Campbell Magazine | Fall 2024

Where there is no path

CORDELL WISE, CAMPBELL’S FIRST BLACK STUDENT, SHARES HIS JOURNEY

TRAINING, SERVING

Students in Campbell University's Doctor of Physical Therapy program provide free monthly physical therapy through its Community Wellness Program, which offers on-the-job training for students and a free option to expensive rehabilitation for their patients. One regular visitor is 9-year-old Javonte O'Neal of Fayetteville, who in May was on campus working on coordination skills shooting baskets and playing cornhole.

Photo by Ben Brown

32 WHERE THERE IS NO PATH

It's been 57 years since Cordell Wise stepped onto the campus of Campbell College and made history as the school's first Black student. For decades, his enormous impact was both under-recognized by the school and dismissed by the man himself. Until now.

FEATURES

5 PAYING IT FORWARD

Director of Athletics Hannah Bazemore credits positive female role models for her career trajectory, and she hopes to have that same impact on those working for her.

16 THE NEAR FALL

Taye Ghadiali almost quit wrestling and was nearly expelled from school and kicked off the team. But his coaches and his teammates never gave up on him, and, more importantly, he never gave up on himself. Today's he's an NCAA All American.

24 EVERY STEP ALONG THE WAY

Brian Ricketts is learning to walk again decades after a near-fatal brain injury thanks to help from physical therapy students at Campbell. Inspired by those who care for his father, his son Ian is on his way in becoming a physical therapist.

44 LIFE OF A CADDIE

A walk-on for the Campbell University golf team in the early 90s, Duane Bock has made a career out of being at the bag for some of the world's best golfers on some of the world's biggest stages.

PRESIDENT J. Bradley Creed

VICE PRESIDENT FOR INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT

Britt Davis

CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER

Vincent Benbenek

ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING

Haven Hottel

DIRECTOR OF NEWS & PUBLICATIONS & MAGAZINE EDITOR

Billy Liggett

DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Evan Budrovich

CONTRIBUTORS

Somi Benson-Jaja, Ben Brown, Stan Cole, Dan Hunt, Bennett Scarborough, John F. Trump

ACCOLADES

Finalist: CASE International Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year (2020)

CASE International Circle of Excellence Awards

Magazine: 2020 (Grand Gold)

Feature Writing: 2021 (Gold), 2022 (Silver), 2017 (Bronze)

Photography Series: 2021 (Gold)

Photography Portraits: 2022 (Silver)

Illustrations: 2020 (Gold)

Cover Design: 2018 (Silver)

Founded in 1887, Campbell University is a private, coeducational institution where faith, learning and service excel. Campbell offers programs in the liberal arts, sciences and professions with undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees. The University is comprised of nine colleges and schools and was ranked among the Best National Universities by U.S. News & World Report in its America’s Best Colleges 2024 edition.

Campbell University publishes Campbell Magazine three times a year.

The University affirms its standing policy of non-discrimination in employment and in all of its programs and activities, with respect to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, ethnicity or national origin, disability, genetic information, protected veteran status, military status and any other characteristic protected by law, except where exemption is appropriate and authorized by law.

A YEAR OF FIRSTS AND LASTS

Whether it’s your first year or your 32nd (and final) year, college experiences are to be treasured

This is a season of “firsts” for our entering freshmen — first time living on their own, first day of classes, first street fair, first Homecoming, to name just a few.

For me, this is a season of “lasts” — last faculty/staff orientation, last Homecoming, last graduation and many more. The freshmen are launching their journey into higher education. I am winding mine down as I prepare to retire from the presidency at Campbell at the end of this academic year.

I have been starting new semesters for 32 years across three different institutions of higher education. The beginning of this academic year, which is presumably my last, gives me an opportunity to reflect upon my career in higher education and my nearly decade long tenure as president of Campbell University.

Being an educational leader provides a unique perspective relative to other professions. Lawyers grow older with their clients, doctors with their patients, and ministers with the members of their congregations. I grow older every year, but the students stay the same age. Being around young adults helps me to retain youthful enthusiasm and a curiosity about life but reminds me of the inevitability of aging and knowing when to step aside. I am as hopeful about what lies ahead of me as I am grateful for what is behind me.

One aspect of university life that I appreciate and will miss is the rhythm of the academic year with its cycle of semesters, schedule of courses and special ceremonies that demarcate our

learning community. There is a clear beginning and a decisive ending to each semester, the most important concluding ceremony being graduation.

If there is a high and holy moment in academia, it is graduation. We celebrate it with pomp and protocol in a very public way. We even wear distinctive regalia that belongs in no other arena or venue except an academic setting.

It is not unlike the Christian liturgical calendar with its sacred rites, holy days and special emphases. Universities began as an outgrowth of monasteries in the Middle Ages, and with the rhythm of the academic year, especially the graduation ceremony, there is an aura of something set apart, distinctive and even sacred.

I am experiencing several “lasts” as I begin my final year at Campbell University, but more importantly, our new students are experiencing their “firsts.” The rituals and ways of being together in the pursuit of higher learning are what mold and shape them during their time at Campbell.

During this season on campus, we are celebrating new beginnings and a time of “firsts” for many in our community, especially our new students whom we welcome to this University we so honor and cherish.

Dr. J. Bradley Creed President, Campbell University

In his 10th and last year as president of Campbell University, President J. Bradley Creed reflects on some of his favorite yearly traditions that he'll be experiencing for the last time this year — such as the President's Picnic held during Welcome Week.

Go Orange. Give Back.

CAMPBELL GIVING DAY

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

On #CampbellGivingDay, November 13, celebrate with us! Proudly put on your Campbell orange and make a gift!

Help us reach our goal of 2500 gifts by making your gift on Campbell Giving Day. Every gift makes a positive impact on the Campbell community, now and for generations to come. Every day, every year, your gift matters to Campbell University, a place where committed students, under the guidance of caring faculty and staff, are transformed and driven to lead with purpose.

Share why you give on social media using the hashtag #CampbellGivingDay, leading others to do the same. Your participation makes a big impact!

Paying it forward

Director of Athletics Hannah Bazemore credits positive female role models for her career trajectory, and she hopes to have that same impact on those working for her

BY STAN COLE

Two weeks after receiving her acceptance letter to attend Campbell University and study education, Hannah Bazemore learned she wouldn’t be the only one in her family making the 75-mile move north from the small town of Wallace.

“My dad walked in and said he was coming here, too,” to take a position as Campbell’s Dean of Student Life, she recalled. “I always like to say that he followed me to Campbell. Not the other way around.”

It’s been 21 years since that freshman year — since her first job in athletics as a student manager for the basketball team — and today Hannah Bazemore is

running Campbell Athletics. It’s a role she never dreamed of having and one that’s more rewarding than she could have ever dreamed.

And it’s a role made possible, she says, by her experience working for and with “two incredible personal and professional role models in college athletics” in former Senior Associate Athletics Director Debbie Richardson and former Women’s Head Basketball Coach Wanda Watkins.

“Hannah Bazemore continues the leadership that will always make Campbell special,” said Richardson. “She embodies commitment to the Campbell family.”

A former head women’s basketball coach at East Tennessee State, Richardson was in the midst of a 10-year stint on the Campbell Athletics staff overseeing the internal operations of the department when she employed an extensive student staff to help run Campbell’s (then) 20-sport varsity program.

“Debbie was — and still is to this day — the most impactful person to me in my career,” said Bazemore. “I left the women’s basketball program as a manager and started as a student worker in operations. I was helping paint lines on soccer fields, working concessions, working home game operations and any and everything they would let me do.”

WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT FUND

Through the newly created Women's Empowerment Fund, the Fighting Camel Club's goal is to have a positive impact on the lives of student-athletes at Campbell, specifically female athletes.

Support the fund through monetary gifts made at gocamels.com/giving

got to know her better and see her in different capacities, the more I came to admire her. The way she carried herself, how she handled her business and the way she treated and cared for other people set the standard of how to be a leader. She was very successful, so of course I wanted to try and emulate some of that.”

Watkins says she noticed the promise Bazemore demonstrated early on.

“I’m proud to witness her growth as she has served in a number of positions here over the years and has such insight of the many facets and operations involving Campbell Athletics,” she said. “She knows the business from the ground up.”

Richardson provided the opportunity for her to not only fill a job description, but to explore the field and grow in the process.

“She allowed me to ask any question I wanted to ask,” she said. “Our conversations sparked my curiosity about college athletics and how it all works. She allowed me opportunities to get involved in anything that piqued my interest or anywhere an extra set of hands was needed. I worked a summer with marketing, dabbled in compliance, just trying to figure out what it was that made the most sense to me and where my niche was.”

Because of that from-the-ground-up experience, Bazemore today still takes

into consideration the overall needs of the department in her decision making.

Wanda Watkins enrolled at Campbell in 1975 as the school’s first female athletics scholarship recipient. She never left until retiring this past May after a combined 49 years (including four as an undergraduate) in Buies Creek. By the time Bazemore began classes at Campbell, Watkins was already in her third decade as head women’s basketball coach and had successfully guided the program through the Division I transition and into the 2000 NCAA tournament.

“For the longest time, Coach Watkins sat on a pedestal to me,” said Bazemore. “It was a privilege to be around her, and as I

Now 21 years after Watkins and Richardson gave Bazemore her first look at a career in college athletics, Bazemore is doing the same for young women and men. Four of her latest hires and promotions on the staff are Campbell graduates. Former women’s soccer player Shelby Denkert is the new assistant AD for Business, while fellow Campbell women’s soccer grads Rosie O’Neal (director of student-athlete development) and Taryn Phillips (director of facilities and game operations) are in new roles. Zach Berly, who first started working as an undergraduate student broadcaster, is the new director of creative content.

“Campbell was such a unique opportunity for me — you can come in and wear multiple hats, get exposed to college athletics where we are competing on a national stage in some sports and experience Division I athletics up close,” said Bazemore. “You get to see behind the curtain a lot. At other places, I don’t know if you’d be afforded that opportunity. I think that’s a huge selling point. You come here and you can just about see and experience anything you want in college athletics.”

Read Stan Cole's complete profile online at gocamels.com

Director of Athletics Hannah Bazemore credits two women — Wanda Watkins (top) and Debbie Richardson (bottom left) — for their mentorship and leadership early in her career. She has worked to keep their legacies alive by mentoring recent Athletics hires Shelby Denkert, Rosie O'Neal and Taryn Phillips.

AROUND CAMPUS

COASTAL BOAST

Campbell's softball team became the school's first program to take home a Coastal Athletic Association title when it won the regular season crown on May 3. The Camels finished the season with a program-record 37 wins and went 22-5 in its inaugural season in the CAA. Trena Prater was named CAA Coach of the Year, Isabella Smith CAA Pitcher of the Year, Alyssa Henault CAA Player of the Year and Lindsay Lumsden Rookie of the Year.

Photo by Campbell Athletics

THE HOME STRETCH

After nearly 40 years in higher education and 10 as president of Campbell University — where he led the construction of the campus-transforming Oscar N. Harris Student Union and guided the school through the challenges of a global pandemic — Dr. J. Bradley Creed this spring announced his plans to retire as president in summer 2025.

NURSING STUDENT EMILY KNAPP (below, right) spent her summer studying abroad in Denmark and visiting much of Europe. She called the experience transformational:

“Being a nursing student has already taught me to take things as they come and that’s what Study Abroad is. Being vulnerable to new experiences and seeing the positive in everything. I learned how to be more inclusive and see where there is room for further accessibility improvements and how different every country is (and the good in that).”

DR. LAURA RICH was named dean for student well-being at Campbell University after serving nearly 20 years in various director roles in student success and support.

The role is a new position at Campbell that will provide leadership over counseling services, student care and case management, disability services and behavioral intervention.

“After years of working with students in various roles, I’ve learned that there is no end to the variety of challenges our students face as they work to meet their academic and professional goals,” Rich said.

LAW SCHOOL STUDENTS enrolled in the school’s pro bono Blanchard Community Law Clinic this summer worked together to help a single mother of three living in Raleigh from becoming homeless by going to court and getting her eviction case dismissed. Madison Parker and Katie Renn Williams (below), along with Professor Laura Clark, claimed their client's hearing disability led to a misunderstanding of her rights and obligations. Their work is just one of the successful stories resulting from the clinic, which works with nonprofit agencies to provide help to their clients facing legal problems.

Read student experience stories at blogs.campbell.edu

Service minded

Campbell med school ranks second in nation in graduates practicing in rural, medically underserved areas

THE SCHOOL OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE ranks second-highest in the nation for “Medical Schools With the Most Graduates Practicing in Health Professional Shortage Areas,” according to U.S. News & World Report rankings of top medical schools released on July 22.

U.S. News says 46.8 percent of Campbell graduates are practicing in medically underserved areas, the only N.C. medical ranking in the top 10 in this category. Further, and also significantly, Campbell’s med school ranks 11th in Most Graduates Practicing in Primary Care, with 41.1 percent of graduates practicing in primary care.

Serving rural communities in North Carolina with the goal of keeping physicians in those communities is a primary goal of Campbell, which boasts the only osteopathic medical school in North Carolina.

On Match Day in April, all of Campbell’s 152 graduating medical students learned they were placed in a residency program. Fifty-one — 34 percent — will serve their residencies in North Carolina. Virginia and South Carolina will each be home to 13 new Campbell residents. Forty of the graduating students will specialize in family medicine and 33 in internal medicine.

Osteopathic medical schools secured the top 14 positions for graduates practicing in primary care, and six osteopathic medical schools are ranked in the top 14 for graduates practicing in rural areas, says the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine.

New coach: ‘Brotherhood alive and well’

Former assistant coach Chris Marx returns to build on the success of Campbell's baseball program

CHRIS MARX WAS OFFICIALLY announced as the ninth Campbell baseball head coach (in the Div. I era) on June 28. The former Campbell assistant — most recently an assistant at Purdue University — brings 17 seasons of coaching experience, following Justin Haire, who departed for Ohio State.

Prior to Purdue, Marx served as Haire’s lead assistant at Campbell for five seasons (20142019), directing the Camels’ recruiting efforts and guiding the offense before transitioning to pitching coach duties.

“I'm here to tell you the brotherhood is alive and well,” Marx said at his press conference. “Our job, moving forward, is to continue to show these players what it takes, to clearly communicate that accountability and discipline will ultimately lead to their successes in the future. There will be challenging times and hard days ahead, but that is ultimately what prepares us for battle. The people sitting in that room on Aug. 21 during our first team meeting, the bond will never have been thicker, the chip on their shoulder will never have been greater than it will be in that room. I'm here to fuel that fire every single day.”

Dr. Jennifer Hill ('18 DO) and Dr. Sarah Lassiter ('22) practice at the Coats Family Clinic, just minutes from Campbell’s main campus. The rural clinic, a Harnett Health physician practice, has up to 12 Campbell residents seeing patients throughout the year. Photo by Ben Brown

DR. ANA RYNEARSON, assistant professor of engineering, received the prestigious U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award to support her work toward improving support for undergraduate engineering students who are unsure of their choice of major.

The award, titled “Choose Your PATH: Identifying and Supporting Undergraduate Academic Decision Points for Persistence, Attrition, Transition or Hiatus,” contributes nearly $600,000 toward her project, which the NSF believes aligns with the organization’s focus on research that promotes support for undergraduate engineering students.

DR. EVAN REYNOLDS, associate professor of chemistry, received a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant this summer to study new methods for sustainable chemical synthesis using thiamin diphosphatedependent enzymes.

The grant is the largest ever received within the College of Arts & Sciences.

In addition to the research, Reynolds’ team will include underrepresented and minority students, and the project will be incorporated into a course-based undergraduate research experience.

Spaces of care

Showing compassion for fellow students drives Aviel Eubanks, elected SGA president this year and to be part of Campbell’s presidential search

AVIEL EUBANKS CARES. About her classmates searching for purpose. About her school uniting as one. About making an impact in the local community.

Eubanks — a political science, pre-law major from Erwin — has dived headfirst into the biggest endeavor of her college career as president of the Student Government Association, a position she was elected to back in April.

She’s cared enough to immerse herself in the University’s student handbook, reading every page thoroughly and asking herself questions like “What do we do as students?” and “Why do we do it?”

“In order to be an effective leader, you must understand people,” Eubanks says. “We’ve tried to bring in more perspectives of the student experience here. We’re learning about individual worth and working to show we care for our fellow students.”

Eubanks and her vice president, Cutler Bryant, focused their campaign last spring on three words: Purpose, intentionality and uniting. A former sorority president, sophomore class vice president and women’s community coordinator for the SGA, she said she recognizes the value of action over simple words.

“Campbell gives us the opportunity to speak our mind and make a real impact,” she said. “It’s all about being at the table and taking your chance.”

Award-winning graphic design student Abigail Ellington received an invite to visit the Hellenic Republic Embassy in Washington, D.C., after her Greek postage stamp and envelope design project caught the eye of Greece’s U.S. ambassador, Ekaterini Nassika.

Aviel Eubanks was selected by her peers as president of the Student Government Association. She was also selected as the student representative for Campbell's Presidential Search Committee.

In her leadership role, Eubanks says she wants to emphasize “spaces of care” — those unique moments where her fellow classmates can be seen, heard and listened to by her, the SGA and the entire Campbell community.

Referencing her faith, Eubanks says she did not come to Campbell to be served, but to serve.

Halle Kahlenberg became the first published undergraduate clinical research student at Campbell when her paper, titled “Vaccine Hesitancy for COVID-19: What is the Role of Statistical Literacy?,” was included in Frontiers in Public Health in 2023. Her research into vaccine hesitancy, which began in the early stages of COVID in 2020, also earned High Merit at the Wiggins Memorial Library Academic Symposium.

Eubanks and her SGA cohorts can be found every Wednesday this fall in the Academic Circle, handing out free swag and blasting Campbell pride as far as sound can travel. It’s one example of her spaces of care — an offering of a shared experience with her fellow students. A connection of a diverse body of learners behind one purpose.

Her passion for spotlighting diverse backgrounds across the board — and reflecting the general needs and desires of her student body — caught the attention of Rev. Faithe Beam, vice president for Student Life, and Gene Lewis, chairman of the Campbell University Board of Trustees. The two reached out to chat with the rising senior about her faith, about the need to connect current students with alumni and about her vision for campus heading into her final year.

Those conversations led to Eubanks’ inclusion as the student representative for the search committee to choose the next president of Campbell University, succeeding Dr. J. Bradley Creed next summer. Much like her own tenure at the student level, Eubanks noted the necessity for a president who can connect, mentor and plan for the future. Someone who can build on Creed’s decade-long legacy and push Campbell forward.

“I’m incredibly thankful that Campbell cares enough to seek out our opinion,” Eubanks says. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be chosen to take part in something like this.”

Eubanks says she wants to see, hear and love her fellow students for what they are. And soon, she will become a huge advocate for the latest step in Campbell’s 137-year history.

— EVAN BUDROVICH

"Campbell gives us an opportunity to speak our mind and make a real impact. It's about being at the table and taking your chance."

Lessons in leading

Graduate students from health sciences and law school finish program focusing on servant leadership and character

THE WORLD NEEDS MORE NEIGHBORS. In a nutshell, this is what the Wallace Servant Leadership & Character Fellowship program at Campbell University is all about. Nine students were celebrated by former Campbell President (and program namesake) Dr. Jerry Wallace as Wallace Fellows in April. The group expressed what the experience meant to them and how they plan to “pay it forward” in their professional careers.

“Campbell has been such an awesome place for me to learn and grow as a person,” said Meaghan Nazareth, a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine graduate who plans to focus on pediatrics in her upcoming residency. “In addition to learning about the importance of being a good neighbor and being a servant leader, this program has helped us figure out what it takes to be leaders within our own programs and that we’re working to serve others. It’s a big part of our professional education here.”

Students from medicine, law, pharmacy, public health and the physician assistant program took part in the most recent fellowship, which is designed to “challenge students and faculty to accept the call to servant leadership through recognition, support and encouragement” through coursework (taught by Wallace), internships and other projects.

Wallace, who will turn 90 next year, says the upcoming 2024-25 program will be his last after leading and teaching it for nine years. He said the program began with the School of Law originally, but recently expanded to include Campbell’s growing health sciences programs. The word “character” was also added to the title of the program intentionally, Wallace said. That focus goes back to Wallace’s belief that the world is better off when compassion wins out over war.

Former Campbell President Dr. Jerry Wallace and former Board of Trustees Chair Bob Barker join students who took part in the Wallace Servant Leadership & Character Fellowship program at a ceremony last spring.

Trust in a summer internship

Trust and wealth management students get an education in business and life in business school's growing intern program

One of the (many) draws of Campbell University’s oneof-a-kind four-year trust and wealth management program is its internship program. If you’re a student, you’re all but guaranteed an internship. And there’s a good chance that experience is going to take you somewhere new.

For Megan Harwood, a senior trust major from Raleigh, and Mason Askew, a fifthyear senior from Texas in Campbell’s 4+1 MBA program, that “somewhere new” this summer was Nashville, Tennessee. The two interned for Cumberland Trust, which manages more than $8 billion for more than 1,000 families in that area.

For Harwood, the experience was a chance to be on her own for the first time. Even when she began at Campbell on the tail end of the pandemic in 2021, she commuted from home. When she moved into an off-campus apartment, it was with her fiancé.

“This is the first time I’ve ever been alone in a new place, in a new city,” she said in July, 10 weeks into her 12-week internship. “It’s been a lot of learning myself, and that’s been so beneficial to me — learning that I can do things on my own. I think it’s beneficial for any woman to get out there on your own. It can be scary at first, but it’s fun. As much as I’m growing professionally at Cumberland, I’m growing personally, too.”

In Nashville, Harwood saw a place where she could see herself living one day. The other draw was Cumberland Trust, a company whose CEO and president is a woman and whose workforce is 75-percent women.

“One of my biggest fears coming into corporate America as a woman was the idea that I was entering a maledominated field,” she said. “When I learned about the number of women who lead and work at Cumberland during my interview, I was sold. I love it. And they made the entire interview process as natural and comfortable as possible. Everything just kind of aligned perfectly for me.”

Askew came to Campbell on a track scholarship and chose the trust and wealth management and MBA path because of the program’s job placement numbers (99 percent of students are working soon after graduation, according to longtime department chairman Jimmy Witherspoon).

Megan Harwood and Mason Askew spent their summer in Nashville, Tennessee, as trust and wealth management interns at Cumberland Trust. The two are part of a large network of summer interns spread out all over the country in the LundyFetterman School of Business' renowned trust program.

“As someone whose parents were always telling me, ‘You need a job, you need a job, you need a job,’ [those numbers] were something I couldn’t ignore,” Askew said. “It’s job security. It’s absolute. And this is a field where you still need that human touch, so I’m not worried about AI coming in and making us irrelevant.”

Nashville was Askew’s second internship. He spent his previous summer in Sarasota, Florida, and he chose Nashville because he wanted to try something new. He also liked the idea that it was a fulltime paid internship, rather than one that simply offers a stipend.

One thing he’s learned during the process of both internships is that new graduates with trust degrees are in high demand. Companies are competing against each other to land Campbell interns and new Campbell graduates, he said, rather than the students and graduates competing against each other for the jobs.

“That’s an amazing feeling to have,” he said. “I have friends in other majors who don’t get the up to 25 interview opportunities that we get. They don’t get to pick the jobs that suit their own personal preference, because they’re taking what’s available.”

The two are quick to point out that “intern” in the trust field isn’t the stereotypical definition of an intern. They’re not relegated to getting coffee and lunch for the bosses. They’re not just taking notes on the side while the “real” employees do the work. They are involved in the process from Day 1. Harwood said she spent time in the estates, special assets and personal trust departments and learned how to read documents, summarize them and administer them properly.

“There’s only so much you can learn in an academic setting,” Askew said. “But when you’re in these companies, shadowing officers and talking through what they’re doing in their day, it’s invaluable. You see how they handle it when a client has a complaint or is frustrated. You see how they put egos aside and diffuse the situation, even if the complaint isn’t their fault. Those extracurriculars, you can’t get that in a classroom. That’s a big part of the internship process for me.”

Both Askew and Harwood have one more year of school in Buies Creek before the “real world” begins. Harwood said she and her fiancé are open to moving to a city like Nashville, and Askew is looking into possible opportunities abroad in the trust field.

“We’re taking it day by day,” Harwood said. “The interviews are coming soon, and graduation will be here before we know it. We’ll see where the field takes us.”

— BILLY LIGGETT

JOBS OUT THE GATE

As the nation’s only undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Trust and Wealth Management, Campbell University produces an average of 70-80 new trust professionals each year. They are now being placed across 50 states with financial organizations of all types and sizes.

Extensive industry connections mean 95 percent of trust graduates are placed with institutions from Boston to San Diego and Seattle to Miami within just one month of their graduation date.

Mars Rover team among best in nation

IT WAS THE BEST SHOWING EVER for Campbell’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge team at the annual NASA competition held in Huntsville, Alabama this spring. The team of students from the School of Engineering placed third overall and earned a Pit Crew Award against schools from around the world.

The annual competition held its concluding competition April 19-20 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The competition this year was “fierce,” and the team from Campbell faced immense pressure after an essential part of their rover was damaged during the first run of the competition.

“They put in many, many hours outside of class on this project, which encompassed not only building the rover, but also K-12 outreach activities, social media posts and a significant amount of documentation and presentations," said founding Dean Dr. Jenna Carpenter.

Campbell was selected as the next institution for the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation Fellows program, an esteemed initiative aimed at cultivating servant leaders commissioned to positive social change. Campbell is one of 12 schools nationwide currently participating in the fellows program, which will provide students with a unique opportunity to engage in immersive experiences, rigorous coursework and community-based projects focused on addressing pressing societal challenges.

Students in School of Osteopathic Medicine were in Ghana on Africa's western coast this summer visiting six villages where they held clinics and served more than 1,300 patients over a seven-day period. “The students jump right in and give their hearts to these people,” said Kristin Johnson. “It’s an amazing opportunity for real-world experience, especially when they are confronted with unique challenges.”

Celestial science

This year’s eclipse among the rare planetary events captured (and explained) by physics professor

BY BILLY LIGGETT

Asolar eclipse in 2017. Mercury’s transit in 2019. The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 2020.

They’ve all been captured by Big Blue, Professor Jason Ezell’s reliable 12-inch spit Cassegrain reflector, and each rare astronomical event has been memorialized in paint on the outside of the large, cylindrical telescope.

On this day, Ezell’s sitting outside of his office on the third floor of Campbell University’s Science Building, paint brush in hand, adding a fourth major celestial event — the 2024 solar eclipse. A few weeks earlier, he and his astronomy students hosted a public viewing on campus near the bronze camel in front of the Pope Convocation Center. The conditions were perfect — warm, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky — for an outdoor gathering, and more than 300 Campbell students and faculty showed up to stare at the sun through sun-safe glasses and witness the moon’s trek between earth and sun.

For Ezell, the science outweighs the “cool factor” — though, he admits, it’s still pretty cool. The eclipse was a learning moment for his students, and for him a reassurance of cosmic truth.

“The earth is a complicated place, but there’s a degree of order behind it,” Ezell says. “Before we understood the science

Jason Ezell has taught physics and astronomy at Campbell University for 25 years. Ezell first discovered his love of physics while a student at Campbell in the late 1970s.

of an eclipse, I’m sure it all seemed very chaotic [centuries ago]. It got dark, the wind would blow, animals would disappear … but then the sun came back and everything returned to normal. Those who chose to take a breath, watch and learn were able to piece everything together and understand it.”

Once humans figured out the Earth, moon and sun’s “three body problem,” they were able to predict — to the second — when future eclipses would occur and where they would be visible on our planet. That’s why on April 8, 2024, Ezell knew viewers in Buies Creek, North Carolina, would begin to see the moon’s appearance in front of the sun beginning at approximately 1:58 p.m.

That’s also why when Big Blue froze at around 1:50 p.m. that day, there was panic.

“We’d set her up about an hour beforehand, and she was tracking the sun just perfectly,” Ezell recalls. “Then when she froze, I said, ‘My gosh, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.’ I looked at one of my students and said we had to reset everything, which takes about five minutes once it figures out its GPS location. But we got it back up with about three minutes to spare, and right on time, that little black dot started to appear.”

Back during the 2017 eclipse, Big Blue’s image was broadcast live on the giant scoreboard at Barker-Lane Stadium. This time, the screen was much smaller — a 50-inch flat screen TV under a tent. But the majority of the crowd on hand seemed to prefer the free eclipse glasses handed out that day. Almost as much as the event itself, Ezell enjoyed the community environment of the April 8 event.

Just a group of people enjoying science.

He’s been a part of the Campbell community since long before enrolling as a student at Campbell in the late 1970s.

JASON EZELL

Photo by Ben Brown

AROUND CAMPUS

THE SCIENCE LEARNED FROM SOLAR ECLIPSES

On April 6, more than 300 Campbell University students and faculty gathered near the bronze camel in front of the Pope Convocation Center to watch the solar eclipse.

While the event was simply “cool” for many in attendance, it was more than that for Professor Jason Ezell and his students. The following are just some of the scientific findings made possible over the years by solar eclipses:

m Studying the innermost part of the corona — visible only during total solar eclipses — is key to answering fundamental questions about how heat and energy are transferred from the Sun out into the solar wind, the constant stream of particles that the Sun spews into the solar system.

m Total solar eclipses provide an opportunity to study Earth’s atmosphere under uncommon conditions.

He’d go on to earn a Master’s Degree in Nuclear Physics from N.C. State University. His research interests have included using microanalysis methods to identify naturally occurring radionuclides (excess nuclear energy) in the environment. In 2011, he discovered radioactive particles over the U.S. stemming from an accident at a nuclear plant in Japan days earlier.

He returned to Campbell as a professor in 1999 and just finished his 25th year teaching physics and astronomy. His office on the third floor of the Science Building feels like that of a scientist who’s been here a while — various plants make for tight quarters (there’s even a pineapple plant), and he shares the space with a caged hamster, a fish aquarium and a turtle.

He points to a book with its cover barely hanging on and shares that it’s his first physics book, given to him by his high school biology teacher in nearby Dunn.

“I took every biology course my school offered, so when I was 18, I ended up taking physics, because that’s what all the seniors did,” he says. “And it was wonderful.”

Nobody can predict the future, he says, but thanks to our understanding of physics, some parts of the future are certain.

“I think back to Edmund Hayley when he predicted the comet was going to come back,” he says. “He had worked with Isaac Newton and thanks to everything he learned from him, he was able to work out the path of the comet to an unprecedented accuracy. He died about a decade before it returned, but he passed away knowing it was going to happen.

“Having that knowledge, it’s magical. It’s just really magical.”

m m m

m In 1868, physicist Jules Janssen discovered a new element while observing the sun’s chromosphere through a prism during an eclipse. Astronomers named the element Helium, after Helios, the Greek god of the Sun. It would be more than 25 years before helium was discovered on Earth, but we now know it’s the second most common element in the universe.

m Scientists are learning about changes in behavior for some animal species on Earth that occur when the sun is blocked.

The 12-inch spit Cassegrain reflector affectionately named “Big Blue” by Professor Jason Ezell has captured several rare occurances like this year’s eclipse. Ezell uses these rare celestrial events to get his students involved to learn more about the vast universe. Photos by Ben Brown

Photo by Evan Budrovich

THe almost quit wrestling. He’s been arrested and nearly expelled from his school. But Taye Ghadiali’s coaches and teammates never gave up on him, and, more importantly, he never gave up on himself.

Today, he’s an NCAA All-American.

THE NEAR FALL

STORY BY BILLY LIGGETT

aye Ghadiali hit the mat with a violent thud. All air left his lungs. The splintering pain in his knee — the result of an ominous twist from the night before — returned like a bad dream.

One win away from the title of NCAA All-American. A feat only one Campbell University wrestler before him had ever achieved. That dream picked up and thrown down almost effortlessly by a mountain of an opponent 50 pounds his superior.

As he lay on the nine inches of padded surface and looked up at the blinding arena lights above, the young man began to accept his fate. The roar of the Kansas City crowd faded from his ears. The faces around him — his fans and teammates in orange, his coach — became a blur.

In that moment of impending defeat, Taye Ghadiali found peace. Maybe, he thought, this wasn’t the year. There would, he told himself, be another.

He closed his eyes.

Silence. Darkness. Surrender.

All of it, interrupted by the blare of a whistle.

PHOTOS BY BEN BROWN

Taye Ghadiali became only the second NCAA All-American in Campbell Wrestling’s history with his eighth-place finish in Kansas City in the spring. He has one more year of eligibility, and sights are set on a podium finish in 2025.

It’s been a month since the NCAA Men’s Wrestling Championships in Kansas City, and Taye Ghadiali is on his back again, eyes closed. The setting is much different — his surrender the result of the pulsating comfort of a large reclining massage chair. The only sound here is emanating from his air pods.

And the interruption, this time, is the opportunity to share his story — a story of how a young man from a rough suburb of Detroit, Michigan found himself wrestling on the sport’s biggest stage for a small but mighty program in rural North Carolina.

Seven minutes in — sitting inside an impossibly hot room where wrestlers go to relax and mix their protein shakes — Ghadiali gets to the part where he was handcuffed and taken away by police in front of his classmates in Campbell’s Academic Circle.

It’s his low point at Campbell University. Worse than any body slam he’d ever felt or would a year later endure.

“There was a time here when everybody wanted me gone,” says Ghadiali, now seated on a small couch next to the chair, looking at his feet and wringing his hands as he recalls rock bottom.

“And I get it. I was toxic.”

That toxicity, he says, first appeared not long after his arrival in Buies Creek. Ghadiali was an undefeated state champion in Michigan as a senior in high school, but according to him, that’s not always enough to get the attention of big Division I programs. “They go for the three- and four-timers,” he says. “So I didn’t get very many looks.”

Scotti Sentes — today the head coach of Campbell’s wrestling program but then an assistant coach to former U.S. Olympian Cary Kolat — first met Ghadiali in a summer camp that used wrestling as a way to keep troubled or at-risk teens off the street, run by one of his old college teammates at Central Michigan. Sentes later saw the young man wrestle in a senior nationals meet against some of the best recruits in the country.

While Ghadiali’s resume and measurements didn’t jump off the page, Sentes liked the raw skills and potential he saw and invited him to Buies Creek for a closer look.

“We’ve done a good job at Campbell of spotting talent that others might have overlooked,” Sentes says. “When I saw him at nationals, I told my friend he was good. And he goes, ‘No, this guy’s really, really good.’ I saw him as potentially becoming a heavyweight in terms of how he moved and his length.

“We knew we had something special, if we could just develop him in the right ways.”

Ghadiali was also getting looks from Gardner-Webb, Kent State and the school most kids in his state would give anything to wrestle for, the University of Michigan. But he agreed to meet the coaches at Campbell — mostly because of Kolat’s national reputation — even though he’d never heard of the program.

“I was self destructive. Every time something good was happening, I sabotaged it. Every time somebody tried to help me or be there for me, I turned away from them.”

TAYE GHADIALI

CAMPBELL

ON HIS EARLY TROUBLES AT

He said he was nervous to meet Kolat, who was the biggest name in U.S. wrestling in the 1990s. He was featured in a 1992 Sports Illustrated article — which dubbed him “The Best There Ever Was” — after his 137-0 high school wrestling record in Pennsylvania. He would go on to wrestle in the Olympics before starting his career in coaching.

“I was nervous, because I had to impress one of the greatest wrestlers ever, but I ended up having one of my best practices ever,” Ghadiali recalls. “I remember Kolat saying, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen everything I want to see.’ And he offered me a full ride right there.”

Ghadiali redshirted as a freshman during the Covidshortened 2020 season, and posted a respectable record in limited action (per NCAA redshirt rules). Off the mat, however, he wasn’t doing quite as well. He admits to drinking, regular marijuana use and too many late nights after coming to Campbell. His first run-in with coaches cost him a portion of his scholarship money. He began to miss practices, which didn’t go over well with his teammates.

Despite his troubles, Ghadiali was an NCAA qualifier as a sophomore in 2021 after going 5-2 in Southern Conference matches and reaching the finals in the SoCon Tournament that year as a heavyweight. He lost both matches at the NCAAs, but his arrow seemed to be pointing upward.

By this time, Sentes had taken over Campbell’s wrestling program after Kolat left to coach at Navy. Despite the noise surrounding Ghadiali — which was considerable — Sentes never wavered in his faith in him.

“I could just see that despite it all, he had a big heart. I could tell he was a good person,” Sentes says. “And he was always honest with me when he made a mistake. I knew he wanted to improve; he just had a different starting place than most. I knew if I gave up on him, it wouldn’t be good for him.”

Back to that on-campus arrest in front of the student union. In front of his classmates. Ghadiali takes a deep breath.

“I’d just gotten back from nationals,” he says, referring to the end of his breakout junior year where he posted a 20-4 overall record, a SoCon championship and his first win on the national stage. “That’s when I heard the cops were looking for me.”

On July 21, 2021 — the summer before this third year at Campbell — a warrant was issued for Ghadiali’s arrest in Pitt County (Greenville) for two counts of “breaking or entering a motor vehicle” and “felony larceny” from the night before. He chooses not to go into the details of what happened that night, other than to say he got caught up in “bad things with bad people.” Not wanting to face the music back on campus, Ghadiali avoided his coaches and his family and stayed with friends that summer.

“My mom called me crying, and that hurt me bad,” he recalls. “She asked me what I was thinking. Why was I throwing my life away? She told me I needed to man up and go back home and make all of this right.”

He reached out to his coach, expecting the worst. Instead, Sentes assured Ghadiali he had not given up on him. Ghadiali called the victims in Greenville and made amends.

In some stories, this is the point where a young man might finally find the straight and narrow path and shed their demons. But Ghadiali again fell back into his bad habits upon his return to Campbell. Drinking. Smoking. Cutting back on work outs. Distancing from his teammates.

On the mat, an NCAA-qualifying heavyweight.

Off the mat, lost.

And while Ghiadali was under the impression that the incident in Greenville was behind him, a missed court date and the unresolved warrants got the attention of deputies in Harnett County. On April 1, 2022, he noticed uniformed officers outside his off-campus home in Buies Creek. While he didn’t know for sure if they were looking for him, Ghadiali had a bad feeling. He stayed inside until they were gone, and he only left a few hours later to walk his dog and grab food from the student union cafeteria on campus. Just yards away from the building, he was approached by those same deputies and asked to identify himself.

Ghadiali put his hands behind his back, was handcuffed and was taken to the patrol car. Several students looked on as it all happened. Soon he was booked and fingerprinted at the Harnett County Jail. His phone call went to Sentes, who then informed his mom. After six hours behind bars, Ghiadali was released on bond.

This was the end, Ghadiali told himself. He’d lost wrestling forever.

“I was self destructive,” he says. “Every time something good was happening, I sabotaged it. Every time somebody tried to help me or be there for me, I turned away from them.”

He was placed on disciplinary probation by the team and the school. This came with regular drug tests and check-ins with coaches. The extra attention wasn’t a bad thing. Ghadiali began to shed his bad habits.

But trouble found him again at a friend’s birthday party only a few weeks later. A fight broke out, he says, between two students (one of them a teammate), and Ghadiali filmed the incident with his phone and posted the video to social media. He could be heard laughing in the video.

His name wound up in the incident report, and he was summoned to a disciplinary hearing on campus.

“They told me that was it. I was gone,” he says. “I was kicked out of school.”

It’s at this point in his story — roughly an hour in — that Ghiadali admits openly (to himself and to the room) that he deserved it. All of it. He found a small irony in the final straw being a TikTok video, considering all the bad things he’d done before, but he accepted his fate.

Sentes, however, had one more plea in him. He talked to the director of athletics, Hannah Bazemore. He talked to her father, Dr. Dennis Bazemore, then the vice president for Student Life and the disciplinary dean. He learned from both that Ghadiali had the right to an appeal.

Nobody, he was told, had ever won such an appeal.

Ghadiali went before the board and told his story. He talked about where he grew up and how that shaped him. He admitted his shortcomings. He was doing dumb things, he said, but Campbell and the wrestling program had saved him from much worse. He wrote all of this out like a term paper and read it to the group that held his future in their hands.

PHOTO: CAMPBELL ATHLETICS

Campbell needed a win from Taye Ghadiali on Feb. 1 to secure a win over in-state rival Appalachian State inside Gore Arena, and Ghadiali delivered. After the win, Camel fans stormed the mat and hoisted him up on their shoulders.

“Throughout my time here, my faith in God grew stronger,” he says now and said then. “God hadn’t given up on me. I asked them to do the same.”

Two weeks after his speech, he received his ruling. The appeal was granted.

Ghadiali was given his final “second chance.” He wasn’t going to mess this one up. He became a more disciplined athlete and a better student. He became a more reliable teammate. He found more meaning in his faith.

“I always believed in God. That was never the problem,” he says. “But I never really felt him. I kept him at a distance. But I believe God watched over me through all of this and had a plan for me. I didn’t always have faith in him, but he always believed in me.”

“I will just say I challenged the singlet [jersey] pull, and the video review showed that it was not a singlet pull,” he says.

The break gave Ghadiali time to regain his composure. He calls it a “mental reset.” Down 4-2 on the scorecard with about a minute left in the match, the outlook was bleak. But Ghadiali knew there was a chance.

“I could hear the fans screaming, and I was thinking at that point that it wasn’t just about me,” he says. “There were so many people who had my back through all of this and wanted this to happen. I was feeding off of that. Scotti could see I was in a dark place, and he pulled me out of that.”

Ghadiali scored a takedown with just five seconds left in the match to tie it up at 5-5 (his opponent had gained a riding time point), and when the clock hit all zeros, the match went to overtime. Riding the high, Ghadiali dove at a leg to start the extra period and latched on to send both men to the mat. He then circled around and found himself on top for the winning takedown at the 30-second mark.

The pain coursed through his body as the wrestler from Lehigh University — a Goliath to Ghadiali’s David-like frame — lay on top of him for the final count.

Taye Ghadiali closed his eyes.

His moment of surrender didn’t last long. A blast from the referee’s whistle jolted him awake. In the corner of his eye, Ghadiali could see his coach motioning for an appeal.

Sentes had “thrown the brick” — more of a foam sponge than an actual hard clay brick — signaling an appeal on a call made just before the slam. Sentes smiles when asked what the appeal was for.

The whistle blew. Taye Ghadiali was an AllAmerican — only the second Camel to finish in the Top 8 in the nation, joining Nathan Kraisser, who did it in 2017. He’s the first nontransfer to achieve the feat. His 35 wins are the fifth-highest mark in Campbell Wrestling history, and his 12 pins are tied for second most.

“I just dropped to my knees,” Ghadiali says. “I’ve wrestled a lot in my life. But I’d never dug that deep before. God tested me, and he showed me what I can do. I just started crying. All the pain returned to my body right after that, but I didn’t care.”

Intermat, a wrestling media outlet, caught up with Ghadiali moments after his win. Still in shock, still out of breath, he poured his heart out to the camera: “I want to start by saying, ‘Thank you God.’ It’s been a hard, long journey. I’ve been almost kicked off the team. I’ve been through a lot these past years. And this one year, I gave everything to God, and I just thank God so much for this moment. I have so many people rooting for me. I’m just so grateful I can make them proud. And I know I can keep building on this.

“National champ next.”

Taye Ghadiali’s 35 wins this year are the fifth most in Campbell Wrestling history, and his 12 pins are tied for the second most. Ghadiali has one more year of eligibity remaining with the program.

In wrestling, a “near fall” — in layman’s terms — occurs when an opponent is almost pinned with a shoulder on the mat (or both shoulders near the mat) for a few seconds. It’s an unfortunate and costly position for any wrestler to be in, but it by no means marks the end.

Scotti Sentes has seen many near falls from his All American wrestler. But he never lost hope that the reversal was coming. Thanks to the redshirt year and the free “COVID year,” Ghadiali has one more year of eligibility at Campbell and one more chance to go for the top prize — NCAA champion.

“He’s been thrown down a lot, but he’s always found a way to get back up,” Sentes says. “He made a lot of sacrifices. He gave his life to God. It’s why I never gave up on him.”

Each year, Sentes and his coaching staff ask their wrestlers to fill out a questionnaire to get a thumb on where they’re at when it comes to culture and meeting their athletes’ needs. A few of the questions ask them to name the Top 5 hardest-working, most trust-worthy and socially responsible teammates.

Ghadiali ranked at the bottom of those lists regularly.

Until this past year.

“The athletic success is a byproduct of everything we try to do here,” Sentes says. “More than anything, we want to develop these young men to become good teammates and good people. I think Taye has done that. We’re excited to see what’s next.”

Feb. 1, 2024. Seven weeks before his rise to AllAmerican. It all came down to Taye Ghadiali.

Through nine matches against the program’s biggest foe — Southern Conference thornin-the-side Appalachian State — the Camels and Mountaineers were in a virtual tie heading into the final bout between Ghadiali and the rival’s heavyweight.

The match would look nothing like Ghadiali’s gutsy comeback in Kansas City. Here, before the largest crowd to ever witness a wrestling event in Gore Arena, Ghadiali would pin his opponent in less than 90 seconds.

His win meant a 22-16 Campbell team win. And in a sight often saved for football fields and basketball courts, the Camel faithful stormed the mat.

Ghadiali was hoisted onto shoulders and carried away by the same student body that watched him taken away in handcuffs 10 months earlier.

“He’s been thrown down a lot, but he’s always found a way to get back up. It’s why I never gave up on him.”

SCOTTI

SENTES HEAD COACH, CAMPBELL WRESTLING

PHYSICAL THERAPY

Every step along the way

Sophomore Ian Ricketts is on the path to become a physical therapist, inspired by those working with his father to regain the ability to walk 18 years after a near-fatal brain injury.

STORY BY JOHN F. TRUMP PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN BROWN

Nearly 18 years after a serious brain injury, Brian Ricketts (center) is learning to walk on his own again thanks to students in Campbell University’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program and thanks to his son, Ian (pictured behind him), a sophomore currently on a pre-physical therapy path.

Ian Ricketts doesn’t remember the day his father was gravely injured. Neither does his father. They remember nothing about the accident. Nothing about the doctors who told Ian’s mother Kim that her husband likely had just hours to live. That — if he did survive — he’d probably never awake from his coma. Or when he did open his eyes 10 days later, that he’d likely be forever paralyzed.

Ian had yet to turn 2 years old on July 21, 2006, when his father Brian Ricketts was helping Kim’s family move a small plane at a private airfield in Fayetteville.

It was raining that day, and as Brian was reaching to grab a handle on the plane, he slipped, falling headfirst on an antenna. The thin metal entered through an orbit in his right eye, through his brain and touched the brainstem.

“No one truly knew what had happened, because they thought he had just hit his head,” Kim recalls. “But when I showed up at the hospital, they had a grief counselor and a chaplain waiting for me. They told me he was going to pass away that night.

“And he lived.”

It’s been nearly 18 years since his father’s accident, and Ian is sitting quietly in a corner room on the second floor of Campbell University’s Tracey F. Smith Hall of Nursing & Health Sciences. He’s thinking about why he chose Campbell for his undergraduate studies. About why Campbell was his first and only choice, despite the opportunity to visit several campuses after high school.

His father is seated to his right. His mother to his left. She’s close to Ian, offering hope, love and support as only a mother can as he talks about his father and their future.

Ian is on a pre-physical therapy track, laying the groundwork for a career that’s been his goal since middle school, around the time he began to fully understand the extent of his father’s injuries.

“I told [people] I’m gonna do physical therapy,” Ian says. “I really want to help people like my dad.”

Brian Ricketts is still working to recover from an accident so freak and so catastrophic, it not only forever altered his family’s lives, but the lives of the people closest to them as well.

When the antenna entered his brain, Brian suffered a stroke of the cerebellum (often referred to as the “little brain), which controls one’s balance and movement. He defied the odds in many ways when he woke from his coma 10 days after the accident, but he remained in intensive care for a month. Another month was spent in the hospital and yet another in inpatient physical therapy.

He was released on Halloween in 2006, just past his 100th day under a doctor’s care.

“It’s amazing,” says Kim. “He had to relearn to do everything — breathe, regulate his body temperature, talk. … His left side is still weak, but it’s definitely not paralyzed. He just … he came from nothing.”

“Looking at the X-ray, I think there’s no way I should have survived,” Brian says. “If I can help one person. ...”

He doesn’t quite finish the thought, but it doesn’t matter. The message is clear.

Trips to Campbell’s Health Sciences campus are a regular thing for the Ricketts family. Smith Hall is home to the Doctor of Physical Therapy program, and part of its evidence-supported curriculum (one that centers on the patient and clinical practice in rural health care) is exposing students to cases like Brian Ricketts and providing free regular therapy that not only benefits the patient, but the students as well.

On this day, Brian is working on walking. It takes the work of multiple PT students to help pull his 6-foot, 7-inch, 300-pound frame up from his wheelchair, but when he’s up, the work begins.

Pushing. Walking forward. Ten steps. Then 20.

It’s a process. Arduous and draining.

But he’s progressing. Slowly ... progressing. Step by painful step. Ian is at his side all the while, pushing, challenging and helping his dad on levels emotional as well as physical.

And at the same time, Ian is learning. It’s been this way his whole life — when Ian was learning to talk at a young age, his father was relearning.

“They had their own language,” Kim says. “[Ian] had speech therapy until he was in fourth grade. Brian just tried to get out the important words, and Ian [learning from him], did the same thing.”

Growing up, Ian had plenty of inspiration to motivate and encourage him, whether it was a health sciences teacher at Gray’s Creek High School in Fayetteville or staff at a nursing home, where he met with an occupational therapist and learned about time and money management, scheduling and patient care. There was his grandfather, a Vietnam veteran. The Devault family — Donna, Terry, Nicholas and Addison — who helped raise Ian when Kim spent most of her time with her husband, by his side in the hospital.

“We didn’t leave Brian, not even for a day,” she says. “It was either me, my mom [Cindy], my dad [Dale] or my brother [Scot]. We stayed with him 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Students in Campbell University’s Doctor of Physical Therapy program help people like Brian Ricketts on their path to rehabilitation by providing regular free therapy sessions. The Community Wellness program is a required course for DPT students and provides on-the-job training that benefits them and the patients they care for.

1: Ian Ricketts, nearly 2, sits on his father's lap just weeks after the accident that punctured his cerebellum.

2: Ian’s goal of becoming a physical therapist began in middle school, where he’s shown dressed in a white coat at a school career fair.

3: Brian Ricketts with family friend Terry Devault, who helped raise Ian after the accident, during Terry’s graduation from Campbell months before losing his battle with cancer.

Terry Devault, who taught Ian to ride a bike, to bowl and to swim, was a graduate of Campbell University. He finished his last classes in the hospital, Kim Ricketts says, and died of cancer soon after. He was 47.

“He was also one of my greatest inspirations to come [to Campbell],” Ian says.

A large, ensemble cast prepared Ian to enter his high school’s Certified Nursing Assistant program as a senior, where he was the only male among its five students. Prior to that, in middle school, Ian remembers completing school projects and developing discussion boards where he shared his burgeoning passion of physical therapy with teachers and fellow students. All the while overcoming the challenges and the uncertainty.

“We’re humans, and we’re always gonna have doubts, no matter what,” Ian says. “But sometimes you just have to overcome that doubt and just keep pushing forward.”

The family’s dog, Sam, patters across the kitchen to a pet bed near the front door.

Adds his mother, “During this time we have come to realize how important family is. And not just blood family, but friends who chose to step up and become family.”

The Ricketts are at home in a still-rural part of Fayetteville, about 30 miles south of Fort Liberty, on a hot Friday morning, and Brian is sitting across from Kim at their kitchen table. Ian is nearby, diligently working to extract DNA from a strawberry — a project for a summer biology class.

Brian recalls being released from intensive care and meeting a physical therapist who worked at the time with Cape Fear Valley Health in Fayetteville. That therapist, Dr. Michelle Green, is today an associate professor and the assistant director of Campbell’s DPT program.

Green stayed in touch with the family and ultimately suggested Brian come to Campbell for his physical therapy in 2014.

“I’m highly thankful I met Michelle,” he says.

Campbell’s DPT program offers pro bono physical therapy, which Green says is a typical outpatient clinic run by students. Residents

can sign up and receive an evaluation. They then work with the students, with faculty supervision, to get better.

The Community Wellness Program, in which Brian is a patient, is a required course for DPT students and continues throughout their second year, embedded within the neuro assessment class. In summer, it’s embedded within the pediatric and the neuro curriculum.

The course is on-the-job training, as students put into practice what they’ve learned in the classroom. Students also develop what Green calls “soft skills,” such as building relationships and talking with and teaching patients and family members.

On this day, as the group of students gather around Brian — helping him to walk up the hallway and down again — rooms on the health sciences campus are filled with patients and groups of student physical therapists.

Patients learning from students. Students learning from patients. Patients with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and autoimmune disorders. People recovering from a stroke or from injuries incurred in falls or accidents. One child, treated earlier that day, was paralyzed from the waist down when a car crossed the centerline and struck the car carrying him, his mother and brother. All survived, although his mother has had multiple surgeries.

Sometimes, in physical therapy, the care doesn’t meet the needs of the patient, or a patient’s insurance fails to cover this procedure or that.

“This program really helps bridge that gap, at the same time helping the students evolve and grow and gain a lot of confidence,” Green says. “We always say that we want to build clinicians who can treat a patient anywhere, anytime, anyplace ... across their lifespan.”

Caring for patients, she says, transcends their diagnoses. Patients are dealing with issues, often internal and not apparent to others, resulting from or precipitated by their initial injury.

Proud Campbell dad Brian Ricketts with his wife, Kim, and Ian during a recent rehabilitation session held at Smith Hall on the University’s Health Sciences campus in May.

“During this time we have come to realize how important family is. And not just blood family, but friends who chose to step up and become family.”

— Kim Ricketts

“We’re humans, and we’re always gonna have doubts, no matter what. But sometimes you just have to overcome that doubt and just keep pushing forward.”

— Ian Ricketts

“They are not just their diagnosis, but they have problems within all of the systems of the body,” Green says. “Our students can’t be just trained in pediatrics, or just trained in neuro, or just trained in musculoskeletal.”

It’s about looking at the whole person, she says. Holistically, osteopathically.

For assistant professor Dr. T.R. Goins, physical therapy is often about becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable. Treating patients with compassion and humility, regardless of their initial or subsequent injuries. An adult patient with a pediatric diagnosis who, for example, suffers a knee injury.

“I want you to not run away from that,” Goins says. “I want you to treat that person, no matter what. That’s one of my objectives. The students don’t know what they don’t know, but the hands-on approach, to me, develops a more well-rounded clinician. … They aren’t seeing just a knee; they’re seeing the whole body.”

A physical therapist is a movement specialist, Goins and Green say, agreeing on the concept. Physical therapy is about helping the individual return to pursue their passion, even if that isn’t quite to the level before the accident, injury or disease.

“We hope to provide a path forward,” Goins says. Joining the conversation with other specialists. Learning to contribute, to help.

One small step at a time.

Movement is taken for granted by so many, says Erin Carter, one of the dozen-plus students working with patients on this day.

“It can be really difficult but extremely rewarding … seeing someone for more than just their abilities,” Carter says. “Giving them their independence back and seeing [them] as human, despite whatever might have happened to them, is what pulls me in.”

For the wellness program, third-year students spend four weeks with the second-year students, orienting them to patients whom they worked with over the past year. It’s not part of the curriculum, but rather done on a sort of voluntary basis.

“They show up to make sure that these people get good transitional care as the second years start,” Green says.

Andy Sartain, one of those second-year students, “for a very long time” has known he would make a career in physical therapy.

“One of my skills is that I love people,” he says. “And I love helping people. And so, I think it’s important for me to work in a field I know that I’m gonna love for a long time. If you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life.”

Above and beyond the inherent challenges.

“I’ve worked in different clinics where I’ve seen patients go from not walking to walking. And even one step is just as rewarding as running a marathon,” Sartain said. “Just seeing the people’s experience is well worth it.”

Brian Ricketts is still outside, in that hallway. Talking, listening, working. Stretching and pausing for a deep breath. Wiping beads of sweat off his forward. Sitting patiently as students, with the help of an orthotics professor, carefully working on a brace to stabilize his left foot, which tends to turn inward. He has since received the finished brace.

A bit later, he strains to rise from his chair, the one with a “Campbell Dad” sticker on the headrest. The sweat on Brian’s forehead is now more prominent. The breaths deeper. He stares straight ahead. Determined, strong.

“We’re going to grind,” says Cole Kuhnel, also a second-year DPT student. “We’re all incredibly excited to be working with Brian.”

For Ian, his father’s rehabilitation has always been a part of his life. And it will probably continue for the rest of Brian’s life.

“I really push hard for Ian so he can see that there is a good outcome and that people do take advantage of what’s being offered,” Brian says.

Ian has found his passion, and he, too, is working hard to realize that dream. Becoming a physical therapist, getting his degree and eventually his doctorate from Campbell University. He also plans to try to earn a spot on the basketball team.

“We are so proud of Ian and the person he has always been and continues to be,” his mother says. “He has the biggest heart and wears it on his sleeve. Ian has chosen the perfect career to showcase just how big his heart is. His dad and I could not have asked for a better kid, and we love him so much.”

vvv

It's been 57 years since Cordell Wise stepped onto the campus of Campbell College and made history as the school's first Black student. For decades, his enormous impact was both under-recognized by the school and dismissed by the man himself. Until now.

Where there

BY BILLY LIGGETT ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAN COLE

CORDELL WISE ('70)

there is no path

“Go where there is no path and begin the trail.”

— Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South in 1960

Only 444 miles of Interstate 95 highway separate the sprawling urban campus of Temple University in downtown Philadelphia and the smaller, rural home of Campbell University. In 1967, the distance felt like lightyears.

Black students at Temple numbered in the thousands that year, many in the throes of a fight for civil justice as they championed for better facilities and a curriculum that better reflected their culture and history. Just four years later, the school would become one of the first in the nation to offer an African-American studies doctoral program.

Segregation at then Campbell College was entering its 80th year. Visitors to Lillington, North Carolina at the time were “greeted” by a large wooden billboard boldly emblazoned with the image of a hooded white knight holding a burning cross while riding a sheeted horse.

Help fight communism and integration, the sign pleaded, followed by a statement.

This is Klan Country

Cordell Wise didn’t see his decision to head south that winter as anything “monumental” or important at the time. A star basketball player at his high school in New Jersey and rising star at Temple, Wise’s journey was one of necessity. A self-described “academic failure” up north, Wise saw the south as a second chance to play the sport he loved and — he readily admits — his ticket out of a military draft that would have all but guaranteed him an even longer trip east to a war in Vietnam.

Somebody, he says 57 years later, was going to be the first Black student to enroll at Campbell. If it wasn’t him, it was going to be Patricia Oates from Clinton or Margueritte Lawrence from Apex, who became Campbell’s first two female Black students in the fall of 1968.

He didn’t come here to be a trailblazer, he says. He just came to play basketball.

That part of his Buies Creek experience certainly had its highs — he was the catalyst behind an unprecedented run at the NAIA national title, which had the school on the edge of euphoria for his three-year run.

As expected, however, there were struggles. Stories of segregated restaurants and movie theaters exist, though they're more comfortably shared by the white teammates who stood by his side than the man himself.

And as uneventful as Wise’s arrival in Buies Creek felt — to him — at the time, his exit from the school after earning his degree in 1970 was equally quiet. A falling out with a coach over a chance at pro ball planted a seed of distrust and disdain in Wise toward Campbell that only grew over the decades that followed.

On Jan. 27, the University offered a long overdue olive branch when it inducted Cordell Wise into its 2024 Campbell Athletics Hall of Fame class, recognizing his significant impact on the school both on and off the court. In returning to Buies Creek for the first time in ages — first during a Homecoming reunion in the fall and finally for his Hall of Fame induction ceremony — Wise was giving a second chance to an institution that gave him a second chance 57 years earlier.

There’s finally an ending to the story of Cordell Wise and Campbell University.

And, finally, there’s joy in sharing it.

Cordell Wise got his first taste of the South at the age of 8. His parents took him on his first ferry boat ride across the Chesapeake Bay — from Maryland to Virginia — to visit his mother’s family when young Cordell approached a water fountain for a quick drink.

“Suddenly, somebody snatched me up from under my arms. It was my father,” he says. “He told me, ‘That’s not our drinking fountain.’ Then he pointed to the signs that said ‘white fountain’ and ‘colored fountain.’ He didn’t want any problems on the ferry, but I had no idea.”

On the beaches in Virginia, large fences separated swimming areas where white people could gather and areas for those who weren’t white.

“That was the South back then,” he says, matter of factly.

Pine Burr Yearbook photos from 1968 to 1970 demonstrate how active Cordell Wise was during his time as a student.

In addition to being a two-time NAIA AllAmerican basketball player, Wise advanced to the NAIA national championships in Billings, Montana running the 220yard race in track.

It was around this time — back in the more progressive confines of his hometown of Riverside, New Jersey — when Wise first discovered basketball. His father took him to a local gym to simply see if he liked the game. He was introduced to a man named “Pop” Vernon, who coached basketball to boys in the community from elementary school through junior high.

“Pop was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known,” Wise says. “He got me interested in basketball, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it appeared I had a little talent.”

Riverside, Wise says, was a basketball town. When kids weren’t packed in the gym for practices or pick-up games, they were playing in driveways or in parks. His coach at Riverside High School was a good motivator who taught his players the lost art of the pick and roll.

Wise was a 20-points-, 20-rebounds-per-game star in high school, leading his team to the Burlington County championship as a junior and senior in 1964 and 1965. He was also a star football player, receiving a scholarship to play at Penn State from Joe Paterno himself.

But Wise opted for Temple University to play basketball for another legendary coach, Hall of Famer Harry Litwack, who won 373 games at Temple over a 21-year span. Wise worked a summer camp for Litwack prior to joining the team washing dishes in the camp’s kitchen. When he wasn’t working, he was in the gym with Litwack and the rest of the Owls shooting anywhere up to 500 shots a day to refine his game.

“I’d just go out and shoot until my arm cramped up, rest, and then do it again,” Wise says.

As prepared for the college game as he was, Wise was equally unprepared for the classroom. His GPA after his first semester was below the minimum needed to play as a freshman. That 1966 Temple squad would go on to a stellar 21-7 record and a trip to the NIT quarterfinals (the following year, they made it to the NCAA Tournament).

In 1969, what would have been Wise’s final season with the Owls, Temple won the NIT in New York's Madison Square Garden.

“I really think if we would have stayed together, we could have done damage in the NCAAs,” Wise says. “But that didn’t happen.”

What did happen was a twist of fate. Wise’s high school teammate Ken Faulkner did head south to Campbell College and was part of a Fred McCall team that went 10-17 that year and needed some help. Wise also had a teacher in high school who was a Campbell alum. Word of his uncertain future at Temple made its way to Buies Creek, and McCall was soon on the phone with Wise with a proposition.

“He told me I could be a big fish in a little pond, but I wasn’t really worried about that,” Wise recalls. “I remember when I got down there, Coach McCall drove me around. This was old Campbell, where they had a big circle drive in the middle of campus [where the Academic Circle sits today]. Coach drove me around that circle twice to make it seem like a bigger campus.

“But again, I wasn’t really worried about any of that.”

Campbell College wasn’t the last in North Carolina to desegregate in the spring of 1967, but it was also far from the first. UNC’s law school admitted four Black students in 1951 after the McKissick v. Carmichael case ruled their previous rejection based on race was unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was also unconstitutional.

By the end of the decade, Black students were admitted into UNC and NC State’s undergraduate programs. Private schools in the state like Davidson and Wake Forest (1962) and Duke, Elon and Gardner-Webb (1963) — though they were not beholden to the same standards of integration that public schools were — soon followed suit.

Cordell Wise’s admission into Campbell in 1967 was one of the final important acts made by the school’s second president, Leslie Campbell, son of founder J.A. Campbell. Campbell had announced his retirement the previous year and stepped down after the spring semester to make way for his successor, Norman Adrian Wiggins.

“The roof was literally blown off the rafters of Carter Gym when Wise made moves to the basket never before seen on the Campbell campus.”

—

David Fulton ('70)

Wise’s admission didn’t necessarily make headlines in Buies Creek, at least not in the student newspaper, Creek Pebbles. One article that fall did tout Wise’s addition to the basketball team, but made little fanfare about race or desegregation.

“I met with the dean [A.R. Burkot], and he told me that as a precaution, they got everybody together in an assembly to tell them I was coming,” Wise says. “And I don’t know what they said, but when I got to campus, I had no problems.”

Others who broke the color barriers at their schools weren’t as fortunate. At Catawba College, basketball star Garland Davis was greeted with a cross burning on his lawn in Salisbury, courtesy of the Ku Klux Klan.

“None of that ever happened at Campbell,” Wise says. “And I can probably attribute that to the presence of Fred McCall, because he was the type of individual who wouldn’t put up with anything like that.”

Wise’s friends and teammates from the late 60s at Campbell do recall a few run-ins, off campus. Bob Hager (’69) arrived in Buies Creek as an “18-year-old Yankee” from Pennsylvania who had never been exposed to racial issues common in the South. He remembers demanding his friend be served at a grocery store that served burgers and hot dogs after Wise was initially refused.

“Campbell was a suitcase school and really only us Northerners were on campus on weekends,” Hager says. “So Cordell, our friend John and I went to the movies in Dunn, and as we approached the ticket booth, a young lady asked that we wait a minute while she went into the theater to check on something. She returned with the manager, and he informed us we’d have to sit in the balcony. I thought the theater was full, but we entered and followed the manager up the stairs — looking down on the first level, we saw there were only about 10 other people in the theater. We were sitting in the ‘Black section.’”

On campus, Wise was embraced. Teammates took him under their wing and showed him the ropes. With basketball not a distraction in his first semester that spring, Wise buckled down in the classroom and worked to bring his GPA up. He said the smaller class sizes and one-on-ones with professors and counselors were a blessing.

Cordell Wise was the first in 1967, but by 1972, several Black men and women were enrolled as students at Campbell College. Among them were (from top) Eddie Battle, Margueritte Lawrence, Louis Thompson, Charles Cotton, Charles Lee Gray, Fatai Adeleke, Lucius Ross, Russell Wright, Andrew Broadie, Glenn Bowen, Willie Maull and Jess Grover.

In 1968, Patricia Oates and Margueritte Lawrence became the second and third Black students to enroll at Campbell after Cordell Wise the previous year. Oates would return to Campbell nearly 50 years later to earn her undergraduate degree in communications in 2017. She was among the profiled "Women of Campbell" in Campbell Magazine in 2018 for her significant impact.

Weekends were spent mostly on campus, playing ping pong or shooting pool in the old student union. Sometimes, they would hop in a car and drive to Fayetteville or Durham.

Most of his time, though, was spent in the gymnasium. And his impact as a basketball player can’t be understated.

According to one classmate, Wise was magic.

“He was one of the most dynamic athletes I’d ever seen and without a doubt, the greatest to play for any sports team at Campbell during my years there — including those NAIA champion soccer squads,” says David Fulton, a 1970 graduate. “The roof, numerous times, was literally blown off the rafters of Carter Gymnasium when Wise made moves to the basket never before seen on the Campbell campus.”

In Wise’s first year with the team, Campbell went 16-10, a six-game improvement from the previous year. They’d go on to win 20 in 1969

"Cordell’s warm outgoing personality made him a friend of just about all who knew him, and trust me, this was not easy during those times and in that place."

Bill Silvester ('68)

and 24 in 1970, the program’s first two 20-win seasons as a senior college. That 1970 season saw the Camels beat nationally ranked Elizabeth City State in the District 29 championships to advance to its first-ever NAIA national tournament berth in Kansas City.

Over his three-year career at Campbell, Wise led the Camels to a 60-27 overall record and was a two-time NAIA All-American. He was the fastest player in program history to reach 1,000 points (in just 53 games) and set a school mark with 26 rebounds in a game against High Point. That 24-win mark in 1970 still stands as the second-highest win total in Campbell history.

While there’s no denying Wise was the catalyst behind the success in those three years, today he attributes that three-year run to his teammates — players like Faulkner, Allen McRae, Andrew Broadie, Willie Maull and Jim Waicus, to name a few.

“I got double teamed a lot,” he says. “So basic math says there’s only five people on a team, so if two are on me, somebody’s got to be open. So I did a good bit of passing. It’s not like today, where you see guys double teamed and they want to prove they can get it.”

Carter Gym in those days could barely hold just over 1,000 people, and that was with fans standing along the baseline and practically within arms’ reach of the players. Wise called the atmosphere on game nights “electric.”

“We packed it every night. It was like my second home.”

Basketball wasn’t the only sport he excelled at. Wise was a highly touted and recruited wide receiver on his high school football team, but Campbell had nixed its football program in the early 1950s. The school did have a flag football team — and in one game where Wise had scored “three or four” touchdowns, he was approached by the track coach, George Wood, who was “in need of a sprinter.”

He found one. Wise competed in the 100-, 220- and 440-yard dashes and won the 1969 District 29 title in the 220, sending him to the NAIA national championship in Billings, Montana, where he advanced to the second round. He did all of that without training.

“I was already in pretty good shape, so I just showed up to the meets,” Wise says. “It certainly wasn’t the reason I came to Campbell.”

By the time Cordell Wise graduated from Campbell College with his degree in physical education in 1970, there were at least six Black students enrolled in the school — a number that would more than double by 1972. Those years also saw a rise in the number of Asian and Latino students.

Today, roughly 42 percent of Campbell University undergraduate students identify as a minority or mixed race.

“Cordell Wise should know that he was admired and respected by many Campbell students who didn’t know him personally,” says David Fulton. “He brought to us some of the greatest excitement I have ever experienced. It was a very special time for Campbell when he was there.”

On Jan. 27, Cordell Wise joined Rodrigo Cagide, Barbara Foxx, Earl Stephenson and Erin Switalski in the Campbell Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2024. Several of Wise's old teammates were on hand for the ceremony.

Wise was a junior at Campbell when the Carolina Cougars — a member of the American Basketball Association, a league that would eventually merge with the NBA in 1976 — reached out to the coaching staff to inquire about drafting the Camels’ AllAmerican forward.

Wise was never told about this call until months later. He would go on to stay another year at Campbell, but a bitterness toward the program and its coaches had formed. The Cougars would draft Wise a year later, but, he says, the roster was “pretty well solidified.”

“I went to camp, had a good camp and ended up getting cut after the first exhibition game,” he says. “Then I went on.”

Wise was picked up by the Eastern Basketball League, a semi-pro league full of Division I players who fell just short of the NBA and ABA. Wise lasted three seasons in what he called a “rough and tumble league,” before starting his post-basketball career. He found jobs in the casino industry in Atlantic City before moving on to investment banking as a stockbroker and branch administrator. He also taught and coached in Trenton, Willingboro and Camden schools in New Jersey for a decade.

Ever the all-around athlete, Wise found a new passion in tennis. He learned the sport through the son of a friend who was training for his high school team.

“This kid taught me how to hit a tennis ball,” he recalls. “But more than that, he told me

by Bennett Scarborough

Photos

not to play [tennis], but learn it. It took me three weeks just to learn to hit a backhand properly. Then another for the forehand. After that, I took a couple courses, and I ended up taking the USPTA courses, and I became certified.”

He’d go on to become director of tennis at Mill Creek Park in Willingboro for 10 years and site director for the National Junior Tennis and Learning Center in Trenton. He most recently worked as assistant pro at Sea Pines Racquet Club in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where he taught alongside two-time major champion and former World No. 1 singles player Stan Smith.

Wise was enjoying tennis and retirement in the Hilton Head area when he received a call from Stan Cole, longtime sports information officer for Campbell University Athletics and current associate director of athletics. Cole had long championed for Wise to be inducted into the Campbell Athletics Hall of Fame; his omission an inexplicable wrong that he hoped to right.

The uneasy relationship between Wise and his alma mater was the subject of a short article in the Winter 2014 edition of Campbell Magazine. Cole says that feature opened the path toward reconciliation, and when he reached out to Wise to inform him of his induction into the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024, Wise was ready to make amends.

He made his first visit to campus in over 50 years for Homecoming last fall, and he was among five — joining Rodrigo Cagide, Barbara Foxx, Erin Switalski and Earl Stephenson — inducted into the Hall on Jan. 27 of this year. Both visits brought Wise back to happier times.

“I saw many old friends and saw several people I’d forgotten about, and we reminisced about things like how the traffic circle used to be there and how we had to go to chapel to avoid demerits,” he says. “Being in a Hall of Fame isn’t something you thought about when you played. We played the sport because we loved it. But the fact that Campbell took the time to honor me … it’s deeply felt by me. I gave Campbell everything I had, and it’s good to be recognized for that effort.”

As for the break-up and the reasons for it, Wise’s words are true to his name.

“Time is a healer,” he says. “I’ll say this about the South. If people didn’t want you around, they told you. And nothing like that ever happened on campus at Campbell. I met some of the finest people I’ve ever known there. I choose to remember that.”

“Time is a healer. I met some fo the finest people I've ever known [at Campbell].”

Cordell Wise

Hear Stan Cole's complete interview with Cordell Wise on the Campbell Call podcast, available at gocamels.com or through Apple or Soundcloud streams.

As caddie for Sepp Straka, the world's No. 27-ranked professional golfer, Duane Bock ('92) has worked the Ryder Cup in Rome and all four majors, including the recent U.S. Open just down the road at Pinehurst No. 2.

A WALK-ON AT CAMPBELL IN THE LATE 1980S, DUANE BOCK HAS MADE A CAREER OUT OF BEING THERE FOR SOME OF THE WORLD'S BEST GOLFERS

THE LIFE OF A CADDIE

BY STAN COLE

PHOTOS BY

CHASING FOWL PHOTOGRAPHY

Three decades can pass in a hurry. On the same green where his future wife first questioned his read on a putt, 30-some years later Duane Bock is helping his son Alex prepare for a North Carolina Amateur qualifier at Keith Hills. He points to a spot near the green on the third hole of the Black course and shares that memory.

He was introduced to the game by his father and followed his two older brothers into golf at Campbell, where he met his spouse before embarking on his dream career. The game has led Bock all over world, by way of Buies Creek.

Over the last year, the 1992 Campbell graduate has served as caddie for Sepp Straka, the world’s 27th-ranked professional golfer. The pairing is the latest for Bock, who has served as a caddie at golf’s highest level for the better part of two decades following a 12year professional playing career. Bock’s past year-plus has included a win at the John Deere Classic, runner-up finish at The (British)

Open in 2023, a Ryder Cup Championship for Team Europe in Rome, plus stops in all of the “majors” — Augusta, the PGA and most recently, the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2.

That’s quite an itinerary for someone who was not even recruited out of high school in a small village on the eastern end of Long Island.

THE SONS OF A LANDSCAPE BUSINESS OWNER, none of the Bock boys — Duane and his brothers David and Darrell — were members of the private clubs that dominate the golf map in suburban New York.

Duane first picked up a golf club at 4 but didn’t own his first golf shoes until 10 years later. He purchased his first “real” clubs at 16, using the money he made while working as a caddie at the Maidstone Club. By that time, he had been playing tournament golf for more than six years, starting first as a 9-year-old from the ladies’ tees, then playing up an age group with the 11- and 12-year-olds.

“You think it’s glamorous, traveling the world in beautiful spots. I’m blessed to be able to do what I do. But you miss a lot at home and make a lot of sacrifices to do it.”

Not long after he made his East Hampton high school team as an eighth-grader, Bock knew that he wanted to follow his brothers into college golf, and ultimately make a go of it as a professional. But he wasn’t just a golfer. Bock embraced the full high school experience.

“My dad wanted us to learn the game from the model of being an athlete first,” Bock said in June, just before the U.S. Open. “I played all the sports — baseball, basketball, soccer, everything except football, to be honest. I was on the football field — but in the marching band. I played the trumpet.”

When he wasn’t dribbling a basketball, singing in the chorus or marching in a Christmas or Memorial Day parade, Bock was working on his golf game. The professionals at the Maidstone Club — Dave Alvarez and Glen Farnsworth — gave Bock lessons and taught him how to practice, but also invited him to accompany them to play some of the great courses in the area like Shinnecock Hills, Deepdale and Winged Foot.

“I was always around the game of golf,” said Bock. “Maidstone also allowed the employees to play and practice after five o’clock and that’s where I fell in love with the game.”

When he wanted to play before the evening, Bock occasionally grabbed a few clubs, hopped on his bike and “ditched it in the woods” then looked for an open hole where no one could see him and played a few holes.

PLAYING IN MET SECTION TOURNAMENTS prepared Bock for high school competition, where he became one of the best prep golfers in the state. He won his county and conference tournaments, earned all-state honors and represented New York in the prep nationals as a senior.

Fueled by a competitive nature and with the knowledge that more opportunities would be available the farther south he looked, Bock began his search for a college program. East Carolina, Florida Southern and Methodist provided walk-on chances, but no hope of competing during his freshman year.

“I really wanted to play,” said Bock. “When I went to [visit] Methodist, my brother Darrell said, ‘Since you’re here, why don’t you call up Coach Danny Roberts at Campbell just 30 minutes up the road?’ I remember sitting down with my parents, and Coach Roberts said, ‘Well, I don’t have any seniors; I have four juniors; I don’t have any sophomores, and the rest are freshmen we are recruiting. If you’re good enough to qualify, you’ll play.’ He didn’t have any scholarship money, but the opportunity to play was there if I’m good enough.”

That was all Bock needed to hear.

He played in seven of the team’s 12 events as a freshman and finished fourth in the 1988 Big South Championship. One year later, Bock again placed fourth when the Camels won their first Big South team title — this time at home at Keith Hills Golf Club.

Two more Top 10s in league championships and four individual crowns followed for the former walk-on who finished his collegiate career with a school-record 44 starts, a mark that stood for more than a quarter century. Bock’s 17 career Top 10 finishes was a record that stood for more than a decade and still ranks fifth in the school’s Division I history.

Bock still remains the only Campbell men’s golfer to finish in the Top 10 at his conference tournament four times. Only current DP World Tour member Jesper Svensson, plus Ray Kraivixien, Vaita Guillaume and Braxton Wynns have joined Bock as a four-time all-conference honoree.

“I loved the small school setting,” said Bock. “I came from a small high school. I came from a small village where we all knew each other. The family setting was dear to my heart, and that was something I fell in love with at Campbell. Family is huge in my life, and I knew Campbell would provide that family setting for me.”

Over one summer break during his college career, Bock had the opportunity to meet eventual two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen. That relationship proved to be a pivotal one as the former Maidstone caddie transitioned from outstanding collegiate golfer to budding professional.

“[Janzen] just got his tour card and was friends with one of the assistants at Maidstone, Robert Waters,” recalled Bock. “I was able to play a lot of golf and ask him a lot of questions about

how to practice, what to practice and about the things I would need to do to get better to make it out on tour. I drove the ball straight, but that wasn’t how I started beating people, it was from chipping and putting and from Lee Janzen telling me those things.”

AN AVERSION TO DOING EXTRA LAUNDRY may have led to Bock meeting his future wife, Geraldine. While visiting the snack bar at Keith Hills one day during his senior season, his fashion sense “impressed” a Campbell co-ed.

“Down in the valleys at Keith Hills, it could get pretty wet at the time, and I made a habit of tucking my pant legs down into my socks. So it kind of looked like I had knickers on or plus fours,” Bock recalled. “I had saddle golf shoes on and was waiting in line behind [two young women]. Geraldine didn’t know I was looking, kind of elbowed her friend April and pointed down at my shoes. So, my New York yankee kind of came out in me, and I asked her, ‘You got a problem?’ She said, ‘No, your shoes remind me of the shoes we used to wear when we were cheerleading.’ We struck up a friendship from there.”

Geraldine, who would later caddy for Bock at times during his time on the Canadian Tour, was a newcomer to the game when she followed her future husband around Keith Hills during a tournament in his senior year. On the third green (now the Black course), she watched Bock miss a putt and — according

“The adrenaline you get when you’re coming down the stretch and trying to win a golf tournament, when you cross that finish line and you do it, it’s the highest of highs.”

to her future husband — told one of his friends, “You’d think after four years, he’d know how that putt breaks.”

Little did Geraldine know at the time that pin locations changed from round to round and week to week on location.

“She thought for four years I was putting to the same hole location,” recalled Bock with a chuckle. “But now she gets it. We have two kids who have played high school golf, so she’s watched a lot of golf in her career. Some of my best golf tournaments were with her caddying for me.”

NOT ONLY DID BOCK AND THE CAMELS practice at Keith Hills and other courses in the area, they also occasionally traveled an hour west to Pinehurst to practice. An accident while visiting Seattle in the winter of 1991-92 might have just been the start of what helped Bock win one of the nation’s premier amateur championships the following summer.

While finishing his studies and serving as the team’s assistant coach under John Crooks in ’91-92, Bock traveled to Seattle for teammate Ken Wooten’s wedding.

Held at Pinehurst No. 2 since 1901, the North & South Amateur championship field has included multitudes of golfers who have gone on to distinguished careers. A plaque bearing Bock’s name appears on the wall of the clubhouse alongside such golfing greats as Francis Ouimet (1920), Jack Nicklaus (1959), Curtis Strange (1975, 1976), Hal Sutton (1980), Corey Pavin (1981) and Davis Love III (1984).

“We played some golf out there [in Seattle], I slipped and dislocated my kneecap,” recalled Bock. “I had surgery to clean up my meniscus, so I all could do that spring was chip and putt. That practice of chipping and putting leading to the North & South that year was what helped me win that golf tournament. I was not going to out-ball strike anybody. I was always a short hitter. My iron game wasn’t as good as anybody else’s, but I knew I could compete with my wedges and my chipping and putting because I put that extra time in. You slip and fall and you’re in surgery, then you’re in a soft cast and think it’s the end of the world. But at the end of the day, it was a blessing in disguise, because of the time I had chipping and putting.”

Following his North & South victory, Bock began his playing career with backing from members of the Maidstone Club. He started his pro career on the South African Tour, then competed on the Canadian Tour and in other events for a dozen years.

“My first experience was down in South Africa,” recalled Bock. “I was standing on the driving range, and at that time Nick Price was No. 1 in the world. Ernie Els and Retief Goosen had just won U.S. Opens, and here I am on the driving range with these guys and playing in the same tournament as these guys.”

As a rookie, Bock finished 11th on the money list and had a runner-up showing in Edmonton. Among his fellow competitors were 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir, threetime winner on the PGA tour Chris DeMarco and Ken Duke, who won the 2013 Travelers.

1992.

HIS WINNINGS WERE ENOUGH to finance his professional career for more than a decade while Geraldine was back home in Morganton, working fulltime. Shortly after the Bocks welcomed their daughter Albany in 2002, Duane realized that the grind of not only traveling for 30 weeks out of the year — but practicing and working out while at home — was just too much.

“I’ll never forget I was on the driving range up in Mimosa Hills Country Club, and I just didn’t want to be there,” said Bock. “I was just coming off the road for four weeks, and I’m home, but still not home. That day, I’d had enough. [Geraldine] had sacrificed so much with me being gone and taking care of everything at home, paying all the bills, keeping the house in order.”

While Bock had always thought of coaching after his playing days ended, he came to realize that he could help “coach” his fellow competitors. He also did not want to uproot his family from Morganton.

“I decided to get in my car and drive to Lafayette, Louisiana, where the Nationwide Tour was playing, sit in the parking lot and find a [caddie] job,” said Bock. “My first job on that tour was with Jim Gallagher Jr., just a one-week deal. While I was there, I saw a lot of friends I competed with up in Canada, and one was Ken Duke, who gave me my first opportunity.”

As the world’s best players know, Pinehurst’s Donald Ross design features undulating turtleback greens that require pinpoint accuracy on approach shots. Bock’s attention to his short game resulted not only in his most notable victory, but also in a Top 10 amateur ranking in the nation to end the year.

Bock and Duke partnered for three seasons before Bock had the opportunity to work with rising star Kevin Kisner. Hired by Kisner for the 2009 Q-School, their collaboration lasted for 14 years, including four PGA tour wins, a runner-up at the British Open, a World Golf match play title and two runnerup finishes in the event.

Duane Bock as a member of the Campbell golf team in

The partnership lasted until the summer of 2023 when Kisner decided to take a six-week break from the tour in order to spend more time with his family. In the meantime, Kisner encouraged Bock to work for another golfer if he so desired.

Shortly thereafter, Bock was back in Pinehurst with his family to follow his son Alex, who was competing in the North & South Junior Amateur Championship. He took a phone call from Sepp Straka, like Kisner a former University of Georgia standout, who needed someone to caddy for him in the British Open. Less than 24 hours later, Bock was on a plane to Illinois, where he looped for Straka in the John Deere Classic. Incredibly, in their first event, Straka won the tournament. Then they headed to England, and Straka finished in a tie for second at The Open.

It was Kisner who let Bock know that Straka was going to offer to make the job permanent, and encouraged him to accept it.

The partnership took Bock and Geraldine to Italy last fall where the couple was welcomed into Team Europe for the Ryder Cup. He was in Scotland for this year's British Open and was Straka's caddie in Paris for the Olympics.

AS ALBANY AND ALEX GREW UP, they followed their father into the game. Albany will be a junior this fall at Belmont Abbey, where she is studying nursing and is a member of the golf team. Alex is heading to UNC Charlotte this fall on a golf scholarship. Unlike their father, Albany and Alex grew up with the benefit of a club membership and never had to sneak on to Mimosa Hills to play. They also had club pros looking out for them while dad was away.

“I’m on the road competing 28 to 30 weeks a year, but there’s a solid 22 weeks when I’m home. That time is spent with the family,” said Bock, who introduced the game to his children, much like it was presented to him, as a way to have fun.

His typical week on tour includes three full days of preparation for a 72-hole event that begins on Thursday.

“Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday is a grind; it’s a lot of work individually without your player learning the golf course,” said Bock. “I spend a lot of Mondays walking the golf course by myself. You know what your player’s tendencies are, you know exactly how far he hits his drive, so you’re trying to find the right line off the tee for 3-wood, driver. Doing a lot of work

around the greens. You know the areas where they’re going to put the pins. It’s all about preparing for the next shot, the best opportunity for getting up and done for pars.”

For a tour caddie, the responsibilities don’t end with carrying the bag, cleaning the clubs, providing yardage, making club suggestions and dealing with weather conditions.

“Caddying is a very easy job when things are going well,” Bock admitted. “When things aren’t going well, it’s very difficult. The mental side is the hard part, and the relationship you have with your player is extremely important. You’ve got to know when to listen and know when to tell your player to snap out of it and move on. Successful teams you see that have been together (a long time) they are really good at that.”

While the benefits of life as a full-time tour caddie include world travel, competition at the highest level and the financial rewards that follow success (a caddie is customarily paid 10 percent of his player’s winnings), it does have its hardships.

“The toughest part is time away from home,” said Bock. “What people don’t realize ... you think it’s glamorous, traveling the world, and in beautiful spots. I’m blessed to be able to do what I do. But you miss a lot at home and make a lot of sacrifices to do it. Everybody needs a strong support system, and I have that in my wife and my kids.”

Still, there’s nothing like the feeling of competition and reaping the rewards of hard work.

“The adrenaline you get when you’re coming down the stretch and trying to win a golf tournament, when you cross that finish line and you do it, it’s the highest of highs,” said Bock. “I’m blessed and fortunate enough to be able to provide for my family. We’re in a situation now where I can provide. The first 15 years of my career, my wife was home providing for me. Having the lifestyle we now have is very gratifying.”

THROUGHOUT THE COURSE of his conversations, Bock constantly refers to all the people that have played important roles in his life’s journey. From his parents, David and Elizabeth, to his brothers, his teaching pros, coaches and his teammates. To his family and support system and employers through the years. He repeatedly heaps praise.

He also recognizes the part that Campbell University played in his path to success.

“My professors worked with me; they knew I was trying,” said Bock. “Coach John Crooks, Coach Wendell Carr, my teammates. I’m who I am today not only as a player, as a caddie, as a husband, as a father, it all comes from the experiences, from what I learned at Campbell. I don’t think I would have gotten that from any other university. It was just a perfect fit for me.

“God put me there on that campus for a reason. I am who I am because of Campbell.”

TOM KEITH (‘64)

The legacy of a name

Keith Family Ballroom is latest of important contributions that have spanned over a century

Tom Keith was alone on the quiet campus of Campbell College in 1964, chipping a small bucket of golf balls with an old wedge from a small patch of overgrown grass just outside of his residence hall.

The non-spectacular scene sparked an important moment of inspiration

for Tom’s father, Fred Keith, who just happened to be walking by after what was surely an important meeting that day for the member of the school’s Board of Trustees and longtime friend of the Campbell family.

“Watching me hit balls off the dorm, I think that’s what gave him the idea to build a golf course,” Tom Keith says 60 years later.

“Of course, it took a few years for it to happen,” he adds with a smile. “But that’s where it all started.”

Keith Hills Golf Course and the surrounding Keith Hills community — both named for the man who started the fundraising efforts and planning that made them happen — is celebrating its 50th anniversary over the next several months. Located roughly a quarter mile from the western edge of Campbell’s campus in Buies Creek, Keith Hills has served as home to generations of

Tom Keith was involved in his alma mater as a member of the Board of Trustees (and onetime chairman) for over 40 years before stepping down from the board in 2023.

professors, cabinet members and alumni for the school over the last half century; and the course has served as both home to the University’s storied men’s and women’s golf programs and a learning facility for Campbell’s renowned PGA Golf Management program.

Like his father, Tom Keith has lived a life of service and advocacy for his alma mater, leading the way as a member and one-time chairman of the Board of Trustees and member of several other University boards and committees.

On April 11 of this year, Tom Keith again followed in his father’s footsteps by adding the Keith name to another important part of the University’s campus. The family was honored at the naming ceremony of the Keith Family Ballroom, the large event area on the second floor of the 4-year-old Oscar N. Harris Student Union. The ballroom has become the University’s go-to space for conferences, fairs, large luncheons and dinners, awards ceremonies and other big events.

The Keith Family Ballroom honors the Keith family and the family’s legacy, Tom Keith says, rather than just one man.

“I’ve always tried to continue the legacy built by my father,” he says. “This name honors him, and it honors our family and its association with this University.”

The Keith family in North Carolina goes way back to the 1700s, when Tom Keith’s great-great-great grandparents, William and Martha Keith of England, crossed the Atlantic and landed in Fernandina Beach, Florida, in 1766. After the birth of their first son, William Jr., that same year, the couple headed north to South Carolina and eventually to Brunswick County. According to published family history, William Jr. may have aided the Swamp Fox, Gen. Frances Marion, during the Revolutionary War as a young

teenager. He would become father to Tom Keith’s great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Keith Sr., in 1820. Benjamin Sr. would serve as a commissary for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was captured by the Union Army in South Carolina in his 40s. His experience in a POW camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, would “ruin his health,” according to family history.

His son, Tom’s grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Keith Jr., was born in the small unincorporated town of Keith, North Carolina, in 1858. At the age of 8, he began working on the family farm to help support his family financially. He would start the nearly 150-year tradition of real estate in the Keith family when he acquired several thousand acres of land in Pender and New Hanover counties in the late 1870s.

His son, Fred Keith, started the Keith family relationship with Campbell University when it was still Buies Creek Academy in 1916. He graduated from the Literary Department in 1918 in a class of 45 students. After establishing himself in the real estate business, he

returned to Campbell to serve on the Board of Trustees from 1956 to 1984.

In 1969, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the school.

In 1973, Campbell President Norman A. Wiggins set in motion plans to launch a law school in Buies Creek. The idea spawned excitement locally, but drew criticism from outer circles, especially those who questioned how the small college and town could support the needs of law students. A new community along the Cape Fear featuring a golf

course designed by a renowned architect was one way to do it.

A decade after seeing his son chipping outside of his dorm, Fred Keith and Campbell Vice President Lonnie Small began the funding efforts to build Keith Hills. The course would be up and running by 1976, and the homes bordering its fairways and greens would start going up soon after.

“Campbell and Keith Hills go hand in hand,” says Joe Wynns, a 1975 graduate who was among the first golfers to play

by

The Keith Family Ballroom was formally dedicated in the Oscar N. Harris Student Union on April 11. Pictured above: The Keith family Alex, Juliana, Jamie, Anne, Tom, Benjamin and Brittany.

Photos

Evan Budrovich

the new course. “Campbell needed Keith Hills, and Keith Hills doesn’t exist today without Campbell.”

“The Keith family has a special place at Campbell University and in the Buies Creek community,” adds Dr. Britt Davis, vice president for advancement who has worked closely with Keith family for the last 15-plus years. “Fred had the vision for a golf course community here and was heavily involved in Campbell for nearly 30 years. Tom has continued that legacy and continues to serve in literally

every capacity one can think of — from advisory and governing boards to strategic planning to philanthropy.”

Tom Keith had several options after high school, and he seriously considered those options. But with two parents heavily involved in Campbell (his mother, Grace Butler Keith, was a member of the Board of Advisors) and much of his youth spent on campus in Buies Creek, the choice was easy.

Tom would graduate from Campbell

in 1964 with a degree in business administration. Whereas his father and grandfathers before him enjoyed a career in real estate, Tom would detour slightly and enjoy a career in real estate appraisal. His company, Tom J. Keith & Associates in Fayetteville, has served individuals, Fortune 500 companies and government entities for over 50 years.

He wasn’t even 30 yet when he was chosen to serve on the Campbell Board of Trustees (which he did from 1970 to 2023). He was named chairman and

The Keith Hills golf course and community in Buies Creek will celebrate its 50th year over the coming months. The course was the brainchild of Fred Keith, a 1918 graduate of Buies Creek Academy and father of Tom Keith, who like his father, was a longtime member of Campbell University's Board of Trustees.

served in the role from 2017-2018. His last 15 years on the board saw some significant votes, with the launch of a new medical school, engineering school and nursing, physical therapy and physician assistant programs; and the addition of several new buildings (the Pope Convocation Center and Oscar N. Harris Student Union being the most significant).

“For me, the best part of being on the board was working with some of the most talented people I’ve ever known,” Keith says. “I felt like I contributed because of my knowledge and experience in real estate valuation, but we had people on the board from all walks of life. Engineers, people in the medical field and contractors, among others. We could pull all those resources together, ask a lot of questions and eliminate a lot of mistakes when making those big decisions. Everybody had a say. We had presidents who sought our input. I was quite happy with the experience.”

After his service on the board came to an end in 2023, Keith looked for a way he could continue to contribute to his alma mater. When Davis approached him about the naming for the student union ballroom, he liked the idea of supporting a facility that was a major need for the campus when it was built in 2020.

On April 11, he was joined by the rest of the Keith family — his wife Anne; their son Alex (a 2014 Campbell graduate) and his wife Juliana; son Benjamin and his wife Brittany, and son Jamie — at a luncheon and ceremony celebrating the naming of the Keith Family Ballroom. Speaking to the crowd of friends and Campbell cabinet members on hand, Keith talked about the importance of giving back.

“You have to give your time and effort and resources to help nonprofit organizations make their way and to help other parts of society. [For us], Campbell is the most rewarding of all,” he said. “My dad was a strong supporter back when it was Buies Creek Academy. Today, you’re helping bring Campbell into the 21st Century with a culture that has brought us new programs, a medical school, a nursing school and more. It’s my hope that Campbell will continue to be an organization that makes a real difference in the lives of people.

“I would like to thank all of you for giving me this chance to participate in the development of this University and my own personal growth,” he added. “Our family certainly understands the value and importance of a college degree.”

1980s

BILLY RICHARDSON (’80) and his wife Barbara Richardson funded the Norman A. Wiggins School of Law Richardson Family Education Equity Clinic. Launched in February, the clinic provides free legal representation to low-income, at-risk children with disabilities who are seeking to restore and protect their education rights in public schools.

THE REV. TIMONY REGISTER (’83 MED) delivered the address at the 2024 baccalaureate service for Harrell Christian Academy. His granddaughter Taylor Grace, was among the graduating seniors of the class.

TAMMY FLEMING (’86 LAW) was named to the executive board for the Davie Community Foundation. Fleming has been a practicing attorney in Davie County since 1986.

1990s

The Keith family in North Carolina can be traced back to William Keith, who crossed the Atlantic from England in 1766. His grandson, Benjamin Franklin Keith Sr., fought in the Civil War, and Benjamin Franklin Keith Jr., specialized in real estate. Fred Keith, a 1918 graduate of Buis Creek Academy, was the man behind the Keith Hills golf course and subdivision.

TAMMY BROWN TEW (’91) was named to the Fayetteville Sports Club Hall of Fame in February. Tew was one of the top basketball players to come out of Terry Sanford High School, where she finished her career with 2,644 points. To this day, she remains the all-time leading scorer for Campbell University women’s basketball with 1,893 points.

JAMES GILLEN (’94 LAW) was reappointed unanimously by the North Carolina Senate to the state Industrial Commission. He started his career with the Industrial Commission in 1994 as an agency legal specialist. He first served as commissioner in 2019.

Benjamin Franklin Keith Sr.

Benjamin Franklin Keith Jr.

Fred Keith

ALUMNI NOTES

THOMAS HUFTON II (’94 TRUST) was promoted to senior vice president and chief trust and wealth management officer at The State Bank in Fenton, Michigan. Hufton has been with the bank for 30 years.

A. JOHN HOOMANI (’97 LAW) was appointed to serve in the role of chief operating officer for the North Carolina Department of Insurance.

MELISSA HOLDING (’98 MBA) was named director of wealth management at Huntington National Bank in Columbus Ohio in April. She recently served as Huntington’s mass affluent client segment director, overseeing the bank’s overall strategy and approach, business results and segment growth.

DR. BEN WHITE (’99) was named head of Clemson University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion. White had served as director of the department’s religious studies bachelor’s degree program since its inception in 2014.

DR. JASON SMITH (’99) was named principal at Liberty Christian School in Indiana. Smith earned national attention in 2021 when he helped a young middle school student by fixing his hair cut himself when he didn’t want to take off a hat.

CHERYL WAIDE (’99) was named among seven “Black Excellence: Standouts in Nonprofit” by the NHL’s Florida Panthers in February. Waide is the executive director of ElevateHer Media, which partners with progressive organizations committed to advancing equity and fostering resiliency to amplify missions, drive change and fight for social justice.

At the heart of his dream

Family tragedy and history of heart issues inspired recent MSBS grad to pursue med school to help others

The red and blue flashing lights coming in through the windows of his home in Virginia is one of the earliest memories of Surya Gara. He was 3 at the time, and the first responders were there for his grandmother. Moments earlier, she suffered a heart attack upstairs, and efforts by Gara’s father to revive her were unsuccessful. She was only 54.

Just over a year later, his father was hospitalized after a heart attack. Gara remembers images of him hooked up to an assortment of machines during his road to recovery.

Those images had a profound impact on Gara.

“You don’t grasp it when you’re that young, but looking back, it certainly had an impact,” he says. “When I think back to what happened to my dad, I remember seeing all the effort that went into saving his life. To those medical professionals, he was a stranger. But to me, he’s my dad.

“Seeing the round-the-clock care that he got and everything that went into making sure he’d recover and go home to his family meant a lot to me then, and it still means a lot to me now.”

SURYA GARA ('24 MSBS)

Photo by Ben Brown

Over 20 years later, Surya Gara is a first-year medical student in the Jerry M. Wallace School of Osteopathic Medicine and a recent graduate of Campbell University’s Master of Science in Biomedical Science program. The Chesterfield, Virginia native’s journey to a career in health care has by no means followed a traditional path.

After graduating from Virginia Tech University in 2019 with degrees in biochemistry and biology, Gara spent the first two years of the pandemic out of school working as a medical scribe, shadowing doctors and writing down their conversations with patients. The work taught Gara to take vital signs and help create and read a medical chart.

If there was any doubt that he’d one day become a doctor, that doubt was washed away in the pandemic. Having a front row seat to medical professionals’ response to a global emergency — while putting their own health at risk — solidified his desire to help others.

“That really touched me, especially when you’d see doctors take on 12-hour shifts in crowded emergency rooms,” he says. “What drew me to medicine in the first place was that idea that I can have a positive impact on someone’s life. I’ve always thought the best way to do good is by serving and helping others.”

His family’s history of heart problems was another factor. Gara is well aware of his own genetic risks and says learning more about the science behind it will not only help him, but also his father (who is alive and well).

“Beyond being there when people need you, another reason I want to be a doctor is the opportunity to teach others,” he says. “If we

can spread health education and health literacy and give people the tools they need to maintain their health, then we can play a big part in avoiding some of these health problems down the line.”

Gara’s experience as a scribe inspired him to take the next steps toward becoming a doctor, but he still wasn’t sure he was ready for the rigors of medical school. He looked for masters programs that could serve as a stepping stone (and solidify his admissions resume) and found Campbell’s Master of Science in Biomedical Science program, a two-year curriculum designed to do exactly what Gara needed. Seeing that it was taught by med school faculty on a med school campus convinced him Campbell was the right move.

“You’re basically getting a preview of what your first year of med school will look like,” he says. The classes helped him adapt to the fast pace of a four-year school, and that exposure to med school-like courses helped him refine his study methods and pick up information quicker. “I’d say it instilled discipline in me that I probably didn’t have as an undergrad. The faculty and staff were incredible. Very supportive and there for me whether I needed advice or had questions outside of the classroom.”

There’s still a long way to go, but Gara is finally ready to fulfill a dream that’s been with him for, literally, as long as he can remember.

It’s a good feeling, he says.

“I’ve grown so much at Campbell,” says Gara. “I feel like this school is very invested in us, and I’ll be prepared for the next step.”

— BILLY LIGGETT

Joshua Murray’s passion for studying alternative fuel and energy resources goes beyond his budding career as an engineer and his undergrad experience at Campbell's School of Engineering. Murray, now a grad student working toward his PhD at Clemson University, has dreamt of doing this kind of work since high school.

Last spring, he was chosen for the National Science Foundation’s prestigious Graduate Fellowship Program, created to “broaden participation of the full spectrum of diverse talents in STEM.”

The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support, inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000. His proposal for the program was a renewable fuel for the light duty vehicle market, rather than for big truck or tractor engines.

MELISSA CAIN TRAVIS (’99) is author of Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Comis Comprehensibility (2022) and Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God (2018). She was a featured speaker at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith in Texas on Feb. 17.

2000s

BRIAN FLETCHER (’00) was named manager of the Interstate 85 North Welcome Center in Norlina, one of nine such centers operated by the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

COL. K. CHAD MIXON (’00) was named garrison commander at Fort Liberty during a ceremony in June. Mixon started his Army career in 1993 as an enlisted infantryman in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment. He has held several positions under the Army’s Special Operations Command.

ABNER SUAREZ (’00) received his Doctor of Education degree from Oral Roberts University. His dissertation is titled: “Exploring the Concept of Transformation in the Doctor of Education Program at Oral Roberts University.”

RICKY RAY (’01) was named director of athletics at Stetson University in Florida and began his new role on May 6. He previously served as associate athletic director at William & Mary and as deputy athletics director with Campbell University.

JOSHUA MURRAY (’21)

ALUMNI NOTES

TOMMY BAYRER (’01) was inducted into the SalemRoanoke Baseball Hall of Fame’s 2024 class. Bayrer was a standout outfielder at Cave Spring High School and went on to play at Campbell before he was drafted by the Houston Astros in 2001. He pitched two seasons in the Minor Leagues for Houston.

SHARON GRIFFIN (’07 LAW) was appointed as the Carteret County Interim Attorney in March. Griffin has served in several leadership roles with national, state and county organizations and served as senior national program director for the National Association of Counties and executive general counsel for the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.

LAURA RICH (’02, ’08 MED, ’24MC) named dean for student well-being at Campbell University after serving nearly 20 years in various director roles in student success and support. The role is a new position at Campbell that will provide leadership over counseling services, student care and case management, disability services and behavioral intervention.

JENNY ISGETT (’02 LAW) was named to the executive leadership team of Title Resources Group, where she leads business development in several areas of the company.

CHONG TOH YING (’08) was appointed as engineering manager in Malaysia for Verisense Health, a digital health software and data company. Chong was a software engineering manager at Inspectorio, an AI-powered software solution company.

ORANGE OWNED

Store of the roses

Third-generation rose cultivators built business on values of 'honesty, quality, diligence and compassion'

It takes family, grit, determination, good employees, valued customers and God to grow and thrive through three generations running the same business. At least that is what Taylor Pike (’02), owner of the Orange Owned business Witherspoon Rose Culture in Durham, says is the secret to their success.

Witherspoon Rose Culture has 73 years of experience installing and caring for more than 2,700 rose gardens throughout the region. The business has a diverse selection of roses and gardening services expertly offered.

It all began with Bob Witherspoon, who graduated from NC State University with a degree in floriculture. Upon graduation, he began working with a man in Durham caring for shrubs, trees and a few rose gardens.

After an accident, the founder of that company turned it over to Bob, who decided that the best way to keep the business alive and running was to focus on only caring for rose gardens. Bob and his wife, Thelma, expanded their business into Chapel Hill in 1951.

Witherspoon Rose is a third-generation business. It was passed down from Bob and Thelma Witherspoon to David and Rhonda — Taylor’s parents — and now Taylor and his wife. The values of Witherspoon Rose are based on faith and operating from a Biblical foundation. Their beliefs, according to Taylor Witherspoon, are “honesty/integrity, quality, diligence and compassion.”

These values permeate throughout the business, including interactions and relationships with customers.

“We want all of our interactions to leave our customers, vendors and team members feeling like their lives were enhanced by our interaction,” Witherspoon said.

He said Witherspoon Rose hires employees who embody its values. Every new hire goes through face-to-face orientation. At every chance, Witherspoon says, “We promote and hire from within.” Everyone starts “at the bottom.”

Photo: Witherspoon Rose Culture

“No one is too important to do the hard jobs, and you get to coach and teach right there on the job,” Witherspoon said.

He and both his parents are all proud Campbell alumni.

“The whole time I was at Campbell, I would think about how these things I was learning can help the family business,” he said.

Witherspoon took over for his parents and implemented a lot of what he learned at Campbell into the business. From his philosophy of business class, business administration class, to accounting, he took bits and pieces from all.

Witherspoon Rose has since expanded to Myrtle Beach, Richmond and the Tidewater area. It services North Carolina from Asheville all the way to the coast.

Witherspoon said he credits the success of Witherspoon Rose Culture to God and his blessings. “We start there, asking for sustenance at each leadership meeting. We ask for continued blessings and wisdom,” he said.

Learn more about Orange Owned businesses online at alumni.campbell.edu

A quick glance through the rose selection at witherspoonrose.com renders types like “Abbaye de Cluny”, “All Dressed Up.” “All My Loving,” “Avant Garde” – and those are just the roses that begin with the letter, “A.”

There’s simply a rose for everyone.

— DAN HUNT

Last spring, Campbell marked the first Philanthropy Week, dedicated to the spirit of giving and recognizing the many who have contributed to the university, making the Campbell experience possible for its students. The week included the annual Thank-A-Giver (TAG) Day, the dedication of the Keith Family Ballroom and the Employee Giving Appreciation Barbecue (pictured).

The Advancement team was extremely pleased with the first Philanthropy Week and envision it being a staple going forward.

Vice President for Institutional Advancement Dr. Britt Davis said, “It’s an opportunity for the campus community to honor and applaud the impact Campbell alumni, friends and faculty and staff have on the university mission and the ability of our students to afford a life-changing Campbell education. Philanthropy is more than just money — it’s a personal commitment to the mission and purpose of Campbell University. We celebrate those who are philanthropic to Campbell through their time, talent and treasure.”

ALUMNI NOTES

REID SMITH (’08) was named to the governing board of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Smith is the founder and chief executive of RiverWILD, an investment and development company headquartered in Clayton.

LORA BAKER (’08 LAW) was appointed as District 29B judge in North Carolina by Gov. Roy Cooper. Baker serves Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties.

2010s

PAUL CONSTANTINE (’12) was named associate director of strength and conditioning for the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons in February. He previously served in a similar role at the University of Alabama from 2020-2023.

AMANDA MIARS (’12 LAW) was named wealth and estate advisor for Live Oak Private Wealth in WIlmington. Miars joined the firm with over 11 years of experience in trust and estate planning and business planning.

ALICIA ROTH (’15 MED) was named head coach of the Jacksonville University volleyball program. Roth was previously an assistant coach at Pitt, where she helped lead the program to the Final Four in three seasons. She began her coaching career at Campbell as a graduate student in 2013.

CHRISTOPHER WESTON (’14) published “The Lonely Hollow” in February. The young adult novel is about a teen whose family moves to the infamous town of Sleepy Hollow.

INAUGRUAL PHILANTHROPY WEEK

MIKE JUSTICE (’14) was named head football coach at Franklinton High School, where he has served as an assistant and JV head coach for the last five seasons.

AARON GOFORTH (’15 LAW) was promoted to the role of partner at Hatch, Little & Bunn LLP.

CHILI DAVIS (’12) was named assistant special teams coach for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams after spending the 2023 season with Kansas State University’s football program as special teams quality control coach. He has also had coaching stints with Florida A&M and the University of Washington. Davis played defensive back for the Camels from 2008 to 2011.

DR. ISAAC HANSON (’17 DO) joined Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center as a trauma surgeon in January. Hanson completed his surgical residency at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Mt. Sinai Hospital. He is certified by the American Board of Surgery.

JOHN WIGGINS (’17 MDIV) was selected for the Lenoir County Board of Education in February. Wiggins is pastor of La Grange First Missionary Baptist Church. He is an Air Force veteran who worked in law enforcement for 25 years with the Goldsboro Police Department

MEAGAN CULBERTSON (’19 MSA) will serve as Laurens District 55 high school assistant principal in South Carolina. She has experience as an assistant principal with focus on graduation rates, teacher retention, professional development and budget.

T. J. MCGEE (’16) married Sarah Odom on Jan. 13, 2024, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

HOPE TURNER HARTSELL ('20) and MASON HARTSELL ('20), both graduates of the BSN program, were married on Nov. 18, 2022.

SHELBY DIACHENKO JOUPPI ('20 DPT) married Dan Jouppi in Raleigh on March 26, 2022.

OCTOBER

26 OCTOBER 26

New to Homecoming at Campbell University this year is the first Alumni Block Party, featuring live camels, music, interactive games, food trucks and more!

10 AM-NOON, CORNELIA CAMPBELL ALUMNI HOUSE

Other Homecoming Events

Distinguished Alumni Awards

Golden Club Brunch

Alumni Block Party

Orange v. Black Wrestling

Homecoming Parade

Pepsi Tailgate Town

OCTOBER 26 | 4 PM

LEGACY GIVING

It started with a smile

1964 graduate Robert Winston dedicates education scholarship to his late wife, a longtime teacher

Robert Winston was 18 when his girlfriend at the time invited him to a Valentine's Day dance at Oxford High School in February of 1960. Unlucky for her, Winston will always remember their date for another reason.

“She introduced me to her friend, Lynda,” he says. “I saw her smile, and it was just love at first sight. I really did fall for her.”

Robert Winston and Lynda Anne Lilly would date for the next five years before saying their vows. Their marriage would last 58 years before Lynda passed away in 2023.

In memory of his wife and her 55 years of service as an educator, Winston has set up a scholarship at Campbell University in his

wife’s name. The Lynda Winston Memorial Scholarship will, he hopes, benefit future teachers from rural Granville County, north of Raleigh.

The scholarship symbolizes a deep connection with Campbell for Winston, a 1964 graduate, as it also honors generations of his family who have walked the school’s hallowed halls in Buies Creek as far back as 1911, when it was still an academy.

It all started with his father’s cousin, Fred Pittard, who attended Buies Creek Academy from 1911 to 1914. His brother, Bridge Winston Pittard, joined him in 1912, and Robert’s uncle, Charlie Winston, was a student in 1918. Another uncle, Patrick Henry Winston, attended from 1918 to 1920 before transferring to UNC and eventually the Medical College of Virginia before becoming a doctor. He went on to serve in World War II and practiced medicine until 1975.

The family connection doesn’t stop there.

Robert’s aunt, Martha Layton Winston, served on Campbell’s Board of Trustees, and the former Layton Dorm on campus was named after her father. Robert’s nephew, James Pratt Winston II, graduated

Lynda Anne (Lilly) Winston and Robert Winston from the 1964 Pine Burr Yearbook Lynda transfered to Campbell College from Meredith College to attend school with her soon-to-be fiance. This year, Robert has dedicated a scholarship to his late wife.

from Campbell in 1977 and became founder and partner of the accounting firm Winston, Williams, Creech, Evans & Company LLC in Oxford. Niece Kathryn Winston graduated Magna Sum Laude from Campbell, also in 1977, and enjoyed a 37-year career as an inspector for the College of American Pathologists.

Robert Winston enrolled at Campbell College in 1960, the fall after meeting Lynda, who chose Meredith College after high school the following year. At Campbell, Robert majored in history and social studies and was president of his 1964 senior class. That same year, he convinced Lynda to transfer from Meredith to finish up at Campbell, where she earned her degree in 1965.

Robert’s career also began in education, teaching U.S. government and history and launching the Industry Cooperative Training program at Stafford High School in Falmouth, Virginia, and later at Webb High School in Oxford, North Carolina. He was superintendent of Oxford Orphanage from 1975 to 1981, before he was named the presidential appointee under Ronald Reagan to lead the Federal Volunteers Program in Atlanta from 1981 to 2006.

Robert also served on the Campbell University Presidential Board of Advisors from 2007 to 2023. He received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine from North Carolina Governor Mike Easley in 2006.

His decision to teach was inspired by one of his Campbell professors,

Dr. John Bunn, who taught religion. Bunn showed grace to Winston in his senior year when he wasn’t in the right mind to take a test (giving him a 10-minute coffee break to ready himself). That gesture stuck with him, and the two became friends later on in life.

Winston has since spoken highly of his alma mater, guiding new generations of his family to Buies Creek. Second cousin Charles W. Dean graduated from Campbell in 1991 with a business degree. A few years before that, nephew John Lee Winston also earned a business degree and launched a successful career in banking. John's son, William Davis Winston (Robert Winston's great nephew) is the most recent graduate earning his Professional Golf Management degree in 2015.

All told, a member of the Winston family has graduated under every Campbell president.

Robert Winston is proud of all them. But the most important thing he got out of his Campbell experience was meeting Lynda.

His wife earned her degree in elementary education and taught second grade in Stafford County, Virginia and Granville County until 2006. Her love for teaching inspired her husband to focus her memorial scholarship on future teachers. He says he hopes that when those students seek to find out more about the name on their gift, they learn that Lynda Winston was loved by just about everyone she met.

“The first thing you noticed about Lynda was her beautiful smile,” Robert says. “She lived with the statement that the least expensive thing you can give someone in life is a simple smile. And I can say this — and she would say it, too — we knew each other for 63 years, and we never had a serious argument or disagreement. She was just that kind of person.”

— BILLY LIGGETT

DR. JAMES JUNG

Beloved former chemistry professor, chair dies at 95

Dr. James Jung was a prominent figure in Campbell University’s history, arriving on campus as a professor of chemistry in 1962 and teaching generations of students for the next 46 years that followed. After that first year, he was promoted to chair of the Chemistry Department, and he would eventually rise to chair of Campbell’s Division of Mathematics and Science.

Not bad for a guy who didn’t even take chemistry in high school or as a college undergrad.

Jung, a brilliant man who loved puns, playing his guitar, golf and solving puzzles, died on May 19 at Universal Healthcare in Lillington. He lived to be 95 years old.

He was a graduate of J.W. Cannon High School in Kannapolis in the 1940s and attended Davidson College, where he was part of the ROTC program and team captain of the wrestling team (where he was known as “The Dragon”). He served as 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 19511953. Following his service, he pursued additional certification at Catawba College.

After earning a Master of Education from UNC-Chapel Hill, Jung’s focus turned to chemistry, and he earned his PhD in organic chemistry from UNC before coming to Campbell. At Campbell, he developed close friendships with fellow professor and academic dean Dr. A.R. Burkot and then-Vice President for Business Lonnie Small.

”I was a little rookie teacher when I first came here and Burkot kept me straight for many years,” he said in 2008. “Small introduced computers to campus and I watched him during the early development of the Keith Hills Golf Course and community.”

At the time of his retirement, Jung said his greatest accomplishment as a professor was his students, not his many accolades.

“I never kept those things (awards),” he said. “But many of my students have gone on to get graduate degrees and become very successful.” His advice to new students who are pondering their career paths was to major in chemistry. “If you major in chemistry, you’ll never regret it.”

A good boss and friend

Iturned down my original offer to work at Campbell University. It was 2011, and I was a newspaper editor in a nearby town looking for a job — any job — that would both let me do what I was trained to do and get me the heck out of the fast-sinking newspaper industry.

Campbell was looking for someone to take over its magazine at that time. It seemed like a perfect fit — a 9-to-5 job that would allow me to keep writing, keep creating and keep loving what I do.

It was during my interview process when I met Britt Davis for the first time. He was still fairly new to his role as vice president for yniversity advancement, and I’m guessing at the time he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted from the next Campbell Magazine editor. I remember telling him and Haven Hottel (assistant vice president for marketing and communications) "real journalism" to the publication — solid storytelling and in-depth features on widereaching topics. The magazine could be much more than a cheerleading tool.

It was a risk, telling a hiring team that their marketing tool shouldn’t just be all about marketing, but it’s how I felt. Lucky for me, Britt and Haven felt the same way. They called me a few weeks later and offered me the job.

Like I said, I turned it down.

Part of it was apprehension. As much as I saw the writing on the wall that jobs in the newspaper industry were no given and that it wasn’t the same career I thought it would be when I was in college, I was still afraid to leave the one profession I knew. The one profession I felt I was good at.

I got a personal call from Britt a few days later, asking me to lunch to discuss my decision and see what it would take to get me here. We met at a small Mexican food restaurant in Lillington and talked about our families, his vision for Campbell and how I could potentially fit in that vision. It felt more like a “chat” than a second job interview.

Britt saw something in me and wasn’t ready to give up on me easily. A few weeks later, after the birth of my second child, I closed my eyes

and jumped into the deep end, leaving the only career I thought I’d ever have and starting a new one in higher education.

That child, my son, turned 13 this summer. Campbell is, by far, the longest and — happy to say — most satisfying job I’ve ever had. And I have Haven (who’s still here with me) and Britt to thank for that.

Britt Davis announced to our team in July that after 17 years with Campbell and 13 in his role at vice president, he’s leaving higher education for new career in international sports advancement. Like me over a decade ago, he’s leaving an industry that he loves for something new and exciting. I’m guessing it’s not an easy decision for him. But I’m also guessing there’s a great deal of excitement in his decision.

I’m not a sappy guy. Britt definitely is. So I won’t write about how much I owe Britt for bringing me here and how much I appreciate all he’s done for me since. I just won’t.

Back to that lunch. I remember Britt telling me he wanted this magazine to win something called a CASE award. I had no idea what this was, but it became an immediate goal. We’ve since won more than 50 of them.

More important than the “work,” Britt’s been a friend to me and my family. He knows my kids, and they know him. When you’re in a place this long, these relationships are as important as the work. Campbell becomes a part of your family, and the people here do as well.

When a University president announces his or her retirement, it’s almost always a big deal. They get a big send-off and stories written about their legacies. That doesn’t often happen to vice presidents or us lowly directors.

Britt didn’t get a big write-up for his retirement. He didn’t want one. But he does get this very simple “thank you.” He changed my life, and I’ll always be grateful for that.

Billy Liggett Editor | Campbell Magazine

FROM THE VAULT

Back when students used film and every photo counted, the Pine Burr Yearbook in 1969 was loaded with talented photographers. One of them was Bobby Williford, shown here getting up close with Patsy Devane. Campbell College's photography department was led by Taom Landen, and other students in the program that year included Willis Peele, Butch Pinson and Albert Matthews.

1969 Pine Burr Yearbook

Photo by Ben Brown