His father went on to become a lawyer, studying and attending school as Aycock was growing up.
“We would talk about things in a very casual manner; he would bring up controversial subjects, and he would not ... tell me what to do or what not to do,” Aycock recalled in an interview from 1990. “We were just sitting there, milking cows, talking about the pros and cons, and he left it up to me. This very delicate instruction he gave and the exercise of judgment, it stood me in good stead.”
He hoped to one day start a law practice with his father, but his father died of a stroke in his early 50s.
“So his whole life, that was something that he had an ambition to do. He really believed the law was a tool for good, and he always believed the law had a lot more common sense than people gave it credit for,” his daughter Nancy Aycock said.
William Aycock graduated from N.C. State University, where he was student body president. He then went to UNC for his master’s degree in history.
“I can always remember when I found out he went to State, I was always like, ‘Really?’ because he was always 100 percent devoted to UNC-Chapel Hill,” Nancy Aycock said.
When he returned from duty in World War II, he drove through the night to get to the law school at UNC. He met the dean on Saturday morning and begged to join the class even though the semester had already begun. That night he began studying from a textbook loaned to him by the dean.
He was classmates with J. Dickson Phillips, now a retired U.S. appellate court judge; Bill Friday, former president of the UNC system; William Dees, the first elected chairman of the Board of Governors; and John R. Jordan Jr., a former state senator and chairman of the Board of Governors.
He was deemed brightest among them, graduating first in his class.
In his final year in law school, a professor asked Aycock to teach the class when he was ill.
The dean was so impressed that he offered Aycock a teaching position at the school.
“We won’t ever have another faculty member who came straight out of the student body to join the faculty,” said Martin Brinkley, incoming dean of the law school. “It speaks volumes to how much they respected him and how brilliant he was.”
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Aycock received the law school’s McCall Teaching Award five times.
Aycock’s background as a child of the Great Depression, World War II veteran and legal expert, informed his work as an educator.
He was often spotted at the Campus Y or a Tar Heel baseball game, checking in with the student body.
“He had a folksy sort of way about him,” said law school dean Jack Boger.
“He was not at all urbane or sophisticated, and yet he was one of the smartest people anybody had ever seen.”
Summer Editor Sam Schaefer contributed reporting
university@dailytarheel.com
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the titles of Jack Boger, the dean of the law school, and Martin Brinkley, the incoming dean of the law school. Brinkley is not yet dean of the law school, Boger is still dean of the law school until Brinkley takes over the office. The story also misspelled Brinkley's name in two instances. The story has been updated to reflect these changes. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the errors.