Rev. F. Sue Fitzgerald ‘59

From 1963 until her “retirement” in 2005, Rev. Sue Fitzgerald held pivotal and trailblazing roles as the founder and only Director of the Christian Education Center at Mars Hill College in western NC, as one of the first ordained female Baptist ministers to serve in North Carolina, as Minister of Education and interim pastor at Mars Hill Baptist Church, as a teacher of seminary extension courses which gave both pastors and laypeople throughout the region access to religious education, as the founder of a program for handicapped children and adults in the late 1960s in Madison County, as a mentor and teacher to hundreds of college students, as chaplain for Hospice of Madison County, and as the most recent president and director of Madison County Neighbors in Need. During those years, Fitzgerald has received two honorary doctorates, from Mars Hill College and from Wake Forest University. She has been featured in two books about female Baptist preachers in North Carolina.

For twenty years, Fitzgerald was Director of the Center, which provided leadership and ideas as well as an ever-growing and extensive library of audiovisuals, background reading, study materials and guides covering every imaginable church need, and all free for the asking for pastors and laypeople all over the region that is particularly dotted with small churches in need of assistance. She received the Spirit of the Hill Award in 2011.