Scholarship, Garden Gifts Bequeathed by Former Professor

A 1957 Georgia Southern alumnus and 28-year history professor at Georgia Southern, Saunders passed away in December 2008; but along with his legacy of scholarship, he left behind two gifts: the Department of History’s Dr. R. Frank Saunders Jr. Memorial Scholarship and the Botanical Garden’s Smokehouse Garden, which memorializes him and his parents, R. Frank Saunders Sr. and Mollie Lanier Saunders.

“In his will, he set aside grants for the Department of History and the Botanical Garden,” said Saunders’ sister, Betty Saunders Anderson (’59), a retired teacher living in Savannah.

Saunders, who grew up on the family farm east of Portal, Ga., earned both his undergraduate degree and an M.Ed. at Georgia Southern and a doctorate from the University of Georgia. He taught at Georgia Southern from 1968 to 1996.

His father had attended Georgia Southern when it was First District A& M.

Saunders’ love of scholarship was evident in his many published works on regional history and his three-decades-long career as a professor at Augusta State College, Abraham Baldwin College and Georgia Southern. The fully funded endowment specifies that the scholarship will be awarded annually to a junior or senior Georgia Southern student majoring in history and having a minimum GPA of 3.0.

“Frank cared very much about local and regional history, making numerous contributions to our knowledge and understanding of South Georgia, including papers and artifacts for Henderson Library’s Special Collections, a wonderful book on coastal Georgia with friend and longtime collaborator George Rogers, and, shortly before his death, a marvelous folk-life drama to celebrate Portal’s centennial,” said friend and fellow professor Don Rakestraw. “His generous gift to the Department will support our students as they continue to examine the rich past of the nation and region.”

Saunders’ gift to the Garden was inspired by his farm upbringing and strong love of the land, said Anderson. Saunders looked after his mother in her later years and took care of the farm. “Having grown up on a farm just beyond the years of the Great Depression, there was still some of that around when we were growing up and you realized how hard your parents and grandparents had to work to have what they had,” Anderson said. “And as it was passed on to us, we certainly didn’t want to squander it away.

“We wanted to be good caretakers. And he was an extremely good caretaker from the last scrub oak to the tallest pine tree to the little streams that run here and there and the ponds and the lakes,” she said. “Everything was under his supervision. He took the greatest care. He wanted it to be left better than he found it.”