"I hope people who receive the Terri Taylor Memorial Scholarship will be inspired to find out who Terri Taylor was, and maybe pick up the guitar and sing a song like Terri could, or draw a beautiful birthday card like Terri could."
As comforting as it is listening to “You’ve Got a Friend,” the 1970s tune written and sung by Carole King and later popularized by James Taylor, the lyrics seem to set an impossibly high bar for friendship:
Winter, spring, summer, or fall
All you have to do is call
And I’ll be there, yes I will
You’ve got a friend
Can anyone truly claim to have a friend who’s up for anything—loyally on standby—every hour of the day in all seasons? Far-fetched as this description may sound, Sewanee alumni who were close to Terri Taylor, C’79, say she was exactly this type of friend. Two decades after Taylor’s sudden death from cancer, Dr. Paul Erwin, C’79, and his spouse, Dr. Renée J. Hyatt, and Frank and Beth Candler Marchman, both C’79, have created the Terri Taylor, C’79, Memorial Scholarship to honor and extend her legacy.
Erwin says he met Taylor while performing singer-songwriter hits at the Outside Inn, a venue formerly located at the current site of the Ayres Multicultural Center. Though both were shy, according to Erwin, they eventually began performing duets. “I think the first song she and I ever did together was James Taylor’s ‘Long Ago and Far Away,’” he says. “Terri did Joni Mitchell’s part.”
A gifted vocalist, Taylor also played the clarinet in high school and taught herself to play the guitar. According to her twin sisters, Janette Taylor Wojciak, C’78, and Carol Taylor Worsham, C’78, “she was an unassuming and down-to-earth performer and the true musician in the family.” Janette and Carol arrived at Sewanee a year before Terri enrolled, giving Terri an early familiarity with the Domain.
Before long, Erwin and Taylor connected with other kindred spirits, including the Marchmans. Their close-knit group grew to a solid gang of nine: “the Cumberland Nine,” as they called themselves. As a natural resources major, Taylor shared a few classes with Paul and Beth, both biology majors. Beth says she and Taylor also bonded over music. “Once, we went to the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and I came back with a T-shirt that said New Orleans Jazz,” Beth recalls. “I was so excited—but I had no clue it was the basketball team!”
Travel became a favorite activity of the Nine, and their trips often involved hiking, caving, or cycling. “Terri loved the outdoors,” Frank says. “[At Sewanee], you could knock on her door and say ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ and boom—she was there.” Wojciak and Worsham credit their parents with encouraging curiosity about nature. When the three sisters were children, their family often went camping. “Our mother taught us not to be afraid of bugs,” Wojciak says.
Given Taylor’s enthusiasm for plants and animals, she particularly enjoyed a systematic botany course taught by Professor of Biology and Sewanee Herbarium founder George Ramseur, P’75, P’78, Wojciak says. Beth has fond memories of the same course—especially the final exam, which involved identifying nearly 100 plants. “I couldn’t wait to wake up and go to that exam,” she says. “It was like Christmas morning to me.” Wojciak and Erwin also cite William Kenan Professor of Biology Harry C. Yeatman, P’79, as a standout in the Biology Department. “He amazed me in the breadth and depth of his knowledge,” Erwin says, noting that Yeatman was a renowned expert on microscopic crustaceans called copepods, and could also expound on subjects as diverse as “bird eggs, Native American arrowheads, and taxidermy.”
After graduating from the University, the Cumberland Nine embarked on careers across the country, but they kept their tight connection. Frank, who majored in English and found his niche teaching and coaching at a private high school in Newnan, Georgia, says the Mountain has never been far from his thoughts. “A lot of our students go to Sewanee, so [when I graduated], I never felt like I was leaving home.” Beth earned a nursing degree from Emory University and served for several years as a public health nurse in southeast Atlanta before stepping back to focus on parenting. Erwin went on to earn graduate degrees from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Johns Hopkins University, and the University of North Carolina, and is now dean of UAB’s School of Public Health, as well as a professor in health care organization and policy.
Taylor used her natural resources knowledge to land a position as a hydrographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In this role, “she helped map the topography of waterbody bottom elevations” in locations throughout the United States, Wojciak says. Later, she received a master’s degree in landscape architecture and worked for the National Park Service in Colorado and Washington State as a historic preservation landscape architect. She also worked in the same field for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In Seattle, she met and married Marshall Peabody, who shared her love of the outdoors, music, and cycling. “He’s very easygoing and was very clearly devoted to Terri,” Erwin says.
The Terri Taylor, C’79, Memorial Scholarship is the second fund that Erwin and the Marchmans have established in Terri’s memory—in 2020, they created the Terri Taylor, C’79, Cornerstone Scholarship. Both scholarships were set up as need-based and directed toward students seeking to major in natural resources. In the early 2000s, the friends also contributed to a scholarship in memory of Charlie Orr, C’79, a member of the Cumberland Nine who died in 1984.
“Scholarships are one of Sewanee’s most pressing needs,” says Associate Vice President for Advancement Terri Griggs Williams, C’81, noting that funding gaps necessitate covering some scholarships with tuition funds and draws on Sewanee’s endowment. “Paul and Renée and the Marchmans have been deeply thoughtful in stepping up from a Cornerstone to an endowed fund, which will strengthen Sewanee in perpetuity while honoring an extraordinary alumna.”
Though Taylor was a focused student, she joined the Cumberland Nine in occasional mischief. “She loved a good joke—and loved playing a good joke,” Frank says. One memorable prank involved blurry, black-and-white photographs, which Taylor and her female friends mailed to Frank, Paul Erwin, and other men in their group. “We each got this strip with white marks,” Frank says. “They looked like dental records.” On closer examination, the recipients of this “special delivery” realized they were being mooned. Frank says it didn’t take long to figure out the prank and exact revenge. “We took the photos to the main entrance of Gailor and put them on the bulletin board for everyone to see—with names underneath the pictures.”
Soon after Taylor’s death, her family and Cumberland Nine friends provided a gift for a memorial stone bench in a tranquil spot behind Johnson Hall, which was Taylor’s dorm for many years. Visitors to the memorial will find an inscribed quotation from the poet and philosopher Henri-Fredéric Amiel:
Life is short, and there is little time to gladden the hearts of those who journey with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Taylor followed this advice well, her friends say. Long before she fell ill, she bequeathed $1,000 to each of the women in the Cumberland Nine for travel in her memory. She also regularly sent greeting cards decorated with her stippling art. “I hope people who receive the Terri Taylor Memorial Scholarship will be inspired to find out who Terri Taylor was,” Frank says. “And maybe pick up the guitar and sing a song like Terri could, or draw a beautiful birthday card like Terri could.” Taylor’s sisters, Janette and Carol, add they hope recipients will value conservation and strive to protect the earth.
Erwin notes the Cumberland Nine is now “minus two, but plus spouses, children, and grandchildren,” and reunions are always special. “We meet up on a fairly regular basis—all of us, together.”
