When Candy Sherman retires April 30, she will take many memories with her, but none will compare what happened on Legion Field in 1983.
Sherman remembers standing on stage in the middle of a then-unfenced and treeless Legion Field, watching as R.E.M. played for a larger-than-capacity crowd; and that was just a typical workday.
The concert was free, and there was no way to limit the crowd because the field had no fence at the time.
“I heard the helicopters flying over, and there were so many people, and I was standing up on the stage and looking out,” she said. “I remembered thinking, this could be the greatest professional error of my life or it could be the best day.”
It turned out to be the best day.
Sherman and her late husband, Barry, moved to Athens in 1981 from Michigan, after he was hired as a telecommunications professor in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Sherman said her husband wanted to come to UGA so he could get involved with the Peabody Awards program, which is administered by the university. He served as the program’s director from 1991 until his death in 2000.
Before coming to Georgia, Sherman earned her master’s degree in counseling and student personnel (now higher education administration) from Western Michigan University. While working on her degree, Sherman was employed at the university’s student activities office, and enjoyed it so much that when she arrived at UGA, she applied for a job in the student activities office, now known as the department of campus life. After two weeks, she was hired.
“It was very serendipitous,” she said. “I always feel like there was some lucky star that was watching over me that got me here and into this department.”
Since 1981, Sherman has held six different positions in the Division of Student Affairs. She first worked for University Union as a program adviser, helping students develop programs and bring entertainers including the Commodores with Lionel Richie, B.B. King, Jay Leno, Rosie O’Donnell, Bob Hope, Michael Moore, Sting and R.E.M., as well as a wide range of films to UGA.
“That was a really interesting job,” she said. “I loved working with those students because they had a really great knowledge and interest in entertainment as well as a desire to learn how to create and promote large scale events.”
After five years of organizing events and working 16-hour days, Sherman left University Union and spent the next 14 years working with various areas within student activities including radio station 90.5 WUOG; the Pandora yearbook; the campus newspaper, The Barker; and Homecoming festivities. In 2000, she opened and now serves as the director of the Center for Leadership and Service and associate director for Campus Life.
Among the programs she now works with are Dawg Camp, a series of weeklong camps that brings new students to campus and introduces them to different aspects of college life, including outdoor activities, community involvement and Athens’ diverse music scene.
Another program, the LeaderShape Institute, held in May, emphasizes leading with integrity and vision development. The weeklong program helps participants work together with a future building focus to develop and implement ideas for their own community.
The love students have for their communities is what Sherman finds most rewarding.
“It has inspired me and is what has kept me coming to work,” she said. “They all want to share and give something back and be better people, and that gives me a lot of hope for the future.”
As for her own future, Sherman said retirement will begin what she calls her “second act.
“I don’t know what that will be,” she said. “I don’t think I will make a good full-time retired person.”
Sherman said she will miss the people, the atmosphere and the work she has enjoyed doing for 27 years.
“Work is work, but if your work also can be what you love, what you can be passionate about, and if you can find meaning in it and know you’re making a difference and giving back on some level, you have it made,” she said.
