Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being on the campus of Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia where my aunt (my father’s sister) was a student.  Brenau has been part of my mother’s side of the family since the 1890s when my great grandmother taught art there. My mother was a student at Brenau in the late 1940s.   My grandfather was chairman of the Board of Trustees in the 1960s.  My mother’s sister was a department head.  I received my undergraduate degree there in the 1970s as did my sister.

From 1928 to 2011, there also was a high school, a girls’ boarding school known as Brenau Academy, on the university campus where I taught for 15 years from 1996 until the high school closed in 2011. In 2012, I began teaching at the university as an adjunct professor but was sidelined two years ago, first by my own health issues and then by my husband’s stroke.