Property Donation Becomes New Home of FVSU President
Lillian Brooks Graves and her daughter, Agnes Brooks Stewart, were highly respected in the Fort Valley community. These strong women worked diligently in their church and community helping to improve the lives of their neighbors and friends. When Graves and Stewart died suddenly, their beautiful home on Daniel Drive became vacant. Today, the house has a new resident. Early in 2017, Johnnie B. Booker, daughter of Mrs. Graves and sister to Mrs. Stewart, donated the home to Fort Valley State University. The residence and its adjacent one-acre parcel of land are now the current home of President and Mrs. Paul Jones. “I am pleased that the Fort Valley State University Foundation accepted this house for its use, and President and Mrs. Jones have chosen to make it their home,” Booker said. “It is a house that anyone would be proud to live in.” Booker had the house built for her mother 16 years ago.
At the Naming Ceremony in October, designating the home as The Lillian B. Graves House, Booker stated that her, “family connections to the University go back to the early 1940s when my grandfather served as the college chef.” For a while, her family lived with her grandparents, Hubert and Johnnie Mae Rogers, on the campus across from Ohio Hall. Both she and her sister attended FVSU’s nursery and the Demonstration School. They also graduated from Henry A. Hunt High School, named after Fort Valley High and Industrial School’s second principal. In addition, Mrs. Stewart received her baccalaureate degree from FVSU. Booker is a retired executive from the CocaCola Company where she served as Global Director of Supplier
Diversity. She also served as director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Office of Equal Opportunity and Vice President of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC). She currently serves on the FVSU Foundation’s Board of Directors. Mrs. Graves was a retired nurse who served 32 years at the Peach County Hospital. She genuinely cared about people and enjoyed entertaining them in her home. She was an active member of the St. Peter AME Church for over 65 years and passed away only days after her 85th birthday. Booker’s sister, Agnes, was a retired mathematics teacher and taught in both Peach and Crawford County school systems. She also
served as President of the Peach Area Habitat for Humanity for 5 years. At the time of her passing, she had completed the requirements toward a Masters of Divinity degree from Beacon University and received it posthumously. She was a dedicated lifelong member of St. Peter AME Church where she served as a minister and an ordained deacon. In memory of her beloved mother and sister, Booker established an endowed scholarship at FVSU to benefit an African American female, mathematics major with a B or better grade point average. Booker also stated that her decision to donate the home to FVSU was “based on the University’s history with her family and the community, which her family truly loved.”
2016-2017 ANNUAL REPORT OF GIVING PAGE 7
