By Jake Crouse
Bishop Will Willimon ’68 believes that the strong student-faculty connections he experienced as a student at Wofford College are still the hallmark of a great college education. The endowment of the Willimon Family Provost Fund and Professorship is both a thank you for the experience he and his family had as Terriers and a promise that Wofford’s top academic officer will always have the support to lead the best faculty, who, in turn, will guide the best students.
The fund was created as a result of conversations between Willimon, his wife, Patsy, and their children, Harriet Willimon Putman ’99 and Will Parker Willimon ’98.
“I have a deep gratitude for Wofford and what it meant for me,” Willimon says. “It set me on a course of academic endeavor and an intellectual life.”
Willimon’s funding allows for sustainable financial support for the salary of the provost position, which frees the annual dollars that once supported the role to be used to further the college’s reputation of academic excellence.
Dr. Timothy Schmitz, provost and professor of history, is first to hold the Willimon Family Provost position.
“Will Willimon and his family have been generous friends of Wofford for decades. Will has actively served the United Methodist Church and Duke University as a professor and as dean of the chapel. He’s also a long-time member of the Wofford College Board of Trustees. He understands academic excellence and the critical importance of education to our greater society,” says Schmitz. “I could not be more honored to be the first to hold this position.”
Willimon, an influential preacher and theologian, attributes much of his professional success to lessons learned in Wofford classrooms.
Dr. Vince Miller, professor of English emeritus at Wofford, had Willimon write an essay each week — his first intensive training in the practice of writing. Willimon has gone on to author nearly 100 books as well as essays and papers, many of them on Christian theology. A Pew Trust survey ranked him as the second most widely read theologian among American pastors. Wofford’s Sandor Teszler Library archives holds the Willimon papers, which are available to review and study.
Willimon also recalls turning in a paper during his senior year to the Rev. Dr. Charlie Barrett ’55, who taught in Wofford’s religion department for 33 years. Barrett gave Willimon an A, but he thought Willimon was recycling ideas and not challenging himself to think critically. With the A, Barrett admonished Willimon that he wouldn’t be so easy on him next time.
“Most professors can’t say that kind of thing because they don’t know someone down deep,” Willimon says. “I just think that’s the essence of higher education: Students who are known, taught by faculty who are known, who take the trouble and the time to get to know one another deeply.”
Wofford has deep ties with the Willimon family. Carl Parker ’38 and Don Parker ’69 — Patsy’s father and brother — attended Wofford, as well as both of Will’s children. The sonnet bench — featuring Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 — near the Sandor Teszler Library was Will’s gift to Patsy for their 25th wedding anniversary. The Willimons were responsible for securing a Holtkamp organ, which was once in the Duke chapel, for Wofford’s Leonard Auditorium, and the William H. Willimon and Patricia Parker Willimon Scholarship at Yale Divinity School gives preference to incoming students who are graduates of Wofford. Will rotates off the college’s board of trustees this month after 36 years of leadership.
Will Willimon is also the official, unofficial ambassador for Wofford graduates who go onto Duke for graduate school, showing them around campus and inviting them to his home for a meal and conversation.
“I proudly point out to all new arrivals at Duke the Wofford seal atop the Duke Union building. There’s ‘Old Main’ forever memorializing the Wofford-Duke connection,” says Will.
And now there’s the Willimon Family Provost and Professorship at Wofford College, forever honoring the student-faculty relationships that are at the heart of the Wofford experience.