ATHENS, Ga.
– 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,” said 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 the University
of Georgia’s work in Croatia
until last 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, Cotton said.
“My father is a no-nonsense kind of person,” she said. “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 joked 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 said.
“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 said.
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 said 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 said. “I hope that
supporting improved health and economic conditions will help put America
in a better light in foreign countries.”
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