James Kenneth (Ken) Sanford, the author of Charlotte and UNC Charlotte: Growing Up Together, died on August 25, 2025, at the age of ninety-three. Bonnie Cone, the founder of UNC Charlotte, hired Ken in 1964, the year before Charlotte College became the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Ken’s official title was Director of Public Information and Publications, a position he held until his retirement in 1994. Drawing on his inside knowledge of the early history of the university, he set to work on writing a history of UNC Charlotte around the time that he retired. The book came out in 1996 under the title of Charlotte and UNC Charlotte: Growing Up Together, and it established Ken as an important Charlotte historian.
I first met Ken a few years after I arrived at UNC Charlotte in 1984. He and Sam Nixon, one of the people who worked in his office, arranged for a reporter from The Charlotte Observer to interview me about my research. At the time, I was impressed with how much Ken knew about the publications by UNC Charlotte’s faculty members.
When Ken’s book came out, I attended an event related to the launching of the book. I still have the copy of the book that he signed. I remember him saying, “You’re in the book.” Well, my curiosity got the best of me, so I checked, and sure enough, he mentioned my research in a couple passages in the book. What impressed me the most about the book, however, are the chapters in which he explains how Bonnie Cone succeeded in founding the university. In these chapters, he relates Bonnie Cone’s campaign to establish the university to the larger history of Charlotte during the post-World War Two years. Ken’s account of how Charlotte’s leaders from this period got behind Bonnie Cone’s campaign stands out as an indispensable source for anyone who is interested in the history of Charlotte during these years.
In a sense, Ken’s book is much more than a history of a university. While it certainly provides readers with a detailed telling of the university’s first fifty years, the book also speaks to larger concerns. In the preface to the book, Doug Orr, a former UNC Charlotte administrator who went on to serve as the president of Warren Wilson College, comments on how Ken’s book transcends the history of UNC Charlotte:
Ken Sanford’s account of this special university is worth reading on one level as an engaging account of one university’s formative years during the second half of the twentieth century, and of the cast of individuals, decisions, an events that marked its progress and union with a city also experiencing its coming of age. But in a more universal sense, it chronicles the manner in which an American university created out of a cow pasture can address its urban dynamic and, in fact, reach out and envelop itself with that urban presence, and therefore be a model for building a contemporary university.
In 2020, Ken moved to the Aldersgate Retirement Community in Charlotte, and it was there that I saw him for the last time. I occasionally give presentations at retirement communities, including Aldersgate. After one of my talks at Aldersgate, Ken came up to me, and we talked for a few minutes. He said that he liked my presentation, and he told me that he was glad to see UNC Charlotte professors sharing their expertise with members of the community. In reflecting on that final conversation with Ken, I realized that my presentation was related to Ken’s longstanding conviction that UNC Charlotte should be an active player in the larger Charlotte community. Throughout his career, he acted on this conviction, and Storied Charlotte is a better place because he did.