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Heritage Happenings
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Honoring Dr. Reynolds
During the 2008 Heritage Club Gala Dinner, Jeff Kilgore presented the Reynolds family with a plaque to honor Dr. Herbert Reynolds. Click here for a text of that tribute: More
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By Luke Blount
Fifty years is a long time, but don't tell that to the members of Heritage Club. The newest inductees from the Class of 1958 returned to Waco and reminisced about their days at Baylor as if it were yesterday. Heritage Club president Leo Parchman '54 even referred to the seventy-somethings as "kids."
Upon the acceptance of their first Baylor diplomas, the Class of '58 ventured out into a completely different world than that of 2008. In the late '50s, Elvis was king, Arnold Palmer had just won his first major, and the space race during the Cold War had just begun.
"I remember reading the headline about the Russian satellite, Sputnik," said Loyd Kindiger '58, a former campus paperboy. "We didn't have a television, of course, and I didn't listen to the radio that much. So my world views were shaped by the paper."
On Baylor campus in 1958, 8:30 p.m. curfews on weeknights and dress codes were strictly enforced. Ladies never wore shorts, and the phrase "Sunday dress" still meant something. "When we went to church, we wore white gloves and a hat," said Eva Parker Anderson '58.
Anderson returned to the Baylor campus for the first time since she left for nursing school more than fifty years ago. She was able to gather eight of the original sixteen nursing school graduates from 1958 (pictured left) and bring them back to Waco. "I was very impressed with the campus and events," said Anderson. "The size of the campus is really amazing."
Fifty years ago the total campus area was about a fourth of the size it is now, and many of the current buildings served different purposes. Burleson was a dorm, Marrs McLean Gym was the home of men's basketball, and some of the current dorms housed the opposite gender from what they do now.
Randy Parsons '58 remembers a campus with less congestion where Fourth and Fifth Streets were still open to vehicular traffic. "When I was here, you could drive, but you couldn't dance,” he said. “Now you can dance, but you can't drive."
But driving was somewhat of a luxury in the late '50s. "If you went on a date with a boy, he probably didn't have a car," said Anne Shelton Tucker '58. "We walked to town." Sue Scarborough Leach '58 agreed. "If he had a car, he didn't wait outside for you either," she said. "He had to sign in."
Kindiger remembers his first date with his wife, Marjorie Schmitt Kindiger '58. "I bumped into her on campus, and I was so embarrassed that I didn't know what to do," he said. "It was Friday night, and I never had any money, so we sat on the park bench by Pat Neff Hall. And for the next two hours we got to know each other pretty well." The Kindigers were married two weeks after graduation and will be celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary this May.
During their visit to campus, Heritage Club members participated in several events. They had the opportunity to take tours of the campus and listen to speakers, in addition to mingling and reminiscing with friends. On the final night, the Class of 1958 received their official induction with the presentation of their golden diplomas in a graduation-type ceremony. When the final member crossed the stage, the honorees erupted in a unified yell of, "We're the greatest of the great; we're the Class of '58."
Marjorie Kindiger recalls the pre-school retreat before her freshman year where one of the main agendas was to create a class yell. "On the bus, a bunch of us on the back row made up our yell," she said. "When we were standing in line to eat, we had a contest with the sophomores to see who could yell the loudest."
The tradition of class yells eventually faded away along with many other conventions of 1958. From a telephone plug-in switchboard in Pat Neff Hall to wireless Internet and from girls' dorms fashioned from abandoned army barracks to the apartment-style residence halls of North Village, Baylor continues to evolve.
But as the outward appearance has dramatically changed over five decades, many Heritage Club members believe the spirit of Baylor has remained constant. "The love and inspiration are still here," said Anderson. "I don't think I'll wait another fifty years to come back."
For more on Heritage Club 2008, go to the BAA message board: Heritage Club 2008 Thread
If you would like to respond to this story, send an e-mail to Between the Lines Editor.
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