Page 40 - Robeson Living Summer 2021

Pinchbeck on train from California to North Carolina
discharged to step forward. He stepped forward and received an had a big meeting there and I went. I saw a girl there. I asked a
honorable discharge. His next step was to hop a train for Pem- fellow who she was, and he told me her name was Bertha Lowry.
broke, North Carolina. I told this guy you’re looking at my wife. He said no. I want to
marry her. I got myself introduced to her and though it took me
In talking about his arrival in Pembroke, North Carolina he re- two years to land her, I finally did”.
called “when I got there, not knowing a soul, in Pembroke, but
knowing of it through somebody I had met in the service. I got off Pinchbeck married Bertha Jane Lowry, thirteen years his junior,
a freight train in front of Old Main. That was the first building I on February 19, 1937. She was the daughter of William Henry
had even seen and the next building I’d see was a little log cabin Lowery and Crossie Manyor. Her family lived across from the
now where I’m holding the Scout meetings weekly”. The morning campus on what is now the football stadium. The Pinchbecks
after he arrived, he went into town for breakfast. He asked if they were parents to three sons Walter Jr, William Henry and Francis
served eggs and ham when they replied yes, he said I will take six and three daughters Mary Alice, Helena and Sandra.
eggs, six pieces of toast and the biggest piece of ham you’ve got.

He arrived at the height of the Great Depression and there were Campus Life
no jobs, so he decided to leave. He rambled back north ending up Pinchbeck went to work for Cherokee Indian Normal School of
at the Article Circle then down the West Coast to Mexico. Some- Robeson County. The school was renamed in 1941 Pembroke
thing kept drawing him back to Pembroke, so he returned once State College for Indians. Today it is known as the University of
again for a visit but soon left again. He made his trip back to North Carolina at Pembroke. He worked as the superintendent of
Pembroke in 1935. buildings and grounds for twenty-eight years and three months.
“When I started working there, we had one hundred and one stu-
When asked why he stayed in Pembroke he stated “Well, I’ll tell dents and it got to be one hundred and twenty-five. Then during
you. I stayed because of the people I found here. They were In- the war, the army picked up our men and it got down to eight-
dians but weren’t like those elsewhere. They had ingenuity and five”. By the time he retired enrollment was at 1,564 students.
ambition – they could compete against the white race – a tough
people”. In those early years of the college several of faculty lived in
campus houses along what is Faculty Tow. The Pinchbecks lived
Family there for 20 years and four of the six children were born on cam-
He also said “that is not the only reason I decided to stay. There pus. They kept a mule and cow on campus as well as tended a
used to be a little wooden church, a Holiness Church, and they garden. In the Pembroke College news section of the October 13,
Page 39 Page 40 Robeson Living ~ Summer 2021