Honorary degrees are awarded by the college to persons of outstanding character and personality who have (a) distinguished themselves for scholarship or literary achievement; or (b) won professional or other distinction; or (c) rendered conspicuous service in a particular field. Fisher and Weant received honorary doctor of divinity degrees. Roueche received an honorary doctor of letters degree.

Born in China Grove, N.C., Fisher received his bachelor’s degree from Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1940, and graduated form Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1943, the same year he became an ordained minister. He serves as interim pastor at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in China Grove, N.C. He previously served as interim pastor at New Hope Lutheran Church in Kannapolis, N.C., where he helped merge three congregations into one. Though he retired from active ministry in 1983, he has continued to serve as an interim pastor full-time since then, and has served 12 churches in that capacity.

Fisher’s previous positions included serving as pastor of Lutheran Church of the Transfiguration in Cayce, S.C., from 1962 through 1983; pastor of St. James Lutheran in Rockwell, N.C., from 1949 through 1962, where he was named pastor emeritus in 1998; and pastor of Cross of Christ Lutheran in Concord, N.C., from 1943 through 1949.

Roueche, Class of ’60, serves as professor and director of the Community College Leadership Program at The University of Texas at Austin and was

named Lenoir-Rhyne College Distinguished Alumnus in 2000. He holds the Sid W. Richardson Regents Chair in Community College Leadership at The University of Texas at Austin. The Texas doctoral program in Community College Leadership is the nation’s oldest and has produced more presidents, vice presidents, and deans of American community colleges than any other university graduate program.

Weant served as pastor of Philadelphia Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dallas, N.C., from 1976 to the present and served on the L-R Board of Trustees from 1984 through 1987. He received his bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in mathematics from Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1972. He received his master of divinity cum laude from Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in 1976 and was ordained the same year.

He served on the N.C. Synod’s Stewardship Task Force from 1994 through the present, as dean of the Synod Southwestern Conference from 1988 through the present, and as chairman of the Synod Social Ministry Committee from 1990 to 1993. Weant also served as president of the Greater Gastonia Ministerial Association from 1987 to 1998 and vice president of the Dallas Ministerial Association from 1986 to 1987.

Weant has served as a board member of Lutheran Support Group of Gaston, Inc., which works with Lutheran Family Services, from 1991 through the present; he served as president from 1983 through 1985. He was one of five recipients of the 1993 Family Advocate of the Year Award presented by Gaston County Commissioners.