In the making of the DreamersAndGiants.com website, and in teaching WVWC History, I spend a good bit of time reading about the people who have taught here through the years. Occasionally I come across photographs of these people in places that are very familiar to me!
The 1954-1955 faculty is seen here in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Library where I have spent so much time. As a Library Science student, many of my classes were here as well as my work-study. Having worked in this building as a professional librarian from 2001-2017, it is safe to say that I know this building very well. To see a photograph of people like Dr. Ralph Brown, President Scarborough, Professor David Reemsnyder, and Professor Nellie Wilson sitting in that space is quite fascinating for me.
This group of people has always been of the highest academic stock, as a look at any of the college catalogs can attest. Here is the catalog for this particular year as an example. They have taught thousands of students and provided guidance and helped to shape the college as well as those students. They have served on countless committees, developed many new programs, and advised student groups of all kinds. They have hosted students in their homes and taken them on trips that have opened the world. Their teaching was not all done in a classroom.
President Stanley H. Martin poses on the front steps of the Annie Merner Pfeiffer with the faculty in the early 1960s. Another place that I have passed several thousand times myself, not knowing that this photograph existed. This cloud of witnesses has been here before me.
This 1971 photograph in front of John Wesley, a familiar landmark today, includes some of those very iconic names and some more recent ones like William Mallory, who just retired last year. This is the group that I remember from my college years, and many of these people played a major role in my education and prepared me for my career.
Time marches on. But the work that they have done is not a thing of the past. It lives on in the hearts and memories of their students. And, sometimes, if you listen closely, they still have much to teach us.
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