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When Martha Mansfield Clement ’48 arrived at Sweet Briar College in the late summer of 1944, the world was at war, and peace was little more than a memory. As she surveyed the pastoral setting, however, with its venerable trees and stately brick architecture, her thoughts were far from the battlefields of Europe.

“I thought it was beautiful,” she said, adding that due to wartime gas shortages she had never visited the college. “It was a really gorgeous place. … I thought, ‘This looks like it will be a lovely place to be.’ ”

Martha Mansfield, Sweet Briar College Class of 1948The love affair that began more than 60 years ago has grown into a lifelong affection for the Sweet Briar community, a devotion that will be recognized on Saturday, May 27, when Clement is honored with the Sweet Briar College Outstanding Alumna Award.

Presented during Reunion Weekend, May 26-28, the Outstanding Alumna Award was established in 1968 and recognizes “alumnae who have given outstanding service to the College in a volunteer capacity.” Since her graduation with a bachelor’s in sociology, Clement has maintained a constant connection to Sweet Briar as a volunteer, staff member and donor.

“I admire what Sweet Briar represents and the education it offers to young women, so anytime I was asked to take on a volunteer job I always said ‘Yes’ and did it willingly,” Clement, now 79 and living in Alexandria, Va., said.

As a volunteer, Clement has served as National Alumnae Admissions Representative Chair; a member of the Executive Board of the Alumnae Association Board; Class Fund Agent; president of the Amherst (Va.) Sweet Briar Alumnae Club; member of the Centennial Awards Committee, and co-chair of the 50th Reunion Class Campaign, which raised a whopping $285,925.

I admire what Sweet Briar represents and the education it offers to young women, so anytime I was asked to take on a volunteer job I always said ‘Yes’ and did it willingly.
Martha Mansfield Clement ‘48

She also served as co-chair of the highly successful 2003 Washington Regional Campaign Event supporting the College’s fundraising initiative, Our Campaign For Her World.

Outstanding Alumna Martha Mansfield ClementOver the years, Clement’s career path has also found its way back to Sweet Briar again and again. After graduation, she taught in Virginia public and private schools for 13 years before returning to Sweet Briar in 1978 to work in the development office, where she was appointed director in 1986.

After retiring from SBC in 1989, she worked as a consultant for Stetson University under ex-SBC vice president for college relations Mark Whittaker. In the winter of 1992, she returned to her alma mater and served eight months as interim director of development.

As a donor, Clement has also shown her commitment to Sweet Briar’s future as a member of the Silver Rose Society and the Williams Associates, having named Sweet Briar College in her will.

In a letter to Clement, alumnae associate president Linda DeVogt ’86 said, “Martha, your devotion to Sweet Briar College has been demonstrated from the day you arrived on campus as a student, through your many years of service as a dedicated staff member, and then as a model alumna volunteer.”

Clement might not have attended Sweet Briar had it not been for her older brother, Paul “Pooch” Mansfield, an attorney in Lexington, Ky., who was acquainted with several Sweet Briar alumnae.

While most of her classmates in Munfordville, Ky., were headed for public colleges, he said “I think you’re a diamond in the rough. You need to go someplace that’s smaller, and if you don’t like it you can come back and go to the University of Kentucky.”

Clement must have had made a similar impression on her daughters – Sweet Briar alumnae Sarah Preston Clement ’75, E. Anne Clement ’78 and Ellen Clement Mouri ’80 – and granddaughter, Sarah Mouri, who graduated May 13 from Sweet Briar.

Sarah Mouri is quick to point out her grandmother’s influence on her decision to attend Sweet Briar. As a child, she and her brother explored the 3,250-acre campus when her grandmother worked in the development office. “My younger brother and I would swim in the lake, run around the dell, and peruse the old bookshop,” she said.

Sarah Mouri '06When it came time to pick a college, however, Mouri was set on William and Mary, much to her grandmother’s chagrin. “My mother said I had to at least look at [Sweet Briar] to make my grandmother happy,” Mouri said. “I was the last of my grandmother’s granddaughters to be able to consider Sweet Briar. Reluctantly, I agreed to go.”

But when Mouri and her mother drove onto campus four years ago, there was something about Sweet Briar that grabbed hold of her and wouldn’t let go. “I can still remember driving onto campus in the spring,” she said. “Everything was blooming and green. It felt like home. That’s the only way to describe it.”

As they walked around campus, learning about the biology program, the low student-to-professor ratio, and the possibility of bringing her horse to college, Mouri said she “started to think of Sweet Briar as a college, versus the place I used to go in the summer to visit my grandmother.”

By the end of the day, Mouri had decided to follow her grandmother’s and mother’s footsteps to Sweet Briar. “[When] my mother and I got back into the car and were driving away, I said, ‘I think I want to go here.’ My mother just looked at me and said, ‘Are you sure? We haven’t even looked at William and Mary yet.’ She urged me to wait and think about it, at least until I had looked at William and Mary, but I was sold,” she said.

“I have since scrounged around the Sweet Briar College Museum and found my grandmother, aunt and mother in old yearbooks. You can’t beat family history and I wouldn’t change my decision if I could.”