Five hundred and seventy four students graduated from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Lydia Danielle Trail, a resident of Liberty and a first-generation college student, was among the numbers earning her Bachelor of Arts in English-Writing and a minor in Spanish.

After graduating from DeKalb County High School in May 2015, Trail started Lee in the fall of the same year. She became a member of the Student Leadership Council, a leadership council member of Sigma Tau Delta (the university’s English honors society), a community builder of Tharp Hall, a student worker for the Department of Language & Literature and the School of Nursing, a member of the Anthropology Club, and an intern for GenZ Publishing. While at Lee, she also traveled to Guatemala on a university medical missions trip and represented the university at the annual Sigma Tau Delta convention in St. Louis and presented her creative nonfiction piece “I Loathe You, Asthma.”

Trail was a Lettie Pate Whitehead scholar for four years, which is a scholarship awarded to less than 40 female Lee students every year, and was also awarded the Presidential scholarship.

She is the daughter of Heidi Trail, granddaughter of George & Linda Tripp, great-granddaughter of Doyle & Jesse Christian of Woodbury, and niece of Angela Tripp and Cassie Tripp.