Sarah Virginia Dunlap - C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Awards

Winsome in person and in every dealing on the University’s behalf, Sarah Virginia “Peaches” Dunlap was cheerfully painstaking in every detail, but sensitively energetic and imaginative in support of Dean Walter Reece Berryhill (dean from 1941 to 1964) through the years of transition and growth from a two-year to a four-year School of Medicine. She continued to be helpful to the school even in her years away as executive secretary of the Markle Foundation, and was a fastidious idealist as Secretary of the University, assistant secretary of the Board of Trustees and in service to the search committee for a new chancellor. Dunlap was a fitting recipient of one of the first C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Awards. In 1987, she was also recognized for her University service with a William Richardson Davie Award and a General Alumni Association Distinguished Service Medal.

C. Knox Massey

The late C. Knox Massey of Durham attended the University in the early 1920s and then founded an advertising agency in Durham now considered one of the South’s advertising pioneers.

After retiring from the ad firm in 1967, Massey became a special assistant to then UNC Chancellor Carlyle Sitterson—working another 25 years essentially as a volunteer—at a salary of “$1 a year.”

Massey established scholarship programs and faculty teaching awards in addition to the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award.

He earned:

The School of Medicine’s Distinguished Service Award in 1957

The Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service Medal in 1979

The University’s William Richardson Davie Award in 1988

Massey died in 1993 at the age of 90.