During his eight years as bishop of the North Alabama Conference, William Willimon ’71 M.Div. became increasingly aware of the burden of debt that the men and women he was ordaining into the ministry were carrying. He decided that he needed to do something to help. With his wife, Patricia, he established the William H. Willimon ’71 M.Div. and Patricia Parker Willimon Scholarship Fund at Yale Divinity School. In a nod to his undergraduate alma mater, Willimon asked to give first preference for the fund to Wofford students in need of financial aid.
“There is a long tradition of Wofford graduates coming to YDS,” says Willimon, who established the Willimon Family Endowed Scholarship at Wofford in 2011. “Mine is directly tied to Dr. John Bullard, who was head of the Religion Department at Wofford when I was there. It was rumored at Wofford that if you were an A student, Dr. Bullard would not write a recommendation for you to anywhere else. I found that to be true. When I suggested that I apply to more than one graduate program, he simply told me he was a very busy person and would not write a recommendation for anywhere else. ‘You will thrive there,’ he told me.”
Willimon acquiesced. After graduating from Wofford, the Greenville, S.C., native enrolled at Yale Divinity School, completing his master of divinity degree. His ministry took him to a number of South Carolina Methodist congregations, and then to Duke University, where he was dean of the chapel and professor of Christian ministry until his election as a United Methodist bishop in 2004. He served eight years as the bishop of the North Alabama Conference before retiring and returning to Duke in 2012.