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Amanda Wofford '09 "writes home" to Webb about her passion for education and wilderness survival and leadership. Webb alumni of the 1990s may remember Amanda and her sister, Brianna, as the young children of Outerlimits director, Brian Wofford. The girls frequently accompanied Webb trips even before they were students. Amanda attended Webb for six years. She is currently a junior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Amanda writes, "I just finished my fall semester of my junior year at UTC. I spent the semester observing at a magnet school in Chattanooga, TN for my education degree. I worked with several teachers, eighth graders, and ninth graders in the school. It was a great experience, which solidified my thoughts about my calling to be a teacher.

"I have worked for UTC outdoors, (our campus recreation) for a year and a half now. Through UTC outdoors I have earned a Wilderness first aid certification, life guarding certification, kayaking instruction course, and most recently my Wilderness First Responder. I have gained a lot of leadership through UTC Outdoors. I teach kayaking and lead kayaking trips. I hope to lead a multi-day sea kayaking trip during UTC's spring break.

"A lot of people thought that my dad made my sister and I go on outdoor trips and participate in WILD, but we have always pursued it ourselves. During my college experience I have found my own outdoor leading styles and have developed a greater passion for the outdoors.

"I hope to follow in my dad's footsteps by encouraging others to discover the outdoors, challenge themselves, and take adventures. I have also had the pleasure of paddling with current Webb students , which has been a great opportunity to stay in touch with the Webb community. I grew up at Webb, attended school at Webb, and still feel welcome as an alumni. Webb will always be home to me and the rest of the Woffords. "Just wanted to stay in touch, and say thank you for all of your efforts of keeping the Webb community united and connected. I carry Webb and it's traditions with me everywhere I go and in any situation that I'm faced with!"

Don Alexander '03 deployed with Operation Enduring Freedom

Don Alexander ‘03 “wrote home” to Webb in response to the recent Alumni Giving Challenge. Don attended Webb for six years as a Day student from Murfreesboro, Tenn., and then entered military service through the United States Air Force Academy.

Don writes,”Well I’m still in the Air Force flying KC-135s out of Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. Currently I’m deployed in support of OEF [Operation Enduring Freedom] and will be gone through the beginning of next year.

“I got married in September to Callie (Stockwell) Alexander from Post Falls, ID. We met in ‘09, just after I moved up to WA. Between the Air Force and my new wife I manage to stay pretty busy. Callie and I have made it back to TN a couple of times and I made a point to take her by Webb. I just didn’t think she would understand much of my upbringing without setting eyes on the campus. Not so sure I can talk her into reading The Schoolmaker, though.

“I really do appreciate the Alumni Office making an effort to contact the alumni without fiscal goals in mind. Its always entertaining to read up on the news from Webb and I can’t help but feel a sense of pride when I hear what the students are accomplishing. The school has undoubtedly improved in all aspects since my graduation. However, I understand Webb couldn’t afford to continue to provide its students with those great opportunities without the help of the alumni, and I’m glad to do my part. I’ll continue to give as long as I’m able. Sometimes we just need a little reminder!”

Here is a video of Curtis Jenkins '92 speaking to students and visitors on Martin Luther King Day, Monday January 16, 2012.

Jenkins also visited Webb in December 2011, to speak in chapel about his personal Webb experience. His chapel talk that day was very popular with Webb students. His theme was "striving for greatness."

"There is greatness in all of us," Jenkins said. "It doesn't matter what country you come from, what your nationality is, what color your skin, there is greatness in all of us. And that was something that I had to come to realize."

Jenkins came to Webb in 1988 through a special admissions program in the 1980s, which brought inner-city youths to Webb for summer camps, and offered opportunities for some of the visiting students to attend Webb.

"When I came here there were only two or three other black students," Jenkins said. "It was a real culture shock. It's great to say thank you to all of the faculty members who put their arms around me and made me feel comfortable, who made me feel like part of the school."

"Being one of two or three black kids in a predominantly white school, I felt like I was second-hand at times. But throughout the years here as I met friends and developed relationships, I learned that there is greatness in all of us."

"What the faculty did for me and my other classmates was, they pushed us to be great. They pushed us to be excellent in academics, and sports, and drama, and speaking in front of people. They pushed us to be great."

While a student at Webb, Jenkins was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and played baseball and basketball. He went on to study electrical engineering at Tennessee State Univerity; he is currently studying business management with Colorado Tech. He has worked with AT&T and lived in Nashville for 13 years. He is married and has two children.

"Webb has meant so much to me," he said. "I have wanted to figure out how I can give back to the student body and how to come back and say thank you for everything that Webb has done for me."

Posted here on January 12, 2012

“Empowering people to find their public voice is a thrilling mission,” said Priscilla Grim '92.

“Though I would never stand naked in a New York City park, I will defend my sisters who choose to do so, as it is their freedom of speech. Though we all have family members who say inappropriate things, we love them. Though we may have coworkers who miss the mark on messaging, goals, or communication, it is our responsibility as team members to assist them to a common place of agreement.”

Grim is coeditor of the well-known “We are the 99 Percent” Tumblr blog, and is the project manager for the Occupy Wall Street Journal – two independent media outlets which have received mainstream media attention.

Grim’s current role was foreshadowed by her history as a Webb student: Grim was voted “most artistic” by her Webb classmates, and also took initiative to create a literary magazine at Webb called The Utopian.

“I am enormously grateful for everything that [my Webb education] gave to me: a strong sense of independence and self, rigorous academic training, and all in a space where I was free to choose where I focused, if I framed my academic interests in a compelling way.”

From Webb, Grim went on to earn a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the New School University in New York and is currently earning a M.S. in Information Science at Columbia University in New York. Grim has worked for non-profit organizations for over a decade.

“If we see something in the world that should be improved for our fellow citizens, we should say something," said Grim. "This country was founded on the right to both assemble in public and speak our minds about our communities. We need to exercise both of those rights frequently to keep our government aware of whom they should be serving.”

“My father left the service, as an Army Captain, after the Kent State incident in 1970,” Grim said. “He told my brothers and me that he could not support a government that would fire on unarmed citizens legally engaging in their right to assemble. I wish he were alive, because I think he would be proud of what I am doing, promoting the idea that democracy should be reborn through peaceful action.”

“I grew up in a dual income household where my father traveled 60 percent of the time and my mother worked as a nurse caring for cancer patients,” Grim says of her childhood. “Instead of taking my brothers and myself on vacations, or spoiling us in other ways, the decision was made to invest into our minds."

"I am so incredibly grateful to them for that gift, and have thought about it many times as I went through my own fight to get my daughter in a charter school in Brooklyn so she could have a better educational experience.”

Grim's "senior page" in the 1992 yearbook speaks to her ever-passionate nature. "My advice to anyone still attending [Webb] is this: Carpe Diem, be a poet, and never relinquish your dreams.”

Kristin Bouldin '07 is from McMinnville, TN. She graduated from Carson-Newman College in 2011 and is currently earning a Master's degree by studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Kristin speaks about her path to interests in multicultural studies and studying abroad, as well as how her time and teachers at Webb prepared her for college and international life.

If “dedication” had a name it would be Dorothy Elkins.

Elkins, 85, has dedicated 55 years of her life to The Webb School in Bell Buckle. As a secretary, she reported directly to six former headmasters of The Webb School; and as a secretary/assistant in the Alumni and Development Office, she has worked for four different development directors.

Mrs. Elkins, a Bell Buckle native, was recently selected by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) to receive the Support Staff Distinguished Service Award for her commitment to Webb and its students The CASE Support Staff Distinguished Service Award applauds the long-term, exceptional commitment to a school by a support staff member. She traveled to New York City, her first visit to the “Big Apple” and her first plane flights, to accept the national award at the CASE/National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Conference on Monday, Jan. 25. According to John Holtz, senior awards program coordinator for CASE, the judges were touched by Elkins’ dedication to The Webb School, but also by the students’ dedication to her.

“It was impressive to the judges that students come back as alumni to share a lunch with her, and that over the course of 52 years she is still connecting on a personal level with the students, some of whom are children of alumni that she well remembers,” he said. “The other candidates were very well qualified, but in the end Dorothy Elkins won easily,” Holtz added.

Elkins’ career at Webb began with a temporary assignment in 1957, assisting the secretary to then Principal G. Webb Follin. “I was asked to come help out for two to three weeks,” Elkins recalled. At the time she was managing the books for her husband James’ business, Elkins’ Garage, and caring for their son, Bobby, then 5. The temporary job at Webb turned permanent and when Sybill Steiner, secretary to the principal/head of school, resigned a couple of years later, Elkins took the job and never looked back.

Elkins is a 1944 graduate of Bell Buckle High School (now Cascade High School) and a graduate of Shelbyville Business College. She married James, a World War II Veteran and fellow Bell Buckle native, on her birthday, Aug. 29, 1946. The couple was married for 62 years until James’ death in May 2009. In 1988, Elkins transferred from the Webb Administration Building to the Alumni and Development Office. She continues to work on a part-time basis for the Alumni and Development Office as a research assistant. Among her duties are hand addressing and mailing personalized birthday and sympathy cards to Webb’s 2,700-plus alumni.

“When I send out the cards, I think about how happy they will be that we thought about them,” she said. Mrs. Elkins’ personal touches are instrumental in helping the school maintain its relationships with alumni and is a valuable resource for the Alumni and Development Department and the school as a whole.

Here is a video tribute to Imre Lagler, Latin teacher and soccer coach at Webb for thirty years. Mr. Lagler retired from teaching in 2002 and passed away in January 2009; this video tribute was produced for the memorial service given at Reunion 2009.

Mr. Lagler's charismatic personality was quite notorious at Webb. A native of Hungary, Mr. Lagler came to the United States in 1961, the same year he married his wife, Elisabeth in New York.

"My childhood [in Hungary during the 1940s and 1950s] was just constant work, and tedious work, and of course you never made money because you lived off the land," said Mr. Lagler. "You worked or you starved."

Mr. Lagler taught at two schools in the U.S. and earned a master's degree at the University of New Hampshire before coming to Bell Buckle to teach at Webb in 1972. The Laglers had no real ties to any particular area of the U.S. and found the climate, space, and small-town feel of the South appealing. The Lagler's two sons, Imre '81 and Zsolt '83 attended and graduated from Webb.

During his 30-year career at Webb, Mr. Lagler witnessed some interesting changes in the student body and administration. At the time of his retirement in 2002, Lagler said, "The student body (today) is very smart, we have a lot of talented people. We have to change with the time. I think you can see the difference. The Head of School needs certain freedom so he can do things the way he sees fit."

Mr. Lagler's teaching philosophy went beyond the classroom. He believed that the greatest teachers combine knowledge with patience, understanding, and a love of young people, especially the least motivated students. "Those who don't want to do it, you just go after them, constantly, consistently, and sooner or later, they will do it," he said. "Real teaching skill comes with students who have some limitations and lack of motivation."

Mr. Lagler also coached soccer for 16 years at Webb. He believed that the team's competitive successes were less important than seeing the individual players working as a team. "The students who were frustrated in the classroom were very cooperative on the soccer field, and they opened up on the soccer field," he said.

Mr. Lagler is perhaps most notorious for what his colleague L.R. Smith terms his "rather mercurial temperament." Mr. Lagler believed that discussions among colleagues, whether casual or heated, are very important. "I welcome any discussion, whether political, philosophical, or related to education or the economy," he said. "Discussions are very important because we learn. I learned a lot from ideological arguments."

Those heated discussions are missed at Webb.

To read more, please visit the "I have a funny Imre Lagler story" Facebook group.

Here is a video tribute to Jack Heffner, Headmaster of The Webb School from 1977-1989, which was produced for The Webb School Bell Buckle Alumni Reunion 2011. Jackson E. Heffner, a 1942 graduate of The Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., received a bachelor's degree in history from Princeton in 1947 and a master's degree in political science at Stanford in 1954. After a brief period with the Foreign Service when he served as U.S. Vice Consul in Basra, Iraq, he began his academic career as a teacher at the Asheville School in Asheville, N.C. He served as headmaster of the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., and headmaster of North State Academy in Hickory, N.C. and of the Samuel Ready School in Baltimore, Md. The 1960s and 1970s were difficult times for independent boarding schools. Heffner recognized the impact of the era on Webb. In a 1989 interview, he commented that this was "a period of great soul-searching on the part of individuals of all ages. Increasingly, the young found those of us who were older seemingly out of touch with the times ... they regarded us as having failed them." Heffner continued, "The Webb School did not escape that era unscarred, but it did emerge in far better shape than many similar institutions." The Heffner years saw a new major capital campaign launched in 1981. Notable improvements during his 12-year administration included significant endowment growth, the construction of Cooper-Farris and Austin-Davis dormitories and the Davis-Woosley Science and Computer Center. New courses were added to the academic program; Outerlimits and Intramural sports became a standard offering in Webb's curriculum. Through these financial successes and facility improvements, Heffner did not lose sight of the core mission. "We are proud of the work which has been done," he said upon retiring in 1989, and then quoted the school's founder Sawney Webb: "but we strive not to let bricks and mortar take precedence over the areas of greater importance."

Ever wondered what on earth the saying "pedigree your ancestors" means?

Today at Webb, "pedigree your ancestors" is inscribed onto a wall of the Big Room, Webb's primary classroom building. The saying is explained in a story from Lawrence McMillin's "The Schoolmaker." The Webb School's founder, W.R. "Sawney" Webb, told this story to Webb's earliest students. McMillin said, "The boy who particularly touched the heart of Old Sawney was the shy one, the poor one...the one who felt inferior, unsure, underprivileged, or afraid, yet was in deep earnest under his desperation...Old Sawney fashioned the true history of a little scrub horse into a fable about the human spirit." In this video, L.R. Smith tells the story of "Little Brown Jug" to a class of Webb students in the Junior Room, Webb's oldest surviving classroom building, built in 1886 when Sawney Webb moved his school to Bell Buckle from Culleoka.

This is the story behind "pedigree your ancestors."

Webb on the web... a new blog from the Alumni Office

With so many exciting things happening at Webb, so many cool alumni stories to share, and so many ways to share them on the web, we decided to start a Tumblr blog to help document Webb's journey. We hope that Webb alumni of all ages will follow this blog for photos, news, and stories about Webb's history, and each other.

If you have a question or a story to share, please send it on in!

Sandi Jobe, Director of Alumni Relations

[email protected]

#Webb School #Bell Buckle #Webb alumni #Sawney Webb

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