William & Edith Ridington
Annual Lectureship

The Ridington family has generously established an endowed annual lectureship at McDaniel College. Further contributions may be sent to the Development Office.

WILLIAM ROBBINS RIDINGTON (1908 - 1990)

After graduating from Mercersburg Academy in 1926, Bill earned degrees in Classics and Greek from Princeton (A.B. and A.M.) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). He extended his education with study, mostly in archaeology at Middlebury College; the American School and Classical Studies in Athens; the Virgilian Society of America in Cumae, Italy; the University of Birmingham; and the Aegean Institute in Poros, Greece. He also earned a master's degree in vocational guidance and testing from Columbia University in 1953.

After a three-year instructorship at Dickenson Junior College (now Lycoming), he joined the Western Maryland faculty in 1938 and retired in 1973. During this distinguished career, he held membership in ten professional associations, often serving as an officer. He also made contributions to his field in such journals as Classical Weekly and Classical World and was widely recognized as an authority on the origins of ancient Greek athletics and games.

For twenty-six years Bill held the important position of Faculty Secretary. He was also a long-time guidance counselor and administrator of the College testing program; he was a frequent counselor of foreign students and director of a summer Latin Workshop from 1958 to 1965, which attracted students from around the nation. Bill was also instrumental in forming an active chapter of the American Association of University Professors on the Hill.

Bill was a founding father of the Westminster Cooperative Association and was an active participant in the successful drive during the early 1960s to integrate Carroll County public accommodations.

EDITH FARR RIDINGTON (1912 - 1991)

Edie graduated with "Honors in Course" from Mount Holyoke in 1933 with a major in Greek and a minor in archaeology. She earned her Phi Beta Kappa key in her junior year. In 1934 she was granted an A.M. in Greek from the University of Pennsylvania and completed two additional years of graduate study in the classics.

After her marriage to Bill, she joined him as a part-time instructor at Dickinson Junior College until their move to Westminster in 1938. Their four children, Robin, Candace, Jean, and Joy occupied most of her time over the next two decades. In 1957 Edie began her twenty-year career as an adjunct instructor with the classics and English departments, a position she also held at Hood in the mid-seventies. She was named Senior Lecturer in Classics Emerita by Western Maryland in 1988.

She played a major role in establishing a Phi Beta Kappa chapter on the Hill and became a charter member when the chapter was established in 1980. The Edith Farr Ridington Phi Beta Kappa Writing Award, given annually to a graduating senior who writes the best original research paper, was established in her honor in 1991.

Although a long-time adjunct instructor, Edie was certainly not a part-time member of the College community. A mainstay of the Freshman Colloquium program during the Sixties and early Seventies, she was also a dedicated participant in the legendary faculty lunchtime symposia over the years, and in 1981 a permanent faculty lounge in Memorial Hall was appropriately dedicated to the Ridingtons. Her active retirement years were dominated by her twin passions, reading 90 to 100 books and running hundreds of miles each year.