Page 6 - YB2003

Willialll Roberts MeDalliel From our midst, the perfect name ... On January 11, 2002, the trustees announced their unanimous decision to change the name of Western Maryland College. After an intense four-month-long effort to select a new name for the institution, on Friday May 10,2002, President Joan Develin Coley, the Board of Trustees, and members of the College Committee on the Naming Initiative presented the name "McDaniel" to an enthusiastic CoUege community gathered on Memorial Plaza for the much anticipated announcement. The new name, came from William R. "Billy Mac" Mcfraniel, who in many ways personifies the ColJege with which he was associated with for 65 years, from his student days in the late 1870s until his death in 1942. As student, alumnus, professor, administrator, trustee, and parent, his legacy lives on in the men and women who occupy today's classrooms. Presidents called him indispensable. Colleagues respected his dedication to teaching and appreciated the hand he invariably extended to faculty newcomers. His students spoke of his attention to detail, his demanding yet patient way of guiding them through algebra, geometry, astronomy-and in the early years, the exercise he invented: club swinging to music. "There is no royal road to learning," McDaniel once said, "yet the fact remains that the educational pilgrim must travel it, and needs a guide, a counselor and friend." William McDaniel was and will always be all that and more to the thousands of lives he touched and changed. Six decades ago, the trustees seemed almost to foresee the destiny that would be McDaniel's. Saddened by his death, they ended their eulogy to their friend and colleague with these words: "And somehow or other, one feels that the l~fe of William R. McDaniel will be interwoven. into the destiny of Western Maryland College, as his life has been into every decade of its history. For while William, R. McDaniel, the mortal. is gone, William R. McDaniel, the spirit, Lives and motivates the lives of others. "