If you stroll through Brock Commons, especially during a big event on campus, there’s a good chance you’ll find Barclay DuPriest holding court at the threshold of the campus store. If Randolph-Macon were a monarchy, she would be its undisputed queen. She welcomes first-time guests and old friends with the same enthusiasm—and with a Yellow Jacket pride bolder than anything you can buy on her shelves.

“Barclay is the heartbeat of RMC,” explained Gabe Laplante ‘19, who has witnessed this phenomenon for nearly a decade working in the campus store. “People just gravitate toward her. Maybe it’s the unsolicited advice that somehow always ends up being exactly what they needed. She listens without judgment, gives guidance without ego, and leads without needing the spotlight. Whatever that thing is, it’s magnetic. You can’t label it, but you definitely feel it.”

Barclay DuPriest began her journey at Randolph-Macon in 1985. It’s a story she gleefully retells about securing a job at her husband Rob ‘69’s alma mater. How she snuck away from her job as a middle school math teacher at Hanover Academy during a break to come speak with retiring bookstore manager Kathryn Stephens. How she wanted her sons to be eligible for the free tuition benefit afforded to employees of the College. In her interview, she covered for her lack of retail experience with ideas she had gleaned by driving to Farmville to visit the campus bookstores there, and she fudged her admiration for a book of management advice she’d noticed on the desk of Mr. Ball, her future boss.

She secured the position, of course, and set about the work of becoming an institutional fixture.

During her first summer as manager, Barclay found a box of discarded photos from the yearbook and taped them up all over the store. Those photos would become a signature of her office decor, but never again did they feature unfamiliar faces. Gradually, Barclay came to know each of those students, and generations more.

Her legendary ability to recall names, faces, and details has baffled and amazed decades of Yellow Jackets, who often cite Barclay DuPriest as the embodiment of the connected experience that is so core to Randolph-Macon’s essence. Graham Rashkind ’96 recalled getting to know Barclay after years of quick visits to the store with his father and grandfather, who served on the Board of Trustees. “’I thought Barclay had this special thing for you,’” he told his dad, Alan. “And then I realized it was everyone! If you were interested in having a relationship with her, you had one. It wasn’t a matter of if she had enough time. She always had time.”

Though Barclay was a 38-year-old mother of two when she first arrived at RMC, she put up few barriers with her young new friends. “I considered myself to be one of their contemporaries because I was having so much fun!” she explained.  

She judged contests. She arranged skits for major events. She attended parties and admits to more than a few antics that can’t be shared in print!

For each of her four decades, she and her husband Rob have been fixtures at athletic events, performances, lectures, and more. As her relationships deepened, so too did the depth of her engagements. In the late ‘80s and ‘90s, she served as advisor to the Phi Mu sorority, with a bond so deep that the women got special permission from the central Phi Mu office to make her an official member. “She is one of us,” explained Phi Mu Raynor Hutchinson-Dahlquist ‘92, “Whenever we’re with Barclay, we have a glass of pink champagne, and just love all over her.”

Retail, the Barclay Way

Barclay ran the campus store the same way she built relationships—by paying attention. She admits to feeling overwhelmed by parts of her new job in the beginning. “There were nights when I thought, oh boy, I have bitten off more than I can chew,” she said.

Still, she quickly observed that the store needed to be open during more hours when students were available to shop. She heard them when they clamored for name brand items. “They wanted those Champion sweatshirts!” she recalls. “I ordered 144, and they sold out, so I ordered more.” She set up a tent at football games to expand sales, and added products like used textbooks, music, and popular books inside the Brown Campus Center. In Year One, she turned a record profit.

Her husband Rob sometimes joined her on trips to conferences, where she learned about running a campus bookstore. Over time, she grew to be a leader in the National Association of College Bookstores, where she led sessions and wrote articles about integrating the bookstore with campus life. She used her voice to enhance awareness about Randolph-Macon. “I enjoyed representing the College,” she remembered, with a twinkle in her eye. “And I didn’t feel guilty if I exaggerated a little!”

Loss and its Aftermath

As Barclay had hoped, her youngest son Tad enrolled at RMC in 1991 and joined the RMC football team. He was a student, an athlete, and quickly became part of the fabric of campus life.

In July 1992, her boss came to her office with a state trooper. Tad had been killed in a wreck in Richmond.  

The porous boundaries between Barclay’s personal life and professional one melted away. This was a campuswide tragedy, deeply felt. “I can’t say how much this college just rallied behind me,” Barclay reflected. “Everybody just really looked out for us.”

Teammates, coaches, faculty, and students surrounded the DuPriests with care—quiet presence, practical help, and enduring remembrance. The College retired Tad’s football jersey, an honor that acknowledged not only his promise as a player, but the place he held in the community.

Dexter Hurt ‘94, who played football with Tad, remembers a mutual support system. “We were all there for her as much as her for us,” he remembered. When Hurt later received the Tad DuPriest Award, an MVP award selected by teammates, the honor was both a recognition and a continuation of that shared grief.

A Buoy in a Storm

“Despite the tragedy in her own life,” Hutchinson-Dahlquist observed, “she’s turned that into love. Just absolute love.”

Barclay—always in tune with students—had a way of noticing when someone needed that love. She probed. She listened. Then, often, she acted.

For some, the storm was academic or emotional—poor grades, heartbreak, the weight of expectations. For others, it was painfully practical. When money was tight for Dexter Hurt, Barclay wouldn’t hear of him deferring his books. Instead, she opened a tab in the bookstore and told him to take what he needed. “I don’t even remember if she told me what the cost was,” Hurt said later. “Thinking back, I don’t know if she really charged me for all those books.”

When Hutchinson-Dahlquist faced a financial crisis that put her enrollment in doubt, Barclay jumped in. “I didn’t know if I could stay,” she recalled. “Barclay worked the phones. Wow—what an advocate.”

Sometimes, the connection ran even deeper. In 1992, a young student from Ghana, Paul Sekyere-Nyantanki ’93, knocked on Barclay’s door with a simple, devastating introduction: “My name is Paul Nyantanki. I understand you’ve lost your son. I have lost my mom in Africa, in Ghana. I wonder if I might be your son and you might be my mom.”

Nyantanki, who drove a cab on weekends to support himself, became part of the DuPriests’ family. They supported him through his time at Randolph-Macon and beyond, as he went on to medical school at Johns Hopkins.

To Barclay, these moments were not exceptions. They were the work.

Love is a Circle

As the years passed, Barclay’s deep relationships with students she lovingly calls her “children” ripened new fruit. The children of children enrolled at RMC.

Emma Landis ’24, daughter of Lindsay Natale ’91 and Barry Landis ’88, stopped in the campus store after she had enrolled at the College and was flabbergasted when Barclay recognized her from the family’s holiday cards. “I was a little girl in those pictures!” Emma marveled. “How could she know that she was me?”

Barclay’s deep connections with alumni and parents afforded her a special role that she relishes: asking for donations on behalf of the College.

“She’s a natural-born fundraiser,” reflected Interim Vice President for College Advancement Rick Golembeski ’96. “When her name pops up in your inbox or on your phone, you know what the ask is going to be, and you say yes because you love her, trust her, and believe in Randolph-Macon just like she does.”

More than a few Barclay admirers have mused on what Randolph-Macon will be without the woman so many see as its heartbeat in its employ. “I have been asking myself one question ever since I heard Barclay was retiring,” admitted President Michael Hill, who counts himself among those fervent admirers. “And that’s ‘how in the world does RMC make any sense without Barclay in her chair?!’ But then I stopped to think about how her abiding love for all Yellow Jackets is a standard to which we all aspire. And I know she’ll keep her promise to never truly leave us. So we plan to send her off in style and keep the chair handy for whenever she visits! Because it’s not the paycheck that makes her who she is, it’s the love that she will continue to share, and for that I’m beyond grateful.”

The Queen herself promises to keep working the phones, tell anyone who will listen to come to RMC, and to visit campus often. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” she said—just as she has, in one way or another, for more than 40 years.