Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080171
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: EMORY LENGTH: Long
And for the most part, he's been there ever since.
He graduated from there in 1971 and went to work the next day as an admissions counselor.
He married college sweetheart Patsi Barnes on the campus a week after she graduated in 1972.
He worked for a Knoxville, Tenn., church briefly, but returned to the school at the start of 1973 to hold a succession of positions leading to his present one as interim president of this college in Washington County about 140 miles southwest of Roanoke.
The school's board of trustees announced his six-month appointment in February, to run things until a successor is named to Charles Sydnor, who left at the end of 1992 to become chief executive of Central Virginia Educational Telecommunications Corp.
Trollinger, 42, seems happily amazed by it all.
"That wasn't part of the plan," he says.
The plan, when he was growing up in Roanoke and taking flying lessons at Woodrum Field, was to go to the U.S. Naval Academy. He had pestered his congressman for an appointment since eighth grade, but a minor medical problem delayed his entry the year he graduated from William Fleming High School.
He decided to continue working at Kmart, as he had through high school, and take classes during the day at Roanoke College. But the Rev. Al Honaker, pastor of Huntington Court Methodist Church, where his family went, told him he should not miss the experience of living on campus.
"He just decided that I wasn't going to stay home and go to college," Trollinger recalled. "And he was just relentless about pushing me to consider Emory & Henry."
Honaker arranged a visit for Trollinger.
"And when I saw the campus. . . . It just fit my image of what a college should look like," Trollinger said. He told his congressman "I'm almost embarrassed to say that I believe I've found where I was supposed to be."
He had barely turned turned 10 in August 1959, when the family moved from North Carolina to Roanoke. Trollinger still remembers a long-ago fishing trip on which his father spoke of college being something that would give the boy more options in life.
"Before I knew what college was, I knew I was supposed to go," he said, "although being the first person in your family to go to college is kind of intimidating."
He ended up with a major in religion and minor in economics with plans for college-level teaching. But jobs were scarce, so he accepted the offer of the admissions counselor job after graduation "and started working for Emory & Henry the very next day."
The next plan was to go back to school after a year. He was accepted at Boston University, but the expenses of living there made him reconsider. Instead, he became youth director at a Knoxville, Tenn., church while Patsi worked at a bookstore in Maryville, Tenn.
At the start of 1973, he came back to Emory as associate director of admissions. By the end of that year, the school's alumni director retired and the alumni association offered the job to Trollinger.
In mid-1981, he became the college's first director of development. "And really that's what I've done since," he said, although his job titles changed to vice president for development in 1985 and vice president for external affairs in 1988.
Much of his work involves fund-raising, not always an easy job.
From 1974 to 1991, annual donations from Emory & Henry graduates rose from $53,120 to $817,668. Giving from all sources went from $372,988 to more than $4.6 million. Emory ranked 21st among the nation's 3,200 colleges in numbers of alumni giving for the last fiscal year.
Part of his success comes from Trollinger conveying his own philosophy of passing on opportunities like those he was given.
"I've got a sense of calling about what I do," he said. "I really believe that everybody has this need and desire in life to make a difference."
The idea came back to him again when he heard himself being quoted by the senior orator at graduation: "What you do for yourself dies with you. What you do for others goes on forever."
The success has spread to other giving areas. The school's first capital fund campaign, launched in 1982, had a $3.3 million goal and brought in $4.4 million.
Emory & Henry launched a second drive almost at once. Now it is closing in on its Sesquicentennial Campaign goal of $20 million by June.
Patsi Trollinger has long been associated with Emory & Henry, too, as public relations director. After undergoing problems with pregnancies and almost giving up on having children, the couple had twins three years ago after 17 years of marriage.
"Kids add a dimension to life that's just not there without them," Trollinger said.
He had similar feelings when he sees new freshman students each year: "You never know when you look at them who's going to be the great writer, researcher. . . . Maybe there's a cure for cancer in this group. . . . Who knows what it could lead to?"
by CNB