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world War II was a tough time for   teenagers in love. Just about every male high school student expected to be joining the armed forces and going off to fight soon after graduating.     For two Wilmington natives, that was the challenge they faced as students at New Hanover High School in 1943.     Heyward Bellamy and Mary Cameron Dixon “were real buddies in high school,” he recalled recently. But because he was busy working in his family’s store, “I got to do very little in the way of socializing except at school.” Fortunately, he and the pretty, popular Mary were in many of the same clubs, and spent time together at football games, a class play, and the Junior-Senior Prom. “I was chasing her all the time.”     But Heyward was also being distracted by the war. He took early graduation to join the Army Air Forces. The fortunes of war took him all over the country, training first as a meteorologist, then as an aircraft gunner, then as a navigator, and finally as an instructor. The war ended before he could be sent

overseas.     During that time, he and Mary exchanged letters. He sent her records of some of her favorite classical music; they still have those old 78 rpm discs. On his infrequent leaves, he headed to her house.     Finally, after the war ended, they were married in that house, on July 3, 1947. They still live there today, after 62 years.

Heyward Bellamy left this message in Mary
Dixon’s yearbook as he left to join the military.

Heyward was voted
“most intellectual” in
his senior class. The
yearbook predicted
he’d become mayor!

Honor students both, Mary and Heyward
were in several high school groups together.

Mary earned her
teaching degree at
East Carolina.

Mary Cameron Dixon was in college at war’s end.

Heyward Bellamy as Army Air Force aviator.

Back at New Hanover High School, the
two young teachers appeared side by
side in the 1952 ‘Hanoverian’ yearbook.

Mrs. Bellamy spent most of her academic career in
the University of North Carolina system. Dr. Bellamy
retired in 1981 as Superintendent of New Hanover
County Schools in Wilmington. They still live in the
Historic District home where Mrs. Bellamy grew up.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mary Bellamy died in 2010, the year after this story was published.

aside from his military service, and time spent at the University of North Carolina pursuing his degrees, Heyward Bellamy spent his entire career in New Hanover County’s public schools. As superintendent he contended with the turmoil that accompanied the schools’ desegregation.     When she retired from UNC-Wilmington in 1988, Mary Bellamy was honored as the longest-serving teacher in the state-wide university system.     The Bellamys have three children and three grandchildren, several of whom are also educators.