C L AS S C O L U M NS
A puppy rescued by Amy Swope ‘07 from a trash pile in Kuwait (inset) grew up to be a healthy and thriving dog (main). Her nonprofit, World Animal Guardians, helps Americans bring their rescued street animals from foreign countries back to the United States for fostering and adoption.
VALIANT EFFORTS
Amy Swope ’07 helps working dogs find their way home from combat zones
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ike members of the Class of 2020, who are homebound due to the coronavirus pandemic, Amy Swope ’07 had a graduation day that turned out very differently than she had expected. At Mary Baldwin, Swope learned “perseverance and professionalism,” as she puts it, as an interior design major who mixed creativity with business sense. She especially appreciated her “Women in Business” course with Professor Claire Kent, and the art critiques she experienced in Professor Beth Young’s class. “In Professor Kent’s class, I felt like I got the professional armor I needed to take on my first job, and Professor Young taught me how to not give up and keep going
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after a tough critique. I learned that the real world will be hard sometimes, especially when you’re committing to something you care about.” Alongside her studies, Swope participated in ROTC at Mary Baldwin and served in the Staunton-based unit of the Army National Guard as an E4 specialist. She had grown up in Augusta County, and many of her fellow guard soldiers were friends she knew from high school and from playing on local sports teams. On the very same week as her Commencement ceremony, her unit was deployed to Baghdad as part of the U.S. troops’ surge strategy in the Iraq War. “It was mayhem. I couldn’t even walk
across the stage. My unit gave me the option of staying home, and I said, ‘No, I’ve been with you guys for five years, and you aren’t going without me.’ Mary Baldwin let my parents get my diploma for me, and I went with my unit.” Earning their college diploma often puts young men and women at a crossroads in their lives. For Swope, her year-long tour of duty in Iraq became a bridge — both to her future career and her future calling. “I’ve always been a driven person, but my service focused that part of me into a drive to be what is really important in the world, to be what the world needs. Service in the military peels away all the layers of things that aren’t as important in life and lets you
