Earl and Mary Guthrow

A Richmond native and Hampden-Sydney graduate, Earl was a UVA Engineering graduate student when he met Mary, then a senior at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. While Earl was completing his M.S. in Materials Science, Mary went to graduate school at UC-Berkeley, and after a year of cross-continent letters and phone calls, they were reunited in Philadelphia, where Earl entered Penn Medical School and Mary continued her English graduate studies at Penn. They were married in 1967, in Mary’s hometown, Lubbock, Texas.

With an M.D. and Ph.D. (biochemistry) from Penn, Earl went to Duke for internship and residency in internal medicine, then two years in the Air Force in San Antonio, returning to Duke for endocrinology fellowship and research. Mary wrote her dissertation in between moves and two children and finished her Ph.D. in 1975. As part of a wave of Duke-trained subspecialists settling in Lynchburg, Earl started his endocrinology practice in 1981. Mary was assistant dean of the college at Sweet Briar before joining the R-MWC English faculty in 1986.  Both retired in 2006 and have cherished more time together for friends, travel, volunteering, and family—two sons (one pilot, one engineer), one wonderful daughter-in-law, and two Texas grandchildren.