{"id":46622,"date":"2023-03-09T14:10:04","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/?p=46622"},"modified":"2024-07-16T00:41:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T04:41:05","slug":"what-she-never-had-laura-allred-79-gives-in-honor-of-her-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/textiles.ncsu.edu\/news\/2023\/03\/what-she-never-had-laura-allred-79-gives-in-honor-of-her-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"What She Never Had: Laura Allred ’79 Gives in Honor of Her Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In 1951, a young woman named Marilyn Wattenbarger graduated from high school with outstanding grades and a stack of strong scholarship recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cMarilyn comes from a splendid background and has inherited leadership qualities of unusual degree. She has always proven herself to be of the highest moral and spiritual character, perfectly reliable in every way. Should any group choose her to be a recipient of their scholarship, their gift would be most wisely placed.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n \u201cShe is a willing worker, eager to learn, and will put her whole heart and soul into her work \u2026 She is a most deserving young lady and I know that any investment in her future will certainly pay dividends to society.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n \u201cIn my estimation, there are few prospects among high school graduates better qualified as a candidate for your annual scholarship than Marilyn Wattenbarger.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Wattenbarger, however, did not receive the scholarship she needed to afford college. <\/p>\n\n\n Instead, her daughter, Laura Allred, did so 23 years later from what was then NC State\u2019s School of Textiles, going on to build a successful career in textile design.<\/p>\n\n\n Now, Allred is creating the Marilyn Wattenbarger Scholarship Endowment, a need-based scholarship in the Wilson College of Textiles aimed toward helping applicants like her mother \u2014 academically gifted students who need an extra helping hand to assist with the burden of costs. <\/p>\n\n\n Wattenbarger grew up in a rural area of California, just a couple hours outside Yosemite National Park. Her parents divorced before she reached high school so she was supported primarily by her mother, an uncommon experience for the 1940s. Because of this, Wattenbarger worked when she wasn\u2019t in school, helping to provide for the family alongside her two sisters. <\/p>\n\n\n Allred \u201979, described a favorite family story about her mother working for a local orchard during World War II. \u201c[She] and one of my aunts entered into a contest to benefit the war efforts \u2014 a competition to see who could slice and remove the pits from apricots the fastest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n It\u2019s no surprise to Allred that her mother and aunt swept the competition, even when facing grown women. \u201cThat\u2019s my mom, she was always striving to be the best at anything she did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n That work ethic continued into high school, where Wattenbarger graduated as salutatorian. She had earned two small scholarships, but with an older sister already in college, those scholarships weren\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n\n\n Instead of heading to college, she got a job at First National Bank as a teller, working to save money toward a college education throughout the year. Wattenbarger continued applying unsuccessfully to scholarships. <\/p>\n\n\n Unfortunately, for the second time, Allred\u2019s mother was not given an opportunity for a life-changing scholarship. By November of 1952, she had married Allred\u2019s father and after his stint in the Air Force, the pair drove across the country to live in his hometown of High Point, North Carolina. <\/p>\n\n\n Allred\u2019s father had also been raised by a single mother, and faced similar financial restraints to Wattenbarger\u2019s family while growing up. But thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was able to attend college once they moved back to North Carolina. <\/p>\n\n\n \u201cHe always credited my mom for his being able to get through college,\u201d said Allred. \u201cShe worked during the day while he took classes, and then helped him study at the kitchen table in the evenings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Despite not earning a bachelor\u2019s degree, Wattenbarger was an intellectual force of nature, constantly learning new things and teaching her three daughters. From sewing to cooking to organic gardening, she knew how to make the most out of the resources they had. But she also knew Spanish and Latin root words, and Allred recalls many family road trips where her mother would quiz her daughters on these subjects. <\/p>\n\n\n She cared deeply about leaving the world a better place than you found it, and it was a lesson she instilled into her children from a young age, both directly and by example. <\/p>\n\n\n Wattenbarger would make sure the Girl Scout troop she led for many years would clean up all the trash at campsites, even if it wasn’t theirs. If land near their home was being developed, she would transplant important flora to a safer location.<\/p>\n\n\n Wattenbarger was also an accomplished painter, and she nurtured her daughters\u2019 creative abilities in addition to their academic ones. Eventually, she took the SATs while Allred was still in high school and earned her associate\u2019s degree in art at Davidson County Community College. <\/p>\n\n\n \u201cMost importantly, my mother taught us to be kind, to give back and reminded us that we could accomplish anything we put our minds to,\u201d said Allred. \u201cI come from a legacy of strong women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n For Wattenbarger\u2019s daughters, education was a top priority. Allred and her sisters all were able to attend college \u2014 thanks to scholarships. <\/p>\n\n\n After graduating from college, Allred\u2019s father began his career in the world of furniture, first in sales, then moving on to designing pieces. \u201cI remember him sketching designs on napkins at our kitchen table, and then seeing those sketches come to life in the furniture market,\u201d said Allred.<\/p>\n\n\n Her father\u2019s sketching paired with her mother\u2019s passion for sewing, textiles and art cultivated a passion for design in Allred. <\/p>\n\n\n She was accepted into the Textiles program in 1975, and received a scholarship that made her attendance possible. Shortly after she received her acceptance letter, she heard that she was also accepted into the College of Design, and so she attended NC State as a double major. <\/p>\n\n\n Even doing summer school twice, the double major had little course overlap and it took four and a half years for Allred to graduate. She worked part-time at Sadlack\u2019s on Hillsborough Street<\/a> to help cover costs, though the road looks much different now than when she attended.<\/p>\n\n\n Her hard work during school quite literally paid off. In Allred\u2019s last year at NC State, she won the Lewis Cramer award, which supported an 8-week study abroad program at the Scottish College of Textiles. And by the time she graduated, Allred said her father would brag to his friends that her entire education had only cost $6,000, thanks to the scholarships she earned. <\/p>\n\n\nThe Life of Marilyn Wattenbarger<\/h2>\n\n\n
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The Road to NC State<\/h2>\n\n\n