Forever Dukies

Connie B. Bishop, BSN’75, DNP’12, a clinical assistant professor at North Carolina A&T State University, has always been a Dukie. Her late father, Bob Bossons, was an assistant football coach at Duke on Bill Murray’s staff in the 1950s and on Mike McGee’s staff in the 1970s. Her mom, Virginia, was the executive assistant for the English department at Duke.

Connie BishopBishop received a full scholarship to Duke and chose to study nursing.

Bishop and her husband, the Reverend Benjamin B. Bishop, D’77, A’97, recently made a bequest commitment to establish a scholarship endowment that will benefit underrepresented undergraduate students at Duke University School of Nursing. In addition, the bequest will support scholarship endowments in two more areas that are close to the Bishops’ hearts: graduate students in Duke Divinity School and student-athletes.

“I have been given so much. I went to school on a scholarship, and I have an obligation to provide money for others to go to school,” Bishop says.

Many of Bishop’s significant life events happened while she was a student at Duke. In 1974, she met her husband at the graduate student center cafeteria near Hanes Hall, where the nursing students lived at the time. They got married in 1976 in Duke Chapel. Bishop also received her nursing cap and nursing pin in the chapel.

She has always maintained contacts with Duke and served as an interviewer for the Duke Alumni Admissions Committee and served as president of the Duke Nursing Alumni Council.

Making a planned gift to Duke was part of the Bishops’ financial planning from the time the Reverend Bishop joined the U.S. Navy after college. “We’ve always given to the Iron Dukes, and I’ve always tried to give to my alumni association. It is just like a fiber of our being,” Bishop says.

To learn more about making a planned gift, contact Anita Stallings at anita.stallings@duke.edu or call 919-385-0062.

By Aliza Inbari

August 23, 2018