Dr. William Hensley Leftwich
Professor of Psychology 1961-1986
Chairman of Department of Psychology, Director of Center for Psychological Services
Comments made by Dr. Fred Anderson of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society, upon the addition of Dr. Leftwich to the University of Richmond Trustee's Honor Roll of Distinguished Faculty, Administrators and Staff, January 8, 2006.
William Hensley Leftwich enjoyed delving into the study of why people act the way that they do. Sometimes we call that field “psychology”. After graduating from Richmond with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, he pursued the PhD at Purdue. In 1961 he returned to alma mater to teach psychology and soon became chairman of the department and director of the Center of Psychological Services. He also began sharing his skills as an administrator and was named as associate dean of the summer school.
In 1973 the still-new president of the University of Richmond, E. Bruce Heilman, selected four vice-presidents who would report directly to the president. Bill Leftwich was one of those four, becoming vice-president for student affairs. As such, he interfaced with every phase of student campus life. He supervised counseling, orientation, career placement, social organizations, activities, health services as well as sharing responsibilities in the area of student housing and food services. It would be easier to list the areas for which he was not responsible. And all the while, he remained a professor of psychology.
Bill Leftwich died twenty years ago this March at a young age of 54. When he was gone - way too soon to be gone, the school newspaper carried the following statement: “For those students who knew him well, Leftwich’s greatest assets were that he listened and cared. He was sensitive to student concerns and worked hard on their behalf. He assumed the role of advisor, administrator and mentor. Perhaps the best thing one can do in life is dedicate himself to an institution that will outlive him in order to better it for later generations."
Pat Teachey, a long-time UR staff member was for awhile secretary to Dr. Leftwich, and she once summarized him in a single sentence: “He loved his alma mater and his family and took such pride in both.” For many of the alumni, faculty, staff and administrators who served this institution over the long years the thought of alma mater and family are very intertwined. For many, the Latin meaning of “fostering mother” placed alma mater, this particular and beloved University of Richmond, whether or not it was the source of their own education and degree, as something akin to family. Some of those honored today had little or no actual blood-kin and they found those family relationships through the University of Richmond. I have known of professors and staff members of this institution who left everything they owned to the institution, thereby repaying every dollar they had earned. UR was their next of kin.
Now for Bill Leftwich, he has family and the UR students and community were just an extended family. The concept of family and the inherent values which are associated with it also spilled over into the classroom. In 1968 Bill Leftwich reported on a series of faculty seminars on teaching and summarized the campus of that period: “Ours is an enthusiastic, dedicated faculty concerned about providing the very best possible instruction for the very best student body.”
Dr. Leftwich was referring to that slice of University history from the Sixties but the same thought could be applied to any decade in the 175 years of the institution. In every age, even from the beginning, the academics were rigorous – the Seminary men of the 1830s studied Latin and Greek and Geometry and Moral Philosophy, Logic and Rhetoric, all of the classics as well as rising before day to work in the vegetable garden. Whenever you talk with one of the students from a distant class, you learn anew that each student generation experienced the best possible higher education for the times and that each student generation excelled to the best of its ability. But what they found here at the University of Richmond was more than academics. They found a place of values where there was a caring staff, administration and faculty, all of whom were concerned about the development of the whole person.