion concert in Charlotte around the same time. Lots of local bands were involved in these assorted benefits for kind of lefty causes.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: I always felt that Greensboro, with exceptions, was a much more gay friendly place than a lot of other cities in the south, even bigger cities, even bigger than say Charlotte, which may or may not still be the case. A lot of people still think it is and I don't disagree with that.

Scott Hinshaw: Why do you think that is? What makes you think that?

David Gwynn: I think that a lot of the reasons that Greensboro can be a little more liberal than Charlotte in a lot of ways and this is particularly true back in the '80s, I think, is that the colleges are a bigger part of the mix here, whereas Charlotte is banker town, Republican banker town. Nothing wrong with 00:59:00republicans except the platform.

Scott Hinshaw: There are five colleges and universities in Greensboro.

David Gwynn: Yeah. They are much, proportionately, a much bigger part of the mix here. Yeah. UNCG also being traditionally, an arts school, or what later on we would come to refer to as the creative class. I really hate that term. UNCG being big on that too and tended to be, a particularly liberal university.

David Gwynn: Yeah. There have been a lot of anti-gay things that have happened here, particularly the purge back in the '50s around Commerce Place and the bus station, which is something a lot of cities did on those days. Later on, there was controversy on UNCG campus and a lot of other campus about people who would 01:00:00cruise in the basement of the library or the basement of Elliott Center and that was a big thing. when I was here as an undergrad.

David Gwynn: It's not a thing that happens anymore because so many things in the world has been replaced by an app. That was a thing that happened then. There was a certain subset of men who may or may not really have identified as gay that were involved in that. Either, I'm not going to say it was just closeted people that didn't have any other option. There were a lot of really out gay men that did that whole scene because they thought they met a more interesting class of people, if you will.

David Gwynn: "Met" may be the wrong word here. There's always going to be a subset of gay men who have a fetish for man who don't identify as gay. You felt 01:01:00like you'd meet people that way. UNCG I don't think was every hyperactive on the enforcement of, the term is tearooms by the way. There was actually a book written in the '60s by sociologist called Laud Humphreys it's called Tearoom Trade. It was about soliciting or meeting for sex in public restrooms that kind of thing.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: Interesting book, raised a lot of ethical sociological questions too, which he was really generally sympathetic but there were still some ethical questions. That was a big thing at UNCG. It's a thing that if you're talking about gay history at UNCG, you can't really ignore because it was such a big thing. I don't think UNCG was ever as aggressive with the enforcement on that as some other colleges and particularly in places like malls where it would also happen.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Okay.

David Gwynn: I'm not sure where we drifted off into that from.

Scott Hinshaw: I think it flowed pretty well. I do want to talk about, unless there's anything else you want to talk about in that area?

David Gwynn: Not really. Eventually, I left it all moved to San Francisco where everything was drastically different.

Scott Hinshaw: Do you want to talk about San Francisco at all?

David Gwynn: Not really. I can if you want to. San Francisco, I loved it for about six or seven years. It was exactly a place I needed to go. I was an only child. I needed to move to the other end of the country to become myself in a lot of ways. San Francisco in the '90s was a pretty amazing place to do that because it was so recessionary and you could still afford to move to San Francisco and live there working at Kinkos.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah.

David Gwynn: You can't do that now. I was looking online at my old apartment from San Francisco and it rents for $4,000 a month now. It was a hovel. It's now 01:03:00a more nicely flipped hovel. It was a great place to be. I will never say bad things about having moved to San Francisco. I didn't like it so much by the time I left.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. It was an experience though.

David Gwynn: Because it had changed a lot and so had I. It was the experience I would have missed. I lived there 13 years. If you want to be out and open San Francisco obviously is the place to do it or was at the time. I don't know that it really is anymore but it was at the time.

Scott Hinshaw: All right. Let's talk about what brought you back or what happened when you came back. You eventually came back at UNCG, right?

David Gwynn: I did.

Scott Hinshaw: For your MLIS your Master's in Library Science. You received that in 2009. Can you tell me what happened to your life to and make you think, hey, this is something I want to do or this is a viable career path or.

David Gwynn: San Francisco. It actually does figure into ... San Francisco that 01:04:00was where I met the one -- my one long term life partner. We were together for almost 10 years. We actually were among the couples that got married in that civil disobedience thing in San Francisco on Valentine's Day weekend in 2004. Those weddings were all invalidated.

David Gwynn: We never actually did it officially anywhere else after that because even in that case it was more about those civil disobedience than, because it didn't seem something we needed to do since it wasn't going to be recognized where we lived anyway. But at that point I was ready to go out of San Francisco. I was done with it.

David Gwynn: My partner had been born and raised in Fresno. I think he wanted something different too. We left. We've been back to North Carolina in 2005. I have no idea what I was going to do when I got back here. I was freelancing doing web designs, so yeah there was income from that. My ex ultimately ended up 01:05:00in this weird sort of hybrid telecommuting thing where he was going back and forth from North Carolina to San Francisco for most of the time we were together here.

David Gwynn: We moved back originally to Charlotte and moved to Winston-Salem in '06 and bought a house. Then, I finally said, "I got to do something. This is not working. I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life." I sort of knew I was going to handle this because I've been -- Oddly enough, supermarkets sent me to librarianship. I was doing web stuff early on in San Francisco. I started doing websites in 1996, which was before a good chunk of America knew what a website was. That was about one area to be an early adopter in I guess.

David Gwynn: I was on a personal website starting around 1999 because I'd always been interested in the history of supermarkets and supermarket chains. Go figure. I don't know why.

Scott Hinshaw: It fits in well with geography and history.

David Gwynn: Yeah. Over the years, it really did once I started researching and it became kind of an obsession because I mostly did -- I was doing architectural research on them, on the building types. Then, I also started concentrating mostly on location research. Overtime, where the chains are located, which is a really neat way to follow urban development patterns in the city.

David Gwynn: I've been doing that ever since. I found myself doing research in a lot of libraries and also in archives and also using a lot of digitized online resources. I thought, I'd been working in web design and had been working for the company, currently known as FedEx office formally known as Kinkos for years.

David Gwynn: Imaging was a thing, document manipulation was a thing, I had a background in too. There's probably a profession in here somewhere so I went to library school here in UNCG starting in 2007. I very specifically went into the program knowing that what I wanted to do coming out of it was to digitize historical materials.

Scott Hinshaw: Very good.

David Gwynn: That was my thing. That was what I wanted to do. I was lucky enough that I was able to go in. There wasn't really a lot in the program at that point on doing that. I was sort of able to develop my own program going to library school which I really appreciated from the LIS department here is that they've allowed that freedom and flexibility.

Scott Hinshaw: Flexibility, yeah.

David Gwynn: I was able to create my own program, worked a lot with the University Libraries too. Actually, despite the fact that I was 45 years old or 44 years old, I did the student worker thing in the library working in the digitization lab because there are some dues that you have to pay to get into a 01:08:00position. That was some of the dues I had to pay.

David Gwynn: Unfortunately, I had the flexibility in my life with an understanding part of I was able to do that and work some of those opportunities. I also did some internships and volunteer works with the public library and historical museum. As luck would have it, I was in the right place at the right time and I got a job here at the UNCG library managing the unit that digitizes historical material and puts them online. It was sort of a magic ABC after school special kind of --

Scott Hinshaw: Everything fell into place.

David Gwynn: -- kind of an end, yeah.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah.

David Gwynn: I felt like Kristy McNichol after her boyfriend kicked drug addiction or something. It's like everything worked out the way it was supposed to and pretty painlessly. Of course, then, yeah, my ex and I split up and 01:09:00everything got weird after that but work was good.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. What is your job now?

David Gwynn: I'm currently the digital projects coordinator, which is a sort of misleading title because it seems to suggest that I do anything related to digital projects at all which is not strictly to my department does digitization.

David Gwynn: We digitize primary source material, archival material, print materials to place them online specifically as opposed to say digital humanities, which works with tools that use these materials. Or, digital collections which means I'm managing library databases maybe that kind of thing.

David Gwynn: We actually digitize and make materials available. I do work a lot with digital humanities people as well because obviously I'm trying to work with people who want to develop tools using materials. They need the materials to 01:10:00work with.

David Gwynn: My job is really interesting. I get to do a lot of different and varied stuff every day. I've been doing this for almost 10 years now and I still absolutely love my job. After many, many years of having jobs that I absolutely despised and hated, retail Kinkos. It's really nice to go to work and love it. Not everything is perfect every day of the week. There's drama, there's politics, it's academia, there's always going to be drama and politics because that's kind of what we do. Generally, I still absolutely love my job.

Scott Hinshaw: You're very good at it. You help us a lot. Do you want to talk about some of the projects and things you've worked on? Maybe some of your proudest accomplishments that you've done since you've been in this position?

David Gwynn: I don't know if there are specific projects that excite me so much as the body, the large body, of stuff that we've gotten online. What I'm particularly proud of is that we've developed a lot of working relationships with other schools and colleges and museums and the public library here in Greensboro. We're starting to look out and have more of a regional focus to what we do, which interestingly enough, I always think, it goes back to when I was working at the radio station.

David Gwynn: I thought the radio station is part of the University but it serves a larger community and has a mission that's based on that community. I think that University Libraries have that same responsibility not just to their campus but to their larger communities. Of course, it helps that it's also a personal interest of mine to work with local history obviously. I feel like we've built a lot of relationships in the community. We're doing something, we have a larger 01:12:00focus than just the internal library community.

David Gwynn: We're trying to make something that's more accessible to the region. With some projects we've worked on recently now, a lot of the work that my unit has done and that the larger work that other units in the library, like our development team, have done with slavery related materials are really important. They're being used on a nationwide and global scale. I've only been a small part of that.

David Gwynn: A lot of that came out of a partnership with our lead developer here at UNCG and emeritus faculty member in the history department. Then, I've worked with that a lot to some extent. I'm working with Richard Cox and our development team on a grant now to digitize other materials where we're actually working with our registers of deeds statewide.

David Gwynn: I think that's a project to be proud of just because it's getting so much usage nationwide. The Slave Ads project which my unit specifically did actually was actually use in Colson Whitehead's recent book The Underground Railroad. He referenced us and thanked us. I give him credit for that because a lot of people don't. That was pretty cool.

Scott Hinshaw: It's nice to be acknowledged.

David Gwynn: He actually was able to come on campus to speak about it as well. I feel like we're having a little larger impact. Yeah, maybe we just have to get stuff online so people can use it. I feel I've used a lot of other people's stuff online. I feel like this is my way to give back to the library or the history or genealogy or whatever community you want to speak of.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Right. I was hoping maybe you can talk about how the 01:14:00library has changed since your undergraduate years? I assumed you went to the library in your graduate year --

David Gwynn: I went to the library a lot in my undergraduate years. I was a good library person guy thing.

Scott Hinshaw: Patron.

David Gwynn: Yeah. The basement of the library is a whole lot less creepy now than it was, even when I was in grad school, I will say that. I think the library is a radically different place than it was 30, 35 years ago. The big difference now is that there are people in it.

David Gwynn: There weren't really a lot of people in the library when -- particularly up in the stacks in the tower part of the library, when I was an undergrad, which is why a friend of mine could nap up there in 1982 and not really be noticed. Then, be able to jump out the window and commit suicide that night.

David Gwynn: There were a lot of people up in the stacks. Now, the library is full of people. It's amazing how different it is, how crowded it is. The library 01:15:00is, I think, a more important part of student life now than it was 30 years ago. Obviously, it's not about books anymore. Yet, the books are nice. I like the books. students aren't looking at the books. They don't care about the books.

Scott Hinshaw: What do you think has brought people in the library?

David Gwynn: I think it's just a good communal workspace. I think we, in the library, have been really good at listening and observing what students want and trying to give it to them. They want workspace, they want good computers. They want collaborative workspaces, spaces where they can work together. Some of them also want really quiet spaces and we try to accommodate those as well. It's not a "shh!" library like a lot are.

David Gwynn: Yeah, we've got the digital media commons now where they can work with scanning, photography, gaming. That's what makes the basement less creepy 01:16:00now. When I was in grad school, the library science stacks were in the basement. It was this weird little hobbit maze back there. It was impossible to find anything except that you expected around every corner you're going to find a dead body or something. It was creepy that way.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. It's much more open now, the light. Not as many shelving units everywhere, yeah.

David Gwynn: Yeah. I regret seeing the books go away because I like the books. I still buy books. Books are good. I understand that that's not where it's going right now. I think we can strike a medium, a balance between the books. That's good. I think now with our concentration on special collections and university archives in particular, we're more focused on what I think is probably a more important collecting area for physical materials now because we're looking to 01:17:00collect unique things.

David Gwynn: Not books that every other university has a copy of as well. We're looking to collect history and things that are specific to our institution. I think that's where it's going now. I'd like to digitize a lot of that stuff too.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. We would like for you to do that too. It's so much nicer for researchers even if they eventually come in and see the real thing too. It's nice that they can see it online as well.

David Gwynn: Yeah. I think early in digitization, there was a lot of worry that's like, "Oh, you got to digitize everything and then throw it all away." No, I've never, never advocated throwing anything away. If it's a book that there are a thousand copies of it in a thousand libraries, maybe you can get rid of that. I would never. I'm upset at all the things that were thrown away when they were microfilm 50 years ago. That's just awful to happen.

David Gwynn: Early on, I think people realized it more now. Early on, there wasn't this recognition that if you have collections digitized, it actually tends to raise the visibility of your archives and bring more traffic to your other collections. It's not like we're in competition here.

Scott Hinshaw: No, I don't see it that way. Speaking of getting people into the library, I mean, what do you think about the connector? You talked about that earlier. We also had some policy changes like food policy changes and how they felt.

David Gwynn: Yeah, I think, absolutely. The connector is a big thing now because I think that may have been the smartest thing they did to integrate the library into the bigger campus. Because it was kind of a pain to get from EUC to the library because you had to go around three corners, up four flights of stairs. The library has always been hard to enter from that side of campus.

David Gwynn: It actually added a door which means you didn't have to go around 01:19:00to the front portico on College Avenue.

Scott Hinshaw: An accessible door as well.

David Gwynn: Exactly. It meant that if you were in EUC and need to get by the library it was that kind of thing. Yet, yes, obviously, a lot of people use it as a cut through from one campus to the other. Those people are in that process of cutting through the library being in the library, seeing what's in the library and getting familiar with being there.

David Gwynn: Even the cut through traffic I don't think is a bad thing. I think it's a great thing because it's --

Scott Hinshaw: I agree with you.

David Gwynn: Yeah. Maybe it's just coming out of retail as my background, I think, building traffic, you don't sell anything to the just looking people but you might eventually.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah, on their way to the Caf or that they see a service they didn't know we had or something like that.

David Gwynn: Yeah. I think in recent years too, specifically our special collections and archives I'm really happy with the way that that has more opened 01:20:00up to people because people were just scared.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. Before I got there, we used to have closed doors, that's another policy change, yeah.

David Gwynn: Yeah. That's so much more opened. There's so much more outreach coming out of that whole area of the library now too. That makes me happy.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah, that's great. All right. I'm going to move on to the conclusions portion. I'll give you a chance to add anything else if you want to add anything else.

David Gwynn: Okay.

Scott Hinshaw: Can you tell me how UNCG has affected your life and what it means to you?

David Gwynn: I just keep coming back like a bad penny. I don't really know what that metaphor means but I've heard it all my life. I'm not sure what a bad penny is but apparently, I am.

Scott Hinshaw: I think you're a good penny.

David Gwynn: I keep coming back because I mean there's always a part of UNCG that's going to seem like home to me apparently. I think my first time I was an 01:21:00undergraduate, I used to sleep ... I wasn't on campus but I used to sleep on campus a lot on the couch in my office. I was very involved in UNCG the first time I was here.

David Gwynn: Not so much the second time I was here. I guess presumably now that I work here, you could say I'm relatively involved again. It's a neat community. I think it's one of the more interesting and less antiseptic universities in North Carolina. Not to mention any universities by name. A lot of the universities that developed all at once in a corn field 40 year or 50 year or 20 year or 30 year or even 100 years ago sometimes.

David Gwynn: I don't know, they just seem -- UNCG is a little quirkier than some universities. I like it here particularly in recent years. We're quirky. We used to be quirky and not terribly diverse. Now, we're actually quirky and diverse 01:22:00too because we are a minority serving institution. We got people from all over the state, all over the country and all over the world. It's a much different student body than I was here.

David Gwynn: I really enjoyed watching that happen over the years. I like where we're at now.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. I'm going to ask you to look into the future and tell me what you think, where you see UNCG going in the next 20 or 30 years?

David Gwynn: Jets and cars and everything up on stilts.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay.

David Gwynn: No more Caf, a food rack that cycles in every bedroom.

Scott Hinshaw: All right. Yeah.

David Gwynn: No.

Scott Hinshaw: You might be right. I mean, who knows.

David Gwynn: Yeah. I was counting on that for now too. We don't have it yet.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah. We don't have it.

David Gwynn: I think UNCG can only get more diverse. I think we've recognized that our mission is to serve a lot of first generation college students, 01:23:00immigrant communities as well. I think we're working with that mission very well. We understand it now and we decided, yeah, this is the thing we do. I'm glad we've decided that. I think we will see more of that in coming years.

David Gwynn: UNCG is a landlocked urban campus. I sometimes wish UNCG would be better recognizing that it's a landlocked urban campus rather than trying to spew forth into the hinterland bulldozing everything in its path. I fantasize about seeing UNCG and I'm still an urbanist and a planner at heart despite the fact that that's not my career path I went.

David Gwynn: I fantasize about UNCG that's a lot more dense and a lot more vertical and is less into edging out into the surrounding neighborhoods and maybe going more up than out. Whether that will happen remains to be seen. I 01:24:00hope it will happen. I think, if we're going to grow past some level, it's going to have to happen because there's only going to be so many more neighborhoods we can buy out.

Scott Hinshaw: Of course, we've already grown past where people said, "These are our boundaries," right?

David Gwynn: Yeah.

Scott Hinshaw: Lee Street used to be a boundary.

David Gwynn: Yeah. We used to when I was here, even back in the '80s when we're talking about we used to refer to the boundary plans as fortress UNCG. It's like UNCG wall in everything in this area. Yeah, it was going to be basically from Aycock Street to Tate Street, from the railroad tracks to Market Street. We jumped those boundaries.

David Gwynn: I worry as we jump on to the Tate Street that gives me a little pause now. At the same time, I'm thinking, we're jumping into buildings that weren't being used for anything particularly useful before. Maybe it will help Tate Street.

Scott Hinshaw: Right. Yeah, I think the Lee Street Gate City Boulevard that it's going to take a long time for people to get used to. I don't know that people really think of that as the university yet but 10, 20 years down the road --

David Gwynn: They probably will. I think we can build a bridge rather than a tunnel wall. That would go a long way towards that connection. I don't know.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. I don't have any more formal questions for you but if there's anything else you'd like to add, this is the time to do so.

David Gwynn: I'm trying to think. I have enjoyed talking to you.

Scott Hinshaw: It's been great.

David Gwynn: I don't feel like I was in the middle of a lot of the stuff but I think I was adjacent to some interesting stuff over the past few years.

Scott Hinshaw: Yeah, certainly.

David Gwynn: Yeah. That's about all I got.

Scott Hinshaw: Okay. Thanks so much for talking with us. I've enjoyed it.