#OTD 75 years ago (April 22, 1950): During a 15-minute intermission of the afternoon matinee show of “Ice Cycles of 1950,” William Neal Reynolds Coliseum was formally dedicated by a host of North Carolina dignitaries, which included Gov. Kerr Scott, UNC-System President-elect Gordon Gray, R.J. Reynolds chairman of the board James Gray, NC State College Chancellor Col. John W. Harrelson and UNC comptroller William D. Carmichael. Also among the 7,500 spectators in attendance were Mary Katherine Reynolds Babcock, her husband and their 7-year-old daughter Betsy. Babcock, then considered the wealthiest woman in the world, gave the initial donation of $100,000 to begin construction of the mammoth arena in 1941, with the request it be named in honor of her uncle, William Neal Reynolds, brother of her father and co-founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company of Winston-Salem. “Mr. Will” and his wife Kate raised Mary, her sister Nancy and her two brothers (NC State aerospace engineering graduate R.J. “Dick” Reynolds Jr. and the late Z. Smith Reynolds) after their parents died when they were still adolescents. Babcock and her husband gave an additional $52,000 to purchase ice-making equipment for the coliseum and, in the 1951, the first of 605 acres in Forsyth County to move Wake Forest College from its original home in the town of Wake Forest to Winston-Salem. One person who did not participate in the festive activities was William Neal Reynolds, who had medical procedure the week of the dedication and was unable to travel from Winston-Salem. Reynolds, a graduate of Trinity College in Durham, was identified by Carmichael as “owner of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, member of the Duke University Board of Trustees, Democrat and Presbyterian.” He was celebrated at length, as was the Reynolds Tobacco Co. “The name of Reynolds is inseparably interwoven with the agriculture and industrial life of North Carolina,” Carmichael said. “The trustees, in honoring William Neal Reynolds, by naming one of the most important buildings in state history, also honor State College.” Things got a little cringy when Carmichael, namesake of @NCState's Carmichael Gymnasium and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carmichael Auditorium, started reeling off Reynolds’ cigarette brands in his speech. “I would be a poor Chesterfieldian, Gov. Scott, if I did not say that it was a Lucky Strike for North Carolina when Reynolds hit on Camels,” Carmichael said. The featured performance, however, was the first of two shows that Saturday and the fifth consecutive day of the “Ice Cycles” international tour, was Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” with skater Margaret Field as Snow White and her husband Jimmy Lawrence as Prince Charming. Ice Cycles later became the Ice Capades, which appeared regularly for week-long stints at Reynolds Coliseum for decades. (Photo of Reynolds Coliseum on Dedication Day, via @ncsulibraries and @NCSU_SCRC.)