Her hearing aids are turned as high as the heat in her cozy apartment, but dressed in a navy blue sweater and pearls, she looks lovely. It’s a good day for visitors.
On Valentine’s Day, Virginia Thomas Dickinson Morgan ’39 will turn 99. But in August of 1935, she was headed to college.
Kelly Morgan ’00 leans in close to her grandmother, thumbing through pages of old Battlefield yearbooks. One in particular stands out. Morgan points to a picture of herself – a young woman on the steps of a newly built George Washington Hall.
It’s a black-and-white photo, but with stints as a student and on the staff, Morgan’s Mary Washington memories are filled with color. And with two sisters and two grandchildren – one an orthodontist, the other an attorney – who are also alums, her story comes with its share of coincidence.
Morgan grew up on a Spotsylvania County dairy farm at a time when few women went to college. Still, one by one, she and her sisters, Orene Dickinson Todd ’37 and Norma Lee Dickinson Walker ’41, enrolled at the all-woman State Teachers College in Fredericksburg.
Morgan took typewriting, shorthand, economics, and more, and joined the Alpha Phi Sigma honor society. She served as class treasurer and worked on the then-student newspaper The Bullet and the Battlefield yearbook. A junior when the school’s name changed to Mary Washington College, she helped design the first MWC ring.
She remembers 3-o’clock teas and formal meals in the dining hall, with assigned seats and impeccable standards upheld by notorious Dean of Women Nina Bushnell. “She had very strict rules,” Morgan said. “You didn’t disobey any.”
She and Virginia-Hall roommate, Lucy Oliver Harris ’39, became best of friends, shopping in Fredericksburg, spending time at the amphitheater and treating themselves to ice cream and Cokes at the C-Shoppe. One of their outings – a trip to visit Lucy’s cousin at the then-all-male U.Va. – would set Morgan’s Mary Washington legacy in motion.
That’s where she met James Patterson Morgan, who was “good looking,” she said. They started a courtship overseen by Bushnell, who demanded parent-approved lists of callers and smelled suitors’ breath before allowing them to pick up their dates.
“Of course we couldn’t ride in a car with a boy,” Morgan said.
When the dean couldn’t discourage the romance, national security stepped in. James was called to serve the country as an Army Air Corps navigator in World War II. With her beau away when she graduated, Morgan clung to campus, signing on as secretary to Dean of the College Edward Alvey Jr.
“He was a fine gentleman and always very professional,” Morgan said of Alvey, for whom she would work for six years. “I was very fortunate.”
But love wouldn’t wait for the war. In 1942, when James’ troop train stopped overnight in Springfield, Mass., Morgan was waiting. They tied the knot right then and there.
James returned home safely from the war, and their marriage would span 63 years, until he passed away in 2005. He had transferred from U.Va. to Duke, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, served in the Air Corps Reserves and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He had raised three sons – James Patterson Jr. and twins Jon and Gary – with Morgan, who left her Mary Washington job to be a stay-at-home-mom and later retired from teaching high school in Warren County, Virginia.
It would be Gary’s children, Kelly and Michael Morgan ’05, who would follow their grandmother – and their late great-aunts – to Mary Washington.
On campus, Kelly studied chemistry and reveled in research, working to grow the dental office at Fredericksburg’s Moss Free Clinic. Amazingly, she lived in the same Virginia-Hall space her grandmother had shared with her long-ago roommate, Lucy. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Kelly established Morgan Orthodontics in Lansdowne, Virginia, where she mentors current Mary Washington students. She has a 5-year-old son.
Michael majored in computer science, studied abroad and served in the Peace Corps. Just as Mary Washington transformed from a teacher’s school to a college when Morgan was a junior, it became a university when Michael was in his own junior year. A graduate of The George Washington University Law School, he is an attorney in Calvert County, Maryland.
And there’s one other thing. At UMW, he met wife Erin Weimert Morgan ’04, with whom he would welcome a son just last month, as well as his grandmother’s namesake, Virginia, now 3.
She was there for the recent family visit to Morgan’s assisted-living apartment in Warren County, where the family poured through those Mary Washington memories. Among them was a letter hand-typed by Alvey soon after Morgan left campus – but only in body, never in spirit.
After several attempts to fill her position, he finally had found a promising fit. “I’m so glad,” Alvey wrote. “However, there will never be another Miss Dickinson!”
I was fortunate to not only know Mrs. Morgan, but to graduate from Warren County High School with her sons, Jon and Gary. She offered to show me around Mary Washington College with one of my very good friends. I graduated from MWC in 1972 and my friend in December 1972. She was quite influential in my attending MWC.
I so love this article. The Morgans and my parents were friends. Mr. Morgan and my dad worked together. I had Mrs. Morgan for both English and typing when I was in high school. She was one of my favorite teachers. I am an alumna of MWC…class of ’74.
Former high school typing teacher I loved! Virginia and Jim also dear friends of my parents and whom I grew up with as FMC/Avtex families as well as the Front Royal Country Club Wednesday evening picnics!! Birthday blessings and cheers to a soft spoken and beautiful Southern lady!!!❤️🎉💐
The Morgans were our neighbors on Blue Ridge Avenue when I was a little girl. I was the same age as her eldest son Pat and we were in the same first grade class. As Mrs Morgan had recently had the twins, my mom took Pat and myself to school everyday. Though it has been very long ago, I remember she and Mr Morgan as being very sweet folks.
Happy Birthday, Mrs. Morgan! We think of you often and the wonderful friendship you and my mother, Virginia McCormick, shared.
We hope this birthday is an extra special one for you!
Love,
Ginny and Allan Hammock
I love this lady lots! The Morgan’s were dear friends of my parents (Jim and Irene Corr) and were part of the FMC/Avtex community in Front Royal! Virginia and Jimmy were such a special couple- I have many fond memories of time spent with the Morgan’s-the Wednesday night country club picnics, a dinner party for me when I got engaged, Garden Club and bridge club activities with my Mom, etc. Probably my last memory of Virginia occurred just 3 weeks before my own mother passed away- Virginia agreeed to accompany my mother Irene on a trip to visit cousins in western North Carolina- the trip began with them stopping to eat lunch near Bridgewater VA . After eating they walked to their car and entered 3 white Cadillacs before they found the right one! The trip was full of episodes that we still laugh about today! Virginia later shared with my sister and me that she didn’t tell my mother her correct age because she was afraid my mother would think she was too old to travel ! Virginia and I also shared stories about our common Alma Mater – MWC! So Virginia I wish you the happiest of birthdays and hope you can laugh at these old memories!