James Arthur McFarland '52
(Year Awarded--1997)

Some 25 years ago, Jim McFarland stepped forward as a leader among Davidson alumni--about the same time South Carolina tapped him to promote and look after the health of a state notable for prominent Davidsonians. Both his prestige in medicine and the prestige of his college have grown over that quarter century. Teaching at the University of South Carolina Medical School, directing its Hematology and Oncology Division, presiding over specialty medical societies--these are but some outcomes of his Davidson, Johns Hopkins, and Duke training, of his early medical practice in his hometown of Rutherfordton and of his five years teaching at Duke.

In all these places and in Columbia he has worn proudly his Davidson colors: Alumni Chapter President, member of the Columbia DAAP team, a member of Columbia campaign committees during the Davidson 1987 Program and The Campaign for Davidson. An early member of the Ne Ultra Society, he served, soon after its founding, as National Chair of the Annual Fund in 1975, leading volunteers to reach and surpass the largest goal in the Annual Fund's history up to that point. He took on that yeoman service just two years after joining Davidson's Board of Trustees, where he served from 1973 to 1982.

Like many Davidsonians, his life has involved heavy commitments to family, church, and profession. Even so, his faithfulness to his college has remained exemplary--a devotion foreshadowed by his roles as a student, in the band, on the football and baseball teams, with ROTC and campus publications.

Because you have always responded generously and enthusiastically to Davidsons call to service, and because you have made Davidson proud to claim you as her own, the Davidson College Alumni Association honors you, James A. McFarland, Class of 1952, with this Alumni Service Award on the occasion of your Forty-fifth Reunion, April 19, 1997.