Chancellor James Moeser and the Board of Trustees honored the four recipients at a Carolina Inn dinner Wednesday, Nov. 16.
Established by UNC’s Board of Trustees in 1984, the Davie Award is named for the Revolutionary War hero who is considered the father of the university. It is the highest honor bestowed by the trustees and recognizes extraordinary service to the university or to society.
Born in Raleigh in 1931, Daniels began his career at his family’s newspaper, The News & Observer of Raleigh, at age 15, working as a bill collector and performing odd jobs for the business office. His grandfather, Josephus Daniels, founded the paper.
“Attending UNC was a great and growing experience,” Daniels said. “In the subsequent years, I have found it to continue to be a progressive force — generating discussion, creating an atmosphere of people able to argue about ideas, not being content to go with the popular sentiments of the day.
“I would hope UNC never becomes a bastion of the establishment but — rather like a god newspaper — afflicts the comfortable. I want it to educate as many students from this state as it possibly can.”
Daniels received his UNC history degree in 1953. After graduation, he joined the Air Force and served two years before returning to UNC to enroll in law school. He left law school to rejoin the family businesss and went to work initially in the advertising department.
In 1971, he became publisher and president of The News & Observer in Raleigh, posts he held until retiring in 1996.
During this stretch of his career, he championed government openness, and The News & Observer won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism in 1996 for stories on the environmental and health risks of waste disposal in hog farming. That same year, Daniels was inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame.
Also in 1996, Daniels and his wife, Julia Jones Daniels, were named outstanding philanthropists of the year by the Triangle Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives. That year, they established the Julia and Frank Daniels Endowment Fund at the Greater Triangle Community Foundation.
Daniels is a former director of UNC General Alumni Association and a former member of UNC’s Board of Visitors. During Carolina’s Bicentennial Campaign, which ran from 1990 to 1995, he served on the steering committee. He has served as a trustee for UNC’s Kenan Institute.
The other recipients of the award were Marjorie Bryan Buckley of Bethlehem, Pa.; Donald Curtis of Raleigh; and Richard J. “Dick” Richardson of Pittsboro.
Since graduating from UNC in 1962, Buckley has led efforts to bring Outward Bound to North Carolina and to create UNC’s Carolina Center for Public Service. Buckley also played an instrumental role in founding the Carolina Center for Public Service.
Curtis heads Raleigh-based Curtis Media Group, which operates North Carolina’s largest network of radio stations, including flagships WPTF-AM and WQDR-FM. A UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication alumnus, Curtis was inducted into the N.C. Association of Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame in 2002.
In 1995, then-Chancellor Michael Hooker selected Richardson to be the university’s provost.
Hooker and Richardson served four years together, and during that time seven new deans were appointed, along with several other high-ranking administrators.
To honor him, his colleagues and friends established the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professorship for a senior scholar and teacher in American politics.
