Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502200058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD STRADLING DAILY PRESS
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG (AP) LENGTH: Medium
Dodge, 85, and Walker, 73, live a quarter of a mile from each other in the little crossroads town of Lively, just north of the Rappahannock River. Their husbands died within a month of each other in 1978, and neither wanted to ``just sit,'' as Walker puts it. So they went back to school.
The two didn't exhaust the curricula available to them. They exhausted themselves.
``We're getting decrepit,'' Walker said. ``It is a long drive. If you take four hours of a day driving and three hours in classes - for a little old lady, it's very tiring.''
Initially, Walker returned to school to get her bachelor's degree. Dodge came along for moral support and because she enjoyed the classes. When Walker graduated in 1985 with a double major in English and history, the two friends decided to keep taking classes at William and Mary. They averaged three per semester for more than eight years.
``They're a living reproach to most of the human race, who don't have this kind of intellectual curiosity at that age,'' said Ludwell Johnson, an emeritus history professor.
Dodge is more succinct and far more modest about it all:
``I think people think we're just crazy.''
Walker saw her chance as retirement approached. She and her husband were building a house overlooking the Corrotoman River, not far from where he grew up.
``My husband liked to sail,'' she said. ``He couldn't wait to get down here to sail. And I didn't like that. So I said, `That's all right. You sail, and I'll just go to school.'''
When her husband died unexpectedly of heart disease, Walker had second thoughts about school. That's when her friend and neighbor volunteered to go with her.
``Beulah said she was too old,'' Dodge said. ``And I said, `I'll go with you, and you'll be young.'''
Dodge had been to college before. She earned a bachelor's degree in French from Hollins College in 1931 and says she would have gone on to graduate school and become a teacher had it not been for the Depression.
Instead, she came home to Richmond, where she took a job keeping accident statistics for the state. She eventually married, and she and her husband worked in the hotel business. The spent their summers in Lively.
Dodge and Walker got started at Rappahannock Community College in Warsaw, about 28 miles away from Lively. Walker needed a foundation of courses before she could transfer to a four-year college. After three years, she had that foundation - and a 3.7 grade-point average. Dodge had taken most of the same classes for no credit and was Walker's tutor.
Together, they enrolled at William and Mary in the fall of 1983.
Two years later, Walker's grade-point average had dropped to 3.1. ``They just really grade tight at William and Mary,'' she said.
She had nearly all the credits she needed to graduate, but at that time, she said, William and Mary didn't have an adult degree program. Instead, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton agreed to accept her credits and give her a degree if she completed one correspondence course.
``I graduated with about 100 kids. Cap and gown,'' Walker said.
With her diploma framed on the dining room wall, Walker could have called it quits in 1985. But, she said, ``I didn't want to come down here and sit in a rocking chair.'' She and Dodge went back to William and Mary that fall, this time to take classes purely for fun.
Dodge and Walker have given up the long trips to Williamsburg since then, but they haven't given up their education. This semester, they returned to Rappahannock Community College, where they are enrolled in a computer class. Neither owns a computer, but that's not the point.
``I just want to be computer-literate,'' Dodge said. ``All these little children come and talk to me, and I don't have any idea what they're talking about.
``I've got a lot to learn yet.''
by CNB