Werner Pavilion Dedication
On September 8, 2012, Randolph-Macon College dedicated the John B. Werner Pavilion.
The John B. Werner Pavilion at the McGraw-Page Library is named for Trustee Emeritus and Honorary Degree Recipient Dr. John B. Werner ’53. Werner and his wife Anita fund the annual British debaters’ visit to RMC, and they annually sponsor an on-campus performance by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra.
RMC’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter is supported through a generous endowment from the Werners, and at the annual Phi Beta Kappa Induction ceremony, the John B. and Anita S. Werner Award is given to one or two PBK graduating seniors. Additionally, the McGraw-Page Library benefits from a generous endowment set up by the Werners.
The Pavilion is named for Dr. John B. Werner ’53.
Werner Pavilion Dedication Video
The dedication ceremony was led by an invocation from Ashley Roth ’13, a scholar in the A. Purnell Bailey Pre-Ministerial Program for Ordained Ministry. Chairman of the RMC Board of Trustees Alan Rashkind ’69 welcomed guests and shared his admiration for Werner.
“To whom would it be more appropriate to dedicate an addition to the library, the figurative and literal center of a college, than John Werner, among the most stalwart advocates of academic excellence at Randolph-Macon, an institution with which John has been so closely associated for more than 60 years?” said Rashkind.
The John B. Werner Pavilion offers two spaces for faculty and student use. The first floor, named in honor of Hardaway Abernathy ’39, is open 24/7 for student study and will house a small café. Tables, seating and a large table with a flat-screen computer provide a range of study spaces. The second floor includes a high-tech classroom named in honor of Professor Emeritus George Brown Oliver ’49. Construction of the Werner Pavilion was made possible by a lead gift from the Robert G. Cabell III and Maude Morgan Cabell Foundation.
Read President Robert R. Lindgren’s full speech from the Werner Dedication Ceremony.
“The Werner Pavilion stands proudly among both our new and existing structures as a tangible symbol of our mission—our reason for being—to educate the whole student, through gifted teaching, hands-on learning, co-curricular opportunities and superb facilities,” said Lindgren. “The whole student is our singular focus. The Werner Pavilion is another jewel in our campus crown, sending a powerful message that Randolph-Macon is all about learning at the highest level and is an institution on the move.”
George Oliver ’49 came to Randolph-Macon as a student in 1943.
“Like so many of his generation, his studies were interrupted by World War II, but he returned to earn his RMC degree in 1949 and then again in 1950 to begin his long and distinguished faculty career, until his retirement in 1992,” said Lindgren. “Since then he has remained an advocate for the college, and more importantly, its principles, selflessly serving in countless alumni roles.” Lindgren received insight into Oliver’s influence on RMC students when he visited Robert Hawkes ’64 in 2008, shortly before Hawkes passed away.
“Dr. Hawkes wanted to meet with me to describe why he had made a significant bequest through his estate to the college, and he wanted my word that we would use it for a singular purpose: to honor Dr. Oliver. You see, Bob Hawkes had followed the example of his mentor, Dr. Oliver, and went on to become one of the first and longest-tenured members of the History and Art History Department at George Mason University, pausing mid-career to serve as dean of Mason’s School of Continuing and Alternative Learning.
Hardaway Abernathy ’39 is one of RMC’s oldest living alumni.
“Hardaway arrived in Ashland in 1935 from a large family in rural Southside Virginia, and he would become the only child in his family to attend college,” said Lindgren. “He started here in the depths of our Great Depression, and he graduated in 1939, on the eve of World War II. Indeed, 95-year-old Hardaway Abernathy would go on to serve in that Great War and he would interrupt his public-school-education career in the 1950s to serve our country once again during the Korean conflict. He is in my mind a card-carrying member of what Tom Brokaw has so aptly described as the ‘greatest generation.’”
Charles Cabell, president of the Cabell Foundation, spoke of his admiration for Werner, who worked with the Foundation’s trustees for 14 years as the group’s executive director.
“I believe that every person meets about five people in his or her lifetime that make a long-lasting impression on them,” said Cabell, “and John, you are one of my five. Randolph-Macon College is well known for attracting special people like John, but even more admired for taking ordinary folks and turning those ordinary people into people like John.”
RMC Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs William Franz talked about the positive impact that the new Werner Pavilion is already having on Randolph-Macon students.
“John, it is especially fitting that this place, a place for students striving to achieve excellence, bears your name.” Franz added, “The Werner Pavilion stands as a limestone-and-glass monument of this great college’s commitment to excellence in everything we do.”
RMC also held a dedication for the new Day Field on September 8, 2012.
