Receiving an honorary doctorate from LaGrange College is, for me, the compliment of a lifetime. Being asked to speak at this banquet, however, presented a challenge. As I reflected on what I might say, I was painfully aware that I am the only one of the four honorees who is not a distinguished national leader or an eminently successful and generous LaGrange College alumnus.
But because my husband Bill and I have lived continuously in LaGrange since 1973, in some ways I feel our lives have been as closely connected to the college - and we have been as greatly influenced by it - as those who spent four years and became graduates. That’s what I want to share a little bit about. I hope you’ll see the patterns and recognize the great variety of ways in which the college and community intertwine.
We would be late for tomorrow’s 8:30 a.m. processional if I listed all the ways LC has enriched and intersected my life these past 37 years. But let me cite just a few.
Our daughter, Liza Fritchley, attended her first live theater performance - “Winnie the Pooh” by the LC drama department - the year both she and Price Theater were 2 years old. Last year, her three children - my grandchildren - attended their first LaGrange Symphony Orchestra concert at the beautifully renovated Callaway Auditorium, where their mother almost learned to tap dance.
More than 20 years ago, I wrote the newspaper story that announced the formation of the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra. The late, great Dr. David Naglee of the LC religion department, called me at the paper with the news. Dr. Naglee was a wonderful man, a great scholar and gifted musician, but I thought his idea of the symphony was a pipe dream. Fortunately he and others, including LC President Walter Murphy, had more foresight.
The LSO just completed its 20th season, and earlier this year I wrote the story of its latest children’s concert - for which it received a prestigious grant from National Endowment for the Arts to perform portions of the incredible Trail of Tears Symphony composed by Lee Johnson of the LaGrange College music department. The LSO, of course, is now officially recognized as symphony-in-residence at LC.
Until Stuart Gulley came along, that same Dr. Naglee was the best Sunday school teacher I ever heard. He and Stuart now share that title. Nowhere in my life have LC leaders been more meaningful than at First United Methodist Church, where for years we have been uplifted and inspired by dozens of LC faculty, staff, trustees and alums. You can’t look around in my church without seeing LC people, leading and serving in every way.
Seated at my table are two of the finest nurses you will ever meet - both LC graduates. My priceless next-door neighbor Cathy Wiggins directs the Hospice LaGrange program at West Georgia Health and is rightly on the LC Wall of Fame. It was at her hospice that Stuart Gulley and David Rowe were able to tell Frank Lewis that the magnificent new college library would be named for him and his late wife, Laura. What a moment that must have been!
My precious niece Lisa Waugh came here on a Sims Nursing Scholarship - an opportunity that was not just life-changing, but career-making. She is now an acute care renal dialysis nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, where the nursing corps is ranked among the nation’s best.
Everywhere I go for health care here, I run into LC graduates - and the same is true in local schools, businesses, community and charitable events or just walking down the street.
When I retired last year, I was asked to name my most memorable experiences. The first two that came to mind had strong LC connections.
The 2003 Jimmy Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity brought hundreds of volunteers from around the world to join with local volunteers in building more than 20 houses in the Hillside area in just one week. The volunteers were housed here on the LC campus. President and Mrs. Carter stayed in the presidential home where Dan McAlexander and Celeste Myall now reside. That great event could not have happened without LC’s involvement.
The other top memory was LaGrange’s link to the 1996 Atlanta Games, where through the I Train in LaGrange program, based here at the college, hundreds of athletes from more than 30 countries lived and trained in LaGrange during the years and weeks leading up to the Games. In this very building, Turner Hall, I interviewed athletes from Swaziland, Mauritius, the Sudan and South Africa, which was competing for the first time as a unified team, black and white athletes together in their first Olympics after the fall of apartheid. It was an amazing experience for this community and, again, it could not have happened without LaGrange College.
My son, Kyle, who earned his Eagle Scout award with help from LaGrange College trustees Henderson Traylor and Quillian Baldwin, had just graduated from high school in 1996 and worked for the rec department that summer. His job was to shepherd the I Train in LaGrange athletes, hauling equipment, passing out water, whatever was needed. He made friends with several of them and they invited him to the campus most every evening to socialize. I encouraged him to go - who wouldn’t want their child to have such a great cultural opportunity? He made the most of it. By the time those athletes left for Atlanta, Kyle Lovejoy could play poker in four languages.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the motto Dan McAlexander has brought to LC is correct. But it’s not just students for whom LaGrange College is “transforming lives.” For many years and in many ways, LC has transformed this community and all of us who live here. It is not just a place we go from time to time for plays and programs and football games. LaGrange College, its people and its influence are woven deeply into the fabric of daily life.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this honor, but more than that, for the blessing that LaGrange College has been in our lives.
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