Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux '87 (Year Awarded--2007)
“Take time to stop and smell the roses! Your Davidson friendships are definitely not the mere garden-variety sort, but they do need tending. So, send your news. This issue’s theme is flower gardening ….”
So wrote Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux for the class notes section of the Davidson Journal. Then, in typical fashion, sticking closely to her theme, she went on to describe a lawyer as “never a shrinking violet” and babies born to classmates as “offshoots” and “blooms.” For twenty years now, Nelle has served alma mater and her classmates as the Class Notes secretary for the class of 1987. Each issue of the Journal, her classmates still turn immediately to their Class Notes section to read about one another, to be sure, but also no doubt to see what Nelle has come up with this time as her theme.
Nelle came to Davidson from Memphis in 1983, and set out to make her mark on this place from the start. She graduated in 1987 with the Algernon Sydney Sullivan award and her degree in English, having been an active member of Warner Hall, a founding member of Westminster Fellowship, a writer for the Davidsonian and Quips & Cranks, a dedicated participant in the Y-Student Service Corps, a passionate and tireless volunteer at the Davidson-Cornelius Daycare Center, and the list goes on and on. The college wisely forecast Nelle’s impact when, as a junior, she received the George L. Gladstone Memorial award for a student “with potential for future service to mankind, as indicated by leadership, service, and academic record.” During her senior year, Nelle chaired the class gift effort which established the Sesquicentennial Scholarship, the endowment for which now totals more than $88,000.
Recipient of the W.T. Thompson Scholarship at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Nelle earned her Master of Divinity in 1994. From there she found her way to Savannah as Parish Associate with First Presbyterian Church. Wife to Tom and mother of their two beautiful children, Nelle’s energy is spread even thinner these days, but somehow she still finds time to keep in touch with her classmates and to share their news each quarter. Always looking to do more for Davidson, Nelle now serves as the Savannah area alumni chapter president.
For her countless gifts to Davidson College, for the laughter and good cheer she regularly shares along with news from her classmates, for the example of service she sets and others follow, the Davidson College Alumni Association honors Nelle McCorkle Bordeaux, with the Alumni Service Award on the occasion of her 20th reunion, this 28th day of April, 2007.
|
