Phil Hanes, Winston-Salem's champion
for arts and downtown development, dies at age 84
by By Ken Keuffel
Phil Hanes, an unstoppable force for developing
the local and national arts scene for more than 50 years and a champion of
downtown Winston-Salem, died Sunday morning. He was 84.
He had been in declining health during the past few years.
Hanes demonstrated how much influence one person could have with his energetic
pursuit and support of innovative ideas, including the UNC School of the Arts,
the Stevens Center and the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County.
"I have known Phil Hanes almost my entire adult life, and he has been a dear
friend, mentor, professional associate and confidant," said Milton Rhodes, the
president and chief executive of the Arts Council, which Hanes had loyally
supported since the early 1950s.
"I will miss him, and I cannot imagine Winston-Salem without him. Phil cared
more about this city and worked harder for its betterment than anyone else I
have ever known."
Christine Belcik-Griffith served as Hanes' executive assistant in an office on
Fourth Street for about 10 years, helping him with many an arts- or
entertainment-related project in the city's downtown. She likened Hanes to her
tough Zen master.
"He made me a better person," she said. "There will never be another like Phil.
We are so lucky to have had him. His legacy is legion."
Ralph Philip Hanes Jr. was born in Winston-Salem on Feb. 25, 1926, growing up in
a cultured environment amid wealth and privilege. He attended Woodberry Forest
School, a prep school in Virginia, and in 1949, after attending UNC Chapel Hill
for a time, earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale University.
Hanes began developing an interest in the arts at Yale, and he sang in the glee
club there. Soon after returning to Winston-Salem to work for his family's Hanes
Dye and Finishing Company, which eventually named him its chairman, he dedicated
himself to supporting the arts behind the scenes during spare hours after work.
Hanes theorized that a business dies if it doesn't give young people a shot at
the presidency. So six months before his 50th birthday, he resigned the
presidency at Hanes to promote the arts full-time. At that point, he had already
turned over management of the company's day-to-day operations to a team of young
and innovative people so that he could do the "fun job" of deciding which
artistic or environmental causes the company should champion.
In advocating for the arts, Hanes would wear many hats, including those of
philanthropist, board member, founder, consultant, art collector, publicist and
policymaker. His legacy is felt most strongly on the revitalized streets of
downtown Winston-Salem, at UNC School of the Arts and at arts councils in
Winston-Salem and around the country.
In addition to his work in getting Piedmont Opera and the Southeastern Center
for Contemporary Art get off the ground in the 1950s, Hanes helped found and
donated millions to UNCSA, including pledges to the school's endowment of $1
million in 1997 and $1 million in 2000. (The school began operating as N.C.
School of the Arts in 1965. It was renamed UNC School of the Arts in 2008.) The
1997 donation, which went toward special programs and student needs, was the
largest individual gift in the school's history when it was made.
"Phil Hanes was one of our founding fathers," said John Mauceri, the chancellor
of UNCSA. "That alone would make his passing terribly sad, but the fact that he
continued to be integrally involved in and contribute to the well-being of this
institution throughout his life makes this particularly sobering. His
transformative actions in building and protecting the School of the Arts, and in
creating the City of Arts and Innovation, is the legacy we all will share."
Hanes was instrumental in raising money for the renovations that transformed the
Carolina Theatre into the Stevens Center, which is UNCSA's principal performance
venue on Fourth Street.
"Phil was an idea person and a visionary," Rhodes said. "The Stevens Center is
good evidence of that. He proposed the restoration and pursued it doggedly."
Hanes also lobbied for naming the center after Roger Stevens, the esteemed
Broadway producer who became chairman of National Council on the Arts, later
renamed the National Endowment for the Arts.
"Naming it for Stevens ... was brilliant," Rhodes said. "(Hanes) corralled
luminaries such as Isaac Stern, Gregory Peck, Gerald Ford and others for the
stellar opening."
Mayor Allen Joines said Hanes' impact "will be felt for decades, if not
generations, to come."
"He had a unique approach at getting things done and did not like hearing why
something could not be done," Joines said.
"One of the things he perhaps was proudest of was working with young
entrepreneurs such as Sweet Potatoes and John Bryan at Krankies. Phil is gone,
but we will never forget him. All we have to do look around at the Stevens
Center, the Sawtooth and the restaurants downtown, and we see Phil. When we hear
a beautiful musical or see a dance at the UNCSA, we see Phil."
Stuff of legend
Phil Hanes' involvement in the beginnings of UNCSA has become the stuff of
legend. In the early 1960s, Winston-Salem was vying with several other cities in
the state to become the site of what would become the first state-supported,
residential school of its kind in the nation. Specifically, the aim was to win
over a board of advisers for the arts school, which would recommend to the late
Gov. Terry Sanford a site for the school.
Hanes played a key role in doing just that. Over two days in April 1964, he led
a "Dial for Dollars" campaign that resulted in more than 5,000 people pledging
more than $850,000. A grant of $350,000 from Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation was
added to that amount. The money underwrote the construction of two dormitories
and the renovations that transformed the old Gray High School building into the
arts school.
The cremated remains of Phil Hanes will be housed in an on-campus sculpture
called "Conversations," created in 2006 by artist Richard Hunt. School officials
say that no other educational institution in the United States has campus
artwork that eventually will be used for interment.
The installation of "Conversations" came about because government regulations
were amended. Hanes had advocated for sculpture on UNCSA's campus for many
years. He said he hoped that others would commission pieces such as
"Conversations" so that they could enjoy them during their lifetimes and have a
final resting place among those who love the arts.
A student commons on UNCSA's campus is named for Phil and Charlotte Hanes.
If all this sounds more than a little incredible, it isn't to Rhodes. He has put
in two stints as the arts council's president and chief executive: from 1971 to
1985 and beginning in 2004. So he has had many years watching how Hanes
operated.
"When Phil came up against a wall, he would figure out a way to go over it,
under it, around it or through it," Rhodes said. "He was an early supporter of
the Creative Problem Solving Institute in Buffalo and enjoyed handing out a
sticker that read, 'Let's find at least one good reason why it can be done.'"
As for the arts councils in Winston-Salem and elsewhere, Hanes's support of them
began in the early 1950s when he began raising money for the then-fledgling Arts
Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. This might not have happened if the
late Katharine King Johnson hadn't been able to persuade Hanes to join the
council's board.
"I said, 'Katie, I don't know anything about the arts,'" Hanes recalled in 2007,
the year she died.
Johnson was undeterred. She asked Hanes whether his ignorance of cancer would
prevent him from serving on a hospital's board. Hanes said no and agreed to help
the council.
Arts councils — Winston-Salem formed the country's first in 1949 — unite arts
groups and artists in a cooperative effort to attract financial support through
campaigns similar to those of the United Way. Hanes ardently supported such
bodies, saying that they prevented the kind of "dog-eat-dog situation" that can
result in the collapse of many arts groups chasing after limited funds.
Hanes helped start many arts councils around the country in the 1950s and'60s.
And he founded an organization to advocate for them, namely the National
Assembly of State Arts Agencies.
"There is probably no arts council in the United States formed in the 1950s
and'60s with whom he did not consult by letter or telephone, but more often in
person." So wrote Rhodes in a letter sent to the National Endowment for the
Arts, which in 1991 named Hanes as one of 12 artists and patrons to receive the
National Medal of Arts from President George H.W. Bush.
Hanes was doing more on the national stage than helping establish arts councils
outside of Winston-Salem. In 1958, for example, he became a founding charter
member of the American Symphony Orchestra League, now the League of American
Orchestras. He would remain in the international arts arena for more than 40
years, serving on the boards of roughly 45 national and international arts
organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the N.C. Arts
Council.
Supporting the city
One aim of all this service, Hanes said, was to "bring the information and the
people and the resources back to Winston-Salem." In the 1970s, Hanes began doing
just that when he started Ampersand Inc., a consulting firm aimed at helping
cultural groups with planning and fundraising activities.
He would later write down lessons from a lifetime in a book titled "How to Get
Anyone to Do Anything" (Ten Speed Press, 2006). By 1980, Ampersand had helped
raise $11 million for a range of arts causes and organizations.
Hanes argued that a robust, lively arts scene in Winston-Salem would help it
attract future employers and/or aid current ones in recruiting talented workers.
So at one point, he declared himself a one-man press corps for the city,
generating a stream of mostly positive articles about Winston-Salem in such
national publications as Town & Country and U.S. News and World Report.
And during the past 10 years or so, working with Christine Belcik-Griffith,
Hanes became one of the chief catalysts for downtown revitalization. In
Winston-Salem, that meant not only a growing Arts District and other arts
attractions but also more restaurants, bars and clubs.
"He believed that an energetic, vibrant street scene would attract larger
development and would break down barriers of people of different races and
classes," Belcik-Griffith said. "Downtown belongs to everybody and gives
everybody a place to mingle and meet."
Hanes and Belcik-Griffith routinely took people on tours to show off the current
scene downtown and to encourage future possibilities there. Hanes helped start
the Meade Willis Revolving Loan Fund to provide the last dollars needed for
renovating existing establishments or starting new ones. He became involved in a
restaurant roundtable, in which restaurant owners meet monthly to share ideas
for marketing themselves and pooling resources.
"We helped minimize the potential for failure," Belcik-Griffith said. "We helped
establish a tone of collaboration."
Hanes didn't just talk about downtown revitalization. He lived it, residing in
recent years in a condo in the Arts District, where he would boast to visitors
about the downtown landscape visible from his patio and the new attractions he
could imagine forming there.
Richard Emmett is the arts council's chief operating officer and the owner of
the Garage, a club he started in the Arts District.
"Phil was a champion of the little guys, entrepreneurs and young people," he
said. "He always said that the little things add up to big things."
Hanes was preceded in death by his first wife, Joan Audrey Humpstone, and his
sister, Anna Hanes Chatham. Survivors include his wife, Mary Charlotte Metz; a
sister, Martha Hanes Womble; and several nieces and nephews.
