By Ann Dunaway Criswell ’55 During this unsettling time of COVID-19, I am reminded of a conversation decades ago with my mother, Annie Towles Dunaway 1919. The 1918 influenza pandemic did not spare students or faculty at Fredericksburg State Normal and Industrial School for Women, as Mary Washington was called at the time. Classes were canceled, and students remained in their dorms. Those who were not sick helped those who were ill. There was one death, that of Professor of History Virginia Goolrick, one of my mother’s favorite faculty members. Professor Goolrick lived in an apartment in Virginia Hall, my mother’s dorm. The normal school, founded in 1908 and opened in the academic year of 1911-12, was still new when Annie Towles journeyed by steamboat from Merry Point in Lancaster County to begin her college life. She was in the vanguard of young women attending college with sights on careers as teachers at a time when public education was being expanded. My mother … [Read more...]
