Decades of dedication
Dr. Caroline “Calley” Goode Jackson, W’46
Growing up in Dinwiddie County, Va., Caroline Goode dreamed of becoming a doctor and finding a cure for migraine headaches.
“My father had migraine headaches,” she explains, “and I was setting out at a very young age to find the cure. Instead, I ended up having them myself.”
Goode graduated from Westhampton College with a biology major and soon became an assistant professor at the Medical College of Virginia. (MCV eventually required her to earn a Ph.D.)
During six decades as a medical educator, she taught microscopic anatomy for dental students, anatomy for pharmacy students, and embryology for medical students. She retired from full-time work in 1996, but continued teaching part time at MCV until she convened her last class in May as associate professor emeritus.
At Westhampton College, Goode played three sports and was student government president as a senior. The basketball team had a sparkling record of 25-6 during her four years. She also played field hockey and tennis. “If you played three sports, you were given a blazer,” she says. “I was very proud of that.”
Jackson recalls the University’s role in World War II, training people in the Navy’s V-12 program. She also remembers watching with apprehension as the students left on a streetcar to join various military services. “This was wartime,” Jackson says. “We were very tight-knit. Almost everyone had a sibling or someone very close who was serving in the military. We held each other together.”
Jackson’s ties to the University became even stronger when her son, Greer Jackson Jr., graduated from Richmond’s School of Law in 1973. In retirement, she plans to become more involved with UR, and she plans to keep learning about things that interest her, such as religion and art. She never did find a cure for migraines, but perhaps one of her students will.
—Randy Hallman
Lifelong educator
Dr. Martha Hinkle Fleer, W’61
When going back to college, traversing “the distance from ‘Can I?’ to ‘I can!’ is like walking across a river on a slippery log. Martha Fleer pushed me to step out on the other side.”
That testament to Fleer comes from B.J. Buckland, a 1990 graduate of the continuing studies program at Salem College in Winston-Salem, N.C. Fleer served as founding dean of the program, which now enrolls 450 women annually. Thanks to Fleer’s encouragement, thousands of nontraditional students have “stepped out on the other side.” Many of them had been out of the work force for a decade or more.
Fleer helped start the program in 1978 and served as dean of continuing studies and the evening college at Salem until she retired in 1993. Fleer identified with the continuing education needs of women partly because she had stayed home to raise her children before returning to the work force as a counselor at Salem College’s Lifespan Center.
“I understood exactly the challenges those students faced,” says Fleer, who earned her master’s degree in counseling from Wake Forest University while working full time. Later in life, she drove two hours each way each week for five years to earn a doctorate in adult education from North Carolina State University.
At Salem College, grateful graduates have endowed a scholarship in her name for continuing studies students, and last year the college named its Fleer Center for Adult Education in her honor.
Fleer credits Dr. Frances Gregory, professor of history, and Dr. Spencer Albright, professor of political science, for kindling her lifelong passion for history and public affairs. “I came to the University because I knew I would receive an excellent education,” she says. After a lifetime of service, during which she insists, “I gained more than I gave,” she has paid that legacy forward many times.
—Betty M. van Iersel
Incentives to work hard
Chris Crawford, R’78
At Richmond, Chris Crawford studied hard, worked three or four part-time jobs, and refused to listen to naysayers.
That same resolve and work ethic helped take his company, The Corporate Marketplace, to No. 8 on Inc. magazine’s list of fastest-growing software companies in 2007. “We were up almost 20 percent in 2008,” he notes, “and we are forecasting almost 60 percent [growth] for this year.”
Crawford founded the company in North Kingstown, R.I., in 2000 to provide online storefronts for large companies that spend roughly $30 billion a year on employee rewards and incentives. Using proprietary software, the 20 employees at his corporate headquarters can process more than 1 million orders a day without touching a piece of paper. The Corporate Marketplace maintains 20 sales offices around the country and is nearly invisible to most people, but major clients include Amazon.com and American Express Membership Rewards.
Before going into the incentives business, Crawford worked for Junior Achievement in Washington, D.C. His Junior Achievement division won the top award in the country in 1981, and within four years, he was a division president.
“I came from a family that had little, and my father died when I was a sophomore at UR,” Crawford says. So he made the most of the many opportunities the University offered. He credits Allen Fredd, who headed the financial aid department, with helping him in many ways. Crawford worked days in the library for the “incredible” Carolyn Tate and nights and weekends for campus Police Chief Robert Dillard. He was a dorm director and sports editor of The Collegian, and he helped form a Big Brothers program in downtown Richmond.
Crawford advises young people—particularly UR students—“to take advantage of every opportunity and do so with vigor.”
—Pam Feibish
Beating the odds
Kevin Zepp, ’01
In fall 2000, halfway through the first semester of his senior year, Kevin Zepp began feeling severe pain that turned out to be testicular cancer that had spread to his liver, lungs, and stomach. He underwent surgery on the same day he was diagnosed and started chemotherapy the day after that.
During treatment, Zepp traveled to Indiana to see Dr. Lawrence Einhorn, the oncologist who had treated Lance Armstrong. Einhorn concurred with the brutal chemotherapy protocol that Zepp was already undergoing. It was a good call—Zepp has been in remission since 2001. His official medical status now is “scientifically cured.”
Zepp not only beat back the advance of an aggressive cancer, he completed his senior year on time, graduating in spring 2001 with a business degree and a specialty in accounting. He switched his major to business after entering Richmond on a pre-med track. “After my battle with cancer, I knew I would end up in health care in some capacity, probably using my business background in health care administration,” he says. After college, Zepp went to work for a health care lender.
“That experience allowed me to travel across the country and conduct due diligence on various health care providers,” such as hospitals, hospice, and home-health providers, he recalls. “I started to think I could do this myself. I believed in it. If an individual can age in place at home, it’s usually the best place.”
In 2007, Zepp purchased Liberty Healthcare Services, a small, home health care business in New Jersey. Two years later, he has expanded the company from one small office to a statewide operation with four offices and 140 employees. The company’s rapid growth during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression seems unlikely, but Zepp knows a little something about beating the odds.
—Richard Foster
