Southern 2020

G NKGOES
IN BIRMINGHAM
Fall at Birmingham-Southern is not complete without the ginkgo trees turning
gold and dropping their leaves on the ground near Munger Hall and Stockham
Building. It’s an iconic campus scene, yet some alumni have found a way to take that
experience home.
When Professor Emeritus Dr. Bob Whetstone ’55 retired in 2001, he decided to
collect a few ginkgo seedlings as a retirement gift. From his time as a student to his
service as an education professor and associate dean, Whetstone remembers passing
around stories about the ginkgo and seeing faculty pin the fallen leaves to their
lapels.
“As a going-away present, I went ahead and picked up about eight of those very
smelly seeds and took them home and planted them in pots,” Whetstone says. “I did
that as a memorial of the College.”
That winter, he left the seeds out to freeze on his back porch, and all of them
sprouted. Whetstone kept some for himself and his wife, Jenelle Henley Whetstone
’74, and gave one plant to each of his three children, LuAnn Whetstone Hodges
’82, Mari Whetstone Newton ’89, and Robert Denton Whetstone ’91, all graduates
of the College.
After planting three trees in his yard in Hoover, Ala., and eventually having to
dig up two, one ginkgo tree still stands at least 30 feet tall. He says not even the
ginkgoes that line Hoover’s municipal drive are as tall as his 20-year-old offspring
of the campus ginkgoes. Each of his three children also planted their trees, though
only Newton still lives in the same home as her tree in Vestavia Hills.
These trees symbolize the impact BSC has had on Whetstone and his family over
the past 70 years.
“They look ancient, but they’re actually the same age as me,” Greer Real Tirrill ’79
said about the trees, which were planted the year she was born.
The male and female ginkgo trees on campus were a gift from Mary Griffin Johns
Doster ’52 in memory of Tirrill’s mother, Frances Sensabaugh Real ’55, who passed
away in 1957 at the age of 23. The trees stand as a physical reminder of the family’s
legacy – Tirrill says that, in the 1952 Southern Accent yearbook alone, you can see
her grandfather, Dr. Leon F. Sensabaugh, as chair of the social sciences department,
her grandmother, Mary Holmes Sensabaugh, as the dean of women, and both her
mother and father, Dr. Jack D. Real ’53, as students.
“The trees have become a symbol of legacy and a symbol of giving to a school that
means so much to so many of us,” Tirrill said.
Have you planted a seed from the BSC ginkgo trees, or know someone
who has? We’d love to hear your story and find other ginkgo siblings around
Birmingham. Email communications@bsc.edu.
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