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Shepherd University announces 132nd commencement honorees
ISSUED: 28 April 2005
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
304/876-5465
(Shepherd University announces 132nd commencement honorees)
Shepherdstown, WV--Shepherd University will honor three
local citizens at the 132nd commencement on Saturday, May 21. The ceremony
will begin at 1:50 p.m. in the Butcher Center. Admission is by ticket only.
Commencement speaker Mary Clare Eros, Shepherdstown, will receive a
doctor of laws (LL.D.) honorary degree and Dr. James C. Price II,
Shepherdstown, will receive an honorary doctorate of humanities (H.H.D.)
degree. Martinsburg resident Eleanor Pritts will receive the President's
Award.
Eros is the chair of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy
Commission, which is responsible for developing, establishing, and
overseeing the implementation of a public policy agenda for the state's
four-year colleges and universities.
She is the managing member of the Martinsburg office of the law firm of
Jackson Kelly PLLC and has been a member of the firm since 1981. Her
practice areas include banking, corporate, bankruptcy, government contracts,
bonds and financing, leases, business and commercial, legislative services,
contracts, real estate and property law, and intellectual property and
trademarks.
A member of the Berkeley County Bar Association, Eros is the chair of
the West Virginia State Bar's Third Party Legal Opinion Subcommittee of the
Corporations, Banking, and Business Law Committee. She is a member of the
Berkeley County Pro Bono Referral Service and the West Virginia Law
Institute. She has been listed in the guide, The Best Lawyers in America
(banking law), since 1995 and was named a West Virginia Law Foundation
Fellow in 2004. Eros is an adjunct faculty member at the West Virginia
University law school.
She earned a B.A. in English literature from St. Louis University in
1968, attended West Virginia University law school, and earned a J.D. from
Georgetown University in 1981. Eros previously served as a summer intern for
the U.S. Department of Justice in Elkins, a faculty research assistant at
West Virginia University Law Center and Georgetown University Law Center,
and a co-director of the International Language Institute at Davis & Elkins
College. She served in the Peace Corps in South Korea (1969-1971).
A member of the Rotary Club of Martinsburg, Eros is a Paul Harris
Fellow. She is a member of the board of directors of the Contemporary
American Theater Festival, the Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce, and the
Eastern West Virginia Community Foundation. She has served as chair of the
United Way of Berkeley and Morgan Counties Annual Campaign (2001-2002),
president of the Shepherdstown Public Library, and member of the Shepherd
Board of Advisors.
Dr. James C. Price II, Shepherdstown, will receive an honorary doctorate
of humanities degree.
A ninth generation Shepherdstown resident, Dr. Price graduated in 1948
from Shepherdstown High School, attended Shepherd College (1948-1950) where
he studied biology and chemistry, and attended West Virginia University
(1951) where he studied animal sciences. In 1952 he began his studies at
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, and received a doctor of veterinary
medicine degree in 1956.
Dr. Price practiced large animal medicine for 40 years, beginning his
career in Philippi for three years before returning to Shepherdstown to open
a practice. He retired in 1996.
An ordained deacon and elder in the Shepherdstown Presbyterian Church,
Dr. Price served as the moderator of the Shenandoah Presbytery in 1986. He
is a charter member of the Rotary Club of Shepherdstown and a Paul Harris
Fellow.
He was the first recipient of the Mary Hazell Dobbins Outstanding
Alumnus Award from Shepherdstown High School in 1989, and he was named an
Honorary Lifetime Member of the Shepherd College Alumni Association in 1984.
Dr. Price has been commissioned by the local Rotary Club and the
Historic Shepherdstown Commission to write a book on a selective history of
Shepherdstown. His newspaper column "Deja Vues," reflections on
Shepherdstown past and present, appears in the Shepherdstown Observer. He
served as the media liaison for the town of Shepherdstown during the
Shepherdstown Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks in 2000.
In 2004 he received an Excellence in Community Service award from the
National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 2002 Dr.
Price was the recipient of a West Virginia History Hero Award from the state
Division of Culture and History, and in 1999 was selected as historian
laureate by the town of Shepherdstown. In 1998 he received the Jefferson
Davis Historical Award from the West Virginia United Daughters of the
Confederacy. In 1995 Dr. Price received the Historic Preservation Award from
the Historic Shepherdstown Commission, the first time the award was given to
an individual rather than a landmark.
Eleanor Pritts will receive the President's Award, which is presented
annually to a person who has shown exemplary service to Shepherd University
and to the community.
Pritts earned an associate's degree from Potomac State in 1945 and
entered West Virginia University's accelerated law program, earning an A.B.
and an LL.B. in 1948. She was one of three women in her law school
graduating class.
After graduation from law school, Pritts worked as a social worker in
Maryland and West Virginia. She later became a federal government attorney,
first with the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and then with the
Department of the Navy. In 1955 she opened a general law practice in
Martinsburg. She retired in 1995.
A native of Kitzmiller, Maryland, she represented the United States at
the 1936 Winter Olympics held in Garmish, Germany, as a member of the U.S.
Ski Team. She was a member of the U.S. Olympic committee until 1975. Pritts
served as a history and ski instructor at the Stratton (Vermont) School of
Skiing during the winter holidays, training U.S. Olympic Ski Team members
who could not break training during the holidays. She was a qualified member
of the Ski Patrol until 1995.
Pritts has served as president of the Berkeley County Bar Association
and as a member of the Martinsburg Planning Commission Appeals Board and the
Martinsburg Soroptomist Club. She was a longtime volunteer with the Berkeley
County Girl Scouts.
Pritts is a lifelong member of the Scarborough Society, the Shepherd
University Foundation's Friends of the Library group, and is a major donor
to Shepherd University.
-30-HORST
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