Mary Washington favorite marks milestoNE

 

By Teresa Mannix

You can fool some of the people some of the time, but there’s no foolin’ Frances Armstrong. On March 15, the President’s Office had planned to surprise her with an 89th birthday party. However, Mrs. Armstrong happened upon the cake when she snuck into the kitchen quite innocently.

“I went into the kitchen to get paper towels and there was the cake,” she said. “Betsy [Mangan] came running in and said I shouldn’t have gone in there, but it was too late. I was there and that was it.”

Surprised or not, she and some of her Mary Washington friends celebrated the day with cake and coffee. “It was a lovely thing,” she said. “There were so many people there. It was really nice.”

Mrs. Armstrong has a long history with Mary Washington, dating back to the 1930s when she was a student at the then-Fredericksburg State Teacher’s College. After she graduated in 1936, she was a teacher for 45 years – all but two of them in Fredericksburg. One can not go very far in town without finding someone taught by Mrs. Armstrong at James Monroe High School. Even sitting in the President’s Office eating cake on her birthday, she was only inches away from a former student – Pat Berry from University Development.

Mrs. Armstrong has remained an active member of the Mary Washington community through the years. Just one month after retiring from teaching in 1981, she returned to her alma mater to help out part time in planning the institution’s 75th anniversary, and she has been here ever since. During the past 24 years, she has worked at Trench Hill and Human Resources, and currently divides three hours every day between the Executive Vice President’s Office and the President’s Office. In addition, she assists the University historian in archiving news articles, and she shares her wealth of knowledge about the institution during employee orientation.

“She provides all of our new employees with a campus tour like only Mrs. Armstrong can give, tracing the historical usage of each building,” said Ranny Corbin, executive assistant to the president. “She is a very special lady.”

Mrs. Armstrong has been an active member of the Alumni Association and has served as the Golden Society representative on its Board of Directors. In 1984, she was the first recipient of the Alumni Association’s Service Award, which was named after her in 2002. Fittingly, the Frances Liebenow Armstrong Service Award recognizes outstanding and continuous service to the University or Alumni Association.

“Frances Armstrong is invaluable as a member of the President’s Office team with her institutional memory that dates back to the 1930s,” Corbin added. “Whenever there’s a question about alumni or Mary Washington history, we first seek Mrs. A. for the answer.”

Mrs. Armstrong has watched Mary Washington grow over the years from a campus with only four buildings to the lively grounds it is today. And she looks forward to continuing her connection with the University.

“I’ll go for as long as I can,” she said. “The College has been very good to me.”