The History of Wake Forest College, Volume IV, 1943-1967
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
© 1988 by Wake Forest University Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Revised for vol. 4) Paschal, George Washington, 1869- History of Wake Forest College. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: v. 1. 1834-1865 - - v. 4. 1943-1967 / by Bynum Shaw l. Wake Forest College―History. I. Shaw, Bynum. II. Title. LD5721.W52P3 378.756'67 35-8026 ISBN 0-918401-01-1 (v. 4) In loving memory of my father William Carroll Shaw (1881-1956) And in grateful appreciation of my mother Martha Saunders Shaw (1901―) Contents Preface ix I War and Its Aftermath 1 II The Dawn of a New Day 25 III The End of the Kitchin Era 45 IV A New Hand at the Helm 65 V High Points and Low 75 VI A President's Trials 92 VII A College on the Move 107 VIII Dancing to the Convention Tune 118 IX The Trustee Proposals 135 X Stability and Growth 160 XI The College Administration 171 XII Things Academic 190 XIII The Graduate and Professional Schools 269 XIV Student Life 301 XV The Athletic Program 325 XVI The Retirement of Dr. Tribble 346 Chapter Notes 359 Appendix A Necrology 369 Appendix B Baccalaureate and Commencement Speakers 371 Appendix C Recipients of Honorary Degrees 375 Index 381 Preface The work which follows traces the history of Wake Forest College from mid-1943, when Dr. George W. Paschal concluded his three- volume account, to the end of the Tribble administration in 1967. For the college these were profoundly transforming years, em- bracing not only World War II, the general admission of women, and the final period of the Kitchin presidency but also the event which was to change the institution forever―its removal from the old campus in Wake County to its new location in Winston-Salem through the good offices of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the Reynolds family. In most respects the author has attempted to give a whole picture of the life of the college, an effort in which he has been assisted tremendously by the willing cooperation of large numbers of his colleagues on the faculty and in the administration. The one branch of the institution which deserves greater attention than it was pos- sible to give here is the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, which should have a volume all its own. Happily that need will be filled in a forthcoming study by former dean of the Medical School, Dr. Manson Meads, which is to be entitled "The Miracle on Hawthorne Hill." The author commends that story to his readers. Throughout the work presented here there has been a deliberate attempt to avoid footnoting insofar as possible. Where the source is obvious―the minutes of the Board of Trustees, Old Gold and Black, the Biblical Recorder, the college Bulletin or an area news- paper―footnotes have been omitted for ease of reading. If this practice poses any handicap to future researchers, the author can only apologize. X PREFACE In many respects the years invested in the compilation of this story have been a labor of love. The author first set foot on the Wake Forest campus at a high-school debate tournament in 1939, and it was romance at first sight. There followed a period of eleven years of intermittent enrollment as a student, fourteen years at home and abroad as a dedicated alumnus, and more than twenty rewarding years as a member of the faculty. The early friendships made at Wake Forest have been close and lifelong, and student associations have been a continuing joy. To say that Wake Forest has been a central force in the life of the author is an understatement. It is not possible here to mention all of the people to whom the author is indebted in the preparation of this volume. Especially helpful were those faculty members and administrators who wrote Sesquicentennial monographs about their respective departments. They are all acknowledged in the notes for that chapter and are too numerous to list here. John Woodard and his staff in the Ethel Tay- lor Crittenden Collection in Baptist History gave generous assistance in tracking down elusive material, and Dr. Henry S. Stroupe inspired many of the papers which were used as source material. the late Dr. E. E. Folk, that Renaissance man who taught journalism and writing and much more, directed the author into a life of letters, for which he expresses deep appreciation. Provost Edwin G. Wilson read the manuscript and made many perceptive suggestions during both the writing and publishing stages. And the author would be remiss if he did not acknowledge the contributions of his wife Charlotte, a child of Wake Forest, who made many gentle comments, assisted with the typing, and is almost wholly responsible for the index. bgs Wake Forest College has had a long and honorable career, and whether it nestles in a forest of Wake or stands on a knoll in Forsyth, its mission will remain a quest for truth and a crusade for simple right. We would not deny to this great institution and to those whose faith and good works have made it possible, this vista of a new dawn and this vision of a new hope. From the opinion of W. P. Stacy, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, in Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Inc., v. Trustees of Wake Forest College. I War and Its Aftermath The fall of 1943 found the United States, as indeed much of the civilized world, deeply and grimly involved in World War II, to which there was as yet no foreseeable end. Daily the headlines and the radio spoke of battle in Italy and Russia, of naval engagements in the South Pacific, of tropical islands won an inch at a time and at a terrible cost of blood. Americans ate their breakfast with an ear tuned to Edward R. Murrow in London or an eye to the dispatches of Ernie Pyle. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House and Winston Churchill was already familiar as a dogged, rasping voice. His two fingers spread to the "V" for victory had become an Allied symbol. Joseph Stalin, his name synonymous with that of a heroic city, was an enigma. Benito Mussolini had been deposed in July. On September 3 Allied troops landed on the Italian mainland, and five days later Italy surrendered. That was a relatively meaningless ges- ture, because Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht became an occupying force and fought a punishing retreat. On the home front the war impinged daily on American life with rationed food and gasoline, shoes in short supply, travel restricted, and families heartbroken as the casualty lists grew. Work was tuned to the needs of war, and on the North Carolina coast the night skies were sometimes aglow with the flame of doomed ships. The movie sensation of the year, Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was an idealistic spinoff of the conflict in progress, and the songs of the time were of parted lovers and patriotism. War bonds and the USO were rallying points, and the posters told everyone that "a slip of the lip could sink a ship." Letters were censored, and sometimes they came back. 2 THE HISTORY OF WAKE FOREST COLLEGE In this atmosphere of national crisis Wake Forest College, as an institution and as a family of scholars, teachers, and alumni, was involved in many ways. Since Pearl Harbor the college had lost more than a thousand students as well as a number of key faculty members to the quenchless appetite of the armed forces. On the campus the marching of the twelve hundred soldiers of the Army Finance School, among them fifty women who were quartered in Simmons Dormitory, was a constant reminder of a world at war. The college itself had an enrollment of 448 students for the fall quarter and 372 for the winter. In the spring 328 registered, making the smallest student body since 1904, when 313 men had enrolled.1 Five additional students were attending the joint Duke-Wake Forest Law School in Durham, to which Dr. Dale Stansbury commuted every day; and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem had 179 fledgling doctors, most of them allowed to remain in school only through commitment to future service in some branch of the military apparatus. College tuition and fees for the school year were the same as they had been for forty years, $165. Board ranged from twenty-five to thirty dollars a month, and a room off campus cost from eight to ten dollars a month. Four out of five students were native North Carolinians, and one out of every three was the son, daughter, or near relative of an alumnus. The college was functioning, under a temporary quarter system, in restricted space and with a skeleton staff. The Army Finance School had taken over the Music-Religion Building (completed in 1942 on the site of old Wingate Hall and not yet used by the college), the Alumni Building, all of the dormitories, Gore Gymnasium and the adjacent practice field, Everette Snyder's College Book Store, and "Miss Jo" Williams's cafeteria. Snyder, who had been retained to operate his store as the Post Exchange, opened up a small snack shop for civilian students across the hall, and Jo Williams started a new cafeteria in the Bolus Building in downtown Wake Forest. She had sixteen students working for her, and Annie Jessup supervised four cooks who prepared menus designed to circumvent the shortages of meat, oils, and sugar.