Ferrum, VA, February 6, 2026 — The Ferrum College Office of Alumni and Family Relations is organizing a variety of alumni gatherings in different locations this year, including an Alumni Sweetheart Society Valentine’s Event at the College on Valentine’s Day. While anyone married or single is welcome to attend the formal evening planned on February 14, alumni who met at the College are invited to send their sweetheart stories for the College to share.
For example, you can read in histories of Ferrum College that Martha Arnold was the first graduate to receive a four-year diploma in 1976, but did you know that she gave up her place at the top of the alphabet to marry Chip Phillips ’77 and live with him in a house overlooking the campus while he worked as a College staff member for decades? She served the county working in juvenile services before they retired. Ask them about it the next time you see them at a Ferrum ball game.
Jim Chidester ’80 sent the following story about meeting his wife Trish Mays Chidester ’80 during their freshman year.
It was late August 1978 on my first day of classes at Ferrum College. While in my math class, I sat down next to a girl, Janice, who was friendly and we struck up a conversation immediately. After class we decided to go to lunch in Franklin Hall. We were joined by a few of her friends and while we were interacting, a girl came into the cafeteria and a very strange, once-in-a-lifetime situation happened. This girl had an “aura” surrounding her that I had never seen or felt before. I was immediately smitten with her. As she came closer, Janice called her over to our table and introduced Trish Mays as her roommate. I was awestruck! As luck, or should I say divine intervention, would have it, she sat across from me and we immediately engaged in a wonderful conversation about who she was, where was she from, yada-yada-yada.
Unfortunately Trish was in none of my classes and to top that off, I was a commuter student who traveled from Bedford to Ferrum every day, so I did not have a chance to visit with Trish again until the last day of that first semester. You should know that after our first encounter, I would ask Janice about her and she said that Trish had a boyfriend named Joe, so I moved on. As it turned out, on the last day of the semester I was sitting on the stoop at Beckham Hall after meeting with Betsy Flannigan to secure renting her house a few miles off campus starting in January. As divine intervention would have it, that same “aura” showed up coming down the sidewalk past me. It was, of course, Trish. Having the chance at this unplanned, God-given encounter, I had to speak to her. We sat for several minutes getting to know each other better before the winter break.
It turns out that in that next semester she was in three of my classes, History, Religions of the World, and Math! We would sit next to each other in class and I learned that her relationship with Joe had cooled considerably, so I would carry her book bag and guitar to her next classes, getting to know her that much better. The rest is history, or should I say mythology, as we became inseparable. We got married on Valentine’s Day in 1981. We have a relationship that was gifted to us from GOD that we found at our beloved Ferrum, so we never take our gift for granted, EVER!
Forty-five years later, the Chidesters live on a Virginia farm in the foothills overlooking the Blue Ridge and the Peaks of Otter. Current Ferrum faculty and staff have enjoyed meeting them at College events such as Blue Ridge Dinner Theatre plays and the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival. In Facebook Jim describes being “very happily married” and proud of their grown son and daughter.
Happy 45th anniversary to Jim and Trish Chidester!
Click here to send your sweetheart story to Alumni Director Corretta Patterson.
Click here for photos at the 2026 Alumni Sweetheart Society Valentine’s Event.
