Dessert diva Dinah Sprinkle Reece (’66) creates cookbook to benefit Winston-Salem Ronald McDonald House.

Amy Bannister White (’90) delivers turkeys on Thanksgiving and hope throughout the year.

David Morgan’s (’80) second-chance school is getting its own second chance to reach even more youth.

Long before they became esteemed scholars who determine students’ futures and enlighten the world with their research, these professors were humble first-year students at Wake Forest. Like the rest of us, they might have gotten lost or been a little homesick on the Reynolda Campus, but they also discovered a passion for academics at a University famous for educating future teachers. After pursuing years of graduate school, these Deacons went on to get their Ph.D.s (or, in one case, M.D.) and secure tenure at learning institutions both big and small. We selected a few professors from around the country to reminisce, in their own words, about Wake Forest and their path to the academy.

Fourth-grade students of Carrie Cragwall (’07) are Deacons in training.

When the Lost Boys of Sudan fled for their lives, away from torched huts and murdered parents, dodging government militia from Khartoum, swimming deep underwater to avoid the unblinking gaze of crocodiles, inching past lions in thorn-tree scrublands and suffering such thirst that at times urine sufficed for water, Phillips Bragg (’93) knew nothing of their plight. He finds it astonishing that in 1991 he was busy choosing his English major at Wake Forest while Lost Boy James Lubo Mijak was struggling to survive in a southern Sudan camp for displaced persons called Pochalla.

Walking, wandering and study abroad opportunities open one alumna’s window on the world.