67 Years of Partnership
April 2, 2024
The Motlow 2024 SOAR Partnership Submission
The Gleghorn-Dempsey Bank of Lincoln County Generational Partnership
One of Motlow’s greatest friends in Lincoln County was a milkman.
As one of six children, Charles Gleghorn grew up proficient in mule plowing and cow milking. After high school, he enrolled at MTSU and paid his tuition by working for the College’s Creamery Lab, delivering milk. His milk route began before sun-up, often cold and dark, always underpaid, yet deeply enlightening.
Gay Dempsey, Charles Gleghorn, and Conner Dempsey. Three Generations Partnering with Motlow State.
Gleghorn recently shared, “Young people today don’t know it, but in my day, you had your milk delivered fresh from the dairy in glass bottles. I was that milkman. I delivered right to your door.”
No matter how hard he worked, there just wasn’t enough milk in the cows or hours in the day to earn enough to pay for all his college costs. The dilemma left an indelible mark on his psyche. He knew that education was the key to success, but he learned that you could work hard and be dedicated and still not earn enough to own a car, pay tuition, or make rent.
When Gleghorn started college, he didn’t have a car. He hitchhiked the trip from Fayetteville to MTSU every week. Each Sunday afternoon, he’d thumb his way to Murfreesboro, and every Friday evening, he’d catch a ride back to Fayetteville. He’d get as close as he could to the family farm, usually to Fraiser Furniture, and his mother would pick him up. The financial and logistical challenges of pursuing a college education taught Charles the importance of access, funding, and community support.
When he left MTSU before graduation, he landed a job at the local bank. In his new role at Lincoln County Bank, he worked his way up through the ranks. He began as an errand-runner, moved up to teller, and progressed through almost every department, ultimately becoming a successful lender. His work ethic, trustworthiness, family reputation, and community commitment positioned him to grow the bank while helping others launch new businesses, fund municipal projects and start families. His work at Lincoln County Bank evolved into launching and leading the Bank of Lincoln County.
In his personal life, his family farm days evolved into horse ranching, and he hosted horse shows for the local 4-H kids. He cultivated relationships with like-minded leaders committed to addressing civic needs. He also developed a love of golf, an interest he would later share with Motlow.
Intent And Goals of the Partnership: Ensure Access
One of his early calls for community service came from the local community college. Motlow was in trouble.
Prior to 1976, Motlow only had a small footprint in Fayetteville. The College rented space in The Fred’s Building, a storefront on the south side of town square. For Dr. Frank Glass, third president of Motlow State and Dr. Art Walker, then Director of the Fayetteville Center, expansion into Fayetteville had been a labor of love challenged by limited resources. Dr. Glass reached out to Gleghorn for early assistance in developing Motlow-Fayetteville, and Dr. Art Walker would continue that work when he became Motlow’s fourth president.
“They had red ink,” said Gleghorn, the once milkman was now a well-established bank executive able to see the issue from both a personal and professional lens. “Their mission was great, but their cash flow was…not!”
Intent and Goals of the Partnership: Raising Funds & Raising Friends
“It’s not hard to raise money when you have a great mission,” said Gleghorn. “Getting people to give their time and energy is the challenge. We needed to find land, build, and begin again. And that took a lot of time. We also needed everyone to stay focused on the college mission—not their own mission. That took a lot of energy. For every piece of property that we considered, there was one that we didn’t. And sometimes that can make a project as unpopular as it is popular. So, we had to sign on for the hard part too.”
Gleghorn knew that helping Motlow-Fayetteville would have a positive ripple effect on the community he loved. He remembered how hard it was for him to balance work, attending classes, and coping with a long college commute that was dependent upon the kindness of strangers. Redirecting Fayetteville students to Motlow’s larger Moore County campus to save money, or was not an option. He wanted better for other young people.
So, he rallied Lincoln County leaders to do far more than address the College’s current financial situation. He was determined to achieve something far more stable. Gleghorn called for building a permanent Motlow-Fayetteville college campus. He lead the site selection committee, and helped with the financial planning. He led the creation of a great group of leaders who joined the Motlow-Fayetteville Campus Building Committee, including local legends such as James T. Cox, Jerry Mansfield (then Lincoln County Mayor), Al Smith, Ken Sokol, John Ed Underwood (then Mayor of the City of Fayetteville) who all partnered with Dr. Frank Glass, the President at Motlow at the time, as well as Dr. Art Walker, who served as the Fayetteville Center Director.
Building Fayetteville’s first college campus was the beginning of a multi-generational partnership. Gleghorn went on to serve the College’s Foundation Board of Trustees as a member and Chair. In addition to his personal giving, he has shared his love of golf with the College by hosting yearly fundraising tournaments. His leadership also saw the College launch additional tournaments in other parts of the service area. His children grew up working these tournaments and building their own Motlow relationships. In 2024, his family will host its 32nd Annual Charles Gleghorn Golf Tournament benefiting Motlow.
Intent and Goals of the Partnership: Modeling Personal Giving & Diversity of Lasting Support
Recently, Gleghorn’s daughter, Gay Dempsey, took her father’s seat on the Foundation Board and became Chair like her father. In her leadership role, she’s worked to deepen Motlow-Fayetteville’s relationship with key leaders. She’s been pivotal in making introductions to new industries and collaborating with the College on programming, outreach, and enrollment planning.
Together, the Gleghorn-Dempsey generational relationship with Motlow has given rise to:
- A plan for a new campus
- Annual golf tournaments for more than three decades
- The creation of an endowed scholarship and room naming in memory of Dane Evers
- A room naming gift in memory of Joy Gleghorn
- A room naming in honor of the Bank of Lincoln County
- Dempsey family dual enrollment and degree completers
- Bank Employee Giving Campaigns, and more.
Intent and Goals of the Partnership: Program Growth
Dempsey recently helped establish the Motlow-Fayetteville Advisory Board. This group has successfully engaged business leaders in collaborating with the College to recruit more adult workers from local industry so that new degrees can create new pathways toward new leadership roles in local companies. This collaboration is also working to provide more customized non-credit training programs to meet local company needs.
In addition to her public role in spearheading these efforts, Dempsey also gives of her private, quiet time serving the College by moving work forward on scholarships and the Foundation’s financial support for a variety of other programs.
Dempsey has also been an astute and compelling voice in the recent effort to improve Motlow-Fayetteville’s market positioning. A series of space reallocation efforts to centralize student services had, over time, yielded unintended consequences on campus life visibility at Motlow-Fayetteville. That, in turn, seeded a local misperception among community leaders about the quality of campus life. Dempsey was alert and candid in leading discussions toward simple short-term and deeper long-term opportunities for turning the matter into a positive. Her role in facilitating much-needed college-and-community dialog led to a project called Take Back The Front Door, which won Motlow State a Silver Award from the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations (NCMPR).
Intent and Goals of the Partnership: Modeling the Ideals of Partnerships
Dempsey credits her parents for modeling service to others and inspiring her work with the College. Her parents were partners in supporting, saving, and advancing Motlow-Fayetteville. That family narrative came full circle recently as Dempsey leaned in and helped collaborate on the 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Motlow-Fayetteville Campus her father helped create. Faithful to the community service she was raised to fulfill, she ensured that the event was an opportunity to cultivate new college-going aspirations among young people by working with local educators to transport more than 200 high school students to the event.
She also repeated a family pattern of generational service by bringing her son Conner on board to support the event. He served as grill master, rolling up his shirt sleeves and preparing more than 600 burgers to feed the crowd that gathered celebrating Motlow-Fayetteville. For Conner, burger grilling is a joy that is just part of the job. “I like doing things like that. We help out with a lot of community events. It’s our way of giving back.”
At only 28, Conner is learning the family business by learning the family’s community. Dempsey added, “Community is part of our DNA. Service is not just something we do as leaders at the bank. All of our employees are given three days a year to choose a mission work or community project to support.”
Preparing 600 burgers while standing in the hot sun on black asphalt is a pretty serious contribution to a single event— albeit an important community event. It was an appropriate gathering paying homage to past leaders like Conner’s grandfather and celebrating with current leaders like his mother. Collectively, their contributions reflect three generations of Gleghorn-Dempsey’s supporting five college presidents for more than three decades.
Intent and Goals of the Partnership: Setting the Standard
Many students face challenges in completing their degree. Those challenges come in different shapes and orders of magnitude, yet they all matter. Toward supporting every student’s success, Motlow partners with subject matter experts, community leaders, and industries in searching for ways to remove the barriers derailing college completion. In cultivating these relationships, we often find that the individuals who most deeply understand these barriers become our most inspired and committed partners. When Motlow first turned to Charles Gleghorn as a banker, little did we know that our once hitchhiking milkman would so deeply understand the importance of our mission that he and his family would give rise to the Gleghorn-Dempsey Generational Partnership.