BACK FROM a week in North Carolina, I have the impression that the whole world is on the move this summer.

The American Airlines regional jet I flew from Tyler to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport was nearly full, and the large AA planes that took me from D/FW to the Raleigh/Durham airport and back were fully booked with standby names of folks hoping for a cancellation.

If you have to change terminals at D/FW, which you nearly always do when you use a commuter line, you’ve got a lot of walking to do, just getting to the helpful Skylink cars.

Long straight-line walks are required at North Carolina’s largest airport, but they have very helpful moving sidewalks.

THE PURPOSE of my trip was a visit with my daughter Sally, her husband Paul Jones and their son Tucker, who, at 17, is spending the summer at home in Chapel Hill before starting his high school senior year at the North Carolina School for Science and Math in Durham, where he spent last year as a junior.

Their home’s back yard adjoins a large tract of wooded land owned by the town. It slopes down to Morgan Creek, which runs through a meadow. One day a whitetail doe wandered up into the front yard to graze, saw me standing in the dining room window and looked hard at me with her giant eyes as if to say, “and who are you?”

The next day Paul spotted a fawn in the woods, so I concluded that the doe was a hungry mother.

IN HER ROLE as a member of the town council since 2003, Sally has worked to create the Morgan Creek Preserve, a 92-acre natural area along the creek recently placed under permanent conservation easement with the North Carolina Botanical Garden Foundation.

Sally and I took one afternoon off to visit the Art Museum in Raleigh, which has a beautiful new aluminum-clad building, daylit to best show off its permanent collection.

A special treat on this visit was getting to go with Sally and Paul to a 90th birthday reception for former UNC System President William Friday.

THE WHOLE WORLD was invited, and a big fraction of it showed up at the vast Carolina Club room in the Hill Alumni Center.

A huge cake in the shape of North Carolina had one candle, placed at the location for Chapel Hill.

President Friday, who stood in a long, long receiving line, appeared just as happy to met this Texan as he was to greet any of the Tar Heels who came to pay their respects. President Friday grew up during the Great Depression in Dallas, N. C., and that economic trauma left a mark on him.

According to a report in The Daily Tar Heel, the UNC community newspaper, it was living through poverty that inspired Bill Friday to become the first chairman of the North Carolina Commission on Poverty.

HE WAS QUOTED as saying that poverty is not a glamorous issue, but “it is something we can do something about” and it is “absolutely critical to the well-being of the state itself.”

Bill Friday was president of the UNC system from 1956 to 1986, longest tenure on the UNC record. Since his retirement he has been active in many good causes, and has his own TV show about North Carolina people on the UNC television station.

On this significant birthday he reminisced that his connection with the university came about more or less by accident. He had served in the Navy in World War II and on his return his wife, Ida, had a fellowship at the School of Public Health, so he took a temporary job as assistant dean of students.

Both of the Fridays have been awarded UNC’s highest honor, the North Carolina Public Service Award, and both were in the receiving line, serving as fine examples of growing old gracefully, and productively.

sgreene@tatertv.coc