Two years of scheming, planning, and execution by Bob Ledbetter Sr. ’53 and E. Wright Ledbetter ’85 resulted in a surprise dedication during Alumni Reunion Weekend this past spring of a sculpture for the concourse of the Huffman Center. “During the many efforts to raise the funds for the Huffman Center, my father, Bob Ledbetter Sr., decided that he wanted our family to participate in the Campaign and be a part of this wonderful facility,” Wright Ledbetter said in his remarks during the dedication. “He then decided that he wanted his gift to honor two great Darlington personalities, his wife and her father by naming this concourse the E.L. Wright and Betty Wright Ledbetter Concourse.”
Bob Ledbetter decided to recognize Betty and E.L. Wright further by commissioning a sculpture of the two of them. He chose Julia Trawick Knight T’73, a parent of three current and former Darlington students, to do the sculpture.
“Julia has told me that this is the most wonderful piece she has ever done because it was the most difficult she has attempted to date,” Ledbetter said. Knight made two trips to Italy to work and rework the piece. It is cast of Italian bronze and along with its Italian marble base rises 80 inches. Its scale is one and one-half life size.
“Julia says that my father [Bob Ledbetter] demanded a response from the sculpture that pushed her and brought her the strength to face the challenge,” Ledbetter continued. “RHL’s careful and sincere involvement made her want to work harder and take risks, because she knew he was willing to go the length of the project with her.”
Betty Dandridge Wright grew up on the Darlington campus, first in the McCain house, then the Home-on-the-Hill, while her father, E.L. Wright served first as Darlington’s headmaster for 34 years and then, in 1954, when he became Darlington’s second president. She married Bob Ledbetter, a member of the Class of 1953. “One funny story goes that when my father was courting my mother he would bring her back to Home-on-the-Hill after an evening out and pull around to the back of the house so that he could give her a goodnight kiss,” Ledbetter said. “But always there was E.L. Wright waiting at the back door flicking the porch light on and off signaling to his former student that the evening with his daughter was over.”
Betty Ledbetter has volunteered extensively for Darlington in organizing parents’ auctions, student dances, and alumni weekend barbecues. She helped coach the girls tennis team, contributed photographs of campus life to the Jabberwokk yearbook, compiled slideshows for senior nights, and designed the plastic stadium cups that are still used by the Booster Club today. She has hosted senior picnics, year-end faculty barn parties, and countless reunion parties, including this year’s 50th Reunion party.
She has participated in almost every strategic planning process that Darlington has undertaken over the past 20 years and is currently serving her second tenure as a member of the Board of Trustees. She has accepted an invitation to be the chairman of Darlington’s Centennial Celebration in 2005.
E.L. Wright was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of William and Mary, graduating in 1915 with a degree in English. After a brief teaching position he joined the United States Marine Corps. As a First Lieutenant he sailed for Europe in 1918, but World War I ended before he arrived.
He was invited to Darlington in 1920. After retiring in 1963, he assumed the role of president emeritus until his death in 1974. He married Elizabeth Pope Ramey from Rome, Ga., in 1930, and they had two daughters, Betty Dandridge Wright and Alice Campbell Wright, who married John Turner in the first wedding ceremony held in Darlington Chapel, now named Morris Chapel, in 1958.
In addition to teaching English, Wright was the author of several textbooks on reading comprehension and wrote Darlington’s beautiful Vesper Prayer. It is rumored that he wrote the words to the Alma Mater, and he designed the School’s crest. While at Darlington, he earned a master’s degree in English from the University of Virginia and Davidson College awarded him an honorary doctorate of pedagogy.
He was an active member of the First Baptist Church of Rome where he served as a deacon for many years. He served as head of the Secondary Schools Association, president of the Mid South Association, and a member of the Headmasters Association. He received an Alumni Medallion from his alma mater, William and Mary, for distinguished service and achievement.
Governor Ernest Vandiver ’36 appointed “Dr. Wright,” as his students called him, to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. For Darlington, he led efforts to fund and build Morris Chapel and saved Home-on-the-Hill from demolition.
