Cynthia Haldenby Tyson, president of Mary Baldwin College (now university) from 1985-2003, died on January 7, and is being remembered for the programs she initiated and buildings constructed during her tenure. From my perspective her greatest achievement will not appear on those lists. It was more subtle and harder to document.

I met Cynthia Tyson on the 11th day of her presidency. I was interviewing for the job of chaplain, and I was not at all sure I even wanted the job. I was living in suburban Memphis, and was co-pastor with my then-husband in a new church development project. We had bought a house and made friends. I was also a part-time chaplain at Rhodes College. But the Rhodes job had given me a taste of college chaplaincy, and I liked it.

We met in her office, and I remember saying to her, “I am going to tell you all the things you might not like about me because I don’t want to move my family 700 miles only to discover I am in the wrong place.” I asked her about her plans for Mary Baldwin, adding, “And how are you going to sell people on these plans?” I knew next-to-nothing about the college.

After I left her office, I thought to myself, if that woman hires me after that crazy interview, I should probably work for her. I told friends that I had the definite impression that where the rest of us have bones, she had steel rods running through her arms.

For a number of reasons, not all of which had to do with Mary Baldwin, I took the job. I remained in contact with her until a month before she died in Charlotte. We were not really personal friends. She did not confide in me; she was a private person. But we wrangled over politics and discussed higher education, the role of donors, the psychology of groups and how leadership works or doesn’t

She and I often disagreed. I told her in my interview that we would, but I also said that I fully understood that she was the president, and I was not. She was answerable to the board of trustees, and I was not. So while I would be completely frank with her about my opinions, I understood her responsibilities were different from mine.

Under Cynthia Tyson, Mary Baldwin was a place where you could speak your mind without fear that you would pay a price later. She never, as far as I know, used intimidation or threats as a tool to govern. I appreciated that then, but I appreciate it even more now when in some quarters it is the principal tactic for governing. She managed to garner the respect of those who worked for her without resorting to instilling fear. The atmosphere she created meant Mary Baldwin was a place where freedom of speech, intellectual freedom, freedom of thought were taken for granted.

The students during her time had the experience of living in a community of people where people could be themselves. They are out there somewhere in the world and know that such freedom is possible. They have lived it. I have talked to some of them from time to time, asking them about what we created together and how we lived together in those years. In a time of poisonous polarization, this country needs people who know it need not be this way.

We at Mary Baldwin took this diverse group of people and wove a fabric of respect and trust even though we did not see the world in the same way at all. She led it, and we did it. It was not perfect, but it was a lot better than what has happened at many colleges and universities as well as the disastrous spits in church denominations. Would she have been successful in the much harder environment we currently have? I do not know.

The signature program she created was Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership, VWIL, which was created with money given by VMI people who wanted to keep their alma mater a single-sex school for men. She had to get it through the faculty and sell it to the various constituents of the college. I was not at all sure it was a good idea. I didn’t fight it, but my lack of support was conspicuous. When the program was approved, I went to her and told her that she knew very well that I had failed to support her, and I knew that she had staked her presidency on VWIL. “Where do we stand now?” I asked her.

A lot of presidents would have found a way to get rid of me. They would have seen me as “disloyal.” She did not. She never held it against me, and we went on from there for the rest of her life.

Her politics were notoriously off to the right, and I was just as committed to liberalism. We told each other stories about how we came to our relative positions. Hers had to do with Winston Churchill and mine with growing up in the Jim Crow South. But we stuck it out.

As far as I am concerned, Cynthia Haldenby Tyson’s greatest accomplishment was making it possible for all of us, faculty, employees in every capacity, alumna, and students to live in a community in which we could be ourselves, disagree, but live without fear. I shall always be grateful to her and to the faculty, staff and students with whom I lived.

This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Mary Baldwin president Tyson made true community possible: Columnist