Sam Gladding, who counseled the survivors of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, died Monday in Winston-Salem. He was 76.
Gladding, a professor in the department of counseling at Wake Forest University, died of complications of brain cancer at Trellis Supportive Care, said his wife, Claire Gladding.
Claire Gladding said she will remember her husband’s humor and “his sincere regard and love for other people.”
He “really wanted to help people,” she said Tuesday.
After the terrorist attack destroyed the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people in September 2001, Gladding traveled to New York and counseled about 200 people.
At that time, Gladding was the associate provost and director of counseling education at Wake Forest. He spent a week at a victims’ assistance center in midtown Manhattan and returned to Winston-Salem on Oct. 1, 2001.
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“These were people who up until this point had hope,” Gladding told the Journal in October 2001. “My job specifically was to help them deal with that grief and that reality.”
Gladding said his experiences in New York did nothing to shake his faith in God. Deranged and misguided people do evil in the world, he said.
“This has also strengthened my faith in regards to the goodness of people and the kindness of people and the generosity of individuals,” Gladding said.
In April 2007, Gladding also counseled the faculty members and students at Virginia Tech after a shooting there left 32 people dead.
Nathaniel Ivers, the chairman of Wake Forest’s department of counseling, said he will remember Gladding for his kindness and humility.
“Sam Gladding was one of the most prolific writers and one of the most productive scholars that I’ve ever met,” Ivers said. “He was also humble about his accomplishments.
“In his interactions, he always made people feel important,” Ivers said.
A native of Atlanta, Gladding grew up in Decatur, Ga., according to his biography.
Gladding received a bachelor’s degree in history at WFU in 1967, and master’s degrees in religion at Yale University in 1970 and a master’s degree in counselor education at Wake Forest in 1971, according to his faculty website. Gladding received a doctorate in family relations at UNC Greensboro in 1977.
After he completed his undergraduate studies at Wake Forest, he served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He completed his military service as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves.
Gladding worked at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., and Rockingham Community College in Wentworth, according to his biography.
He also served at the director of children’s services at the Rockingham County Mental Health Center.
In 1990, he joined WFU as a faculty member. Gladding taught courses such as orientation to counseling, counseling, family counseling and the creative arts in counseling, according to his biography.
From 1990 to 1997, Gladding served as an assistant to the president for special projects at WFU, and he was the associate provost from 1997 to 2007.
In 1995, Gladding took a group of Wake students to Kolkata, India, to work in Mother Teresa’s homes. There, they counseled poor and dying people, Gladding said on his website.
In addition, Gladding conducted many professional presentations and workshops on counseling-related topics, across the United States and the world, Wake Forest said in a statement.
Gladding served as president of the American Counseling Association and held leadership positions with various other international, national and regional counseling organizations, WFU said.
“People would ask him, ‘When are you going to retire?’” Claire Gladding said. “He would say, ‘Why would I retire? I have the best job in the world.’”
Gladding “loved his students,” his wife said. “He loved teaching and he loved Wake Forest. He couldn’t have been happier.”
During his career, Gladding wrote 42 books, produced 10 videos, wrote 92 articles in counseling journals, 32 book chapters and 45 poems.
“You just can’t express yourself in clinical notes like you can in poetry,” Gladding said in a story published in the Journal in April 1976.
“He was always working on another book,” Claire Gladding said. “He loved writing. He found great joy in writing.”