Amazing Grace, the wife of USF's first president

By ANDREW MEACHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published December 18, 2007

Every December, from the late 1950s on, John and Grace Allen sent holiday cards to friends with photos of themselves on an emerging campus: standing on fill dirt, beside block walls or in front of a brand-new building.

The Tampa Bay area had acquired a jewel, a public university. John Allen was its founding president. He depended on his wife for advice and public relations.

"She could stand in front of an audience and speak eloquently and with great insight, and mesmerize the audience," USF president Judy Genshaft said.

"Everybody would walk away in amazement. That's why they called her Amazing Grace."

Ms. Allen died Sunday at John Knox Village in Tampa, where she had lived independently until October. She was 99.

"Everyone at John Knox is mourning her loss, from dishwasher to executive director," said administrator Paula Barbolla.

Ms. Allen picked the school's colors because green and gold flowers looked good on a table. She also weighed in on more serious matters.

"There were a number of attempts to grab the school rather than it being independent," Genshaft said. "She simply was not going to let that happen."

A Baptist minister's daughter, Ms. Allen absorbed thick biographies, fiction, and books about birds, of which she could identify scores of species.

To the end, she knew what New York Times reviewers thought of the latest books, though she reserved the right to skip the sad ones.

"She said, 'I'm old enough to decide if I don't want to read a book if I don't want to,'" said her niece, Christine Chambers, 59.

Her favorite for 2007, Little Heathens, described a farmer's family during the Depression.

She sent her copy to Chambers, with notes in the margins on the similarities with Ms. Allen's own childhood.

She kept three Bibles handy - a King James, a Revised Standard and a contemporary version - so that she could study differences between them.

A childhood illness prevented her from bearing children.

But she took a maternal energy to USF and its students, contributing to several scholarships that bear her name.

Controversies such as the trial of Sami Al-Arian disturbed her.

When Ms. Allen got pneumonia in October, intensive care staff feared the worst.

That time, she recovered.

"Here came Aunt Grace, back with that personality," said Chambers, who stood bedside with her sister, Lynne Beckett. "When the nurse came in, she would introduce us. 'This is my niece, Christine, from Michigan. This is my niece, Lynne, from New York.'

"But her body finally wore out," Chambers said. "It was the end of an absolutely incredible woman."

Grace Allen

Born: June 20, 1908

Died: Dec. 16, 2007

Survivors: Nieces Lynne Beckett, Christine Chambers, Carol Letson, Sandra Strubhar , Marian Wyatt; numerous grandnieces and grandnephews.

Services: Spring 2008, details to be arranged.

[Last modified December 17, 2007, 23:56:04]