By Daisha Bunn and Tanya Zanish-Belcher

This past Friday (February 3), Z. Smith Reynolds Library was honored to host a birthday celebration in honor of Dr. Ed Wilson’s 100th birthday (February 1). Nearly 250 visitors came to briefly visit with Ed and Emily in addition to enjoying cake and other refreshments, signing beautiful guest books (created by Preservation Librarian Craig Fansler) with messages for Dr. Wilson, and seeing ZSR’s new exhibit Songs of Wake Forest in Room 424.

Room 424, the current Graduate Student Lounge, was previously Dr. Wilson’s office and the new exhibit features selections from his book Songs of Wake Forest and features poet A.R. Ammons, Dr. B.G. Gokhalé, Chaplain Ed Christman, Dr. Mac Bryan, Dr. Dolly McPherson, and Ms. Penny Niven.

For those of you who could not be with us, here are some photographs from the event, taken by Lyndsie Schlink, WFU Associate Director of Photography.

Special Collections & Archives (SCA) houses the papers of Dr. Wilson and over the past two years, Finley Turner, Archives Assistant, has been working on organizing and preparing his papers for researchers. A special set of donors provided the financial support for this initial part of the Wilson Project, which will be expanded to include the papers of Dr. Wilson’s colleagues. SCA also maintains a web page dedicated to Dr. Wilson where many of his presentations and speeches are available.

Special thanks to all those who assisted and volunteered for the 100th birthday event, including Daisha Bunn, Craig Fansler, and Image360 who curated the exhibit, and the Special Collections/ZSR Team who served as hosts, Stephanie Bennett, Parker Beverly, Daisha Bunn, Craig Fansler, Mary Beth Lock, Jacqui Marroquin, Rebecca May (Registration Coordinator and Cake Wrangler), Megan Mulder, Mel Rutledge, Beth Tedford, Kate Trathen, Hu Womack, and Tanya Zanish-Belcher. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Aramark, the ZSR Dean’s Office, and especially, ZSR Library Dean Tim Pyatt. And thank you to Ed and Emily Wilson, the entire Wilson family, and Portia Griffin!