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A recent SNAP article announced that Stanly YMCA’s warm-water pool now has a “Peggy’s corner” and plaque honoring Peggy Smith Grigg, a long-time Y member, volunteer and “special ambassador.”
The modest item in the newspaper could not tell the full story of the remarkable woman who received the Y’s thoughtful award.
For many readers, though, memories of Peggy likely are flooding their minds, filling in what the story might have told.
Here are some of mine.
Albemarle High School in the 1950s not only had great football teams and fine teachers — it also had many talented students. Peggy Smith was one of them. Musically, academically and in personal character and integrity, she was among the very best. We all knew it.
In her junior year, in 1957, some of us urged Peggy to run for AHS student body president. She was reluctant as no girl had ever held the post and had doubts about being worthy of it. Finally, she was persuaded to run. Her opponent was outstanding — a fine student and football player, the late Graham Harwood.
Peggy won, making history at AHS and becoming one of the first female students in North Carolina to be elected president of a high school’s entire student body.
After high school, Peggy went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, serving on Honor court and being inducted into the elite honorary society, “Golden Chain.”
She then married former high school classmate David Grigg, who was a Morehead Scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill and a graduate of the Duke University School of Law.
In a stroke of luck for Albemarle and Stanly County, they made their home here, raising two fine sons and contributing enormously to the community and the state.
Peggy was for two decades a revered math teacher at Albemarle Senior High School. Many of her students — and their parents — still praise her ability to make math accessible for them.
Most of all, she has remained a dedicated and active citizen, contributing to the community. Over the years, I have often thought about the qualities that led to her history-making success at AHS and exemplary life. No doubt a key was her unusual sense of — and capacity for — the true meaning of “citizenship,” even in a high school setting. As we all are discovering, it is that quality — caring for the public good — that now seems to be waning. Hers has never wavered.
Not only is there a “Peggy’s Corner” at the Y, there also are “Peggy’s Corners” in the hearts of thousands of students, friends and citizens of Albemarle and Stanly County — all dedicated to Peggy Smith Grigg.
G.C. Wilhoit
Emeritus professor of journalism, Indiana University Media School, 1957 graduate of Albemarle High