Anthony Hatcher, an associate professor in the School of Communications, wrote an about Millennials’ attitudes toward religion based on an assignment from his Religion and Media course.

The assignment required students to attend houses of worship outside their personal faith and to interact with people they feared, avoided or just never thought much about. The entire class expressed enthusiasm for the opportunity to get out of their religious comfort zones. Once they met the “other” face-to-face, fear and prejudice vanished.

Students reported on their experiences and interviewed church leaders and congregation members, researched the tradition or denomination and reported on media use during services.

“Today’s college students were toddlers or just starting school when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 occurred,” Hatcher writes. “They have come of age in a time of ISIS, religious assaults on abortion providers, moral protests concerning gay marriage and stories of Catholic priests and pedophilia.”

Millennials tend to pray less and fewer of them attend religious services. Encountering religious people on unfamiliar turf, though, allowed students to see that though others have different beliefs, in many ways, they’re “just like us.”

The text of the story is below:

WWII Vet Survived Near-Fatal Accident in Normandy to Live a Long and Happy Life

Sitting in his private room in Autumn Village, an assisted living facility in rural Beulaville, NC, World War II veteran J.C. Nethercutt looks as though he is wearing virtual reality goggles. Now 92, he needs the magnifying eyewear to watch a televised baseball game. The volume is cranked up, and crowd sounds roar from tinny speakers.

Nethercutt is hard of hearing, hunched at the shoulders, and stiff in the joints, but still vigorous enough to take a daily 30-minute walk. “I really don’t feel it,” he says of his age.

He is content in his modest quarters. Besides the TV, he has a bed, recliner, dresser, and a birdfeeder outside his window.

The relatively spacious room wasn’t always private. He and his wife, Gladys, moved to Autumn Village together a few years before she passed away in 2009.

They were married for 67 years. “Sixty-seven wonderful years,” he says.

J.C. (the initials are his given name) and Gladys were my next-door neighbors when I was growing up. I always knew he was a veteran who was injured in the war, but I didn’t know the whole story until I paid him a recent visit. Although his story is not as glamorous as those of many vets, it still deserves to be told. He served his country and came home physically damaged.

J.C. was born in 1922, the eldest child of Ivey and Daisy Nethercutt. Along with his brother and three sisters, all of whom are still living, he was raised in tiny Beulaville in eastern North Carolina. His father sharecropped in summer and worked as a high school janitor in winter.

He was 20 when his draft notice came in October 1942. Draft letters of the period typically referred to “a Local Board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the armed forces of the United States.”

“I got a letter from Franklin Roosevelt that says, ‘Greetings, your friends and neighbors have selected you for military service,'” J.C. recalled. “I said I didn’t believe I had any friends and neighbors that’d do me that way.”

Gladys was also born near Beulaville. She and J.C. married on Aug. 26, 1942, two months before he was drafted.

That October, he said goodbye to his new wife and departed for Fort Bragg. Then it was on to six months of basic training at Camp Barkeley, a U.S. Army Installation near Abilene, Texas that processed thousands of servicemen from 1940-45.

J.C. became an ambulance driver and served in England and France, landing on Utah Beach June 8, 1944, two days after D-Day. Utah was the westernmost of five landing beaches in the Normandy invasion.

“There was a little town you could see from where we were at. They shelled it and they tore everything up except the church.” He was referring to the historic church at Sainte Mere Eglise, which survived largely intact.

Driving an ambulance, J.C. witnessed many gruesome sights. He also learned how fast to transport the wounded over the numerous potholes that resulted from shelling.

“If [an injured soldier] was hollering and carrying on, I didn’t slow down for the bump, ’cause I knew he was all right,” J.C. said. “If he wasn’t making no fuss, I took it easy with him,” surmising the patient was too hurt to complain.

Ironically, it was an ambulance that nearly ended his life.

Normandy is known for its apple orchards dating back centuries. There were hedgerows surrounding the orchards like fences, and that’s where J.C.’s unit bivouacked. They pulled in after three days of no rest.

“We just fell out of our vehicles and spread our blankets out and lay down and went to sleep,” he said. “When I woke up, I was in the hospital.”

When he came to, he asked someone what had happened to him. “They said that an ambulance run over me. Ran over my head.” He had been out for seven days.

“When I lay down… I put my helmet right up beside my head. The only thing I could figure was it run up on it, and over my head. I didn’t get the full weight of the thing,” he said. “If I had, it’d mashed it flat.”

He was left with a fractured skull and permanent deafness in his left ear. He was in various hospitals for nine months. Gladys didn’t know for a time if he was alive or dead.

J.C. was transferred from the field hospital to England. Eventually, he was stable enough to return to the States, and was sent to Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta. Lawson was a rehabilitation hospital for injured personnel returning from the war.

Gladys traveled to Atlanta and stayed with him until he was well enough to come home to Beulaville. Shortly after J.C. left the Army in 1945, the couple moved a few miles down the road to my hometown of Kenansville, population 800, on a good day.

J.C. had worked in highway maintenance for the N.C. Department of Transportation before the war, and returned to the DOT afterward. In 1958, he and Gladys built a house next door to my parents and lived there for nearly 50 years. The younger of their two sons, Randy, and I were schoolmates from first grade through graduation from high school.

J.C. always kept a backyard vegetable garden, and when he worked outside in coveralls, my younger brother Dana mistook him for Mr. Green Jeans, agrarian sidekick to Captain Kangaroo. 
He retired from the DOT in 1982, and he and Gladys lived beside my folks for another 20 years before health issues forced the move into Autumn Village.

J.C. says he suffered headaches for years, but they eventually subsided. “I’m doing real good now,” he said. “I’m getting along real good.” He has good genes on his side. His mother lived to age 102.

A few years ago, J.C. received a certificate in the mail. It was in French, a thank you awarded to U.S. vets who fought at Normandy. He displays it on the wall of his room, proudly pointing it out to visitors.

When asked how he feels about his time in the Army, he simply says, “It was an experience. I’ll put it that way.”

The conference was held on campus held in April 2013. Hatcher, who teaches a course called Religion and Media at 黑料不打烊, has been the chief organizer for all four Media and Religion conferences, beginning in 2009. The conferences have been principally sponsored by the 黑料不打烊 School of Communications and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. The keynote speaker at the first conference in 2009 was Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist Leonard Pitts.

The 2013 keynoter was author Robert Darden, a journalism professor at Baylor University and noted historian of Black Gospel Music.

The 2013 gathering marked the first year the conference featured competitive scholarly paper and panel proposals, an idea originating with Don Grady, associate dean in the School of Communications. The eight essays selected for publication were authored by:

• Doug Mendenhall, Abilene Christian University Graduate School of Theology
• Andrew Quicke, Regent University
• Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Phillips Theological Seminary
• Kyong James Cho, Texas A&M University
• Joe Marren, Buffalo State University
• Brian Carroll, Berry College
• Michael Ray Smith, Palm Beach Atlantic University (formerly of Campbell University)
• Adam J. Copeland, Concordia College

黑料不打烊 brought TEDx back to campus Feb. 22 for a sold-out event in Whitley Auditorium. TEDx is an independently organized version of TED Talks, and at 黑料不打烊, four speakers shared stories and offered new ideas for technology, entertainment and design.

The talks were recorded by the university’s Teaching & Learning Technologies office and will soon be made available online. 黑料不打烊 seniors Carolina Howland and Kirsten Hughes organized the event and led a TEDx student planning board.

TEDx was sponsored by the Office of Cultural and Special Programs, the Liberal Arts Forum, and the School of Communications. Anthony Hatcher, associate professor of communications, served as faculty adviser.

The speakers appearing at the event are described below, with the titles of their TEDx Talks.

Leanne Gluck
Title: “From Maker to Change-Maker”

Gluck provided insight on how 3D printing is empowering people to move from being “consumers” to being “makers” for changing the world. She explained the importance of using 3D printing by illustrating how cost and complexity, speed, and rapid iteration can change how we perceive education, art and community.

Gluck is director of social impact at 3D Systems, a leading provider of 3D printing centric design-to-manufacturing solutions including 3D Printers, print materials and cloud sourced on demand custom parts. These solutions are used to rapidly design, create, communicate, prototype or produce real parts, empowering customers to manufacture the future. In her role, she manages corporate philanthropy, youth education and sustainability initiatives, helping 3D Systems deliver on the mission of “Making Good.”

Previously she worked at the Clinton Global Initiative building cross-sector collaborations to support the future of manufacturing in the United States. She was also the national Project Manager for “uniquely ME!”, the Girl Scout/Dove Self Esteem Program, helping kids across the country discover a strong sense of self, connect with others and take action to make the world a better place. Gluck holds a bachelor’s degree in cross-cultural communications from Baruch College and an MBA with a focus on social enterprise and global sustainability from The Ohio State University.

Eric Henry
Title: “98% (the percentage of clothes we buy made overseas)”

Eric Henry, president of TS Designs in Burlington, N.C., discussed how important it is for people to start purchasing locally made products. The North American Free Trade Agreement created a massive shift within overseas apparel production industry, Henry said. He discussed how these changes have negatively resulted in regions such as Bangladesh being destroyed within their communities and businesses.

Henry is one-half of the dynamic duo that owns the Alamance County company. Alongside business partner and CEO Tom Sineath, Henry has been in the screen printing and apparel business for more than 30 years. His duties at TS Designs range from sales to R&D to marketing.

Outside of TS Designs, Henry devotes much of his time to furthering the sustainable agenda in various community organizations. He founded the Burlington Biodiesel Co-op in 2001 and has run his car on biodiesel (or straight vegetable oil) that now has travelled more than 250,000 miles. Along with Charlie Sydnor and Sam Moore, Eric founded Company Shops Market, a co-op grocery in downtown Burlington that reconnects local agriculture to Alamance County. His most recent start-up is the Burlington Beer Works Co-op.

Henry serves on the Burlington Downtown Corporation board, which works to create an environment for development that enhances Downtown Burlington as the cultural, historic, social and economic center of the community. He also serves on the board of NC GreenPower, an organization that purchases and resells renewable energy, and Green America.

Jeffrey Rusick
Title: “NASA Deep Space Exploration Challenges: Power and Radiation”

Jeffrey Rusick currently works at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland for the NASA Radioisotope Power System program that provides advanced power generators for deep space science missions, including the Mars Science Laboratory. Rusick shared information on how issues with power and radiation have created problems within NASA Deep Space Exploration, placing limits on the agency’s ability to conduct space travel.

Rusick currently works at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland for the NASA Radioisotope Power System program that provides advanced power generators for deep space science missions, including the Mars Science Laboratory, which landed the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2012. Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which provides approximately 110 Watts of power to the rover day and night, using heat from the natural decay of (plutonium) Pu-238.

Rusick is working on an advanced stirling radioisotope generator (ASRG), which will be four times more efficient than the current rover RTG for future NASA missions. He is also the NASA Product Assurance lead for the ASRG project. He graduated from Miami University in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and went on to The Ohio State University to receive his Master of Science in nuclear engineering.

James “Jim” F. Demarest
Title: “Putting Innovation into Practice: Advancing the treatment of HIV/AIDS until there is a cure”

James Demarest, adjunct assistant professor at Duke university, joined ViiV Healthcare at its inception in November 2009 as the director of microbiology strategy. Through this opportunity he has been able to advocate the treatment of HIV and AIDs. During the TEDx talk, Demarest explained the importance of improving the health care system and treatment options for HIV/AIDs to reduce the psychological strain endured by infected patients.

ViiV Healthcare was created by GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer as a global specialist HIV company dedicated to delivering advances in treatment and care for people living with HIV. Demarest provides global oversight for the virology and immunology associated with pre-clinical and clinical phase compounds as well as marketed products. Prior to joining ViiV Healthcare, he spent more than 10 years at GlaxoSmithKline R&D (legacy GlaxoWellcome) where he was involved in the discovery and development of novel antivirals, immune-based therapies, and vaccines for the treatment of HIV-1 infection.

Demarest earned his doctorate from the George Washington University while conducting research at the National Institutes of Health/NIAID. He did a post-doctoral research fellowship at Duke University, where he is currently an adjunct assistant professor. Demarest and his family reside in Durham, N.C.

– Information in this story was compiled by Associate Professor Anthony Hatcher and Erin Turner ’15

NC Pro Chapter President April Dudash, a reporter for the Durham Herald-Sun, organized the session. The two speakers were:

Barry Yeoman, a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Mother Jones and Rolling Stone among many others. A graduate of New York University, Barry moved to Durham in 1985 where he began reporting for The Independent, now called The Indy. He has covered subjects as varied as politics, zydeco and the poultry industry and won numerous awards.

Ken Otterbourg, who left a 21-year career in 2010 at The Winston-Salem Journal to work as a freelance journalist. His first big assignment with Fortune magazine was an investigation of Alcoa and its North Carolina dams. Since then, he’s written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Business North Carolina. He also regularly works for nonprofits, doing grant writing and case studies for capital campaigns.

Asked about the self-discipline required to solicit new work and complete freelance assignments while working solo, Yeoman replied that “fear is a great motivator.”

Both Yeoman and Otterbourg said they spend much of their time pitching stories to editors, researching unfamiliar topics and making sure that magazine fact-checkers have very little to do. “If you write for a newspaper, it’s assumed that you got everything right,” Yeoman said.

“Magazines have fact checkers who have to justify their jobs and love to point out something you got wrong,” Otterbourg added.

He added that if you mention in your piece that someone has blue eyes, you had better supply a picture.

On the positive side, they said, freelancers get to set their own hours, work from home and get to travel extensively when covering the right story. Yeoman was sent to Turkey for one writing assignment and spent some time traveling around Europe.

黑料不打烊 SPJ adviser, Associate Professor of Communications Anthony Hatcher, who is treasurer of the NC Pro Chapter, and High Point SPJ adviser Bobby Hayes accompanied their students to the meet and greet. 

NC Pro Chapter President April Dudash, a reporter for the Durham Herald-Sun, organized the session. The two speakers were:

Barry Yeoman, a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Mother Jones and Rolling Stone among many others. A graduate of New York University, Barry moved to Durham in 1985 where he began reporting for The Independent, now called The Indy. He has covered subjects as varied as politics, zydeco and the poultry industry and won numerous awards.

Ken Otterbourg, who left a 21-year career in 2010 at The Winston-Salem Journal to work as a freelance journalist. His first big assignment with Fortune magazine was an investigation of Alcoa and its North Carolina dams. Since then, he’s written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Business North Carolina. He also regularly works for nonprofits, doing grant writing and case studies for capital campaigns.

Asked about the self-discipline required to solicit new work and complete freelance assignments while working solo, Yeoman replied that “fear is a great motivator.”

Both Yeoman and Otterbourg said they spend much of their time pitching stories to editors, researching unfamiliar topics and making sure that magazine fact-checkers have very little to do. “If you write for a newspaper, it’s assumed that you got everything right,” Yeoman said.

“Magazines have fact checkers who have to justify their jobs and love to point out something you got wrong,” Otterbourg added.

He added that if you mention in your piece that someone has blue eyes, you had better supply a picture.

On the positive side, they said, freelancers get to set their own hours, work from home and get to travel extensively when covering the right story. Yeoman was sent to Turkey for one writing assignment and spent some time traveling around Europe.

黑料不打烊 SPJ adviser, Associate Professor of Communications Anthony Hatcher, who is treasurer of the NC Pro Chapter, and High Point SPJ adviser Bobby Hayes accompanied their students to the meet and greet. 

Bruno is the recipient of the Presidents Scholarship from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Three years ago, RTDNA joined forces with the Society of Professional Journalists to hold an annual combined journalism conference.

Rich Landesberg and Anthony Hatcher, both associate professors of communications, attended the conference with Bruno. Landesberg is adviser to ELN and Hatcher is adviser to 黑料不打烊’s chapter of SPJ.

Bruno, who is also the student president of SPJ at 黑料不打烊, received the D’Angelo Family Scholarship in April 2013. Established by Drs. Lawrence and Dolores D’Angelo P’02, the scholarship honors the late CBS Newsman Bill Leonard and recognizes the achievements of an outstanding rising senior in the field of broadcast communication.

Lawrence D’Angelo was the college roommate of Fox News Sunday broadcaster Chris Wallace. Bill Leonard was Wallace’s stepfather. Wallace’s father was Mike Wallace of CBS’s 60 Minutes, who died in 2012.

Wallace met privately with Bruno, Hatcher and Landesberg to reminisce and chat about the state of modern journalism. Wallace was at the convention to receive the Paul White Award, an award bestowed upon Mike Wallace in 1991. Chris and Mike Wallace are the only father and son who have received this top honor from RTDNA.

黑料不打烊 journalism students in broadcast, print and digital media regularly win regional and national awards. 黑料不打烊’s SPJ chapter was named Outstanding Campus Chapter for Region 2 in 2011 and 2012. Region 2 encompasses the Carolinas, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

Hatcher has been conducting research on Ross and his sole crime noir novel for more than two years.

Ross (1911-1990) attended 黑料不打烊 College in the 1930s and published only one novel and eight short stories. Unable to earn a living as a fiction writer, Ross turned to journalism, first in Savannah, Ga., and then in Greensboro, N.C. He became a reporter and editorial writer for the Greensboro Daily News, now the News & Record, in the 1950s.

Ross was the eldest of four siblings born near Norwood, N.C. who became known as the “Writing Rosses.” His brother Fred, who also wrote one novel and some short stories, died in 1992. His sister, poet Eleanor Ross Taylor, was the widow of novelist Peter Taylor. She died in 2011. The youngest sibling, Jean Ross Justice, widow of poet Donald Justice, lives in Iowa and is still writing stories and essays.

James Ross’s niece and Fred’s daughter, Heather Ross Miller, is a novelist, poet and teacher at Pfeiffer University near Charlotte. Miller, Jean Ross Justice, and James Ross’s widow Marnie provided firsthand accounts, photos, and original manuscripts that made up the bulk of Hatcher’s research. Numerous interviews were also conducted with former Ross associates, including Pulitzer winners Ed Yoder and Jonathan Yardley, both of whom worked with Ross at the Daily News.

Hatcher’s work on James Ross has yielded renewed interest in the author. A Spanish language edition of the novel will soon be published for the first time. Articles by former Ross colleague Bill Morris on Hatcher’s research appeared in O. Henry magazine and on the website The Millions.

A new edition of “They Don’t Dance Much” has been published by Mysterious Press, who asked Hatcher to pen an essay for its blog:

Hatcher’s essay in Oxford American magazine detailing his search for information on Ross can be accessed online at 

A Washington Post book review by Jonathan Yardley on the reissue of “They Don’t Dance Much” references Hatcher’s Oxford American piece:

North Carolina Literary Review is published annually by East Carolina University and the North Carolina Literary & Historical Association. The 2013 issue also features poetry and prose by Fred Chappell, Bland Simpson, Daniel Wallace and many others. Contents of the current issue can be found at:

In a column posted on both the Huffington Post Religion Blog and the Odyssey Network’s ON Scripture website, Hatcher discusses the attempt by some North Carolina legislators in April of this year to allow establishment of a state religion. 

“Eleven legislators, all white male Christians, backed a bill to codify Christianity in state law, saying the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not trump the state’s rights,” Hatcher notes. “The effort died a quick and merciful death.

“These misguided politicians forgot a simple truth – even if a state could mandate a public religion, that wouldn’t change what is in people’s hearts. As Roger Williams wrote in June 1670, ‘Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.’ Williams, who was expelled by the Puritans and founded a religious colony in Rhode Island, knew firsthand the importance of religious freedom.”

From the ON Scripture website: “ON Scripture, produced by Odyssey Networks, is a leading online multi-media resource, bringing the ancient Christian and Jewish scriptures to life. Every week a scholar from each of those traditions reflects on the meaning of the upcoming Sabbath’s lectionary passage or Torah portion in light of contemporary issues and events. Their essays are enhanced by an original, news-related video produced by the Odyssey team.” Odyssey has an affiliation with Huffington Post that permits its blogs to be posted on the site.

Hatcher used Paul’s letter to the Galatians as a lectionary reference point for his essay.

Hatcher’s column can be read on either the ON Scripture website or on the Huffington Post Religion Blog:

http://www.odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-the-bible-Galatians-2-15 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-hatcher/religious-liberty-for-the-rest-of-us_b_3424072.html 

The Friday evening keynote address by Professor Robert Darden of Baylor University was titled “Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement.” Darden is directing the . 

According to the project’s website, “The purpose of this project is to identify, acquire, preserve, record and catalogue the most at-risk music from the black gospel music tradition. This collection will primarily contain 78s, 45s, LPs, and the various tape formats issued in the United States and abroad between the 1940s and the 1980s.”

The Rev. Mary Brown, Director for Philanthropy and a Web Content & Development Consultant with the Odyssey Networks, gave the conference’s luncheon address on Saturday. 

Participants came from a wide range of institutions across the country, including University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Phillips Theological Seminary; Buffalo State College; Texas A&M; Baylor University; Regent University; Campbell University; and Delaware State.

Communication professors Lucinda Austin, Amanda Sturgill, Colin Donohue, Youseff Osman, and Anthony Hatcher had roles as moderators, presenters, and planners. Dean Paul Parsons and Associate Dean Don Grady also spoke at the conference. Dr. Hatcher’s Religion and Media students also took part in the conference, attending sessions, greeting attendees and writing about the speakers.

Other 黑料不打烊 participants were Religious Studies professor Lynn Huber and Pamela Winfield, and Chaplain Janet Fuller.