By Dee Richardson//
A mysterious plaque was discovered in the ground between Smith Hall and the Coffman Chapel on Oct. 21.
The plaque was revealed to be a memorial plaque for Blaine Broadwater, a longtime Hood College business manager who died in 1974. He worked at Hood from 1948 to 1974.
KayKay Redden, a senior at Hood, discovered the plaque as she was on her way to work in the Admissions Office.
She first noticed an unusual circle in the grass in August during the first-year move-in, but she didn’t investigate it until Oct. 21.
As Redden crept closer to the unusual circle, she noticed something protruding out of the grass and swiped at it with her foot. It revealed what she first thought to be a headstone.
“I saw the name ‘Blaine’ and a date,” she recounts.
This was enough to prompt Redden to tell her supervisor, who, in turn, notified campus
facilities.
Facilities exhumed the plaque and cleaned it off before taking it to archivist Mary Atwell to be examined. The plaque was so large that it required equipment to remove and transport it.
“When I saw it, I tried to move it and I couldn’t lift it at all,” Atwell said.
One staff member has a background in stonework and would be able to chip away at the concrete surrounding the plaque, Atwell says. Once the plaque is a manageable size, it will be moved to the archives in the library.
According to Director of Advancement Services Krista Schaffert, the plaque cannot be reinstalled as there are pieces of it missing. It is suspected that a lawn mower might have damaged it at some point.
According to an article on the Hood website, the plaque was a part of a memorial blue spruce planted behind Smith Hall in honor of Broadwater in 1979.
Unfortunately, the tree was cut down recently. If one wants to see an image of the tree, one could search Hood College on Google Maps and see it between Smith Hall and the Chapel.
For more information on Blaine Broadwater or Hood College memorial plaques, in general, contact Hood’s archivist Mary Atwell atwell@hood.edu or Director of Advancement Services Krista Schaffert schaffert@hood.edu.
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