When she died in December 1998 at 83, her $1.5 million charitable remainder trust included a $690,000 unrestricted gift to Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences, the largest single unrestricted gift in recent history. The Jewell Maye Mull Endowment Fund will support a variety of needs of high importance, including faculty recruitment and retention, faculty travel, research support, classroom and laboratory improvements, innovative learning outside the classroom, strategic staffing, general student support and undergraduate research — and requests the dean receives to keep the college at the forefront of America’s liberal arts programs.

Unrestricted gifts are among the college’s highest priorities and allow the dean to immediately allocate funds to areas of the most urgent need. They are used by the dean to fill the wide gaps between what the state provides and the actual needs of the college. Large unrestricted gifts are also among the most difficult gifts to secure.

"Mrs. Mull’s gift offers infinite opportunities for our students and faculty," said Risa Palm, dean of the college. "Because of her generosity, we will be able to enhance the support of our faculty and students. For example, we will be able to provide support for student and faculty research collaboration, travel to academic conferences and innovative teaching or advising activities."

From their modest home in the rolling foothills of Burke County, Jewell and her husband Luther raised their only child Joe. Like many Carolina alumni, Joe represented the first generation in his family to attend college. He graduated in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in recreation, a program then in the sociology department. After a 25-year management career with Sears, Joe Mull worked with LPL Financial Services as a financial consultant in Gastonia and retired there in 1999. Joe and his wife of 31 years, Wanda, raised six children, including their youngest — twin girls now in high school.

Joe’s introduction to Carolina came on a clear October day in 1957, when he traveled with his junior high classmates to band day in Chapel Hill.

"It was one of those unforgettable autumn days, where the sky is so blue and the leaves are brilliant," he said. "Standing there on the football field in the middle of Kenan Stadium, there was never any doubt that this is where I would go to college. Fortunately, I was accepted because Carolina was the only place I applied."

Mull said though his parents came from humble beginnings, they believed that a good education provided a foundation for self-reliance.

"There was never any doubt I would go to college," said Mull, a 1963 graduate of Drexel High School in Burke County. He also credits his high school principal, Harry Hallyburton, who encouraged students to attend college.

His mother saved for Joe’s college education by working at Valdese’s Dolly Hosiery, a mill that makes baby booties. As a young girl, Jewell, for a brief time during the Depression, was the only family member employed with eight siblings to support. She left school after the ninth grade to work in the mill. Luther, whose formal education ended after the sixth grade, owned a small general store and service station. Over time, he bought land, rental properties and stocks. He was even in the small loan business, said Joe, helping community members establish homes and businesses.

During Joe’s sophomore year at Carolina, 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.’"

Jewell, with Joe’s help, continued to invest the family’s savings in stocks and real estate. In 1991, she established a charitable remainder trust which provided her with income. When she died, the $1.5 million trust was left to Carolina’s Arts and Sciences Foundation, along with Brigham Young University in Utah, a Mormon Church institution that reflects the family’s religious faith, to Belmont Abbey College and Carolina’s Educational Foundation.

Said Joe, "This gift makes the family feel good. 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."

—Del Johnson

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