When Sheila Witherington entered the UALR Donaghey Scholars Program in 1988 as part of one of the inaugural cohorts, she was already 37, raising teenagers as a single mother. She had founded and published Neighbors, a South Arkansas regional magazine, from the dream home small farm she helped build with her own hands. She had been one of the first female letter carriers for USPS, published historical features widely, worked as an executive secretary, and edited several publications. She sang with Sweet Adeline’s and a quartet called ArkanStars. She had lived in France for two years as a child. No one in her family had graduated from college.

She asked the Donaghey selection committee if she could simply sit in the classes and do the work—without the scholarship, stipend, or study abroad. She would pay her own way. She just wanted in the room. They admitted her with benefits.

She wrote about experiential study abroad compared to traditional programs before there was any research proving its effectiveness. She simply knew what worked.

She went on to earn an Ivy League Master of Communication Arts from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. She served as Literacy Fellow at the National Center on Adult Literacy, ran political focus groups for Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and directed operations for Dr. George Gerbner’s Cultural Environment Movement, including its founding convention.

She filled her home first with international students, then foster teens. Late in life, she adopted a 10-year-old with special needs.

On January 1, 2003, she was the first security officer to report for work for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, as mandated by Congress after September 11. She was the only woman among twenty-four men.

A severe work injury ended her career and introduced her to the world of Living with Disabilities. She has visited twenty-five countries, continues to study French, and directs an American-French friendship alliance of more than 600 members. Her research interest of thirty years—South Arkansas from 1910 to 1953, and World War II in the Netherlands—has produced a historical narrative now under review by literary agents.

She lives in Denver at Kavod Senior Life, an active community of Jewish Americans, Russian Jewish immigrants, international elders from around the world, and non-Jewish residents, too. She still studies languages, writes stories, and critiques the political landscape.

Her daughter, Carmen Mosley-Sims of Little Rock, graduated from the UALR Donaghey Scholars a few years her and received the Whitbeck Memorial Award for 1999 outstanding graduating senior with demonstrated excellence in scholarship, leadership, citizenship, and character. They were the the first mother-daughter graduates of the program.

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