The College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University: A Personal Perspective of Its Founding

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Chapter ix

Epilogue

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and
an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a
master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as
you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the
monster and fling him to the public.” - Winston Churchill
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I encountered all of those phases in preparing this manuscript, and they are probably
reflected in the narrative. With this epilogue, I am ready to fling the history to the public. I
started by writing the school’s history in the third person, but I had trouble separating my
life from its life. A friend convinced me that I had to rewrite it in the first person. So I did
that. Thus, the history became a first-person perspective on planning and developing the
school, which later became the college. It is my personal perspective on what, how, and why
things happened.
The how and the why encompassed two major aspects. The first was securing the approval
and funding to develop a school in the university system. The second was building the program. Both of these were trials in themselves. Another phase entered later in the narrative—
defining our role among the other schools and colleges in the day-to-day life of the university.
Finally, as I wrote and included data on the program, faculty, staff, and students, I realized
the manuscript was becoming a resource of related historical information. It related not only

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