By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Betty Rowe Penny.
Contact: 336-334-5371
Posted 4-7-11
GREENSBORO, NC – Betty Rowe Penny, daughter of Robert Alvin Rowe and Leoria Cook Rowe Watson, took a small inheritance from her dad and invested it in the stock market. She watched that money grow until 2005, when she endowed the Betty Rowe Penny Scholarship in the School of Human Environmental Sciences.
“I know this would mean a lot to both of my parents,” Penny says of her gift. “It was a struggle for them to send me to college.”
The Betty Rowe Penny Scholarship, now endowed at $250,000, is designated for students who exhibit financial need and students with majors in Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies, Human Development and Family Studies, Interior Architecture, Nutrition or Social Work.
Penny, a 1959 graduate of Woman’s College, the name UNCG bore before it went co-ed, majored in home economics education. The long-time teacher, wife, mother and grandmother considers that a wise and very practical decision. She studied topics such as home nursing, child development, clothing and textiles, art, home design, parenting and nutrition.
“It’s helped me to better serve my family, my church, my community and my students,” says Penny, who has played the piano since childhood and had planned to major in music. “I can’t think of anything that has made me a better person, a better parent and grandparent. I don’t know of anything I would have enjoyed more.”
Penny lives in Fuquay-Varina with her husband, Horace, a retired banker. Horace, with help from daughter Melinda, breeds and shows Arabian horses. Betty once bred Shetland sheepdogs.
The Pennys have three married daughters – Melinda Canady, Melanie Mangum, and Melissa Murphy —and three grandchildren – Rebekah Mangum, and Austin and Jacob Murphy. They have been married 54 years, which Betty attributes to her skill in the “art of compromise.”
She has a piece of advice for young people, passed down to her children and her students over the years: “Profit from other people’s mistakes. You don’t have time to make them all yourself.”
