Donor Story
Retired Professors Receive the Greatest Gift in Giving Back to UTC
By Chandra Harris-McCray
“Our gifts to UTC are truly what we want to and should do. There is no greater joy than knowing the seeds we planted will continue to grow and make this world a healthier and better educated place. We will never stop working for UTC.”
—Dr. Joe A. Jackson, Former UTC Dean of Libraries
Every step up the staircase marks a moment in time, captured in a photograph, plaque, or award along the wall.
Humility will not allow Dr. Joseph A. and Prof. Mary B. Jackson to dwell too long on any one step of the staircase in their home. They do not care to reminisce on the hows and whys of this or that award.
Merely gliding over the illustrious Phi Delta Kappa’s Educator of the Year Award, Mary fixes her eyes on a black-and-white photo. Never mind that she and her husband were the first couple and she the first woman in Chattanooga to receive the prestigious award in 1990. In the photo, Mary is posed in her nursing corps uniform with her four brothers, who also sported their military uniforms while serving their country. Mary spent three years in the United States Nurse Cadet Corps and another seven as a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps Reserves.
It comes as no surprise, as Mary admits with an innocent laugh, she has a weak spot for those who serve our country. That may be part of the reason she fell for Joe, an Army veteran with a wicked sense of humor, while he was teaching in the Graduate Library School at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
“He kept the science library so nice and orderly,” Mary shyly says of meeting Joe, who served as the head of the science library and acting dean of libraries at the University of Alabama. “I could find every nursing journal I needed. He was watching me, but I did not know it.”
“Or was it you watching me?” Joe quickly quipped.
They were married in 1966. Before they moved to Chattanooga, Joe said metaphorically, “in our covered wagon in 1973,” to pioneer the mammoth tasks of “overhauling the library and Mary establishing the School of Nursing” at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Mary put her nursing experience to good use. She served as an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Alabama—“a place I loved and did not want to leave,” said Mary. Joe shared his wife’s sentiments, so it took three campus visits and much persuasion from the UTC administration before they agreed to return to Mary’s alma mater.
After changing her major three times and receiving a sociology degree in 1954 from UTC’s predecessor, the University of Chattanooga, Mary received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from the University of Alabama.
Mary said, “I did not just become a nurse, but I did so with lots of hard work and great passion.”
With that same tenacious drive, Mary founded the School of Nursing at UTC.
Within the confinement of a broom closet-turned-office and with the help of her secretary (her only staff member), Mary wrote proposals and grants and developed curriculum, all of which became the foundation of UTC’s nursing program. By 1977, the first class of 28 nursing students graduated with a 100 percent pass rate on the state board exam. The awards continued to come—Outstanding Nurse Teaching Award in 1985 and Tennessee Outstanding Nurse Educator in 1987.
The accolades are nice, but “I didn’t do it alone,” Mary said, “I had help from other campuses, colleagues, and staff.”
Librarians, student assistants, volunteers, and an army of capable movers are just some of the myriad number of individuals Dr. Jackson credits with helping him oversee the completion of the $5.4 million T. Cartter and Margaret Rawlings Lupton Memorial Library, constructed in 1974 to replace the aging John Storrs Fletcher Library.
“Some said it would take a miracle for the library to be revamped and become a showcase for a modernized library program. Well, a miracle happened,” said Joe, who grew the library’s collection from 180,000 volumes to more than 1.5 million items before he retired in 1994. He reclassified the library’s holdings, developed a formal library instruction program, earned faculty status for the librarians, and established a permanent archive system for the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
In his 22-year tenure, besides a half-day when he went home ill, Joe never missed a day of work. On campus by 7:30 a.m. every morning, Joe explained, “UTC was our lives. It still is.”
The uncommon generosity of the Jacksons has established a bequest and four endowments. The Dr. Joseph A. Jackson Endowment for Library Faculty Development, the Mary B. Jackson Award for Nursing Students, the Mary B. Jackson Professorship, and the Professor Mary B. Jackson Founders Chair in Nursing all serve to advance higher education training in information science and excellence in clinical practice.
“Someone believed in me,” said Mary, “and I was given a scholarship to attend the University of Chattanooga—that was quite special.”
“Our gifts to UTC are truly what we want to and should do,” Joe continued. There is no greater joy than knowing the seeds we planted will continue to grow and make this world a healthier and better educated place. We will never stop working for UTC.”