DCC honors philanthropist, dedicates new fitness center

Danville Community College dedicated the newly revamped Estelle H. Womack Hall during a ceremony Tuesday at the school.

Womack Hall includes a new wellness and physical diagnostics center that DCC students and employees will use for health and fitness classes. It includes treadmills, elliptical trainers, incline bikes, rowers, weight benches, dumbbells, a stair stepper and men’s and women’s locker rooms.

The Womack Building opened in 1987 as a gift from the Charles A. Womack family to the DCC Educational Foundation. The structure housed the collection from the Estelle H. Womack Museum of Natural History until 2005, when it was moved to the Danville Science Center.

“This is a recognition that she very justly deserves and I think her spirit came through today during the dedication,” Zan Womack, Charles and Estelle Womack’s son, said after the ceremony.

Charles Womack was a local philanthropist who invested in the college as well as scholarships and loan-assistance programs in the region.

DCC President Carlyle Ramsey said he had approached Womack in the early 1990s about naming the building after him, but he declined.

“I said, ‘You’ve done so much (for DCC), what about your wife?’” Ramsey said. Womack agreed.

The building was named posthumously after Estelle in 1994.

Funds from the Virginia Tobacco Commission paid for the renovation, which began in 2007 and finished this past spring.

The fitness equipment was added during the summer, Ramsey said.

Contact John R. Crane at or (434) 791-7987.