22 
SE Biology, Vol. 61, No. 1, January, 2014 
If William Wightman could return to the Wofford campus today, he 
undoubtedly would look with pride at his Main Building, freshly restored and 
renovated to serve new generations of 21st century students. He surely could 
relate to the Wofford woman of the Class of 1991 who wrote, “It is through 
Wofford that I found myself. And it is through the memories of my time there 
that my joys are intensified and my miseries are lessened. The majestic white 
building that I know as ‘Old Main’ is the harbor for my soul, and whenever I 
need strength, I call upon those twin towers to give it to me.” 
Standing beneath the high 
towers, Wightman would 
also perceive roots that 
have grown continuously 
deeper since the college’s 
beginning. Methodist 
Bishop William H. Willimon 
’68 is the former dean of the 
chapel at Duke University 
and the father of two recent 
Wofford graduates. He 
explained it this way: 
“Education is not buildings, 
libraries, or faculty with big books. It’s people, the mystery of one person 
leading another as Virgil led Dante, as Athena led young Telemachus, to 
places never yet imagined, through thoughts impossible to think without a 
wise guide who has patience with the ignorance, and therefore the 
arrogance, of the young. Wofford and its faculty have a way to helping 
students believe in themselves — yet never to excess. I loved it all.” 
And so, the words that Professor K.D. Coates wrote for the Wofford 
Centennial in 1954 still ring true in the first decade of the third millennium: 
“Somehow, in spite of all the complexities, the individual student still 
manages to come in contact with the individual teacher. And occasionally 
too, as in the old days, a student goes out and by words and deeds makes a 
professor remembered for good intentions, and a college respected for the 
quality of its worksmanship.” 
For more about the history of Wofford College, visit the Archives . 
