RADFORD -- “Deep down in every child, there’s good. All you have to do is find it and work on it,” said Grace Wooldridge years after she retired from teaching. A teacher in Buchanan County’s Garden High School for 32 years, she dedicated herself to promoting in her students a sense of their own worth. Recently many of her former students, along with her friends and family members, returned the favor by establishing a scholarship in her name to help Buchanan County students attend Radford University.

Wooldridge was on stage for the surprise scholarship announcement during the 2008 McGlothlin Awards for Teaching Excellence ceremony hosted by RU in April. “I don’t know why they did all this for me,” she said with a characteristic twinkle in her eyes. “I guess because I’m 98 years old.” She enjoined the teachers and future teachers in the audience, “Just love the children.”

In the early 1940s when Wooldridge, a divorced mother of three, stepped onto then Radford College’s campus, she had one thing in mind — she wanted to be a teacher. She and her family sacrificed to make her dream become a reality. The Wooldridge children lived with their grandparents in Buchanan County while Wooldridge lived on campus. Following her first year as a full-time student, a principal in Buchanan County asked if she could please start teaching. In subsequent years, she returned to Radford during the summers, and in 1950 she received her undergraduate degree.

Wooldridge was much more than a teacher to her students. In the words of Tom Colley, executive editor of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and one of Wooldridge’s former Garden High School students, “Children have always been her chief concern, and many have benefited from her personal interest in them — myself included. She taught me for several years and was a strong inspiration in my newspaper career.”

Colley is among several of Wooldridge’s former students whose voices were heard in a video tribute presented just before the scholarship announcement at the McGlothlin Awards ceremony. Wooldridge’s own voice provided the video’s narrative because last year, RU College of Education and Human Development dean Patricia Shoemaker and RU director of radio/TV and communication services Ashlee Claud recorded an interview with Wooldridge, one of the first participants in “Legacies: An Oral History Project.” The project, according to Shoemaker, is aimed at a better understanding of “what drives the most talented teachers.”

Wooldridge now lives in Warrenton with her daughter — and former Garden High School student — Elsie Dee Kreutter.

To learn more, or to contribute to the Grace Wooldridge Scholarship, call (540) 831-6255 or e-mail kcasteel@radford.edu.

About the McGlothlin Awards for Teaching Excellence

The McGlothlin Awards for Teaching Excellence, sponsored by the McGlothlin Foundation of Bristol, are among the largest teaching awards in the nation. Each year two award winners, one in grades K – 5 and one in grades 6 – 12, receive $25,000 each, with the stipulation that $10,000 must be used, within a year, for international travel and/or study to broaden the thinking and experience of the winning teachers and further enhance their excellence as professional educators. The McGlothlin Awards are available only to public school teachers in selected portions of Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky. According to Thomas D. McGlothlin, president of the McGlothlin Foundation, "The McGlothlin Foundation wishes to inspire the award recipients so that they can breathe new life into their classrooms, their peers, and indeed the entire school."

The 2008 McGlothlin Award winners are Tamatha Farrell, a teacher in Roanoke County’s Burlington Elementary School and a 1995 RU graduate, and Tracy Easterling of Vance Middle School in Bristol, Tenn.

The McGlothlin Awards program, nearly 10 years old, is administered by Blue Ridge PBS. Since 2002, Radford University’s College of Education and Human Development has collaborated with Blue Ridge PBS and the McGlothlin Foundation to host the McGlothlin Celebration of Teaching and the McGlothlin Awards ceremony.

Blue Ridge PBS, founded in 1967, is the sole public multimedia enterprise serving 2.5 million individuals in portions of five states. The station’s 26,000-square-mile coverage area includes southwestern Virginia and bordering counties in Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and North Carolina. As the region’s storyteller, Blue Ridge PBS offers outstanding informational, educational and cultural programming, along with an award-winning local production team devoted to regional issues and interests. Further, over 200,000 schoolchildren and their teachers benefit from the station’s education services that provide a safe, trusted environment for innovative on-air and online learning. Blue Ridge PBS is comprised of WBRA-TV/DT in Roanoke, WSBN-TV/DT in Norton, and WMSY-TV/DT in Marion, Va. www.blueridgepbs.org.

The Radford University College of Education and Human Development offers 27 undergraduate and graduate programs in the School of Teacher Education and Leadership, the Department of Exercise, Sport and Health Education, and the Department of Counselor Education and Human Development. Carrying forth the tradition on which the university was founded, this nationally accredited college prepares students for lives of service as educators, counselors and health specialists who bring insight, dedication and compassion to their work in helping people and communities thrive.

Radford University offers a diverse curriculum of more than 140 undergraduate and graduate degree programs or areas of concentration focused on student achievement and career preparation. A student body of 9,122 studies in seven colleges: Business and Economics, Education and Human Development, Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, Science and Technology, Visual and Performing Arts, Waldron College of Health and Human Services, and the College of Graduate and Professional Studies. RU is located in the scenic New River Valley near the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southwest Virginia.