Rowland

Dr. David Rowland’s life is a menagerie of service and science.On the one hand, the former longtime president of Walker College and WWII airman has literally soared to success and tackled the moon by serving his community and country. On the other, the edges of his life have been softened by an avid appreciation of created things: nature, science, family, friends. Collectively, these are the things he is passionate about, and these are the things he has served.

A native Ohioan and graduate of Ohio University in Zanesville, Rowland enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. “I decided to get patriotic and enlist,” he says. “They sent me down [to Alabama] to learn to fly at the University of Alabama.”Fortuitously, a young, bright, lovely coed named Mary Ellen Stinson was a student in commerce school. “I went to a Delta Zeta party on Valentine’s Day. That’s how we met,” says Rowland. The pair spent the next sixty years together, employing the grit that it takes to run a marriage while softening those vital edges of life.After serving four years in the Air Corps, Rowland moved back to Alabama to begin a career in education. He served as principal at Warrior High School in Jefferson County before a few Army buddies suggested that he apply to the presidency of a budding college in northwest Alabama called Walker College.“That was 1956. At the time, we had thirty-two students in one building that belonged to the City of Jasper. Our first order of business was to get the college accredited, and in three years, it was,” he says.As the ninety-two-year-old looks back on his life, it is evident that his time as president (and later chancellor) of Walker College is the figurine that stands the tallest. “When I retired, we had thirteen buildings located on forty acres. We had a sizable endowment and about 1,000 students.”But Rowland is quick to shun atta-boys. Instead, he credits the community that gave him such lasting support. “The community paid for every cent of that school. Jasper dug down and when I left, there was no indebtedness. It was a bootstrap effort. If I presented anything within reason, the Board of Trustees worked to get it done.”Anyone within the orbit of Walker County who understands what Walker College meant to our local communities understands that the college was much more than the brick that supplied ample space and comfort for teaching the curriculums of education. What pumped blood through the college were the people. Rowland. Glen Clem. Winfred Sandlin, Bill Amundson, Vic Canerday, Marcia Adkins, Jerry Dollar, Hank West, Penne Mott, Ben Wall, Duane and Tre Larson, and Harold Short, among others who it is a near sacrilege not to include. Students who embraced the college life, lived in the dorm, cheered and danced, and took pride in their Rebels. They banged on megaphones, purred for athletic teams, mingled in the student center, and furnished the thump of the blue and white.The faculty, as Rowland says, were “intent on teaching” and could have gone anywhere in the country, but understood their call to serve a small coal-mining county in the foothills of the Appalachians. Rowland’s educational influence has been passed through blood lines even, as his son, Allen, and granddaughter, Mary Beth, are professors at the same college that he once led.Although most Walker Countians would invariably connect Rowland with Walker College, his “parallel life” as an Army Reservist of 35 years rises to almost equal importance to him. “I became a colonel in the Army Reserve, specializing in military intelligence. If I told some of the stories about my military service, people in Jasper wouldn’t believe me. The military was a real safety valve for me.”Although Rowland has been retired for over a decade, he continuously occupies his time with things that help him to find purpose in his everyday walk. “I had a pretty good science background. I was interested in wildlife—not partying wild life—but nature.” For eight years, Rowland translated his fascination of birds into short vignettes for the Daily Mountain Eagle. He is also a self-taught wood carver, specializing in birds, Indians, and soldiers, all of which adorn his modest home on Valley Road.Dr. David Rowland has chosen to carve out his niche in our little corner of the world, although at one time potential change beckoned him elsewhere. “After about ten years, there were several opportunities to move, but we had a lifestyle that we liked in Jasper.”With Mary Ellen his ever-solid companion, some time ago the pair began to develop trails near Blackwater Creek. “We had a handbook of toads, mammals, etc. We made a study of it.”Now that Mary Ellen is gone, Dr. Rowland lives alone. He faithfully attends First United Methodist Church and the local Rotary Club. He reads, sculpts, and pours his life into his three children and bundles of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Today, he sits on his sofa and calmly looks out his window and points to the birds. “That one is called the Blue Bird of Happiness. But people mistake that. He’s not happy, he’s fighting his image. He’s entranced with his image.”When all is said and done, and we take a walking trail look at our life, what will we see? Will we see a person that was entranced with his own image? Or will we be like Dr. David Rowland, who realized that service was the only way one can soar free. 78