A Mechanicsville resident is among three distinguished former Bluefield College students who were honored Oct. 23-24 during Homecoming festivities on campus
Published: November 18, 2009
Contributed Report
A Mechanicsville resident is among three distinguished former Bluefield College students who were honored Oct. 23-24 during Homecoming festivities on campus.
Leroy Williams, Class of 1957, received the school’s Volunteer of the Year award for his “transformational leadership” in organizing more than 100 volunteers from 15 different churches to renovate four married-student cottages on campus this past summer.
He completed a successful career as a special projects administrator and manager with Phillip Morris before putting his passion and skills for carpentry and construction to good use leading dozens of construction mission projects in Virginia, across the region, Canada, Europe, South America and India.
Williams brought that same passion to a mission project on the BC campus this past summer, organizing, leading and inspiring more than 100 volunteers to restore four dilapidated cottages for valuable married-student housing.
Under his leadership, the missionaries installed new windows, doors and vinyl siding to the exteriors of the cottages and laid new flooring, mounted new walls, and installed new plumbing, wiring, appliances and cabinets inside the structures.
“He not only volunteered to coordinate the entire effort, but also provided a significant financial gift for the project,” said Teresa Stanley, alumni director. “He single-handedly prepared the scope of the project, organized all the volunteers who participated, and spent nearly the entire summer working alongside those who came to serve.”
In addition to Williams, Stanley presented awards to Margaret Newcomb Leonard, Class of 1955, who earned induction into the school’s Gallery of Distinguished Graduates, and Michael Harris, Class of 1997, who received a Distinguished Young Alumnus award for “the way he has distinguished himself professionally in just more than a decade since graduation.”
Leonard, a longtime public school teacher from Blacksburg, spent the bulk of her career teaching American history and English in Pulaski County. Even after leaving the classroom to focus on motherhood, she remained an active and inspirational teacher, serving as the founder of the Learning Center at Purdue University, which was an early model for learning assistance centers now common at universities across the nation.
Dr. Harris, a Bluefield resident, attended Shenandoah University’s Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy after BC, where he earned a doctorate in pharmacy in 2001. He began his career as a pharmacy tech for Kmart, while still in college, from 1994 to 1997, before becoming a pharmacy intern in grad school from 1997 to 2000. After pharmacy school, he became a pharmacist for Clinch Valley Medical Center, and today he is a pharmacist for Wal-Mart in Bluefield.
