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| Taking part in a recent Georgia
History Project interview are (from left): Bill Evelyn,
UGA videographer; Claude McBride, Alumni Association;
Fran Lane, director of the Visitors Center; and Charlie
Trippi, former UGA football player and coach. (Photo
by Peter Frey) |
Between UGA presidents Fred C. Davison
and Charles B. Knapp, there was Henry King Stanford. Stanford
was known as a friendly ambassador for UGA; he is much
less known for the fact that on the day he was to be introduced
as interim president, he rode to Athens from Americus by
bus. His wife, Ruth, had a hair appointment, and they shared
a car.
That little gem was revealed along with many others when
Fran Lane, director of UGA’s Visitors Center, interviewed
Stanford in Americus for the ongoing “Going Back:
Remembering UGA” oral history project.
The idea for such a project occurred to Lane after witnessing
a similar project that Georgia Tech has run for the past
10 years; talking with an elderly relative sealed the deal.
“I have a 101-year-old aunt who graduated here in
the late 1920s, who only a few years ago could talk with
great passion and joy about UGA,” said Lane. “She
can’t do that anymore. It occurred to me that we’re
losing a lot of history, because people can’t talk
about it anymore.”
Lane’s own history with UGA runs deep. She grew up
in Athens, and her parents were UGA graduates.
“The university has been a part of my life forever,” she
said. “I grew up with the fight song being played
on the piano.”
She earned both her bachelor’s degree in history
and her master’s in counseling at UGA. She was very
active during that time—“I jumped into campus
life with both feet,” she said—and stayed to
take her first post-graduate job, director of orientation.
After a break to raise her children, Lane returned to UGA
in the mid-1980s to work as a counselor in the evening
classes program, which was run through the Georgia Center
for Continuing Education. In 1987, she was assistant to
president Charles Knapp; the next year, she became director
of research in the development office, and stayed in fundraising
until she came to the Visitors Center in 1995. Last year,
she was named external affairs’ Employee of the Year.
At the Visitors Center, “The goal is to provide a
warm welcome to visitors, collect and provide accurate
information and help people accomplish the task they’ve
come to campus to do,” she said.
Working with the 36 student staffers is a highlight of
the job, she said, as is “the super variety. You’ll
never know what opportunity or challenge will present itself,
or what interesting person will walk through the door.”
 |
Charlie Trippi |
Such as football legend Charley Trippi, who came to the
Visitors Center last December to be interviewed for the
oral history project. Trippi also happens to be Lane’s
neighbor, and before the interview—as project co-organizer
Claude McBride, who works in alumni relations, looked at
his notes and videographer Bill Evelyn busied himself with
camera and lights—Lane and Trippi chatted amiably
about Lane’s dogs and about how many interviews Trippi
has given.
“How many of these have you done, a million?” asked
Lane.
“When I was playing, yeah. Not so many now. I’m
over the hill,” Trippi said.
“No you’re not!” said Lane. “Anyone
who can clean the gutters. . . ”
The cameras were ready, and Lane shifted into proper interviewer
mode, drawing out tales of Trippi’s youth during
the Depression, growing up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania
that he desperately wanted to leave. His fond memories
of UGA yielded glimpses into campus life of yore: a time
when a much smaller student population knew each other
well and rarely left campus, except maybe to get a Coke
at a drugstore.
“No one had any automobiles, and no one had any money,
period,” he said. In fact, he only joined his fraternity
because it paid for him to join.
So far, about 10 people have participated in the interviews
since March; Louise McBee, retired legislator and former
vice president for academic affairs, was the first. Lane
said that the videos will be archived mid-year and available
to viewers in UGA’s media archives, and perhaps online
or on DVD. Suggestions for more interviewees are welcome,
Lane said.
“I’d love to do it forever,” she said. “There’s
a limitless pool of prospective interviewees. I think this
could go on.” |
