Stafford overcomes loss of leg to earn doctorate

By Chuck Gordon

Ron Stafford '02 is one determined individual. Once he'd decided to get his doctor of education degree in order to further his career, nothing was going to stop him.

Not even the amputation of his lower left leg.

Stafford, who is diabetic, was about halfway through his doctorate in higher education administration with Brenau University when he developed a blister on his left foot. Even after visits to a wound-care facility, the foot never fully healed, and it eventually became infected. After becoming sick one weekend, Stafford was admitted to the hospital with septic shock.

After one surgery was unsuccessful, he was left with a decision to make: Undergo a second procedure, which had a 30 percent success rate and would have kept him hospitalized for four to six months, or have the lower half of his leg removed.

"I told them to amputate," he says. "That was the quickest way to get back to normal."

Stafford was in the hospital for nine days in total, and aside from watching the plane-crash-survival movie Alive and some Civil War-era dramas the night before the amputation ("I know that's kind of dark humor"), he kept working at his full-time job and on his doctorate the entire time.

He successfully defended his dissertation in April, four months after starting a new job as academic-success and learning-resource coordinator at Helms Community College in Augusta, Ga.

A week after getting his prosthetic leg, Stafford presented at a conference in Columbia, S.C.

"Looking back, I think that's what kept me going," he says. "I had something to do. I wasn't dwelling on what was happening."

Stafford had something else to lean on as he got through the ordeal: the memory of his favorite professor, Dr. Debra O'Neal. O'Neal, part of the history faculty at Wingate for six years, was diagnosed with cancer during her time at Wingate. She died on July 1, 2001, but she kept teaching as long as she could. Stafford wrote a heartfelt memorial to O'Neal that ran in the 2002 Gate yearbook.

"She kept coming to school even with her IV line in," he says. "Remembering how she kept going gave me the motivation to keep going. I thought, If she can do it, I can do it."

Stafford majored in history but didn't immediately join academia. He spent a decade as a photographer, capturing the architecture around Chesterfield County, where he grew up.

In his 30s, ready to earn a steady paycheck (and receive employment benefits), Stafford went back to school to earn a master of library and information science from the University of South Carolina, and he spent seven and a half years as head librarian at Northeastern Technical College in Cheraw, S.C.

He has been drawing upon the history and research skills he learned at Wingate as both photographer and librarian.

"A lot of my photography focuses on historical churches and buildings," he says. "I use the historical knowledge to frame my photography.

"As long as I can remember, I've been fascinated with history. If there was something I was interested in, my mother would make sure I had books to read about it, movies to watch about it. If it was something close locally, we would go and visit the space. She had a lot to do with my obsession with history."

Looking out for rural students

Stafford's ultimate goal is to be an archivist for a large university or other organization, and to get to that point, he knew he needed a doctorate. He chose as his dissertation topic a subject he knows well: being a college student in a rural area.

Robust internet access is a given in most cities and even suburbs and small towns, but in rural areas it can be expensive and unreliable. For rural students, using cellphones as hotspots often isn't a great option because cell coverage can be spotty too. With more and more programs moving to online platforms, especially for nontraditional students, strong internet access is vital.

Stafford (right) with Dr. Debra O'Neal (left) and fellow Wingate student Karen Nilsen, back in their University days.

Stafford interviewed scores of students at Northeastern Tech and found them to be resilient in the face of technological barriers. "They'll do whatever they have to do to get an education, including sitting at the local funeral home at night doing homework," he says.

In his dissertation, "No Signal, No Success? The Internet Divide and Rural Community College Persistence," Stafford discusses their plight and some potential remedies. "Hopefully, in the next couple of months, I will start working with a couple of schools to try to figure out how they can adapt their online learning to make it easier for people without the internet," he says, "maybe give them more time on tests or figure out a way that they can have some analog ability to submit assignments while they're online as well."

Stafford, of course, understands resilience in pursuit of a degree, but he shrugs off his amputation as simply a procedure that was necessary if he was to achieve his goals, approaching it with the analytical mindset of an academic. The prosthetic he wears hasn't slowed him down a bit, and he seems optimistic about the future.

"It really bothers me when people tell me I'm inspirational and have done things that other people can't do," Stafford says. "I don't look at it that way. I look at it as I've just done what I've had to do to keep going.

"I will say that losing a leg was not as painful as getting a doctorate. Getting a doctorate is all about basically how much crap you can put up with and still keep going. I think losing the leg helped me to prepare for that. There have been ups and downs, but I figured out quickly in life that things are going to come along. You can either keep going or stop. I'm not going to stop. I just kind of keep going."

April 5, 2026