The campus of Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, is quieter now. Not because classes have stopped. Not because the semester is over. Because a woman who spent decades lifting students up has died. Shirley Anne Hugee passed away on a Saturday at MUSC Health Orangeburg. She was a Claflin alumna, a former student who became a staff member, and for many young people, the reason they stayed in school.
Hugee graduated from Claflin in 1970. She walked across the stage as a student. Years later, she walked back across the campus as an employee. She did not forget where she came from. She understood the struggles that first generation college students face because she had faced them herself. That empathy became the foundation of her life’s work.
She was the Coordinator for Academic Student Support with Upward Bound, a federal program designed to help low income and first generation students prepare for college. Her job was not just to hand out forms or track grades. She listened. She advised. She intervened when a student was about to give up. She celebrated when a student succeeded. She wrote recommendation letters, made phone calls, and stayed late.
Colleagues say she had a gift for knowing when someone was struggling silently. A student who stopped speaking in class. A transcript that showed slipping grades. A phone call that went unreturned. Hugee noticed. She reached out. She did not wait for students to come to her.
President Dwaun J. Warmack issued a statement after her death. He called her loss a major one for the university. He spoke of her contributions to Claflin’s mission and her role in creating a supportive environment for students. His words were shared across social media, where former students posted their own tributes.
One wrote that Hugee had saved her life. Another said she had been the only adult on campus who believed in him. A third recalled sitting in Hugee’s office for hours, not because she had answers to every problem, but because she stayed in the room and refused to leave until the student was ready to keep going.
Shirley Anne Hugee leaves behind her family, her former students, and a university that will not easily fill the space she occupied. She was not a professor who lectured from a podium. She was not a dean who made decisions from behind a closed door. She was a mentor. A quiet force. A woman who believed that education was not about test scores or graduation rates. It was about human beings.
Claflin has lost an alumna, a staff member, and a piece of its heart. But the students she helped are still here. They are nurses, teachers, engineers, and social workers. They are parents who will tell their children about the woman at Claflin who refused to let them fail. That is her legacy. Not a plaque on a wall. But a thousand lives shaped by her patience and her stubborn, relentless kindness.