An Education at JMU Proves Ageless
Posted on March 20, 2008
A year ago, junior Ibrahim Lamay was in serious jeopardy of losing the opportunity to continue his education at JMU.
A Nigerian native, Lamay was paying out-of-state tuition when his father received a sizable pay cut at his job as an accountant for the Nigerian foreign affairs ministry.
The triple major – who studies international affairs, economics and French – shopped around and applied for scholarships with the JMU Office of International Programs.
“A lot of the scholarships available to international students are not really going to give you anything, because most of them are through outside parties and they’re not really that substantial,” Lamay said.
Shortly after applying, Lamay was notified that he was the recipient of a “substantial” scholarship. Through the generosity of 94-year-old Inez Roop, he received $4,000 in the name of her parents and the Charles S. and Bertha Mast-Graybeal Memorial Scholarship.
Last Friday, students had the opportunity to meet their donors at a luncheon for the most generous and frequent contributors to the school.
Roop, a 1935-graduate of what was then the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg, was recognized at the gathering, along with her late husband, Ralph, for being the first cumulative $1 million donors.
Lamay scoured through the more than 400 guests at the Festival Ballroom for the chance to meet a stranger who cared enough to help somebody she may have never met.
“It was awesome,” Lamay said. “I feel in some ways you feel this is for [the donors] so they could see what they’re doing for the students, but it kind of hit me later that this also is for us. When you see that these people are putting their money, their time and energy into JMU, it makes you not want to take JMU for granted.
“I just wanted to make sure she knew that there was somebody who was grateful for what she did.”
Roop has been grateful too. Over the last eight decades she has continued to give back to JMU and not just with money.
Educated to Educator
Born Inez Graybeal in 1921, she grew up outside of Christiansburg, Va., on an 800-acre farm with her parents, two brothers and a sister. After graduating from Christiansburg High School she was set on going to Randolph Macon Women’s College, but with a brother at Virginia Polytechnic Institute – now Virginia Tech – and her younger sister entering college the following year, Graybeal had to settle on the less expensive school.
“But I only chose Harrisonburg because I had too many cousins from southwest Virginia who went to Radford,” Roop said. “And they would come spend the weekends with us and tell me all the bad things about college. So I said I’ll never go to Radford.”
Education was valued strongly in her family. Her father graduated from the George Peabody College for Teachers at Vanderbilt and her mother from Martha Washington College in Abington, Va. Her father wasn’t able to pursue teaching once he realized two teacher salaries would not be enough to support his family. So he began farming.
Graybeal came to Harrisonburg initially wanting to major in music, but switched to English. The campus was small, consisting only of a few of the buildings that are on today’s Quad.
“Only the main campus [existed] when I was here,” Roop said. “Johnston Hall was in the process of being built. In the last part of my senior year I moved over to Johnston Hall.”
After graduation, she spent a year teaching sixth grade in Covington and two years teaching at Riner High School in Montgomery County. She then married Ralph Roop, a high school acquaintance who graduated from Virginia Tech and got a master’s degree from Cornell University.
Ralph got a job with Southern States, a farming cooperative, and quickly became the head of its petroleum department. They had two daughters, Nancie and Pat, and moved to Baltimore.
“At that time in the middle of the Depression if the one person in the family had a good paying job the other person could not have a good paying job,” Roop said. “So he was well paid with Southern States Cooperative.”
Inez and Ralph both stayed in touch with their respective alma maters and contributed as often as they could.
Return to Dolley Madison University
Forget all of the money she’s poured into JMU; Roop said that her most important contribution happened while a member of the Board of Visitors.
Still active in the school community, Roop was appointed by Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. to the Madison College Board of Visitors for 1974-78 and was reappointed by Gov. John N. Dalton for 1980-84.
As the institution continued to grow, the state was willing to approve an initiative to rename the school as a university.
When the board deliberated over the new name in 1977, many of its members agreed that Dolley Madison – the wife of Founding Father James Madison – would be fitting; Roop found it unsuitable.
“The board was talking about Dolley Madison and we just started having men as students then as day students,” Roop remembered. “OK, now I said we have male students we cant name it Dolley Madison, I move that we name it James Madison. And they voted to accept that.”
Ralph and Inez haven’t seen any of their children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren go to JMU but they continued giving to the school. They split their philanthropic efforts with Virginia Tech, where Ralph went, and Randolph Macon, where their daughters went. Roop did admit that if football games coincided they went to Blacksburg to see the Hokies.
“She could’ve given her money to whoever she wanted to, but for whatever reason she chose JMU, and somehow it ended up with me,” Lamay said.
As the ballroom emptied and Centennial Week came to a close, the closing of a life full of devotion to JMU became a reality for Inez and her daughter, Pat.
“One of the things Mother said to me when we were setting off yesterday from Richmond… was that this was probably her last excursion,” Pat said. “She was really happy that her last excursion would be to JMU.”
Roop lives in a retirement home in Richmond and laughed when Pat retold talked about her mother’s comments.
“I’m 94 years old, soon to be 95,” she said. “And I don’t have much longer to live.”
But Roop will be a staple at JMU for centuries to come, whether in the halls of the building named after her or in the spirit of giving she helped create in what, for her, was just the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg.
