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Dr. Herbert H. Reynolds Baylor President, 1981 to 1995
From remarks to the Sesquicentennial class at Spring Commencement, 1995.
You are a very special class in the life of Baylor University--our
150th-year class--and your diplomas read "Sesquicentennial Graduate,"
as they will for all our graduates throughout 1995. . . . As a group,
you care a great deal about other people, and you have exhibited your
Christian commitment in the way Christ taught: that is, you have loved
God through your worship and witness, and you have gone about doing
good. As Saint Francis of Assisi taught about nine hundred years ago,
"Preach the Gospel at all times; use words if necessary."
 While
there may have been occasions when we have not all agreed on some
issue, we have been able to look beyond the disagreement and
acknowledge that we are a family with high ideals, and that in the long
run each of us, and our university, will be stronger and better
witnesses of those discovered and revealed truths that make Baylor
unique.
As we continue the celebration of our Sesquicentennial on this
occasion, my heart is filled with tremendous thanksgiving for God's
goodness and grace in the life of Baylor over these 150 years. As I
prepared these remarks, all I could think about were the blessings that
have been Baylor University's through much adversity as well as through
extraordinarily good times.
How thankful I am for those bold and farsighted Texians and Baptists
who--in the midst of deprivation in Indian Territory that reached from
Central Texas to the Canadian border westward--thought higher learning
of sufficient importance in 1841 to establish an Educational Society
that resulted in the chartering of Baylor University on February 1,
1845, under the Seal of the Republic of Texas and the signature of
President Anson Jones. Later in 1845, on December 29, Texas would
become the twenty-eighth state in the Union.
How thankful I am for those Baylor trustees, presidents, faculty
members, staff members, students, alumni, Texas Baptists, and friends
everywhere that kept the faith and defied all odds through the time of
the Civil War to help Baylor become the only surviving college or
university of the nineteen chartered by the Republic of Texas between
1836 and 1845. Thus, Baylor is, by all records and rights, the oldest
institution of higher learning in the State of Texas and about the
fifth oldest west of the Mississippi River.
How thankful I am that William Carey Crane, the fourth president of
Baylor, saved the institution in 1869 when he raised $300--$100 of
which he had inherited from his recently deceased father in
Baltimore--to purchase the university campus back from an individual
who had just bought it at a sheriff's auction to satisfy a ten-year-old
$200 debt for shingles to roof one of the buildings in the early 1860s.
How thankful I am that Texas Baptists decided in 1885, at their annual
meeting, to relocate Baylor to Waco in 1886 because the railroad was
bypassing the community of Independence, at Washington-on-the-Brazos,
and because they also wanted to merge the fledgling Waco University,
another Baptist school, with Baylor University.
How thankful I am that Samuel Palmer Brooks, president of Baylor from
1902 to 1931, had the vision--along with the Board of Trustees,
faculty, Texas Baptists, alumni, and friends--to aggressively move
toward true university status by establishing a College of Medicine, a
College of Pharmacy, a College of Dentistry, a Theological Seminary,
and by re-establishing the School of Law. President Brooks and the
faculty also organized the College of Arts and Sciences, the Schools of
Education, Music, Nursing, and Business, and the Baylor University
Medical Center in Dallas.
How thankful I am that in the early days of the Great Depression,
former Governor Pat M. Neff agreed to take over the reins of Baylor and
to guide it through the 1930s and the World War II years with a strong
and unwavering hand, when a lesser person might have failed miserably.
He, our dedicated faculty, and Texas Baptists left our institution
intact, out of debt, and ready for the rapid growth that came after
World War II.
How thankful I am for Presidents William Richardson White and Abner
Vernon McCall, my immediate predecessors, who moved Baylor beyond mere
survival ($2.8 million in endowment after one hundred years and a
campus greatly in need of expansion) to a position of greater strength
and prominence for us to continue building toward national and
international recognition and acclaim.
How thankful I am that in our day we have been able to reinforce and
strengthen the university's purposes as a Christian and academic
institution, that we have greatly enlarged upon our endowment and our
physical plant, and that we now have over twelve thousand students, 650
faculty, and about eight hundred staff members. . . . Further, and not
of least importance, we have secured the freedom necessary for Baylor
to continue being a true university and to do God's work in the world
devoid of religious forces with political aims.
How thankful I am that our future will be even greater than the past or
present through the leadership and vision of those who will guide
Baylor well into the twenty-first century. It is essential that those
leading Baylor in the years ahead keep their eyes on the life and
teachings of Christ, along with all the marvelous discoveries and
knowledge accumulated throughout human history, to ensure that we
remain true to him who said, "If you continue in my word, then ye are
my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free."
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