The Department of Music recently moved into the renovated and restored Powell Hall, built by WPA funds from the Roosevelt Administration, and was completed in 1940. It was dedicated in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin of third Georgia State Women’s College president Frank R. Reade.
The quotation over the main entrance from Sir Frances Bacon reads: “If a man read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not.”
Since Mrs. Roosevelt’s father and Dr. Reade’s father were friends, he asked her to come to Valdosta and dedicate the new library. The first lady stayed with the Reades and dined with the students. Dignitaries from all over Georgia attended, and 5,000 heard her speech: “In this building you are given an opportunity to study and prepare yourselves for the future … I dedicate this building to interesting youth and the strange world in which you live.”
