AU alumni celebrate 50th wedding anniversary on Summerville quad

Lifelong Augustans Lillie and Bill Morris met and dated in high school at the Academy of Richmond County. In 1974, the couple became the first to get married on the campus of what was then Augusta College.

Lillie is a class of 1975 graduate of the College of Nursing, and Bill received his Specialist Education Degree from Augusta College after finishing his undergraduate studies at the University of Georgia.

While the couple hasn’t spent every anniversary at the quadrangle, Lillie said they’ve gone back for the past 10 years, just the two of them to walk around campus and take a photo.

When they saw that their 50^th anniversary fell on a Saturday, the same day of the week they were originally married, they knew they had to commemorate the event with a few more friends and photos.

“We got engaged in December 1973 and set the wedding date for Aug. 3,” said Lillie. “We both enjoy the outdoors, and a friend of ours had just gotten married on the campus at the University of Georgia in one of the garden areas. It just hit me as I walked across that quadrangle every day that it was a perfect setup for a wedding.”

Lillie grew up about two blocks from the Summerville Campus, so when she was a child, Augusta College was an unofficial playground for the neighborhood children.

“The campus was really a part of my entire childhood,” Lillie said fondly. “We used to play in what now is the art department.”

As a nursing student, most of Lillie’s classes were in Fanning Hall on the perimeter of the quadrangle, another spot she and the neighborhood kids used to play around when she was growing up. Lillie walked through the quad every day to get to her classes, so it’s not surprising that when she and Bill decided to get married, she thought it was the perfect spot.

Lillie met with then-President George A. Christenberry to get permission for the event, and the rest is history.