re: UNC Admits Academic Fraud: Lack Of Institutional Controls, *NCAA Issues 3rd NOA

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Been getting away with murder since Bingham killed his wife...

Bingham's first wife died in 1913. In 1916 he married Mary Lily Flagler, reputedly the wealthiest woman in America at the time and widow of Henry Morrison Flagler. She died within a year, and although there was never any evidence of it, Bingham's enemies would long claim he was somehow to blame for her death. As the family business crumbled publicly in the 1980s, several biographers, most notably David Leon Chandler, claimed Bingham had killed his wife for the money, either by overdose or withholding medical care Nevertheless, as Bingham inherited $5 million after her death, enabling him to purchase the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, which became critical in establishing his later national prominence, it made an attractive conspiracy theory.

While Bingham only got 5 million, the rest went to her Kenan relatives who went on to fuel the money that gave rise to UNC. Without all that oil money UNC would not be the institution it is today.

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Good gosh that story brings back some memories. I had not been reminded of that little bit of history in a long long time. I remember when I first heard it back in the sixties or seventies thinking about the famous SC book, "A Piece of the Foxes Hide" and relating it to the whole incestuous murder corruption thing that was so unheard of and spooky in those days ... back when the country was still innocent for the most part. The Flagler money was big. Their version of the Bingham story is different. My first wife came from big money in Miami, real estate family, so the Flagler story was told a lot down there as her grandfather was actually close friends with Harry Flagler. The two of them founded the Orange Bowl together, I've still got some of the plans he gave me around here somewhere. I want to say Bingham Hall was named after Bingham's father maybe, not him but his father? The large piece of family property my first wife's family owns in Western NC was all part of the former estate owned by Harry Flagler which he sold (pieces) to my first wife's grandfather which he proceeded to turn into a summer camp, and another parcel was sold to an actor William Gillette, (late to be known as Gillette Woods, his parcel that is, where he met Aunt Polly, an even stranger story), who had some connection to both the Binghams and the Flaglers through Louisville or Cincy, I can't remember but it was one or both of those.

Anyway, my oldest daughter did her undergraduate work at UNC before moving-on to UC-B for her J.D., ... she still lives on the left coast today. She would be having a fit if she knew I was having this conversation because she always played the Bingham/Flagler connection to her great-grandfather to the hilt, as did that entire side of the family ... come to think of it, that whole snooty thing they used to do, that's why I divorced my first wife.

It's a great story though Cheese Grits. I guess you know well about the Binghams up there in your neck of the woods. I remember them well too from the few years I spent in Louisville ... that was a lonnnnnng time ago back when Pleasure Ridge Park was still a nice area out off of the Watterson Expressway.