Present for the presentation of the gift were (from
left): Rusty Brooks, UGA International Center for Democratic
Governance; Carol Cotton, the Phillips’s daughter
and a faculty member in the College of Public Health;
Lawrence Phillips and his wife, Sarah Mae; their granddaughter
Kendra Hibler, a UGA student; and Steve Wrigley, senior
vice president for external affairs. (Photo by Paul
Efland)
Found in translation
Century-old letter brings university $500,000
to support its outreach work in Croatia
A letter written some 100 years ago
by a woman living in what is now the nation of Croatia
was the unexpected key that led to the University of Georgia
receiving a $500,000 gift to extend the university’s
outreach work in Croatia.
Lawrence V. Phillips, a retired physician, and his wife,
Sarah Mae, of Round Hill, Va., hope their gift will help
improve public health and economic development in rural
Croatia, the southeastern European country that is Lawrence
Phillips’s ancestral home.
The couple decided to make the gift after learning that
UGA has been providing training and assistance to Croatia
for several years through its International Center for
Democratic Governance, a unit of the Carl Vinson Institute
of Government. UGA’s programs include economic development
work with governments in rural Croatian communities and
an exchange program with the University of Zagreb.
“This gift rewards more than eight years of hard
work helping the University of Zagreb develop an outreach
program,” says Art Dunning, UGA’s vice president
for public service and outreach. “Outreach is an
important role for universities in countries like Croatia
that aspire to be part of the European Union.”
Lawrence Phillips was in the private practice of medicine
for 50 years in Temple Hill, Md., before retiring in 2004.
Trained as a fighter pilot during WWII, Phillips remained
a reservist while earning his medical degree under the
GI Bill. He continued in the Air Force Reserves as a medical
officer, flight surgeon and command surgeon, completing
40 years and nine months of military service and retiring
in 1983 with the rank of colonel.
But he knew little about UGA’s work in Croatia until
this past summer, when he needed to have an old letter
translated.
The letter was written in the early 1900s by a woman from
the village of Zaloka where Phillips’s mother, Dora
Suljada, was born. Phillips, who is writing a memoir about
his life and family, obtained the letter from relatives
in Croatia who told him it contained information about
his mother.
But the letter was written in Croatian and Phillips couldn’t
find a readily available translator. So he asked his daughter,
Carol Cotton, a professor of health promotion at UGA, if
someone at the university might help.
Using the Internet, Cotton found Rusty Brooks, who coordinates
UGA’s Croatian programs. Brooks referred her to Keith
Langston, head of the department of Germanic and Slavic
languages. Within an hour of receiving the letter from
Cotton, Langston faxed her back a translation.
That got her father’s attention, according to Cotton.
“My father is a no-nonsense kind of person,” she
says. “He worked many years around Washington, D.C.,
where there are embassies and all kinds of experts, but
he couldn’t find anyone who could do this translation
quickly and informally. When Keith did it at no charge,
on his own time, it made an impression.”
It also prompted Phillips to take a closer look at UGA’s
work in Croatia.
“That may be the most expensive Croatian translation
in history,” Phillips jokes about the letter. “I
looked at the connections between the Vinson Institute
and Croatia, and it’s obvious the university has
a tremendous interest and emotional involvement in Croatia.
Since I’m an MD, and Carol is in health promotion,
I thought it would be good to combine public health and
rural development work in Croatia, and that’s how
this gift will be used.”
It turned out that Brooks and other UGA faculty had worked
in a town near Zaloka. In fact, Brooks knew Phillips’s
mother’s family name and was able to contact friends
who knew Phillips’s cousins in Croatia.
Brooks said the gift will be used in several ways including
providing service-learning opportunities for UGA students
in Croatia, exchanges between faculty at UGA and the University
of Zagreb, financial support to help UGA students study
in Croatia and Croatian students visit the U.S., and internships
for UGA students in Croatia.
The gift may also enable UGA and University of Zagreb faculty
to jointly develop public health and economic development
programs to support Croatia’s entry into the European
Union, Brooks says.
“This is an opportunity for the University of Georgia
to establish a strong regional presence in southeastern
Europe and leverage our work there in the coming years
to have an impact in other countries in the area,” he
says.
Although Phillips has spent most of his career in Maryland,
he’s no stranger to Georgia. He earned his fighter
pilot wings and was commissioned a second lieutenant in
the Army Air Corps at Spence Field in Moultrie in 1944.
He stayed on as a flight instructor and he and Sarah Mae
were married in Moultrie.
As an Air Force reservist, he was twice called to active
duty, once during the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and again in
1968 when the U.S. freighter Pueblo was captured by North
Korea. His duties during the second stint included medical
debriefing of returning U.S. airmen held as Vietnam prisoners
of war, and medical support for crews assigned to aircraft
of the Presidential Fleet and the E-6 Airborne Command
Post.
Phillips says he hopes one outcome of his gift to UGA will
be to help negate an “ugly American” image
that he believes persists abroad.
“Benevolence promotes democracy,” he says. “I
hope that supporting improved health and economic conditions
will help put America in a better light in foreign countries.”
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