Release date: March 30, 2004
Contact: Elaine Justice, Associate Director, University Media Relations,
at 404-727-0643 or ejustic@emory.edu

Emory Celebrates Inauguration With Torch Relay

What: Torch Relay Celebrating Inauguration of Emory University President James Wagner

Who: Emory faculty, staff, students and alumni

When: Thursday, April 1, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Torch arrives on campus at 4 p.m.)

Where: From Emory's Oxford College campus in Oxford, Ga., to the university's main campus in Atlanta. See below for a description of the route.

Dozens of Emory faculty, staff, students and alumni will carry a flame from the university's Oxford College campus in Oxford, Ga., roughly 37 miles to the Atlanta campus to celebrate the inauguration this week of President James Wagner. The relay-style event will begin at 10 a.m. with a small ceremony at Oxford, then begin the trek to Atlanta.

Kirk Larson, an Emory College alumnus and member of the Atlanta Track Club, charted the course from Oxford to Atlanta and recruited some 30 runners with enough stamina to handle individual segments up to two miles (members of the Emory track team will run as a group over one nine-mile stretch). The route will take runners through parts of Newton and Rockdale counties, following Old Atlanta Highway, past Conyers and Flat Shoals, up Covington Highway and through the neighborhoods of Avondale Estates, Decatur and Druid Hills.

Larson's friend Gary Jenkins, a race organizer and publisher of Georgia Runner magazine, helped with logistics such as contacting police departments in Newton, Rockdale and DeKalb counties. The torches that runners will use are borrowed from the Special Olympics (which holds competitions on campus each year).

Larson will run one of the last legs with his wife, Susan Gantt, assistant professor of psychiatry. Gary Hauk, secretary of the university, will carry the torch through Emory Village and up to the Haygood-Hopkins Gate where he will hand it off to the "eternal spirit of Emory" and unofficial mascot, Lord James W. Dooley. After Dooley walks it though the gate, he will pass it to newly elected Student Government Association President Jimin Kim, who will start the torch's tour of campus. A host of Emory notables will carry the torch about 300-500 meters each.

The flame will be kept on campus overnight before re-emerging for the inauguration ceremony at 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 2, where Wagner will use it to light the inaugural cauldron.

The Wagner inauguration is not the first time a torch has been passed between Oxford and Emory. In 1986 a torch run between the two campuses was a part of the university's Sesquicentennial Celebration.

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