“O Dear Christian College We Love You”

That’s the opening line of the ACU alma mater, and it expresses the sentiments of many who have studied at that institution. Throughout my high school years I dreamed of going to college.  I was convinced that a person needed a college education to compete in the world.  Prior to that time no one on either side of my family had ever attended a regular college.  Daddy and Mama both went to a business college but nobody had enrolled in a college or university.

When Daddy moved us to Clyde in 1941, he was thinking ahead.  At that point in time, the most ideal education for people in the Churches of Christ could be obtained at Abilene Christian College.   I did not know, and I doubt if he knew, that ACC was not a fully accredited college at that time.  You could receive a bachelor’s degree, but it did not transfer to all other universities and colleges if a person wanted to do graduate work.

Prior to the fifties, few if any professors at the school held a terminal degree.   Frank Pack was the first man in the Bible department to receive a PhD degree.   I heard him say that as far as he knew there was only one other man teaching in the Bible Department of a Christian College  within our faith community at that time with a terminal degree, and that was W. B. West, Jr. who taught Bible at Pepperdine at that time.    I didn’t know any of this, but I was determined to attend ACC and major in Bible.

Actually I had different ideas about education before I decided to preach.   At one point I thought I wanted to attend either Texas A and M or Tarleton State College.   My visit to the A and M Campus at age 15 pretty well convinced me that I didn’t want to attend school there.   I was much more favorably inclined to attend Tarleton.  I thought I wanted to pursue some area of agricultural studies, and Tarleton had an outstanding ag department.  My visit to the Tarleton campus was more positive.  ACC had an ag department but I really didn’t seriously consider studying agriculture there, although I did participate in dairy judging contests there during my 4-H days.

I had no money to speak of and really no idea about what it would cost, but I was determined to go.   I worked for the school’s maintenance department, and I also worked for M System Food Stores.   Of course I received help from my parents.   I had some pretty decent summer jobs and I sailed through four years at ACC.

By the time I arrived on campus, ACC had received full accreditation.   Most of the professors either had terminal degrees or they were working on them.    The graduate school began a year prior to the time I enrolled, so they were on their way to becoming a respectable institution of higher learning.

I had very little understanding of what academia was about or what the student culture was like.  I was soon to discover that even though Clyde is only 15 miles from the ACU campus, when I drove from our house to the campus in September of 1953, I was about to encounter a world totally unlike anything I had ever known.