Gudgers part of Wallace State’s history, success

HANCEVILLE, Ala. — Between the two of them, Dot and Garlan Gudger, Sr., spent 30 years at Wallace State Community College, educating students and building programs as the college grew.
Dot Denning Gudger worked there first, hired in 1965 by Ben Johnson after his appointment to head the new trade school. She had one more year to complete her education at Tennessee Tech and had the experience in the field as a secretary, which is what Johnson was looking for.
“He wanted people with experience,” she said. “I had graduated high school at 16 and went to college. I had almost two years’ experience in business and I got a job in Huntsville during the space boom. I had work experience in college. I had work experience in summers, and all of that added up to the secretarial experience they were looking for.”
In between the time she was hired and her first day on the job, she completed her degree. “I graduated from college one day and started at Wallace the next day,” she said. She was 20 years old. “I had to wear high heels to keep from looking like the students.”
There were seven students in that first class for the business program that Mrs. Gudger taught, using a modified curriculum similar to the one she had at Tennessee Tech. “I just took their two-year curriculum, took out all the chemistry, biology, history, that sort of thing, and stuck strictly to the business courses,” she said. “And then my experience that I had as a secretary all this time added up and I was able to teach what I knew they needed. I’ve always said it’s much easier to teach what you have done, than just what you read about in books.”
Mrs. Gudger said those first instructors at the college were pretty nervous as they prepared to start teaching. Most of them were not educators in the sense that they went to school to teach. The majority of them were tradesmen recruited from the community to teach the skills needed in their particular area.
“What [Johnson] had done is gone into the community and gotten the best welder, the best auto mechanic, the best heavy equipment operator, and I just sort of slid in on the tail end of those folks,” she said. “Betty Mayo was there, Cupp Jackson, Othell Raney, Emmett Lumpkin, Bob Blanton, just fantastic people who knew what they were doing.”
She said Johnson gathered up all the instructors in the break room and had them all share their years of experience. “It added up to over 200 years, so that encouraged us, as he knew it would,” Mrs. Gudger said.
Mrs. Gudger is proud of the work she accomplished in her seven years at the college. She and her colleague Edna Barnett divided up the work to provide the best education to their students, offering three different majors in the business program: accounting, secretarial and clerical. By the time she left Wallace State seven years later, the program had grown to have 40 to 50 students.
“We were very successful, to be honest about it,” she said. “We employed people all over three counties: Blount, Cullman and Winston. We sent a girl to Sen. Bob Wilson’s office; she stayed there as long as she wanted to work. We had one employer in Birmingham that every time he needed someone, he would call us. I felt really good about helping so many girls. They truly knew what they were doing. I still see some of them today.”
Dot Gudger worked at the college until 1972, when her husband was hired as the Dean of Students to assist in the transition from a trade school to a two-year college. She was actually OK with the situation, since before he was hired by the state, they had been planning a move to North Carolina where he’d accepted another job. She later went on to work at Bevill State Community College.
While Mrs. Gudger worked at the college, Dr. Gudger had been coaching high school sports at West Point, Fairview and Cullman. He’d just finished up his doctorate at Middle Tennessee State and accepted a job in North Carolina. Neither of them, however, really wanted to move. “I prayed all the way home because I didn’t want to go there,” Mrs. Gudger said of their trip home after the interview during which her husband accepted the job. Their prayers were answered.
“The division head of post-secondary education was in our community that day and we were actually having a garage sale, getting ready to box everything up and leave and go to North Carolina,” Mr. Gudger said of the day he was hired by the state. “And the superintendent of education for the state of Alabama…walked in our garage and offered me a job that I could stay in Cullman and not have to move. God took it right down to the end, but he took care of us.”
That job was working as a liaison between the state Department of Education and the Senate to help get bills affecting education passed. When the college began working toward transitioning into a junior college, Mr. Gudger said Gov. George Wallace asked if he would like to have a job in Cullman. “I said I would love a job in Cullman.” That job was as Dean of Students for Wallace State, a job he held for 23 years, during which time he worked with Dr. James Bailey, the college’s second president, to grow the college.
“Basically, our job was to take the technical school and add academics and add the junior college phase to it,” he said. “We accomplished that, and it was no easy task. I’ve never seen a man work any more diligently and with such dedication than Dr. Bailey did to make Wallace State, Wallace State.”
Dr. Gudger said the need for a nursing program was the impetus behind the change from a technical school to a college. His experience working with the Senate aided in the process in helping get legislation passed and adding academic courses to the college offerings. He said the college was lucky in the fact that they were able to pull from a pool of educators who had been working at St. Bernard College, which was closing its doors.
“They had some professors out there who were just outstanding professors,” he said. “Dr. Wayne Maddox, Sam Parker, Dr. Wooten, Dr. Johnson…you could have gone out and recruited them forever and not gotten that type of quality instructors.”
Dr. Gudger is extremely proud of Wallace State’s nursing and allied health programs. He said one of the first questions he asks when he meets a healthcare worker is where they earned their degree.
“We have a great college,” he said. “This has created and made Cullman and Cullman County a better place to live all together, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.”
Mrs. Gudger added that the college’s leadership from day one is one of the reasons for its success.
“Each director has had his [or her] own special emphasis in what they’ve done for the Wallace,” she said. “Mr. Johnson began it, motivated us, got the groundwork laid, started a good foundation. Then Dr. Bailey came and he wanted to expand and he did with lots of buildings, lots of programs. Then Dr. Karolewics, she has done a tremendous amount of things. Every time we pick up the paper they’re doing something else and we’re known nationwide. Each of them have their own influence for a very positive way for Wallace.”