President Cox honors the late Sandra Dunagan Deal by sharing story time with local school children

Georgia College & State University President Cathy Cox honored the legacy of the late Sandra Dunagan Deal with local school children on Wednesday.

Sandra Deal, ’63, ’66, devoted her life to the issues of education and literacy and used her public platform, as the wife of former Governor Nathan Deal, to model the civic virtues of volunteerism and community service. In recognition of Deal’s lifetime of advocacy, Cox read the Dr. Seuss story “Sneetches” to kindergarteners at Lakeview Primary School in Milledgeville.

The story time took place on Deal’s birthday, February 1—the first since her passing in 2022. Cox joined members of the Deal family and other education advocates across Georgia in reading to children on the former first lady’s birthday. The Deal family hopes to make February 1 an annual celebration of education and literacy by encouraging all Georgians to read a book to a young person on that day.

During her eight years as Georgia’s First Lady, Deal touched the lives of countless children—sharing story time with students in more than 1,000 schools and pre-K programs in all of Georgia’s 181 school districts and each of the state’s 159 counties.

In 2017, the Georgia General Assembly provided funding to open the Sandra Dunagan Deal Center for Early Language and Literacy at GCSU, continuing Mrs. Deal’s commitment to advancing childhood literacy programs across the state of Georgia.