The Libraries remembers Gov. Jim Hunt

“Leadership arises from necessity.” This was the opening sentence of the Libraries’ 2014 exhibit “James B. Hunt, Jr.: A Legacy of Leadership,” displayed at the NC State library that is named for him.

Jim Hunt, who served four terms as Governor of North Carolina, died in December at the age of 88 at his family farm near Lucama, North Carolina. He is remembered fully in a moving tribute by NC State’s Tim Peeler. In a way, his legacy is also remembered thousands of times a day as students and faculty enter the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on Centennial Campus to use its technology-rich learning spaces. Governor Hunt’s commitment to improving education in the state forever changed NC State University—where he was Student Body President twice—as well as the Libraries.

As a child, Hunt developed a love for learning and reading from his family. At a time when most states had half-day kindergartens, Hunt campaigned early in his political career on extending kindergarten to a full day, which became a reality once he was governor. Every campaign throughout the career of the “Education Governor” emphasized statewide access to an equitable educational system supported by high-quality teachers. From 1987 to 1997, he chaired the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Putting theory into practice, Hunt always took time from his busy governor’s schedule to volunteer weekly in local schools during his four terms, helping students with their lessons and reading skills. His wife, Carolyn, shares this passion for education, having graduated with a degree in teaching from UNC–Chapel Hill. From 1986 to 1990, Carolyn served on the Wilson County School Board, and she was a weekly school volunteer for thirty-five years.

A proud alum of NC State and a driver in the movement to bring a College of Veterinary Medicine to the university, Gov. Hunt also led efforts to secure NC State’s Centennial Campus, which is now anchored by the Hunt Library. Named the nation’s top research park in 2007, Centennial Campus spurs multidisciplinary collaboration among students, faculty, and researchers, as well as corporate, governmental, and institutional partners. But if it hadn’t been for Hunt’s visionary leadership, Centennial wouldn’t have happened. 

In 1984, when real estate developers came calling about the open farmland pared from the Dorothea Dix Hospital grounds, Hunt had a different idea. He knew that NC State needed to grow to maintain its competitive reputation, and he envisioned a new research campus for the school. Hunt allotted the initial portion of Centennial Campus, totaling 355 acres, of a land transfer from Dorothea Dix to NC State. The land allocation grew and became a thriving campus—and that campus needed a library. Hunt let the state legislature know that there would be a global competition to design NC State’s “library of the future.”

The international firm Snøhetta was chosen. Architect Craig Dykers remembers Hunt’s focus on a vision for the university’s future students, not just the needs of the current ones. “From the day he first spoke to us and the design team, Governor Hunt said this is about people that are not yet born. That there are those people that will come long after we are gone that will be influenced—in a positive way, we hope—by the development of this structure,” Dykers says in The Hunt Library Story, a video about the library’s development.

Now the intellectual and social center of Centennial Campus, the Hunt Library opened in January 2013. It has become the definition of the research library of the future, putting emerging technologies, research computing, and visualization tools into the hands of students and faculty, enabling and encouraging collaborative multidisciplinary instruction and research.

The Hunt Library is a fitting embodiment of the “Education Governor” Jim Hunt’s lasting legacy. "I never dreamed it would be this good," he said at the April 2013 dedication of the building. "The thing that excites me the most is that students tell me they like it."

“Even though the library‘s named for me it’s going to be about the life of the state and the story of leadership in the state—in particular, the last half century when North Carolina has gone from being down near the bottom in things to closer up to the top, and how that came about,” Hunt said in a 2009 interview about the Hunt Library’s plans. “It’s appropriate that it’s at NC State because no university represents the kind of community involvement and people working together to improve their lives more than NC State does.”