Sweet Briar recently received bequests from the estates of two former students totaling more than $4.4 million.

Alice Laubach, a 1935 graduate, specified that her gift of more than $3.1 million be used to support the College’s sciences faculty.

She was a business and technical librarian at the American Enka Co. in Asheville, N.C. She remained in Asheville after retiring from Enka, which became part of Akzona Inc. and later BASF.

The College also has received an unrestricted gift of $1.3 million from the estate of Frances Johnson and James D. Finley II.

Frances Finley was a 1937 graduate of Sweet Briar. James Finley was chairman of the board of Lowery D. Finley & Co. in Virginia Beach, then a family-owned insurance agency. He attended Hampden-Sydney College and graduated from Washington and Lee University with a law degree in 1935. He practiced law and served in the U.S. Coast Guard before joining his family’s business.

The gifts are especially welcome and appreciated, as both will allow the College to service its highest priorities, said Sweet Briar President Elisabeth Muhlenfeld.

“The Laubach [bequest] is important inasmuch as it will support salaries of our professors in the sciences,” she said. “Faculty salaries are the highest priority in the academic arena.”

Because the Finleys made their gift unrestricted for Sweet Briar to use at its discretion, Muhlenfeld believes Frances Finley wanted it to benefit the entire college rather than any one part of it.

[“It’s] a testament to her sense of the value of the education she received here, and the power of the college to provide similar opportunities for women into the future,” she said.

– By Jennifer McManamay, SBC staff writer