LEODELLE AND FLEMING JOLLEY '43Ox-'47M

A lasting commitment to the University

Leodelle Jolley's interest in Emory began more than fifty years ago, when she packed her sixteen-year-old son Fleming '43Ox-'47M off to "Emory at Oxford," as she still calls it. That first acquaintance has long since matured into a lasting commitment to the University, particularly in the area of ophthalmology. In the mid-1950s, she and her daughter, Malinda J. Mortin, became charter members of the Society of Southern Dames, founded to benefit Emory's Department of Ophthalmology (now the Eye Center). Most recently, she made a legacy gift of real estate worth more than $1 million to the Eye Center, where both she and her late husband, Lex Jolley, were cataract patients.

Chapters of the Society of Southern Dames have been established around the country, with three in Florida alone. Last June, at age ninety-one, Mrs. Jolley left her home in Pine Mountain, Georgia, and attended the national meeting of the society in Atlanta. She looks forward, she says, to this year's gathering in Texas.

According to Mrs. Jolley, her pride in her son still lies at the heart of her pride in the University. Upon completing a neurosurgery residency at Emory in 1954, Fleming Jolley began a private practice in Atlanta as one of only eight neurosurgeons in the city. After two years in private practice, he joined the Emory Clinic. His $2 million gift to Oxford College last year supported the renovation of several buildings now collectively known as the Jolley Residential Center.

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