By the Rev. Dr. Will Willimon ’68
When Duke University celebrates its centennial this year, Duke ought to thank Wofford. Big Duke is indebted to little Wofford for its founding and for sustaining it over the years. At least that’s the way I see it.
When I arrived as professor at Duke Divinity School, only eight years after graduating from Wofford, the dean said to me, “Wofford and Duke go way back.” This was true.
Trinity College, Durham, was founded about the same year as Wofford. Both were Methodist schools, mirror images of one another. Wofford provided Trinity with two of its presidents, including Dr. William Preston Few, who grew up near Greer, S.C., and graduated from Wofford in 1889. He served as president from 1910- 40, helping Trinity College become Duke University. He was preceded by Dr. John C. Kilgo, president of Trinity College from 1894-1910. Kilgo hired Few, who had just graduated from Harvard and didn’t have a job, as Duke’s first dean of the college. Few then became president when Kilgo left to become bishop. Both have quads named for them at Duke.
Dr. Walter K. Greene ’03, Wofford’s only alumnus to serve as president of Wofford College (from 1942-51), spent the bulk of his career at Duke University, where he was a professor of English and dean of undergraduate instruction from 1928-42.
Trinity had been the beneficiary of the Duke family of Durham, founders of the American Tobacco Company and the Duke Power Company that electrified the Carolinas. William Preston Few developed a close friendship with benefactor James B. Duke and began talking to him about his dream to grow Trinity into a great university that would lift up the impoverished South by training doctors, lawyers and preachers. Few sketched out plans for the university, and he and James B. Duke began working on details, quietly selecting land in Durham that would be attached to the Trinity campus where would emerge a wonderful new university.
One hundred years ago this year James B. Duke, backed by William Preston Few, announced to the world his gift — the largest in U.S. college history at the time — to build a new university. He directed that there be a “great, towering church” in the center of the campus, Duke Chapel. Few was active in the design of every inch of the new campus, even selecting the “saints” that adorn the façade of Duke Chapel, including among them the now obscure Southern poet, Sidney Lanier (Few’s English professor origins showing). Few took special care in the design of the basketball stadium and the football bowl, the first in the South.
Today, 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.
Old Dukies have told me stories of Few on his early morning walks across the Duke campus with his dog. When some unsuspecting Duke student would bend down to pet Few’s dog, the dog was notorious for lunging at the student, doing bodily damage to more than one. “I have no idea why my dog has antipathy toward you,” Few would say.
I like to think that Few’s dog was a Boston terrier.
One long-standing urban legend is that James Duke offered his money to Wofford if the college would change its name to Duke. Never happened. That Duke rather haphazardly decided to bestow his beneficence on Furman and Davidson is almost a happenstance, suggested by a friend of Duke’s, a rare instance of William Preston Few’s lack of attention to the Wofford-Duke connection.
While I failed to get any money out of the Duke Endowment for Wofford, I did succeed in securing the Holtkamp organ in Leonard Auditorium, working with Dr. John Bullard, now deceased professor emeritus of religion, to move it from the Duke Chapel to Wofford in 1997.
While William Preston Few was busy building a great new university, he still found time to stay in close contact with Wofford. I’ve seen some of the many letters Few wrote to his counterpart at Wofford, recommending faculty, advising on athletics and helping establish Wofford’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1940. I’ve seen the letter from Few to Wofford President Henry Nelson Snyder saying, “Met a fine young man at a recent gathering. Don’t know that he’s what we need for Duke football, but I think he would be perfect for Wofford. Here are his details.”
Bob Durden, who wrote Few’s biography, said to me, “I have been astounded, going through Few’s papers, how much he was engaged with the day-to-day operations of Wofford College. It wasn’t enough for him to build Duke University; he had to run Wofford, too.”
My wife Patsy’s father, Carl L. Parker ’38, went straight from Wofford to the newly formed Duke Divinity School, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree. Many more made the move from Wofford to graduate school at Duke. There’s even a Wofford Street in Durham, named, so I’m told, by Few’s wife, who was quite a real estate entrepreneur.
In my nearly five decades at Duke, as dean of the chapel and professor in the divinity school, I’ve welcomed dozens of Wofford grads to Duke. Pfifer Nicholson ’16, who was a Presidential International Scholar at Wofford, just graduated from Duke Medical School. Stanley Porter ’89, recent Wofford trustee, tells everyone that I got him into the Fuqua School of Business, but like a lot of Stanley’s comments, that’s not true. Patsy and I have loved having Wofford grads over to the house for backyard discussions in the evening.
When Boyd Richardson ’17 showed up at Duke this fall, he came, as he was told, right to my office.
“Carter Rief ’19 told me to show up for your supervision. Carter was my little brother in Kappa Sig at Wofford,” he explained.
“Better than that, Carter was Phi Beta Kappa at Wofford,” I said to Boyd. Ron Robinson ’78 (Duke M.Div. 1981, M.Th. 1984) had encouraged Boyd to come to Duke. I taught Ron my first year at Duke. He was busier courting his wife, Heidi Campbell Robinson, in the Duke gardens than studying, but that’s another story.
A few years ago, an entering student confessed, “I thought about signing up for your class on Barth but chickened out because I heard you are particularly hard on Wofford graduates and grade them tougher than the others.” “Did Ron Robinson tell you that?” I demanded.
I will never forget when Chris Barrett ’97 (Duke M.Div. 2001) presented himself to me at Duke. “Your father, the legendary Charlie Barrett ’55, was my demanding, encouraging professor at Wofford,” I told Chris. “Now I get to repay him by teaching you here at Duke.” Lisa Yebuah ’99 (Duke M.Div. 2004) and Will Malambri ’98 (Duke M.Div. 2001) both serve on the Wofford College Board of Trustees, and yes, I taught both of them at Duke Divinity School. John Lefebvre, professor of psychology (Duke Ph.D. 1998), met his wife, Lisa, who was a nurse at the Duke University Medical Center, at a small gathering in his central campus apartment. They stayed up talking all night and haven’t been apart since. Lefebvre leads a cast of current Wofford professors with degrees from Duke. Others include Grace Schwartz, assistant professor of chemistry (Duke Ph.D. 2015); Robert Harris ’09, assistant professor of chemistry (Duke Ph.D. 2015); Carolyn Martsberger, associate professor of physics (Duke Ph.D. 2008); Joseph Spivey, associate professor of mathematics (Duke M.A., Ph.D. 2008); Natalie Spivey, associate professor of biology (Duke Ph.D. 2009); Dan Mathewson, associate professor of religious studies (Duke M.T.S. 1998); Anne Catlla, associate professor of mathematics (Duke postdoctoral fellow 2005-08) and Kim Rostan, associate professor of English (Duke B.A. 1996).
And sometimes, Wofford sends one back to make Duke a better place. The Rev. Dr. Lyn Pace ’99 joins the staff in the Duke University Chapel as assistant dean of religious life on Jan. 1, 2025. He comes to Duke from Oxford College of Emory University, where he has been the college chaplain since 2009.
A few years ago, when Wofford played Duke in basketball, I warned Coach K, “I know you are feeling anxiety about the mighty Terriers coming to town. If you need any pastoral care, even though I’m pulling for Wofford, I’ll be glad to come by your office and comfort you.”
Coach K replied, “I’m a Catholic.”