MBCNews - $6.5 Million Gift Ignites Ambitious Plan at MBC

$6.5 Million Gift Ignites Ambitious Plan at MBC

2005-07-26
Bertie (née Murphy) Deming Smith — a Mary Baldwin College alumna from Alexandria, Louisiana — has pledged a total of $6.5 million to spur funding for the college’s ambitious 10-year strategic plan, Composing Our Future. Mrs. Smith’s recent gift of $500,000 was matched in 2004-2005 by $1 million from other donors. She has just pledged an additional $6 million over the next three years, to be matched 1:1 by gifts from other donors.
“My pledge to Mary Baldwin is an affirmation of my continuing confidence in the policies and plans of the Board of Trustees and President Pamela Fox’s leadership,” states Mrs. Smith. “She has demonstrated the vision and abilities to continue to lead and improve the college just as those did who preceded her, and to whom we must be grateful.”

“Women’s colleges,” Mrs. Smith continues, “and Mary Baldwin in particular, deserve and must have the same financial support from alumnae families and friends as that given to larger private and public colleges and universities. I convinced my late husband [Dr. John W. Deming] of the fairness of this concept. Equal gifts to his alma mater and mine reflect this philosophy. I invite all of our supporters to consider it.”

The first installment of $2 million will be spent on campus planning and facilities. “A sense of gratitude and optimism prevailed” when the college faculty was informed of the gift, observes Dr. Fox. “Mrs. Smith’s gifts have provided a milestone of forward momentum, an endorsement of our strategic directions, and a renewed spirit on campus.”

Having attended Mary Baldwin for two years in the mid-1940s, Bertie Deming Smith is the sister and aunt of women who have attended Mary Baldwin. Mrs. Smith is an esteemed and much-awarded trustee emerita of the college’s board of trustees having served for more than 30 years until 1996. Among her many gifts, she and her family established the first endowed chair (in business management) created by a woman’s college in the South in 1979.It is her name that graces the Bertie Murphy Deming Hall Fine Arts Center on campus. Her first husband, Dr. John W. Deming, having passed away in 1996, Mrs. Smith is married to Joe Smith, former publisher of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk in Louisiana. Her father founded Murphy Oil Corporation, now in its third generation of Murphy family leadership. She is the mother of two daughters and two sons, and grandmother to 11.
Front image: Bertie Murphy Deming Smith poses in the art studio in the MBC named in her honor.
Image one: Deming Fine Arts Center viewed from the front.
Image two: Students paint in one of the building's art studios.
Image three: A student and professor rehearse in the building's music lab.