Deconstructing a Man of Contrasts

Friends in Atlanta remember a couple busy with their kids and his work, active in the Episcopal Church (he was sometimes asked to speak to the congregation). "Everyone just marveled at his gifts for speaking and educating," said Joan Cates, a former neighbor.

He has filled out since his basketball days, with some of the looks and manner of Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, a politician's ease and a deep, rich voice that still hints of Alabama. Nancy Ladner is a bubbly blond Southern lady, friends said.

It's at AU, where the couple moved in 1994 when he took the job as president, that the stories begin to split.

A Promising Start

Ladner was emotional at his inauguration, surrounded by family and friends, looking out over the crowd, which greeted him warmly.

Faculty, students and trustees alike were glad to have a leader with a clear vision for the future of the school; before Ladner came, AU had been in turmoil for years after one president admitted making obscene phone calls and others quickly came and went.

But it wasn't long before some people were taking shots. Rather than living in the president's house on the campus, the Ladners moved into another one the university bought nearby. They added a waterfall and a small pond full of koi to the back yard and upgraded from a cook who served home-style food to a chef who could make 100 canapés for a university event or flounder stuffed with seafood mousse for the two of them.

Sometimes students protested, saying they were wasting tuition and classroom dollars -- or put soap in the waterfall, filling the back yard with bubbles.

Gina Maria Schulz avoided going on the campus when she worked at the president's house in the late 1990s because people would always ask her if the Ladners were living high on the hog, she said. "People on campus were so mean, and I just thought, 'You don't know the real Ladners.' "

She enjoyed her job -- "Personal Assistant to the First Lady," it said on her cards -- even though sometimes she and housekeeper Menei Man would roll their eyes at the rules. They always had to sort through all the clothes, she said, to figure out whether he had worn a tuxedo shirt at a wedding or a university event, to determine whether the bill was paid by AU or the Ladners. When Nancy Ladner wanted to take the housekeeper to their home on Gibson Island in the Chesapeake Bay, her husband said that wasn't appropriate, Schulz said.

"He was the most ethical man I ever met," Schulz said.

Soon after Schulz left, Katya Thomas, now a Foreign Service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, Congo, came to work there. She quit after a few months, she said, because the Ladners made no effort to separate personal from university expenses and she couldn't be a part of that. Besides, she said, "Dr. Ladner had a hot temper and treated me like his servant."

They are people with exacting demands for anything from Christmas lights to flowers to how dress shirts and boxer shorts should be ironed, several staff members said. Daniel Traster, a chef there in 1998, learned to make cheese sticks just so, after about 20 tries.