Often people seek to give back to an organization that proved beneficial to their own lives.

Such is the case with Lanny Leonard. As a Sandhills Community College graduate, Leonard recently made a generous contribution to Denise Baker's Crossing the Atlantic art and communications project. Baker is a professor of art at the college.

Leonard, who is originally from Aberdeen, says of SCC, "I was able to get a great start at Sandhills. The experience and education I received greatly prepared me for success at East Carolina University, working for a major corporation, and eventually starting my own business."

Leonard worked for Xerox before opening his own distributorship in Fayetteville.

After 22 years, Digital Document Solutions has grown to cover 12 North Carolina counties.

The Crossing the Atlantic art project was created to showcase letter-writing as a lost art form.

"It is about making a connection through communication that is lasting," Baker said. "It doesn't involve technology, but hand-written correspondence."

Baker teamed up with Jasper McKinney, art professor of the Newry Institute in Newry, Northern Ireland, for the project. Baker and McKinney asked family, colleagues, and friends to send postcards to each other.

More than 1,375 postcards crossed the Atlantic between the two countries, two colleges and two communities. Several faculty members from both colleges have visited each other, and plans are in the works for the two communities to become international sister cities.

The show opened at Sandhills during the fall of 2007 and is now in transit to the UK. It will open on the campus of Southern Regional College next month. After exhibiting there, it will travel to four other college campuses in the UK and then go to the International Sister City Conference in Belfast in July 2009.

Leonard helped support the travel cost of the show and the touring of the exhibit.

"Without the community support, and especially Leonard's alumni support, this endeavor would have been impossible," Baker said. "We are very appreciative of his dedication to the college and to this art project."