Jewell Maye Mull never walked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s tree-lined paths on her way to class or a Tar Heel football game. Her many years in the Drexel and Dolly hosiery mills in Burke County left little time for the privilege of studying literature, art or music.
She started in the mills after the ninth grade. Briefly during the Depression, she was the only member of her family with a job, and eight siblings to support.
But before Jewell Mull died at 83 in December 1998, she made sure that generations of college students will enjoy the kind of learning opportunities about which she could only dream. Mull left $1.5 million to higher education, including $690,000 (with a 2015 market value of $1.3 million) to the College of Arts and Sciences — all amassed through frugal living and small investments, over time, by Mull and her late husband, Luther. He quit school in the sixth grade and ran a general store and service station.
The Jewell Maye Mull Endowment Fund is the one of the College’s largest single unrestricted gifts. Since 2002, the fund has provided support for numerous faculty, students and programs.
In 2013-14, Professor Jaye Cable, chair of the curriculum for the environment and ecology, used the Mull Fund to support an undergraduate environmental science student who presented her honors thesis at a national scientific conference. The student, now graduated, has a fellowship and is working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Chemistry professor Mark Schoenfisch used Mull funding to start a new area of research aimed at saving the lives of people with sepsis, the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. “The Mull Fund specifically helped support a graduate student’s stipend to initiate this new research direction, and obtain preliminary research results along with additional funding from UNC.”
“Mrs. Mull’s gift offers infinite opportunities,” said Dean Risa Palm in 2000. “Because of her generosity, we can enhance the support of our faculty and students. For example, we will have support for student and faculty research collaboration, travel to academic conferences and innovative teaching or advising activities.”
By contrast, Mull spent years making baby booties in Dolly Hosiery in Valdese, saving first for the education of her only child.
Joe Mull said his parents believed education provided a foundation for self-reliance; and Harry Hallyburton, his principal at Drexel High School, encouraged students to attend college.
Like so many Carolina alumni, Joe represented the first generation in his family to attend college. But during his sophomore year, his father died. He wanted to return to Drexel and help his mother, but she would have none of it.
“She told me that it was my father’s biggest dream for me to finish college,” he said. “Dad was buried on a Thursday, and I was back in class on Monday. A college education was important to my parents. My father loved to come to campus and watch the students. He would tell me, ‘you folks don’t know how lucky you have it.’”
Joe graduated in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in recreation. After 25 years in management with Sears, he consulted at LPL Financial Services in Gastonia. Joe and his wife of 31 years, Wanda, raised six children. Joe died in 2007.
Over time, Luther Mull had bought land, rental properties and stocks, said Joe. Sometimes he extended small loans, helping folks build homes or start businesses. After his death, Joe helped his mother continue to invest the family’s savings in stocks and real estate. In 1991, she established a charitable remainder trust that provided her with income.
“This gift makes the family feel good,” Joe said. “We are thankful that Carolina will benefit in a meaningful way from my mother’s endowment, because the university has been such an important part of our lives.”
Excerpted from a May 2000 UNC news release announcing the gift.
