Before Duke was Duke

For Elizabeth Roberts Cannon, Few isn't a quad, Gross isn't a building and Flowers isn't a road.

Cannon, Trinity '26, remembers seeing President William Few's children on campus, acting in plays directed by Paul Gross' wife and attending a tea at the Flowers home.

She attended Duke, well, before it was Duke.

In the middle of Cannon's junior year, sleepy Trinity College transformed itself into Duke University after an enormous donation from tobacco and power magnate James Buchanan Duke.

Still sharp-witted at age 94, the former history major has a keen sense of the changes that have happened between her graduation and today.

Cannon remembers pre-endowment Trinity as a small, religious-minded school whose students came mostly from the South.

Methodist ministers' children had free tuition and even formed their own student group.

"Trinity was very much a Methodist institution in those days. We were big Methodists," she said during an interview in her Raleigh home. "And we were not very rich, and the tuition was very reasonable."

Cannon quickly settled into a campus life that looks nothing like the social scene of 1999.

"The social life for women was quite closely supervised," she said. "Freshmen could have only one date a week, but they had what was called... a social hour. For an hour after the evening meal, the boys could come over for an hour. Then the bell rang, and then everybody had to leave."

Southgate Dormitory, the only housing for women at that time, was locked at 11 p.m. every night. "You got in at 11 or you were in trouble," she said.

Getting in trouble could mean being "campused," or prohibited from leaving school grounds.

"I was campused one year because I was proctor on my hall and a girl came in with whiskey on her breath-I don't know if she was drunk or not-and I didn't report her and somebody else reported her and also reported that I did not report her. And she was shipped. She went home. And I was campused for three weeks, couldn't leave campus for three weeks, couldn't have a date."

Not being able to leave campus had some bad side effects, Cannon said.

"The place that made the best sandwiches-chicken salad sandwiches-that have ever been made on Earth were made at the Owl Pharmacy, and that was at the corner of the campus, across the street...," she said. "If you were campused, and couldn't get off, your best beau would have a milkshake and some chicken salad sandwiches sent up from the Owl Pharmacy."

The concentration of all the female students in Southgate provided an opportunity for a famed campus activity: a capella.

"There were some boys who sang together a lot, close harmony," she remembered. "They would come over and serenade the girls at Southgate."

During her time at Trinity and Duke, Cannon was a member of Alpha Delta Pi, one of only three sororities on campus.

"It was silly," she said. "I sort of regret it. I shouldn't have joined one. I cut myself off from some of the most interesting people on campus. I really did.... If I had a daughter there, I would say, 'Don't do it.' It may not be that way now. They're larger, perhaps, and it's not such a big deal. It was quite a big deal in my time, and caused a lot of heartache. It wasn't worth it."

By the time she graduated in the spring of 1926, the University existed, created nearly two years earlier through the Duke Endowment.

Cannon remembers the time around the gift as particularly exciting.

"About the time of the endowment, Buck Duke was on campus, and there was a dinner party for him, and he had his 12-year-old daughter with him...," she remembered. "Somebody thought it was a good idea for a young person to go and sit by Doris. My one claim to fame: I sat by Doris Duke at lunch. And she was just a nice little girl, chattering away...."

After Duke gave the money, workers began reconstructing the Trinity campus into East Campus, tearing down many of the older buildings around the East Campus quadrangle, or as it was then called, the race track.

"Of course, that campus was renovated entirely before they started on the West Campus," she said. "And so, after the endowment in '24, the place was all torn up. There was just mud everywhere. Everybody had to have boots. You'd never get to classes because it was such a mess...."

The few extant buildings from Cannon's years include East and West Duke.

But her recollections of those buildings differ sharply from their contemporary uses.

"In the basement of West Duke was a little place you could get snacks and Coca-Colas that we called dopes, and it was known as The Dope Shop," she said. "It's sort of interesting, there was a dope shop on the campus."

As for East Duke, Cannon remembered when James B. Duke's body lay in state there her senior year; her eventual husband, Ed Cannon, was the class president and had to make sure things ran smoothly.

Remarkably, Cannon's family connections to Trinity run farther back than the Dukes'. Her aunt and uncle both went to the school around the turn of the century.

"As a matter of fact, my grandmother's brother... who was killed in the Civil War, went to Trinity College before it came to Durham [in 1892]," she said.

These connections continue through today, with her grandson Ed Rhodes, currently a Trinity senior.

Two years ago, Cannon established a prize in her name for outstanding undergraduate history work.

History department chair Alex Roland met her at the time. "We had only a limited opportunity to chat, but I nonetheless formed a picture in my mind of a remarkable woman. She has had a full and interesting life and finds herself the center of attention of a large and engaging family," he said. "Still she is self-effacing about her longevity and her vitality. Duke played an important part in her life and she cherishes the memory of having attended in the earliest years of the University."

Cannon said she hardly recalls the day she graduated from Duke.

"You know, [it's] the strangest thing, I don't remember but one thing about it, that's lowering the flag. Do they still do that?" she asked. "I don't remember a thing about it except just dissolving in tears at the flag-lowering."