A Home for His Hopes

For decades Thom H. Spike Terwilliger has been looking for just the right place to honor his mother’s name with a research endowment. Last year, he found it in the Department of Veterinary Medicine (VetMed) at AGNR. The Barbara Holton Terwilliger Endowed Research Fund will carry on his mother’s legacy of advancing animal husbandry and welfare.

Owner of the American Dairy Goat Association pedigreed farm, RaGoChi Bend, Barbara Holton Terwilliger (1935-1983) was affectionately known throughout the Cooperative Extension system as the “goat lady.” Shewas a recognized leader and advocate for the dairy goat industry in the Northeast from New York to Connecticut.

“My mother was a humble and self-less woman who didn’t go to college,” Terwilliger explains. “She raised a large family and ran the farm. Having her name on campus is incredibly meaningful to her success and how her legacy will continue through research in an area that she was passionate about.”

After learning about the scope of VetMed’s work, from genetics to infectious disease and biomedical science, he saw a synergy and a connection with his mother who devoted so much of her life to animals.

“It’s incredibly exciting to be a small part of this program,” he said. “I’ve had the honor of naming four endowments after others. This is certainly the most personal and one that honors the woman who is single-handedly responsible for my being adopted those many years ago from a land far away.”

Terwilliger’s mom grew up in the Catskills in New York, then, when the family settled in upstate New York they ultimately adopted six children. Five of them, including Terwilliger, were adopted from Korea through the Holt Adoption Agency, which his mother read about in Reader’s Digest magazine in the late 1950s.

Terwilliger grew up on the family goat farm and eventually made his way to the military and then the Federal Government, where he retired as a senior executive at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

His autobiographical podcast, The Boy in the Trash Can, is heard in 58 countries around the world. He has several named endowments at four other institutions, including The College of William & Mary, where he earned his Ed.D., the University of Texas at Austin, George Mason
University, and Hanover College.

Along with the endowment, the seminar room inside VetMed’s research intensive building has been named after his mother.

“Naming the seminar room was icing on the cake,” Terwilliger said. “Everyone who has a philanthropic agenda does so with the hope that their passion will make an impact. At Maryland, that hope is a promise—a promise to advance science and the field of veterinary medicine well beyond Maryland.