{"id":19644,"date":"2017-02-09T13:46:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T18:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatminds\/?p=19644"},"modified":"2017-02-15T16:32:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T21:32:23","slug":"legacy-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.umw.edu\/greatminds\/2017\/02\/09\/legacy-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Legacy of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her hearing aids are turned as high as the heat in her cozy apartment, but dressed in a navy blue sweater and pearls, she looks lovely. It’s a good day for visitors.<\/p>

On Valentine’s Day, Virginia Thomas Dickinson Morgan ’39 will turn 99. But in August of 1935, she was headed to college.<\/p>

\"Virginia <\/a>
Kelly Morgan ’00 shares photos from an old Battlefield yearbook with her grandmother, Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39, who will turn 99 on Valentine’s Day. Photo by Reza A. Marvashti <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan turns 99 on Valentine’s Day, but her Mary Washington legacy is still going strong. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39. Photo by Reza A. Marvashti <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39 poses with grandchildren Kelly Morgan ’00 and Michael Morgan ’05. Photo by Reza A. Marvashti <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan descends the steps of a newly built George Washington Hall, where she worked as secretary for Dean of the College Edward Alvey Jr. in the early 1940s. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>

 <\/p>

Kelly Morgan ’00 leans in close to her grandmother, thumbing through pages of old Battlefield yearbooks. One in particular stands out. Morgan points to a picture of herself – a young woman on the steps of a newly built George Washington Hall.<\/p>

It’s a black-and-white photo, but with stints as a student and on the staff, Morgan’s Mary Washington memories are filled with color. And with two sisters and two grandchildren – one an orthodontist, the other an attorney – who are also alums, her story comes with its share of coincidence.<\/p>

\"Virginia
Virginia Dickinson Morgan with her parents, cousin, and sisters, Orene Dickinson Todd ’37 and Norma Lee Dickinson Walker ’41. The girls grew up on a Spotsylvania County dairy farm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Morgan grew up on a Spotsylvania County dairy farm at a time when few women went to college. Still, one by one, she and her sisters, Orene Dickinson Todd ’37 and Norma Lee Dickinson Walker ’41, enrolled at the all-woman State Teachers College in Fredericksburg.<\/p>

Morgan took typewriting, shorthand, economics, and more, and joined the Alpha Phi Sigma honor society. She served as class treasurer and worked on the then-student newspaper The Bullet<\/em> and the Battlefield yearbook. A junior when the school’s name changed to Mary Washington College, she helped design the first MWC ring.<\/p>

She remembers ­3-o’clock teas and formal meals in the dining hall, with assigned seats and impeccable standards upheld by notorious Dean of Women Nina Bushnell. “She had very strict rules,” Morgan said. “You didn’t disobey any.”<\/p>

She and Virginia-Hall roommate, Lucy Oliver Harris ’39, became best of friends, shopping in Fredericksburg, spending time at the amphitheater and treating themselves to ice cream and Cokes at the C-Shoppe. One of their outings – a trip to visit Lucy’s cousin at the then-all-male U.Va. – would set Morgan’s Mary Washington legacy in motion.<\/p>

That’s where she met James Patterson Morgan, who was “good looking,” she said. They started a courtship overseen by Bushnell, who demanded parent-approved lists of callers and smelled suitors’ breath before allowing them to pick up their dates.<\/p>

“Of course we couldn’t ride in a car with a boy,” Morgan said.<\/p>

When the dean couldn’t discourage the romance, national security stepped in. James was called to serve the country as an Army Air Corps navigator in World War II. With her beau away when she graduated, Morgan clung to campus, signing on as secretary to Dean of the College Edward Alvey Jr.<\/p>

“He was a fine gentleman and always very professional,” Morgan said of Alvey, for whom she would work for six years. “I was very fortunate.”<\/p>

But love wouldn’t wait for the war. In 1942, when James’ troop train stopped overnight in Springfield, Mass., Morgan was waiting. They tied the knot right then and there.<\/p>

\"Virginia
Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39 met husband James Patterson Morgan on a weekend trip to U.Va. with Mary Washington roommate Lucy Oliver Harris ’39.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

James returned home safely from the war, and their marriage would span 63 years, until he passed away in 2005. He had transferred from U.Va. to Duke, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, served in the Air Corps Reserves and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He had raised three sons – James Patterson Jr. and twins Jon and Gary – with Morgan, who left her Mary Washington job to be a stay-at-home-mom and later retired from teaching high school in Warren County, Virginia.<\/p>

It would be Gary’s children, Kelly and Michael Morgan ’05, who would follow their grandmother – and their late great-aunts – to Mary Washington.<\/p>

On campus, Kelly studied chemistry and reveled in research, working to grow the dental office at Fredericksburg’s Moss Free Clinic. Amazingly, she lived in the same Virginia-Hall space her grandmother had shared with her long-ago roommate, Lucy. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Kelly established Morgan Orthodontics in Lansdowne, Virginia, where she mentors current Mary Washington students. She has a 5-year-old son.<\/p>

Michael majored in computer science, studied abroad and served in the Peace Corps. Just as Mary Washington transformed from a teacher’s school to a college when Morgan was a junior, it became a university when Michael was in his own junior year. A graduate of The George Washington University Law School, he is an attorney in Calvert County, Maryland.<\/p>

And there’s one other thing. At UMW, he met wife Erin Weimert Morgan ’04, with whom he would welcome a son just last month, as well as his grandmother’s namesake, Virginia, now 3.<\/p>

\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39 will turn 99 on Valentine’s Day. Here she poses with her namesake, great-granddaughter Virginia. Photo by Reza A. Marvashti <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Virginia <\/a>
Virginia Dickinson Morgan ’39 poses with her husband, James Patterson Morgan, at her 50th Mary Washington reunion in 1989. Longtime Dean of the College Edward Alvey Jr. stands far right. Virginia’s close friend, fellow UMW alum Gilda Perez ’39, who hailed from Puerto Rico, stands far left. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>

She was there for the recent family visit to Morgan’s assisted-living apartment in Warren County, where the family poured through those Mary Washington memories. Among them was a letter hand-typed by Alvey soon after Morgan left campus – but only in body, never in spirit.<\/p>

After several attempts to fill her position, he finally had found a promising fit. “I’m so glad,” Alvey wrote. “However, there will never be another Miss Dickinson!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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