Will McGregor of McCallie
photo by John Shearer
Recent McCallie School graduate Will McGregor and Girls Preparatory School graduate Katie Brandao were both admittedly fans and admirers of Duke University during their secondary school years.
Mr. McGregor’s mother went to the Durham school, while Miss Brandao had taken part in the Duke Talent Identification Program summer camp for youngsters.
Although the two did not initially have going to Carolina on their minds, to paraphrase the old James Taylor song, the University of North Carolina – the archrival of Duke -- certainly had them on its mind.
The two this spring received Morehead-Cain scholarships to the Chapel Hill school, becoming the first Chattanooga students to receive what is considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the country in more than 10 years.
As a result, the two students figuratively turned blue – as in Carolina light blue – with excitement.
“I thought it was something I couldn’t turn down,” said Mr.
McGregor with a smile.
The Morehead-Cain program is a merit scholarship competition that is almost like a scholastic decathlon in that being selected involves a grueling process and students have to be strong in multiple areas. They must be academic scholars, leaders who possess character, skilled at articulating their thoughts orally, and regular participants in a physical activity.
Although Baylor and McCallie regularly had two students receive the then-Morehead Scholarship many years from the 1950s into the 1980s, the scholarship has since become even more competitive with a larger and more diverse applicant pool. Also, more high schools have become eligible to nominate a student.
The last local honoree was John Stevenson of McCallie in 2006. Baylor has not had a Morehead-Cain Scholar since Dayheen Naderi in 2001, and GPS has never had one, due partly to the fact that the school was not officially a nominating school until a little more than 15 years ago.
According to GPS director of college guidance Susan McCarter, that was finally changed through the persuasive work of Bill Caulkins, a UNC alumnus whose daughters attended GPS.
As a result of all that persistence -- and plenty of waiting by GPS -- a special moment of emotional celebration finally came for the school with Miss Brandao’s selection.
And she is not taking her selection lightly, saying she has felt deeply honored and humbled to represent the school as the first Morehead-Cain Scholar.
“It means so much to me, and I am glad I can honor it,” she said. “Hopefully it has opened the door for future students to get the Morehead.”
The only other local female students to receive Morehead-Cain scholarships are believed to be Baylor students Caroline Willingham Higgins from the class of 1994 and Callie Taintor Wiser from the class of 1998.
As the two new honorees talked about the honor recently in separate interviews at their respective schools before graduating and taking part in summer activities, their own personalities came forth. Mr. McGregor has an easily approachable and smiling manner, and Miss Brandao possesses an already-mature ability to articulate.
And their interests and accomplishments are also unique. Mr. McGregor, a boarding student from Virginia, was a standout soccer player at McCallie and helped start a Leo Club, which is like a student Lions Club, with his brother, Ryan, who now attends Princeton after graduating in 2016. Miss McGregor was the yearbook co-editor, was on the rowing team and has been involved with the Chattanooga Mayor’s Youth Council. In addition, she plays in the handbell choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
But they both had similar feelings of excitement over being chosen.
Miss Brandao, the daughter of Julie Brandao of Chattanooga and Honor Brandao of Florida, said she was thinking about attending Davidson College and possibly Duke late last summer when she began her senior year.
“I didn’t have Carolina on my radar at all,” she joked.
However, that began to change after she went through GPS’ protocol of having seniors interview with some of the school’s faculty and staff regarding school nominations for the more selective college scholarships.
They tried to find the best fit for each student, and Miss Brandao was pleasantly surprised when she was asked how she might like being a Tar Heel. “I think I could come to like it,’ ” she said with a smile.
However, she did not expect to get very far in the nomination process. As with Mr. McGregor, she had to submit the application and write some essays. She was able to advance into the semifinal stage, and then she had to answer questions by talking into a computer.
She was able to advance to the finals and spent a weekend at Chapel Hill with Mr. McGregor and 133 other students. That offered a much more personal touch and showed off the Eastern North Carolina school better than the online interview.
However, it was not easy, she said. The weekend included another unusual interview aspect in which the nominees were put through short interviews in person and then a long one about challenging issues.
Miss Brandao said she did not talk to anyone who felt good about the process afterward.
While the formal interviews were important to North Carolina officials in selecting the nominees, the more fun and informal exchanges sold her on the school. She said that she quickly caught on that the current students loved going to school there.
“UNC really impressed me with its school spirit and tightly knit community,” she said. “Everybody you asked there loved UNC. Nobody had a bad word to say about it. And people there are motivated and want to better the world.”
Mr. McGregor said he also liked the students. And, as a lover of nature and the outdoors, he found the more pastoral-looking campus appealing. “I liked how open it was,” he said.
They happened to be there on the weekend that UNC beat Duke in basketball near the end of the regular season before the Tar Heels went on to win the national championship, and that was also a plus.
Mr. McGregor said that definitely helped sell him on the school.
“Carolina won, so everyone stormed Franklin Street” (in downtown Chapel Hill), he said. “That was definitely a turning point in loving Carolina.”
Miss Brandao had a similar experience that weekend of catching Carolina fever. “I told my mom that even if I don’t get the scholarship, I think I’ll still go to UNC,” she said, adding that she also partook in the tradition of drinking a sip of water out of the old-fashioned fountain inside the gazebo-like Old Well on campus.
They were to find out in mid-March whether they had received the scholarship, and it was obviously a nervous time. Mr. McGregor said he was with his soccer team when he found out the good news an hour earlier than expected.
“My heart started pumping. I wasn’t ready for that at all,” he said with a laugh.
Miss Brandao also knew the expected announcement time, so she had a plan to drive around some in her car and be by herself at her favorite coffee house, Rembrandt’s, when she would learn the happy or disappointing news. She was going to try and appear outwardly calm, even if she was not on the inside.
But just as she was in her room at home getting ready to go out, the positive email came.
“I called Mom from my room and said, ‘I got it,’ ” Miss Brandao recalled with excitement. She also told her younger sister, Emma, now a rising ninth-grader, the news as well. But at her mother’s suggestions, they initially tricked some other family members they visited later before telling them the good news.
Her maternal grandparents were longtime Chattanoogans Clifford and Sally Betts. Mr. Betts, a well-known engineer, died in April shortly after she received the news. Sally, the daughter of former University of Chattanooga president/chancellor Dr. LeRoy Martin, had died in January, but after her granddaughter had been nominated for the Morehead-Cain.
While Miss Brandao immediately accepted the scholarship, Mr. McGregor said he initially wanted to keep his options open, as he thought he might want to go to school at Princeton with his brother, or possibly Columbia.
But after thinking about it and hearing from such people as fellow McCallie graduates and Morehead scholars Carter Newbold and Charles Anderson, he knew he wanted to go to UNC, he said.
About the same time he accepted the Morehead-Cain, his four-year McCallie roommate, Nathan Little, also received a prestigious Belk Scholarship to Davidson College.
Miss Brandao said she was also aided in the process by meeting former Morehead Scholars Judge Neil Thomas and Nelson Irvine, who attend her church.
The Morehead-Cain family of past and current recipients is apparently considered almost as close as the famous North Carolina basketball family and its lineage connected to the late former coach Dean Smith.
Mr. McGregor said he and Miss Brandao had talked a little about their upcoming adventures as Morehead-Cain Scholars since they were selected, including about their summer enrichment activities that are part of the program.
He was to go whitewater rafting and mountaineering with Outward Bound in Oregon this summer, while she was scheduled to go sea kayaking in Alaska.
Besides receiving the UNC scholarships, the two also found out they have another connection in that his great-uncle, Donald “Chico” McGregor, had been a best friend of her grandfather, Mr. Betts, at McCallie before they graduated in 1948.
Chico McGregor and the younger Mr. McGregor’s grandfather, Dr. Alberto McGregor ’55, and father, current trustee Alberto McGregor ‘82, had come to McCallie from Nicaragua.
At UNC, Mr. McGregor plans to study environmental science and look at working in the field of geothermal energy, saying his family’s ancestral country in Central America has a huge potential in that realm with its resources.
Being somewhat fluent in Spanish after spending the first three years of his life in Mexico before his family eventually settled in Leesburg, Va., not far from Washington, D.C., he also hopes to get involved in helping the Hispanic community around Chapel Hill, he added.
Miss Brandao plans to double major in both public policy and computer science. She said she believes computer science is the language of the future and is important, although she will likely work in the field of public policy.
Having just broken another “glass ceiling” as the first GPS graduate to receive the Morehead-Cain Scholarship, she feels more opportunities are opening up for women, but knows small limitations still exist.
“I don’t know if we’re quite there yet, but we’re on the cusp,” she said.
While both Miss Brandao and Mr. McGregor are appreciative of their future opportunities, they are also grateful for the past.
Miss Brandao said she will miss going to a school where she knows something about all 77 of her classmates, and is appreciative of how the GPS teachers pushed her and the other students to think on their feet.
Mr. McGregor said he formerly was just focused on playing soccer before arriving in Chattanooga in the fall of 2013 as a high school freshman. Now he has other goals in his sights besides just those with a bar and net.
“Coming to McCallie changed my priorities,” he said. “I loved my community here. It’s always meant a lot to my dad, and I can see where he’s coming from.”
* * *
Distinguished Company – Both Baylor and McCallie have had a combined 99 Morehead Scholars, or Morehead-Cain Scholars as they became known as beginning in 2007, to have graduated from the UNC program.
And if you are keeping score, which Baylor and McCallie obviously like to do with each other in about everything, McCallie has had 53 Morehead-Cain Scholars to graduate in the UNC program, to Baylor’s 46.
A small number who were initially named scholars while in high school either decided to attend another school, or did not complete the Morehead-Cain program and graduate. Their names are not included in the lists below, which were provided by the Morehead-Cain Foundation office at UNC with the help of representatives of Baylor and McCallie.
Baylor’s recipients and the years they graduated high school include Wilson R. Cooper ’55, Coleman Barks ’55, Hugh “Banjie” Goodman Jr. ’56, William Crutchfield Jr. ’56, Rudy Walldorf ’57, Lawrence B. “Pete” Austin III ’57, J. McLeod Griffis ’58, William B. Riley ’59, J. Nelson Irvine ’59, Roy Kirk ’60, Stephen N. Dennis ’61, W. Neil Thomas III ’62, J. Richard Steele ’62, W. Lane Verlenden III ’63, Grant Bernard Varner Jr. ’63, Petrie M. “Pete” Rainey ’64, Joseph L. Holliday ’65, Charles H. “Landy” Anderton Jr. ’65, R. Van Fletcher Jr. ’66, Addison L. Webb Jr. ’67, Alfred E. Smith ’67, James Haley IV ’68, William P. Aiken Jr. ’68, G. Evans Witt ’69, Bill Mathis ’70, J. Gary Wheeler ’71, and Peter C. Rawlings ’71.
Other Morehead-Cain Scholars from Baylor to graduate from UNC include T. Scott Frazier ’72, Marion Wall ’72, Gregory A. Settles ’73, Alan S. Murray ’73, Robert D. Hays ’76, Jeffrey A. Aiken ’76, Benic M. “Bruz” Clark III ’77, Frank A. Hirsch Jr. ’79, Christopher H. Healey ’80, G. Hadley Callaway ’80, Edward M. Cox ’81, Gregory L. Cullum ’83, R. Glenn Etter Jr. ’84, Scott K. Shriver ’88, Derek S. Bevil ’93, Caroline E. Willingham Higgins ’94, Callie Taintor Wiser ’98, William M. Aiken ’99 and Dayheen Naderi ‘01
McCallie’s recipients include Dave McAlister Davis ’55, David Allan Floyd Sr. ’55, William C. Stem ’56, Mark King Wilson III ’56, Joseph Henley Warner ’57, J.P. Browder III ’58, George W. Campbell Jr. ’58, Daniel M. Armstrong III ’59, William R. Sullivan ’59, Charles H. Battle Jr., ’60, Whitney Durand ’60, Henry B. Aldridge ’61, Elbert Edwin Edwards III ’61, S. Wyatt McCallie ’62, Richard Sandusky Johnson Jr. ’62, James G. Aplin ’63, Thomas A. Mastin ’63, Luther Anderson Galyon III ’64, Jonathan C. Gibson ’64, Stanley D. Davis ’65, Thomas B. Heys Jr. ’65, James W. Hoback Jr. ’66, James C. Wann Jr. ’66, James M. Glass III ’67, and Joel Kronenberg ’67.
Other Morehead-Cain Scholars from McCallie to finish the UNC program are R. Scott Langley Jr. ’68, David H. Paris Jr. ’68, Jay D. Bennett Jr. ’70, Boyd G. Steward ’70, William J. Dulin ’71, Michael C. Shuck ’72, T. Peter Anderson ’73, H. Hill Carrow Jr. ’73, Ward W. Nelson ’75, Harry E. Sibold ’75, Franklin T. Roberts ’77, Robert C. Divine ’78, J. Tally Johnston III ’79, William H. Kimball ’79, Gerry Cohn ’80, Lucas A. Powers ’80, Martin M. Henegar ’81, James C. Farrer ’82, Mitchell H. Parks ’82, N Carter Newbold IV ’84, Holt Buff Grace III ’87, W. Gregory Mullinax ’90, Charles S. Anderson ’93, A. LaVar Smith ’97, Charles N. Battle II ’99, Tyler Ray ‘00, David E. Pollock ’04, and John R. Stevenson III ’06.
And now Mr. McGregor hopes to become the 100th from each school combined to graduate, and Miss Brandao hopes to become the first from GPS.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
Girls Preparatory School graduate Katie Brandao
photo by John Shearer