A Family Legacy of Paying It Forward
By Kim Westerman | February 2025
Honorable Lawrence P. (Patrick) Auld, United States magistrate judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, faced a dilemma every Mother’s Day when he searched for a meaningful gift for his mother, lifelong teacher and UWSP alumna Joan Whitford Auld. She would always say he shouldn’t spend money on her, that she didn’t need a thing. So, in 2016, when the 60th anniversary of his mother’s graduation from Wisconsin State Teachers College (now UWSP) approached, Judge Auld cold-called Carie Winn, then the director of development for the College of Professional Studies, and asked if there was a concrete need she could identify for students in the School of Education that a small scholarship in honor of his mother could meet. With that call, the Joan Whitford Auld Future Teacher Award was born to assist students in covering the cost of teacher certification testing. It has since expanded to help UWSP School of Education students cover costs during their student teaching and/or certification process.
Joan Whitford began her teaching career in 1956 at the old Grant Elementary School in Marshfield, Wisconsin. As a condition of the job, the superintendent required that she live in Marshfield, so her maternal grandmother (with whom she had lived since the age of four) sold their home in nearby Spencer, Wisconsin, and they moved into a small rental house in Marshfield. After a few years, she transferred to Marshfield’s new Lincoln Elementary School. She taught several different grades during those early years, eventually settling into second grade, which she always said she liked best because “the kids were young enough that they all still loved their teacher, but they were old enough that none of them cried about being away from home anymore.”
Judge Auld says his mother had two dreams growing up: to be a teacher and to have a family of her own, noting that her ambition to attend college had a low likelihood of fulfillment for a young girl orphaned during the Great Depression in a small rural community. Yet, through hard work and dedication, she achieved her dream of becoming a teacher by the age of 21. Her second dream was fulfilled a decade later when she met and fell in love with Lawrence Auld, a family friend of a cousin-by-marriage who lived in Sumter, South Carolina, more than 1,000 miles away. In 1967, the two married and at the end of the school year she moved, along with her 98-year-old grandmother, to Sumter.
When Judge Auld was born in 1970, and his sister a year later, their mother chose to stay home with them until they started school, and then she began volunteering in their classrooms and working with students who needed extra help, eventually becoming a substitute teacher. Her plans to transition to a full-time teaching job were derailed by a diagnosis of advanced breast cancer in 1981. She underwent extensive surgery and aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments over the next year. Much later, when Judge Auld asked her how she did it, she simply answered, “I knew I couldn’t leave my children.”
And in the fall of 1982, before completing her final chemotherapy session, she took a job teaching a half-day kindergarten class at Willow Drive Elementary School in Sumter. A year later, she took on a full-time position teaching second grade, where she remained until her retirement in 1996. One highlight of those years was the honor of receiving recognition as Teacher of the Year for, among other talents, the ability to help even the lowest-performing students improve their reading and math skills. Not only does Judge Auld honor his mother’s legacy of giving with the scholarship established in her name, but he’s also given her the best Mother’s Day present of all — a way to help future teachers fulfill their dreams of carrying on this critical work.
America Ambriz-Zermeno, a recent scholarship recipient, says, “The scholarship allowed me to continue my education and has been instrumental in helping me prepare for my career as an educator. I am incredibly grateful for the support that has allowed me to pursue my goals and make a difference in the lives of future students.”
Judge Auld says, “Through the scholarship, we hope to support students who have proven their commitment to entering the teaching profession and need some financial assistance to help them complete the final phases of their journey. Supporting UWSP’s mission of educating future teachers allows us to pay forward on that commitment in two ways. First, we can directly help UWSP students pursuing teaching careers. Second, by helping those UWSP students become teachers, we can indirectly help the students they teach.” He adds, “I can’t think of a more fitting gift for the person who was my first and best teacher.”
