I feel like a proud papa. Kennesaw State University has just unveiled its new $56 million health sciences building, to be known as Prillaman Hall, in honor of long-time KSU Foundation trustee and past chair of the WellStar Health System Board of Trustees, Bob Prillaman and his wife, Liz.

KSU President Dan Papp said the 200,000-square-foot facility will significantly expand academic opportunities in the health sciences at the university. Today, only one in nine qualified applicants are accepted to KSU's WellStar School of Nursing program because of space limitations. Dr. Papp said that with this expansion, nursing graduates will increase from 185 to 250 a year.

This may come as a surprise to you, but next to my beloved Henry W. Grady College of Journalism at the University of Georgia, the Kennesaw State's nursing program is hallowed ground in my house.

When I returned from a tour of duty in Washington courtesy of the Bell System we were soon empty nesters with two children in college - a son at Furman and a daughter at UGA. That left only Momma, who had grown up in an era when young women were encouraged to become secretaries, get married, have babies and leave the business world to the guys.

This she had done in spite of having been a straight-A student in high school, a member of the National Honor Society and possessed with a great love for medicine.

It was then that the family decided Momma needed to go to college, too, and scratch her medical itch. We sent her to Kennesaw State University to study nursing. Having two children in college was a snap. All they needed was money. Having a wife in college was a different matter. I learned to work a dishwasher with more controls than an Apollo spacecraft. I learned to balance the checkbook. I learned to walk across shag carpeting without leaving a footprint when she was studying algebra. (Why do nurses need to know algebra?)

It wasn't easy for her, either. She had been out of school for a long time and was a tad rusty on the academics. But she prevailed thanks to her intelligence, perseverance and encouraging instructors - Charlotte Sachs is a name that comes immediately to mind.

Then when many people were winding down their careers, she began hers as a full-fledged, honest-to-Abe registered nurse. Not long after graduation, she was hired into Delta Air Lines' occupational nursing department, where she stayed until I retired from BellSouth and joined the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games which required a lot of travel on both our parts.

But that is not the end of the story.

It was during her time at KSU that our son graduated from Furman University and was in the throes of breaking up with a longtime girlfriend.

Trying to be helpful, Momma mentioned that one of her lab partners had just broken up with her boyfriend. Despite their age differences, the two had become good friends while cutting up dead creatures in lab class. You tend to get to know people pretty well when you are dissecting things together, I suppose.

Only out of profound sense of loyalty to her would our son even consider going out with someone his mother recommended, let alone cut up deceased critters with. But he agreed. But only for one date. And just as a favor to his mother.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, 25 years later, Momma's former classmate is our daughter-in-law, the mother of our grandchildren and the grandmother of the family's first great-grandchild. Not only did my wife get a superb education in the Kennesaw State nursing program and a fulfilling job with a good company, she also secured us a splendid daughter-in-law.

Today, Jackie Yarbrough is a well-regarded assistant nurse manager in the Mother/Baby unit at Kennestone WellStar in Marietta, where she has worked for nearly 30 years.

She has come a long way from those days of cutting up critters with her future mother-in-law.

So you can understand why I got a little puffed-up when I read about KSU's new Prillaman Hall and the huge investment the university is making in their nursing program.

Not only did Kennesaw State allow my wife to realize her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse, the place gave us a daughter-in-law that we adore.

I hope their investment pays off as well as mine did.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.