Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 7, 1993 TAG: 9312300016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Long
She knew when she took the job in 1987 that she would be splitting her family. She knew when she resigned last summer, to become secretary of the university at Yale, that she would be reuniting her family - but leaving a place she had come to love.
Lorimer, 41, attended a final reception in her honor last week. The next morning, she flew to Connecticut. She attended her first meeting at Yale, where she earned her law degree, that afternoon. She officially started her job last Friday.
At age 34 she had been chosen Randolph-Macon's first woman president. She arrived with two children ages 5 and 1, and left behind her husband, Ernie, a lawyer in Stamford. For six years Ernie traveled to Lynchburg on weekends to see his family.
``We had our eyes wide open to what it would entail,'' Linda Lorimer said. Early in their marriage, she had worked at Yale and he on Wall Street, and they lived together on weekends. This time, the commuting went on longer, and there were children involved. Finally, it all became too much.
``When you're away throughout the week, leaving on Monday and coming back on Friday, you don't have all the emotional support and benefits of having a family,'' her husband said, in a telephone interview from his office. ``There's a tremendous psychological importance to being a family, and it's hard to convey that down a telephone wire.''
Last spring, at a trustees meeting in New Haven, Richard C. Levin, the university's new president, asked Linda to think seriously about returning to work on that campus. She and her husband talked it over on a holiday in Italy in June, and continued the conversation for several weeks, together and apart, in Lynchburg and Connecticut.
Finally, on the July 4th weekend, at the college president's house in Lynchburg, Ernie asked their son Peter, now 7, what he thought they should do. Peter said, ``I'd like to go to Connecticut. I'd like to be with you more, Dad.''
Lorimer knew that it was time to leave. The decision, she said, was ``heart-wrenching.''
Peter, who was ``prepared to do anything to have a seven-day father,'' was ecstatic, Ernie Lorimer said.
Linda Lorimer had come to the century-old women's college with a resume that would be the envy of many a retiring achiever but with no grand plan. She said she would seek to improve the place little by little. She accomplished great things.
Under her leadership, the school raised $43 million in a capital campaign. It refurbished its campus with $14 million in improvements, and it is halfway through a $3.3 million upgrading of its science facilities. It doubled its endowment, to $65 million, and it has the best academic profile that it has had in 15 years, Lorimer said.
Thirty-five percent of this year's entering class came from the top 10 percent of their high school classes. More than half are receiving financial aid, an average of about $10,000 per student (a year at the college costs $19,100). Seventeen percent of the freshmen are minority students. The school has an enrollment of 723.
Lorimer distinguished herself not only as an administrator and fund-raiser, but also as a human being, several people who know her said. One trustee recalled the way she jumped in to cope with an outbreak of a virus among the students. The president brought in medical experts, as expected. She also pushed a cart full of ice water and other items down dormitory hallways to comfort the ill and refresh those who were helping them.
She taught a course each year on volunteerism and serving the public good. She traveled extensively on behalf of the school, hitting all 58 cities served by USAir, plus dozens more on other airlines.
``She's very highly regarded,'' said William Coulter, an English professor who has been on the faculty for 16 years. ``I admired her energy and her refusal to settle for easy answers to complex questions, and I think there's a pretty strong feeling of regret, although everyone understands the reasons'' for her leaving. ``It really has more to do with family pressures than anything else.''
Throughout her stay, she was a working mother, and for much of each week, a single mother, in many ways. True, she said, it was handy to have a beautiful campus and full athletic layout for her children to use after school, and she did have plenty of help. Still, it was a strain.
``The main metaphor for it is juggling,'' she said, ``finding the time to get new tennis shoes for school, seeing what I could do to get there for the school play, in the morning, searching to find the homework that's always missing.''
Meanwhile, her children, Peter and his sister, Kelly, were growing up, going ``from being little toddlers to rollerblading around.''
``I think we're acutely aware that these are special years for them,'' her husband said, ``and that we wanted to spend more time together as a family before they decided that we were no longer appropriate people to spend time with.''
With a laugh, he added, ``There will be a time when we'll be sort of beneath contempt, and then it will be too late.''
During his wife's presidency, he flew between White Plains, N.Y., and Lynchburg so often that he came to know the ticket agents and flight crews by name. He also became a part of campus life and a follower of the school's soccer and field hockey teams. But the separation was every bit as tough as they thought it would be. Lorimer focused on his work during the week, but it wasn't enough.
When Linda Lorimer accepted the job, she told school officials she could commit only to five years, said Sally Dean, the president of the board.
Lorimer was so talented that ``we all knew that at some point it would be time for her to leave.'' And everyone could see the strain of her commuter marriage.
When the president called and told her of her decision, ``I was not surprised,'' Dean said, ``though I was very saddened.
``We felt we were extraordinarily lucky we had her for that five years, and we're especially pleased that we had her for another year.''
Lorimer expressed her feelings vividly in a letter to the college community last July.
``This has been the toughest decision of my life,'' she wrote, ``because I love Randolph-Macon. I have agonized about this because I felt called to be here, because I have a passion for what we seek to accomplish here ... I regret leaving with so many challenges remaining.''
Last week, on her final afternoon in her office, she called her leaving ``as difficult a separation as I can imagine,'' and said, ``I've been on an emotional roller coaster for the last month.''
She will return intermittently during the fall to continue work on certain projects, and she will attend commencement exercises next spring. Her position at Yale, which she considered accepting before coming to Lynchburg, dates to the 1790s, she said. She is one of the three top officials of the university and is chief adviser, and ``utility infielder,'' to the president.
The responsibilities will be demanding, but the travel requirements will be much less.
Many people in Lynchburg have told Lorimer they expect her to become a college president again, probably of a much larger school, before her career is over. Asked if, in 10 years or so, when the children are nearly grown, she would accept such a job, she responded, ``I would take this college presidency, not just any college presidency.''
She regards the up-the-ladder approach to a career as the masculine model.
``With many women, that's not the way we look at what matters in our lives,'' she said. They value meaning and influence over prestige.
Her devotion to women's colleges, which number 83 nationwide, stems from her days as an undergraduate at Hollins College in Roanoke. She graduated in 1974 as valedictorian, with honors in leadership, as well. Women's colleges, she has said, provide their students with greater opportunities to lead and to develop responsibility than coeducational schools do. Her mission at Randolph-Macon was to give back some of what she received.
Dean said the board took a bit of a chance, but not a big one, when it hired Lorimer at 34. The new president learned her role quickly and was ``excellent at anticipating potential difficulties and defusing them, or solving them, before they became problems.''
``She's a wonderful leader, a wonderful person,'' said Peggy Hicks, the campus switchboard operator, who has worked at the school for 36 years.
``A good role model,'' said Barbara Evans, the assistant to the dean of the college.
``A remarkable asset,'' agreed Larry Bowden, the school's chaplain, who praised her ability to bring out the best in people.
Sitting in her sunny office, casually dressed in a jacket, slacks and a blouse open at the neck, Lorimer laughed and said her six years had a price.
``I have aged like Jimmy Carter,'' she said. ``The wrinkles and the gray hair.''
Certainly, her glory-studded career fits Randolph-Macon's motto, Vita Abundantior, or ``the life more abundant.'' So, she said, does her decision to leave the school. As she put it in her letter last summer, ``I believe that the goal of the liberal arts is to reveal not how to make a living, but how to lead a life ... It is time for me to take my own advice.''
When she was growing up in Virginia Beach, her father, a Navy pilot, and her mother always emphasized that her possibilities were unlimited, she said.
As she agonized over her decision last summer, ``They were very agnostic. They wanted to make sure it was a decision of the four Lorimers.''
But when she told them she had decided to go back to Connecticut, they could not conceal their pleasure at learning she and her family would be under one roof again.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB