Assistant Vice President for Gift Planning Jan Clarke was honored at Averett University’s homecoming. Clarke received this year’s Mary Jo Davis Outstanding Alumni Award. Read more in the Danville Register & Bee.
Alum, Infectious Disease Expert, Urges Patience in Fighting COVID-19
Jerri Barden Perkins was heading to the peak of a powdery slope in Sun Valley, Idaho, when her ski instructor suggested they spread out from the group. As they stepped into the gondola, the women pointed their elbows away from their sides to create personal space.
It was the first of March, and coronavirus was beginning to creep through the United States. By the time Perkins, an infectious disease expert who graduated from Mary Washington in 1961, returned to her Hilton Head home in South Carolina, she was concerned. She sat down in her office overlooking peaceful Calibogue Sound to pen a letter to the editor of her local newspaper.
Like her ski instructor, Perkins believed social distancing was the way to slow the virus’s spread. But rather than scooching away from gondola-riders, Perkins was asking a town to close a bridge that provides access to an island.
“It doesn’t respect people or borders; it’s going to do its own thing,” she said of COVID-19. “If we want to survive, we have to pause and distance ourselves until we get more data and knowledge.” Read more.
Office of Gift Planning Spring 2020 Newsletter
The Office of Gift Planning recently released its spring 2020 newsletter, Planning Matters, which includes features on Sue Tillery ’81, whose planned gift will create the third Tillery family scholarship, as well as Lillian Lester ’20, a first-generation college student who was the recipient of the Franklin E. Tillery scholarship for three years. 16
http://giving.umw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/April-20-final-UMW-Planning-Matters-3.pdf