There’s been a change at the top of one of Greensboro’s most influential, well-known and important foundations.
There are very rarely changes to the Board of Directors of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation of Greater Greensboro; however, now there’s a brand-new board member. Former North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Chancellor Harold Martin is now sitting in the seat on the board that educator and civil rights advocate Shirley Frye had held since the foundation was established in 1986.
Foundation President and CEO Jim Melvin said this week that Frye decided to retire from the board, and, very soon after the other board members began talking about a replacement, Melvin said, it was clear Martin would be the perfect choice.
Melvin told the Rhino Times that he is extremely excited about Martin joining the Board of Directors.
“We began discussing it and Harold immediately came up,” Melvin said.
Martin apparently didn’t have to think twice about it when he got the request.
“We called him and he was just ecstatic,” Melvin said.
“This is a big appointment for us,” he added. “Harold knows all about A&T, which is a key for Greensboro.”
The Bryan Foundation, which has been a central player in the growth and improvement of Greensboro and the surrounding area over the decades, has a stated mission of supporting “the economic, cultural, educational, and recreational enrichment of the lives of the citizens of the greater Greensboro, NC, area.”
Another primary purpose of the foundation is to make improvements to, and enhance, the Joseph M. and Kathleen Bryan Park.
The foundation is named for its founder, former Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company executive Joseph Bryan, who was widely known for philanthropic efforts before his death in 1995.
The foundation was instrumental in luring the Toyota battery factory to the area, and in bringing the Elon University School of Law to downtown Greensboro, and the foundation is playing a key support role in the “Ready for School Ready for Life” initiative – a collaborative effort designed to establish an innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children.
Those are just a few of the ways the foundation has supported Greensboro. There are too many accomplishments of the foundation to list, but it’s safe to say that Greensboro would look like a very different city if not for the foundation that came onto the scene in the mid-1980s.
Martin, who was born in Winston-Salem, is Chancellor Emeritus of NC A&T and is the former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University.
In May of 2009, Martin became the twelfth chancellor of A&T.
Years before taking the helm of NC A&T, Martin studied electrical engineering at that university as a graduate student.
Under his stewardship, the school grew tremendously and it has become the nation’s largest and top-ranked historically black university. Anyone who’s ever tried to find a parking space on the campus on a school day knows all about the university’s explosive growth.
There is a building on campus named after Martin and he has earned many awards and honors for his service to the university and the community – including the title of President Emeritus, an Honorary Degree from Wake Forest University, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s Education Leadership Award, and his inclusion in Ebony magazine’s “Power 100” list in 2015.
Like Martin, Frye is a former NC A&T student.
After graduating, Frye later returned to A&T to become the assistant vice chancellor for development and university relations.
She also worked for the NC Department of Public Instruction and later as vice president of community relations for WFMY News 2, where she won an Emmy.
In the 1970s, Frye led the effort to integrate Greensboro’s segregated YWCAs and, in 2016, the newly renovated YMCA Greensboro was renamed the Shirley T. Frye YWCA Greensboro.
Frye is a recipient of North Carolina’s highest civilian award – the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, which honors “individuals who have made significant contributions to the state and their communities through exemplary service and exceptional accomplishments.”
She is married to former NC Chief Justice Henry Frye, who was elected to the NC General Assembly in 1968, where he served six terms as a representative of Guilford County. He was North Carolina’s only black legislator at the time he was elected. The first bill he introduced was a constitutional amendment abolishing the requirement of a literacy test for registering to vote in North Carolina.
