Dear Dr. Mahony,
Thank you. You have been a guiding light and shining star on this campus since I first got here. Since commencement, I’ve felt like we knew each other personally — like I could go to you with anything and you would offer me advice. Walking down Scholars, seeing you and waving, always brightened my day.
You brought up the morale of the students, drew us closer together and inspired us to do our very best. You believed in every member of the student body at Winthrop and encouraged us to aim high and not be afraid of failure. You told us that failure is what comes before success and that we can look forward to these failures and that we should try to find the lesson in it all.
Thank you for always being open to connecting with us. Getting lunch with you was always just an email away. When I was finally able to sit down and chat with you over lunch in Thomson, I felt like you were really listening to me and offering me advice that you might offer your own children.
A couple of weeks after our lunch, I was showing my grandparents around campus and we ran into you. It was a Saturday and you had just come from the gym and were sweaty and probably wanted nothing more than to shower, but you stood and spoke to my grandparents and I for 20 minutes. Being able to connect with you beyond just my life at Winthrop was incredibly important to me, and showed me that having a connection with people goes further than just the moments when you’re at work.
Thank you for the words you said at your final lecture to us here at Winthrop. It’s hard to not look at those around us and just constantly compare what we perceive about them to be the whole truth. You gave us insight into how that looks for you and the discrepancies between what your life on paper looked like versus what reality really held. I will take your words regarding criticism and surrounding myself with strong people that will support me through my last year at this university and then throughout life.
Thank you for raising the standards of what it means to be a president at Winthrop. You have shown not only the student body, but also faculty and staff what we should expect from anyone in the future — dignity, dedication, connection and success. You achieved so many of your goals and truly made Winthrop a better place, both for current students and for future students. It will be hard for any president to ever compare to the legacy that you will be leaving behind.
Finally, thank you for all the dad jokes and gags. College can be lonely and uncomfortable, but your jokes, whether they’re about grandmas loving you or doing the whoa with a group of students, made this place feel more like home.
I wish you well in everything coming for you and your family. The students at SIU don’t know how lucky they are about to be to have you as their president. But you’ll always be our president. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.
Ever Stand,
Victoria Howard
