Baylor Line Magazine | Fall 2022

CarrytheTorch

BAYLOR LINE FOUNDATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

2022-2023

contents

Officers

Tony Pederson, President

Gordon Wilkerson, President Elect

Laura Hallmon, Past President

Nicole Robinson, Secretary

Chad Wooten, Treasurer

Board Members

Sharon McDonald Barnes

Jan Huggins Barry

Marie Brown

Gary Burford

Kaye Callaway

Craig Cherry

Vince Clark

George Cowden III Craig Cunningham

Robert F. Darden

Bobby Feather

Bryan Fonville

Jonathan Grant

John Howard Catie Jackson

Shehan Jeyarajah

Roland Johnson

Shelba Shelton Jones

Karen Walden Jones

David Lacy

Katy Link Wes Livesay

Brooke Mercer Brandon Miller

Jackie Baugh Moore

Robert Morales Doug Myers

Tom Nesbitt

Amy Graham Pagitt

Chase Palmer

Daniel Pellegrin

Skye Perryman

Jennifer Reed

J Rice

Tommy Rosson

Stacy Sharp

Maleesa Johnson Smith

Claire St Amant

Randy Stevens

Lindsey Davis Stover

opening 03

Fear is something we all struggle with. But it is also not permanent. Like bravery, fear is a mindset, and we can choose to be fearless. Editor-in-chief Jonathon Platt shares what he fears most, and asks the question, “How will you choose to be fearless?”

voices

The Young Alumna of the Year explains why she finds it so important to use her voice as a creator of justice and joy, compassion, and peace.

features

IN CONVERSATION: A PLACE AT THE TABLE WITH JOSLYN HENDERSON 14

SEARCHING FOR SHARON HERBAUGH

Despite all obstacles, the war correspondent was devoted to getting the story and relentless in following it to the end. Her untimely death meant the world might never truly know her. Until now…

24

FROM OBSCURITY TO A NOBEL PRIZE NOMINATION

Corbevax, a low-cost coronavirus vaccine created in Houston by two Baylor scientists, could be a better weapon against Covid-19 by reaching the unvaccinated in poorer countries.

@BaylorLineFoundation support@baylorline.com

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Cover

illustration by Curtis W. Callaway

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BAYLOR LINE MAGAZINE JONATHON PLATT

classic

BL CLASSIC: A VISIT WITH “MISS DOTTIE”

BEHIND THE COVER

Covers are my favorite part of each issue. There’s something exciting and creative about bringing one from an idea in my mind into existence on the page. This one is especially unique. Fearless Girl, a statue by Kristen Visbal, stands in front of the New York Stock Exchange with the inscription, “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” Through some technical magic, we were able to combine Curtis Callaway’s photographs of campus and a storm cloud and Ahmer Kalam’s photo of Visbal’s work to bring together this powerful cover. As Fearless Girl faces the monstrous-looking buildings and hulking clouds ahead, her stance looked empowered and determined. Just as “her” native world of the NYSE is changing, so is Baylor — the institution, the culture, the people. Here’s to the women of Baylor who live out this statue’s meaning.

—Jonathon Platt (’16, Ma ’19), Editor-in-chiEf

EDITOR EMERITUS, BAYLOR LINE MAGAZINE ROBERT F. DARDEN

CFO JAMES MCINNIS

DIRECTOR OF MEMBER RELATIONS KELLIE JUANDIEGO

CONTINUE

Friends:

Fear. It’s something we all struggle with. Personally, my biggest fear is being “found out” as a “fraud,” even though such fear is not warranted or even logical. For instance, despite my qualifications, experience, and passion, I rarely feel qualified to write these opening Editor’s Notes. I fear someone, one day, will call me out. I fear the arrival of a letter, phone call, personal meeting wherein someone says, “I see through you and your fancy prose.” By definition, we call this version of fear Imposter’s Syndrome. Maybe you’ve felt it, too. Or, perhaps, you’re a little more normal and are just afraid of spiders or snakes or heights. Fear is universal. But, on the flip side, so is bravery. I’ve heard it said that no one is truly a brave person, we just chose to be brave in certain circumstances. It’s not a personality trait, instead, it’s a mindset, a choice, a muscle we can work and flex and grow. In little ways, we can choose to be brave — like when I choose to write each Editor’s Note, despite the silly, scared voice in the back of my mind, or when you squash that spider. As we flex our bravery muscle more, the little things become less scary, and we grow more fearless in the face of the great challenges life hands us.

permanent.

That’s why this issue is so special to me. It is a record, a collection of examples, of people who have worked at being fearless and who show us that great things are possible when we stand up to our fears.

Whether it’s Joslyn Henderson’s stories of navigating new worlds, a new calling, and a renewed voice (pg. 04); the captivating, encouraging, and emotional narrative of Sharon Herbaugh, a slain journalist (pg. 14); the prolific and worldchanging work of Dr. Marie Bottatzzi (pg. 24); or the memory and legacy of legendary Baylor professor Dr. Dorothy Scarborough (pg. 30), I hope you are stirred and inspired to face life a little more fearlessly.

When you’ve finished reading this collection (and I hope you will read each and every article), I would love to know how these stories have changed you. How will you be less fearful? How will you choose to be more fearless?

This issue is comprised of four stories of four women who have each lived extraordinary lives. Though, I firmly believe that it is their choices, not their personality or their stature or their accomplishments or some super-human genetics, that make them personify the theme of this issue: Fearless.

I hope you choose to follow in their examples.

All my best, Jon J onathon P latt (’16, M a ’19) Editor-in-chief, Baylor Line

Fear is not

Like bravery, it is a mindset. We can choose to be fearless. We just have to work at it.

For Joslyn Henderson, finding out she was Young Alumna of the Year was an “incredibly humbling, unbelievable, gratifying moment,” she said.

A Place at the Table With Joslyn Henderson

By Jonathon Platt (’16, MA ’19)

Photos courtesy of Joslyn Henderson

Editor’s note: Each year, we honor the best and brightest in the Baylor Family at our Hall of Fame Ceremony. It’s truly my favorite event. I like it better than Homecoming, better than Christmas on Fifth; I even like it better than the day I see each new issue hot off the press. There’s something about Hall of Fame that feels different. We’re there celebrating specific people, specific legacies. There’s something meaningful about being a part of that night.

Selfishly, as a young alumnus myself, my favorite award of the night is the Young Alumni Award. To me, it’s not so much of an award about a young person who has done great things, but an award investing, highlighting, and conferring faith in a young person who is doing great things and has greater work yet to be done. I love spending time with each Young Alumnus. This year, I was so pleased to celebrate with the Baylor Family our own Joslyn Henderson (MM ’21, MDiv ’21).

I first met Joslyn eight years ago on a momentous evening of musical ceremony during the Pruit Symposium, a conference on Black sacred music hosted by Baylor Libraries. During the evening’s events, a prominent academic and musician, Dr. Jimmy Abbington, asked this fresh Truett Seminary student to sing with him on stage.

Joslyn blew everyone away.

I think that’s how most people would describe their first encounter with her. She is not one to hide in the background. Joslyn is a voice worth hearing, worth listening to, worth trusting. Ask anyone who knows her, and they will surely agree.

Sitting down to do this interview with Joslyn was one of the most energizing and electrifying things I have done in a while. I’m so glad you will get to read her story here, but, oh, how I so wish you could hear her voice, her talent, her spirit.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with 2022 Young Alumna of the Year, Joslyn Henderson.

The Young Alumna of the Year explains why she finds it so important to use her voice as a creator of justice and joy, compassion, and peace.

Jonathon Platt: What does it mean to you be the Young Alumna of the Year?

Joslyn Henderson: When you called me the first time back in November to tell me about it, it was unbelievable to me. Just literally I was like, “Huh? Me? Are you sure?”

It was unbelievable on one hand, but also incredibly gratifying to know that my time spent at Baylor was not in vain and that there are folks who saw the things I was doing and were grateful for them and had my back the entire time. And it was an incredibly humbling, unbelievable, gratifying moment.

To me it means that my work, my voice, my presence on that campus was not in vain.

Your voice definitely was not in vain. The first time that we met was at Pruit Symposium in 2014. How I remember you being introduced to this Baylor world is when Dr. Jimmy Abbington pulled you out of the crowd onto the stage to sing and we were all just so blown away. You had come from Spelman and had only been at Baylor for a little while. What do you remember about that time? What do you remember about the beginning period of your life in the Baylor family?

Well, the beginning of my life as a Baylor student in the Baylor family started a couple months prior to my even applying or accepting the offer to come.

When I was in Georgia in 2013, I talked to Dr. Abbington about wanting to study church music, being really captured by his presence as a church musician, as a director, as a compiler, as an editor, all so many things. I told him, “I want to do what you do.” And he said, “Oh! If you want to study church music, you need to go to Baylor University.” So I went to work with him in Houston for a little over a year and then started the application process to Baylor maybe in March of 2014. I was able to come out and visit the school of music and the seminary in April of that year, and then happened to start during the semester they were planning and putting on the Pruit Symposium on Black sacred music.

It just awakened this musician in me. It just really made me excited to learn and to know about and to experience Black sacred music in a place like Baylor University.

So yeah, my introduction to being a part of the Baylor family was absolutely 100 percent through Dr. Abbington. It was because of his presence on Baylor’s campus that I became a Baylor student and eventually graduated with those degrees from Baylor.

You’d been at Spelman, a historically Black women’s liberal arts college. Baylor is not that. It has a different culture, history, and a different student demographic. What was that transition like?

In an academic setting as an adult, it was very, very, very different. I really had to lean into the “you are here for a reason,” lean into being chosen or called to seminary and to the school of music and let that be the thing that grounded me. Because, man, I would sit in classes and feel stupid a lot. And I later came to know that was imposter syndrome, but while I was in it, I was like, “Man, I feel everybody knows so much more than I do.” And it wasn’t necessarily that, we just all have different experiences.

Some people come with a wealth of knowledge about theology or music or church music. And some of us are coming to sit at the seat and to learn. And a lot of my experience at Baylor was sitting at the seat and learning, plus my experience and upbringing.

What did you do to combat that imposter syndrome?

To be honest, it still creeps its way in, and then I have to shoot that down to the pit of hell where it came from. But you know what, it’s thanks to mentors like Dr. Abbington and Dr. Emmett Price who’s now the Dean of Africana Studies at Berkeley College in Boston. Those people who continue to pour into me and continue to remind me of the calling on my life, of my gift, of the things I’ve done. Because you’ve got to have some people in your life who are going to be like, “No, no, no, no, no, you got this. You’re good. You’re smart. You deserve this. You’re worthy.” And I thank God for a village that keeps me from floating away.

And that village is strong. Even beyond professors. Students, too. One of my closest friends I met at Pruit, Reverend Doctor Tara Briscoe, who’s a minister and itinerant elder in the AME church. Just so many fantastic

relationships, folks that I just love and who love me and constantly pour into me. And I’m grateful for Baylor University for all the resources that are the people in my life.

When you were at Baylor, how did you participate in the community? What did you do for the school? What positions did you hold? And why would you put yourself in a position where people would know who you are and notice you?

So, I was the ministry associate for worship and chapel, which essentially meant that on the Mondays and Wednesdays, where 3,000-plus students are coming into Waco Hall to go to chapel, they would see me, they would hear me, they would experience my voice leading them in worship. I’d be there, along with my bosses and my boss’s boss and everyone else. But I was the student worship leader present there at chapel. So I was constantly seen.

One of the things I said when I came to Baylor was that I want my presence here... I want it to be known that I was here. As a graduate student, you could go to school, put your head down, leave

out the back door, get your degree, and it’s done. But I didn’t want that to be my experience. My experience at Spelman was not that. I was present at Baylor, I sang all the time, people saw me all the time. I just was the chapel singer for one year, and that’s how the position and how it was and still how it is. But yeah, my presence at Baylor, I said I didn’t just want to be a grad student that came, got what they needed to get, and then left. I wanted my presence to be felt. I wanted Baylor to be better because I was a student there.

You’re now in full-time ministry. Why is it important for you to keep doing this work?

It is important for me to keep going because someone might be radically changed, moved, affected by my presence, by my words, by my songs, by any of the things that I’m doing in pursuit of Thy kingdom come and Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

In pursuit of that, someone’s life may be changed, someone’s heart may be changed, someone’s mind may be changed.

I remember early on at Baylor, encountering

Joslyn came to Baylor not knowing what to expect when it came to community. She, like so many Bears, quickly found a supportive group of friends and mentors.

Joslyn’s voice is known throughout the Baylor community. Her performances are full of emotion, passion, and inimitable talent.

a young man who was a very staunch in his beliefs. And it was my performance during one of the Pruit Symposia that flipped a switch in his mind. He told me, “I’ve been thinking of this the wrong way. I’m ashamed.”

I remember reading his message, and I am incredibly grateful for being in the space, for being the voice, for being the catalyst for what essentially is spirit work and God’s work. It wasn’t necessarily anything that I had done. Perhaps I was the medium, but it was God working on this person’s heart.

Let’s talk about music in your life. Yes.

When did you get involved with singing or any form of musical worship?

Man, it feels like I’ve been singing since I was born. So my father was a pastor, my mom sings professionally. I mean, it feels like I don’t know a time where I wasn’t singing in worship. My mom says from the moment I learned to talk, I was singing. It’s been a lifelong thing, me and singing.

What role did music play in your childhood? In your childhood and in your family?

Yeah. So mom used to direct the choir at church. My father preached, but he would also tune up, as we would say in the Black church, or hoop. So there was a…

Can you explain what that means?

Oh, yes. So, it’s near the end of the sermon, it’s called the celebration in some circles, but it’s when the voice changes to be sing-songy.

Dr. Price talks about it a little bit, the relationship between song and sermon. It’s a

beautiful relationship. It’s natural to me. Right? Music has been a part of my life since I was born. I grew up hearing gospel music played in my home constantly. There’s an album: Carlton Pearson’s Live At Azusa One that was in 1995. I know that CD front and back. I remember my mom playing the tape out so bad that I remember on the track “Take It By Force” with Carlson Pearson featuring Karen Clark Sheard, I remember the point in the tape where it starts skipping. That is how well I remember that music from childhood.

I grew up on traditional gospel music but so much more. We knew the traditional gospel from church, but we listened to what might have been called contemporary gospel music at home. I grew up listening to some of everything.

My favorite artist then and now is John P. Kee. We were talking about prayer in the service, it was a service of lament, and I was asked to sing the spiritual “It’s Me, It’s Me, Oh Lord.” And I sang John P. Kee’s version of it.

What are two or three songs that you would just always love to sing with an audience?

Oh, man. Okay. The first one that comes to mind is a modern hymn. The chorus goes:

And God will delight when we are creators Of justice and joy, compassion and peace

The name of the song is “For Everyone Born.” So the first verse is “For everyone born, a seat at the table, for everyone born, clean water and bread, a shelter, a space, a safe place for living, for everyone, born a star overhead.” And then the chorus, “God will delight when we are creators of justice.” Not just doers, but creators

...If I’m in a place where I’m leading worship and I’ve got an opportunity to get everyone singing, we’re going to sing ‘For Everyone Born.’”

“

of justice and joy, compassion and peace. Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy. The final verse says, or the way that I’ve structured it to be the final verse, but the final verse is, “For everyone born, a seat at the table, for everyone born ...” Oh, man, I’m singing it out of order so I need to look up the words to help me. I love it so much, though.

I’m looking at the lyrics, there is an optional final verse: “For gay and for straight, a place at the table, a covenant shared, a welcome space, a rainbow of race and gender and color, for gay and for straight, the chalice of grace.” Yes. So the second-to-final verse of the song, in the way I would sing it, is: “For everyone born, a place at the table, to live without fear and simply to be, to work, to speak out, to witness and worship, for everyone born, the right to be free.”

Absolutely, 100 percent, if I’m in a place where I’m leading worship and I’ve got an opportunity to get everyone singing, we’re going to sing “For Everyone Born.” Not only because it’s a beautiful song, like audibly, like sonically, it just sounds great, but these are messages that need to be affirmed. That everyone should have a place at the table. So that’s one that I would sing with an audience.

Another one I enjoy singing with a group of people is “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” And the lyrics go: “Because without a doubt, we’ll know that we’ve been revived when we shall leave this place.” Oh, just a beautiful song by Doris Akers, and I talked a little bit about my fascination with my academic pursuit around black sacred music, but certainly bringing up or amplifying a hymn by a black woman, biracial composer is meaningful to me.

So “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” “For Everyone Born,” and “I Love the Lord” simply because I enjoy singing it and it was originally recorded by Whitney Houston, written by Richard Smallwood, and was on a soundtrack that grossed so much simply because of this one particular song. I love it.

These are the songs you picked – I’m going to throw in “Take It By Force,” too, just because you mentioned it earlier:

1. “Take It By Force”

2. “For Everyone Born”

3. “Sweet, Sweet Spirit”

4. “I Love the Lord” When somebody sees you, experiences you perform these, and knows that you picked them, knows that you were the one that picked them, what does this collection tell them about you as a person?

It speaks to my relationship with God in that “I Love the Lord” certainly was derived from Him that preceded its existence, but one that spoke then, spoke in the ‘90s when the soundtrack for Whitney Houston’s “The Preacher’s Wife” came out, and still speaks today. “I Love the Lord” speaks to my relationship with God. That’s a message that they could come to learn from that music. “For Everyone Born” speaks to my bent toward social justice, certainly with that final verse, which is always included by the way. It speaks to my affinity for and my affirmation of queer folks, queerness, my affirmation of justice being seen in the world and that being the work of God’s people. The liturgy is justice in the world, for everyone born. A central message in that song for me is that it’s not for just every child of God or for every born believer. It’s for

It feels like I don’t know a time where I wasn’t singing in worship. My mom says from the moment I learned to talk, I was singing. It’s been a lifelong thing, me and singing.”

“

everyone born, right?

It’s not simply that your fellowship in the church makes you worthy of these things. Every person born should have clean water and bread, should have a shelter, a space, a safe place for growing. For everyone, born a star overhead. God will delight when we create those circumstances, better those circumstances for people.

Child. I got caught up.

“Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” I think we lack theology in our churches around spirit, so I think “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” goes directly to what we experience when we’re all together on one accord that certainly God is moving, but this is spirit work as well: “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place and I know that it’s the spirit of the Lord.” Yeah.

If you could have a billboard anywhere in the world and it could say anything that you wanted, what would it say?

Oh, 100 percent — 1,000 percent — it would say, “Black Lives Matter.” More than that it would say, “All Black Lives Matter.”

“All” is for marginalized people. So all speaks to the LGBTQ folks, all speaks to disabled folks, all speaks to those who are thrown out of their house, all speaks to people who are struggling with addiction. All Black Lives Matter, all oppressed, marginalized, put out Black people matter, Black folks. Black lives matter. Yeah. That’s the billboard. That’s the work.

Do you like to read during your off time? Oh yeah.

What are you reading right now? What are you reading that you’re really excited about? It doesn’t have to be anything prophetic. It can be as profane as you want it to be.

A book that is on my shelf that I’m reading is The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I started to read it and haven’t picked back up to finish, but it also got a little wild there in the center.

And then the book that is my “self-help” book is The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

I bought it when I was in seminary. It talks about the inward disciplines and the outward disciplines.

Let’s say you’re coming back to Waco next week and you cannot choose a chain. Where are you going to go eat?

I’m going to Sergio’s Burrito Truck. I have been chasing a variation of Sergio’s burrito ever since I left Waco in December 2020. I go for the breakfast burrito every time. I don’t care if it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. I’m getting the breakfast burrito with eggs, potatoes, and bacon. Controversial pork. Uh oh. Grilled veggies, Pico do Gallo, cilantro. Mushrooms, too! And with extra red salsa.

One last question. What are you wholly, truly, and grateful for right now? Hmm. That’s a good one. Stability.

Stability. I love that. Do you want to explain or just leave it at that?

I’m going to go a little, not deeper, but I’ll explain it a little bit more. I spent years in school and even before then I was finding my way and that’s not to say that I found my way now necessarily, but I’ve got a good idea of the way, right? So yeah. Stability: being able to come home to this place of my own. Make it look how I want it to look and feel like how I want it to feel.

I remember being a student at Baylor, living in apartments and being like, “Nah, I’m not going to decorate. I know this is only temporary” and really letting that be the thing that kept me from being in spaces that felt like home. But now I have no problem putting stuff on the walls, drilling putting holes in walls. It’s a whole paradigm shift being stable and knowing that the bills will be paid. It’s just a blessing. Stability. I’m grateful for stability.

I love that answer and I love that it’s your answer. Thanks for spending time with me today and sharing with the Baylor Family.

To read more of Joslyn’s story, visit baylorline.com/joslyn.

If you’d like to nominate a candidate for the next Young Alumni of the Year, presented each year at Baylor Line Foundation’s Hall of Fame Ceremony, visit baylorline.com/nominate.

SEARCHING

FOR SHARON HERBAUGH

Despite all obstacles, the war correspondent was devoted to getting the story and relentless in following it to the end. Her untimely death meant the world might never truly know her. Until now…

By Robert F. Darden (’76) Photos courtesy of Dorothy Herbaugh

Sharon Kay Herbaugh (’77), Bureau Chief of the Associated Press in Islamabad, Pakistan, died in an Afghan army helicopter crash in the wild mountains outside Kabul on April 16, 1993. There were no known witnesses, and the crash was later attributed to an engine malfunction.

Sixteen people died that day with Sharon, including two other journalists. There were no survivors. Following Wilson Fielder Jr., who died in the early days of the Korean War, she became the second Baylor journalism graduate to die as a war correspondent.

In fellow AP reporter Ahmed Rashid’s tribute, published just days after the tragic accident, he called her “the bravest of the brave” and told how she repeatedly returned to the bloody chaos in Afghanistan following the rout of Soviet forces from that ancient land. This time, she was following up on horrifying reports of hundreds of children dying from the thousands of hidden Russian landmines:

... despite admonitions from fellow journalists that Kabul was too dangerous, that the world was no longer interested in the story, that there was not even running water to wash her hair, Herbaugh insisted that she had to cover the story herself.

Word of her death spread quickly among her classmates and colleagues from high school, the Baylor journalism department, the Chi’s service organization, the Associated Press, and the hundreds of friends and connections she had made in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.

News of her passing was met with shock and sadness, then by a shared dawning realization that none of us really knew her. Not really. When American forces finally left Afghanistan after a 20-year war in August 2021, another flood of memories battered those of us she had touched in her short 39 years. For me, Sharon had been my Assistant Editor when I was Editor of the Baylor Round-Up in 1976. We had worked shoulder to shoulder for more than a year. And I now had to admit to myself that she was a truly mysterious figure, someone who had somehow transformed herself from preternaturally quiet, hard-working college student into a much-admired, larger-than-life action figure, as much at home with astronauts and presidents as she was squatting with warlords in wind-swept tents in the Hindu Kush.

Worse, I had to confess that it was possible that that part of Sharon Kay Herbaugh had really been there all along and that I completely missed it.

We all had.

After her passing, reporter David Vickers for Pueblo Chieftain tracked down family, friends, and fellow graduates from Lamar High School in Lamar, Colorado. They all called her “shy” and “pensive” and someone “who avoided the spotlight.” Her mother, Dorothy Herbaugh, said that Sharon never talked about herself or what she was doing. Dorothy was stunned whenever she saw photographs of her daughter interviewing warlords, guerrilla commanders, and soldiers.

“It still amazes me what she did,” Dorothy said, “because in high school and college she

News of her passing was met with shock and sadness, then by a shared dawning realization that none of us really knew her. Not really

“

Above: In this photograph, probably taken to accompany a press release, Sharon Herbaugh, then the Associated Press Bureau Chief in Islamabad, signs a contract with the Associated Press of Pakistan in 1992.

was almost scared of her own shadow.”

But her high school English teacher, Dixie Munro, said she may have had a glimpse beneath the placid exterior, noting that while she never spoke in class, Sharon’s essays revealed something more.

“It surprises me that we didn’t know her better than we did,” Munro told Vickers, “but it doesn’t surprise me there were hidden depths in Sharon Herbaugh.”

Even her best friend, Debbie Rife Mathis, said she was “amazed” how Sharon overcame her shyness, even as her fast-tracked career blossomed.

After a year at McPherson College in McPherson, Kanas, Sharon transferred to Baylor, where she majored in journalism and political science. She joined Chi’s, the women’s service organization, and the friends and classmates I interviewed remembered a lovely person who spoke very little – and never about herself.

The recollections of Patty Jo Murphy, who was assigned as her “Big Sister,” mirror what

nearly every Chi told me.

“My overwhelming memory of Sharon is how quiet she was,” she said. “In retrospect, that makes sense when you look at her career –she was always a good listener.”

Suzanne Sample Graham knew Sharon from both Chi’s and the Baylor Round Up staff, which enabled the two to spend more time together. Suzanne called her a “dear friend” and that the two kept in touch after graduation.

“She made me think!” Suzanne recalled. “On the job and in personal relationships, she was always asking ‘Why?’”

My sister Danni, now Danni Mayfield, another Chi who also worked on the Round Up when Sharon was editor, remembered Sharon primarily as an “observer” during the service organization’s weekly meetings:

She would listen intently to who was talking and also be looking around the room occasionally with that pretty smile of hers, just soaking it all in. When she did speak, it was usually to answer a question – which

was most often a request for her to offer up her opinion. I do remember thinking, ‘Wow!’ and that I wanted to be able to speak that well in front of a big group of people and say such intelligent and insightful things someday.

Danni became President of Chi’s her senior year.

“Looking back at it now,” she said, “I guess she was my influence towards that goal of mine.”

Sharon split her time between Chi’s and the Castellaw Communications Building, where she worked first on The Lariat, then The RoundUp. Karen Benson Crisp was a staff reporter for The Lariat but at night her work-study job was to set type for the next morning’s newspaper – a position that often kept her working late into the night. It was there that she most often encountered Sharon. Karen, like everyone else, remembered her as being an uncommonly quiet and private person who

led by example and was dedicated to her job:

I don’t remember her giving a lot of direction or instruction – you had your job, you knew what to do, and she expected you to do it. She was not dictatorial. She was more of a calm, give quiet direction sort of person.

Yale Youngblood also worked with Sharon on both the newspaper and the yearbook:

Almost from the moment I met her during the fall of my sophomore year, I recognized she had a quiet strength and a genuine kindness about her. I never heard her utter a discouraging word, even when she must have been shaking her inner head over something ridiculous I had submitted as passable copy. She wasn’t just my boss – twice – she was the rare kind of boss who cared equally for the product and the people who produced it.

Below: Sharon simply did not like calling attention to herself. In this page from the 1977 Round Up , the Senior Editor is just another staff member. Likewise, though she was well-loved and respected by her fellow Chi’s, Sharon once again chose to remain virtually anonymous in the group photograph.

After graduating, Sharon went to work for the Associated Press in Dallas. She was transferred shortly thereafter to Houston, where she remained until 1986, when she was assigned to AP’s international desk in New York, an uncommonly rapid ascent for someone so young in that venerable organization. She once told a friend that one of her goals was to cover a tornado, a hurricane, and a war. She got the tornado in Dallas and the hurricane in Houston. The war would come.

While in Houston, Sharon was assigned to cover and participate in astronaut training for the Challenger mission and, of course, write about the experience. Dorothy and Howard Herbaugh shared photos of Sharon in an astronaut space suit sitting at the Challenger’s control board, making a meal, and even sampling one of the space-ready dishes. In the process, she doubtlessly befriended astronauts Christa McAuliffe and Judith Resnick. And while I have not found her written account of that tragic day, Dorothy Herbaugh said Sharon watched in horror with the rest of the world as The Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986. It was Sharon’s 32nd birthday.

This is where Sharon story progresses at a dizzying clip. After a stint on the World Services desk in New York, she was assigned in 1988 to become the news editor for AP in New Delhi, India, where, among other dramatic stories, she covered the Sri Lankan civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil.

An article from April 25, 1989, filed from Kabul, recounts a battle where Soviet soldiers claimed to have killed 58 guerrillas based in Pakistan outside besieged Jalalabad. The story quotes both Soviet ambassador Yuli M. Voronstova and the Russian-backed Afghan president, Muhammad Najibullah Ahmadzai.

In December of that year, Sharon was back in New Delhi, this time interviewing Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the incoming prime minister of India and following him through rural backroads where thousands cheer “Rajah Sahib!” or “King, sir!”

In January 1990, she was named AP bureau chief in Islamabad. She was just 35 and already the first woman to become an Associated Press foreign bureau chief. Despite the numerous desk duties that come with being such a position, any time there was news breaking in that corner of the world, I’d see Sharon’s byline.

One example: A story filed from Peshawar, Pakistan, in May 1992, featured her interview with an exhausted 20-year-old Egyptian mercenary, Mohammed Akbar Ali, who had fought in the jihad against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan.

“Those were good days,” she quotes him as saying while he cleaned his Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifle. “But now there are worse people doing worse things to Islam than the communists ever did. We must get rid of them.”

During Sharon’s years in New Delhi and Islamabad, she became friends with a host of correspondents, men and women who shared a unique bond forged by a life of danger

…a much-admired, larger-than-life action figure, as much at home with astronauts and presidents as she was squatting with warlords in wind-swept tents in the Hindu Kush.

“

and intrigue that is all but inconceivable to outsiders, AP reporters who would also become known and admired by journalists everywhere – Ahmed Rashid, Kathy Gannon, Thom Kent, and others.

And then on April 16, 1993, she was gone.

Her body was retrieved by members of the British aid agency, the Halo Trust, in the rugged Kayan Valley, about 90 miles from the border with Tajikistan. A United Nationschartered plane flew her body to the United States.

The last known photograph of Sharon was taken on March 10, 1993. She was talking to the embattled Afghan Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Masood on a crater-pocked street in Kabul.

Sharon’s final dispatch, published three days after her death, was posted from Kabul, and it begins this way:

Life in the war-scarred streets of the capital seems surreal, as children fly their kites in the weed-infested parks, their laughter drowned by the bursts of nearby machine-gun fire. Noisy taxis, buses and bikes weave through the vendors lining the dusty, rutty streets, seemingly oblivious to the boom of artillery streaking across the sky.

Sharon encountered an old man pushing a small wooden cart. Seeing her, he smiled a toothless grin.

“Salaam alaikom,” he said, repeating the ancient Muslim greeting, “Peace be with you.” “But,” she adds, “peace is nowhere to be found in Kabul.”

Ahmed Rashid, now the author of five books on Afghanistan and Central Asia, praised Sharon as a “workaholic, a risk-taker, like any good journalist, and meticulous about her work to the point of obsession.” He called her “quiet, unassuming” and “a great friend, a generous host, and warrior.” When I tracked him down in December 2021, Rashid was still reporting from the field:

At a time when most journalists avoided Afghanistan for fear of being trapped in the crossfire between Soviet troops and the Afghan Mujahideen, Sharon was fearless, courageous, brave and a risk taker with the determination to be the first one there. She was also beautiful, charming, thoughtful, and hospitable but rarely spoke of her personal life and problems of being a female correspondent in a male society.

Thom Kent, now a consultant on Journalism, Ethics, Disinformation, and Russian Affairs in New York, said Shanon was “very quiet” but also “extremely competent and tenacious,” remembering her as one of several female correspondents who excelled in reporting from one of the most dangerous and complex parts of the world:

Sharon became a real expert on Afghanistan. One story told about Sharon was that once, when she was in the mountains of Afghanistan, she ran into an armed band that wanted to seize her satellite telex – a suitcase-sized forerunner of modern-day satellite phones.

She once told a friend that one of her goals was to cover a tornado, a hurricane, and a war. She got the tornado in Dallas and the hurricane in Houston. The war would come.

“

Above: Sharon had a knack for finding danger and making friends. Here, as Chief of the AP Bureau in Islamabad, she sits with Afghan rebels in Pul-e-charkhi, Afghanistan, in August 1992, less than year before her death in that country.

From what we were told, she handled the situation by sitting on the suitcase – knowing that this particular Islamic band would never physically touch a woman, even if they really wanted what she was sitting on. The telex was saved and Sharon and her colleagues were allowed to depart the situation safely.

Kent cited this story to me as an example of the kind of extreme danger even smart reporters must sometimes face – and that Sharon’s death in the Russian-made helicopter was proof that no one can ever truly protect themselves from the “inherent hazards” and dangers that international correspondents all too often face.

Kathy Gannon, now the Special Regional Correspondent in Afghanistan for the Associated Press, was one of Sharon’s closest friends. Gannon arrived in Afghanistan in 1986 and spent 18 often harrowing years with

the AP chronicling the bloody end to the Soviet Union’s brutal occupation, the years of chaotic tribalism, the emergence of the Taliban, and the deadly rise of al Qaeda. Like Sharon, Kathy cultivated friendships throughout the war-torn country before becoming AP’s Iran bureau chief. The Associated Press suffered from numerous attacks by various groups related to warlords and al Qaeda before Gannon herself was ambushed in July 2013. Though badly injured, she survived and was forced to eventually retire from AP. She, too, has written about the region and is the author of the bestselling book, I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror, 18 Years Inside Afghanistan

Kathy said that talking about Sharon even now, 28 years later, is an emotional experience: Sharon was devoted to getting the story and relentless in following the story to its end. When Sharon became a journalist, the

Above: Sharon experienced much of the same training and wrote a series of articles for the Associated Press throughout 1985 following the Challenger mission’s two female astronauts.

industry was still male-dominated and the road to success for women was seen by most women as difficult and meant a choice between home and career. It was a time when difficult choices were made. Sharon never shied away from difficult choices, and she never burdened anyone with the troubles she endured. It was a different time, even though in truth today still looks a lot like yesterday in many ways. But then Sharon, like so many women in the business, powered through, said little and competed at a level that often far outweighed their male counterparts.

Gannon alluded specifically to perhaps the most difficult choice in Sharon’s life.

Sharon had a daughter, Tracee, who she eventually was forced to give to her parents to raise. Tracee’s story is equally compelling and after years of anger at her mother for that decision, she has become a successful writer herself. Tracee’s essays on how she eventually came to forgive Sharon after she had children of her own are the basis of an award-winning series of stories in The Washington Post and elsewhere.

It was Gannon who spoke with Tracee nightly for weeks following the accident.

“Tracee was voracious for information about her mother,” Gannon recalled. “Sharon’s greatest sacrifices were the personal sacrifices she made. I don’t think Sharon at the time

It still amazes me what she did, because in high school and college she was almost scared of her own shadow.

“

knew or believed it was possible to have both a personal and a professional life.”

Together, the two tried to make sense of it all, to understand Sharon’s life and motivations.

In retrospect, Gannon said she thinks she has a handle on at least part of what drove her friend.

“I think she worried always about doing a good enough job, managing her position, worried always that it might not be seen as good enough or strong enough,” Gannon said. “These insecurities were also her strength. She was second to none in the work she did and in her devotion to her craft.”

Many of her friends in the AP and elsewhere flew to Lamar to be present for her funeral. Byron Yake, then AP’s director of human resources, was there at the Lamar Baptist Church when the choir sang “What a Day” and “How Great Thou Art.” Yake wanted the congregation that day to know that Sharon was special.

“She was a courageous reporter working in a difficult country, covering a difficult war and she did it with passion and excellence,” he said.

In the obituary for The Lamar Daily News, another unnamed friend of Sharon’s from Islamabad took her parents aside to tell them that their daughter was “very passionate about Afghanistan. It wasn’t the story but the people. Sharon wanted the world to know the suffering they endured, the courage they had. Courage was something Sharon had a mountain of.”

Visitors entering the newsroom of the global headquarters of the Associated Press in New York pass the AP’s Wall of Honor, which honors the 37 AP journalists who have died on assignment since its founding in 1846. Sharon’s picture and story are there. She is recognized as the first woman correspondent to be killed

in action.

A quote from the AP’s CEO Louis Boccardi reads, in part, “One of Sharon’s editors once said, ‘She’s always looking for the next hurricane.’ That search ended in a field in Afghanistan but Sharon leaves a legacy of brave, insightful work that helped us all understand a distant, bitter conflict.”

And she leaves behind another legacy, a legacy of friends who wished they had known her better, who had listened a little better, and who have belatedly realized at last the truth of the old, old adage – still water runs incredibly, unfathomably deep.

Courage was something Sharon had a mountain of.

“

FROM OBSCURITY TO A NOBEL PRIZE NOMINATION

Corbevax, a low-cost coronavirus vaccine created in Houston by two Baylor scientists, could be a better weapon against Covid-19 by reaching the unvaccinated in poorer countries.

By Karen Brooks Harper, The Texas Tribune | All photos are by Justin Rex for The Texas Tribune

Editor’s Note: We are republishing this story from earlier this year by The Texas Tribune as it highlights the amazing work of two Baylor biology professors, Drs. Maria Bottazzi, distinguished professor of Biology at Baylor, and Peter Hotez, university professor of Biology at Baylor. I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Hotez recently about the BA-5 variant of Covid-19. (To read that story, visit baylorline.com/ba5.) While speaking with Dr. Hotez, I was struck by how often he praised, credited, and was encouraged by his partnership with Dr. Bottazzi, and I think this article does a fantastic job at conveying that. I hope her story and their work is both illuminating and encouraging to you.

Two years ago, when a pair of Baylor scientists in Houston first began crafting a cheap, easy-tomake Covid-19 vaccine, they had a tough time finding support for it at home in the U.S., a country that rewards expensive, flashy new tech.

They could have used help with their goal of combating the virus both locally and abroad, where it was morphing into more dangerous variants headed for U.S. shores.

But the team at the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, led by Drs. Maria Bottazzi, distinguished professor of Biology at Baylor University, and Peter Hotez, university professor of Biology also at Baylor University, worked on their patent-free vaccine with donated money in relative obscurity, failing to garner much outside interest.

Then one thing finally broke through and spoke to the people who had been overlooking their open-science approach to the vaccine known by its first producer as Corbevax. It came without strings or a secret formula, making it a true humanitarian pursuit that could finally reach the unvaccinated corners of the developing world.

“Corbevax to beat inequity?” read a CNN News ticker beside a televised interview with the scientists last month [January 2022].

Now, months after their vaccine won emergency use authorization in India, international news agencies are still lining up for interviews. Curious investors are reaching out to the scientists on social media from around the world. U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are pressuring President Joe Biden to step in and support the vaccine’s distribution abroad.

The vaccine is being praised by scientists, members of the public, and the media as “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine,” “the vaccine game changer,” and “the way out of this global pandemic.”

There’s even talk of a Nobel Peace Prize.

“You are providing sorely needed ethical and scientific leadership. Texas should be proud!” Ambassador Martin Kimani, Kenya’s permanent representative to the United Nations, wrote on Twitter in early January.

And all of this buzz before a single shot of Corbevax has gone into an arm outside of clinical trials.

“I think one of the reasons it’s been a bit viral is the fact that everybody’s been talking about equity, equity, equity, and nobody does much of anything,” Bottazzi told The Texas Tribune. “And then all of a sudden they learn that we have this vaccine that has been open science, with no proprietary technology. And they’re saying, ‘Wait, where has this been?’”

Opposite: Peter Hotez at the Tropical Medicine Lab at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. (inset): Maria Bottazzi holds a vial of the RBD-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine at the Tropical Medicine Lab at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston.

The vaccine formula can be licensed by a vaccine producer in any low- or middleincome nation, which would then take ownership of it, produce it, name it, and work with the government to get it to the people, Hotez said.

Corbevax, as it was dubbed by its Indian maker, was co-developed and manufactured by the biopharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited, headquartered in Hyderabad, India.

Doses [began being delivered to the Indian government starting earlier this year] for distribution to some half a billion people who are still unvaccinated in that country. Just over half the population of India is fully vaccinated, with another homegrown vaccine available there and a third recently authorized.

A halal version of the vaccine, for use in Islamic countries because it doesn’t contain animal-based ingredients, is in clinical trials in Indonesia.

Their vaccine uses the same recombinant protein technology already used for decades in the hepatitis B vaccine, a common childhood shot.

The vaccine technology has no intellectual property rights attached to it. That means the building blocks of the vaccine can be had for the price of a phone call. Once produced, the vaccine can be sold to governments for far less than any other vaccine currently on the market.

“Our intent was to make it available to millions of people in the world who would otherwise not have access to Covid-19 vaccines,” said Hotez,

dean of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine.

The Indian government has secured a deal with Biological E to buy at least 300 million doses for less than $2 per dose. After that, Bio E has said it can make more than 1 million doses per month.

By comparison, the U.S. government is paying Pfizer about $20 per dose. Much of that is the cost of the intellectual property covered by the patent.

The idea of open science, open access, and open source medicine and technology, like the “patent pledge” by Tesla in 2014, is not new, but it’s gaining traction for its focus on equal access over profit. Its critics argue that it can dampen competition and innovation.

There have been attempts to exempt Covid-19 vaccines from intellectual property rights and patents to increase global access, amid debate over whether that would result in more equitable distribution.

But much of the praise for Corbevax and its Texas inventors seems to be their willingness — and that of Bio E and the investors — to forgo a large profit in favor of the more altruistic goal of better access and distribution of the vaccine.

Drs. Bottazzi and Hotez were nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for practicing what Hotez calls “Texas vaccine diplomacy,” by creating a path for the entire world to be inoculated.

“Dr. Hotez and Dr. Bottazzi’s effort to develop the Corbevax vaccine is truly one of

A lab worker works on a project at the Texas Children’s Hospital Center.

international cooperation and partnership to bring health, security, and peace around the world by creating a Covid-19 vaccine and making it available and accessible to all,” wrote U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, in her official nomination. “It is a contribution that is of the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Whether their new fame translates into dollars for continuing their work on advancing the coronavirus vaccine program remains to be seen, Bottazzi said.

She hopes that once the vaccine’s safety data is published for peer review and the vaccine starts going into arms, more support will follow.

They have some powerful voices showing up for them now, too. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, called on Biden to help with its distribution to American allies overseas who are struggling with what he called “ineffective and substandard vaccines from China and Russia.”

“While we recognize existing administration efforts to supply Covid-19 vaccines around the world, the global supply is woefully insufficient to meet urgent and pressing demands,” McCaul wrote in a letter signed by a bipartisan group of more than a dozen members of the Texas congressional delegation.

“We

need to see the data”

All the Corbevax praise is coming in before the scientific trial data has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, seen by experts as an important public vetting process for a new vaccine or medication.

“I’m excited about it. I see a huge potential. I can’t wait for something like this to come to fruition,” said Dr. Jason Morrow, a physician and medical ethicist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “And I also have to be measured and patient and wait for the data.”

Data from company-run clinical trials in India proving that Corbevax is safe and effective was submitted to the Indian government regulators to review before they authorized it on December 28, 2021 for emergency use.

Long before that, in the U.S., the Texas Children’s team published all of its information about the production processes for the vaccine technology in publicly available scientific journals.

7-day average of new confirmed cases of COVID-19: As of Aug. 23, there are 6.2 million confirmed cases. The average number of cases reported over the past seven days shows how the situation has changed over time by de-emphasizing daily swings. The number of new cases reported drops on weekends, when labs are less likely to report new data to the state.

Everyone 16 and older eligible for vaccines

7-day average

Aug. 23 5,388 avererage daily confirmed cases

Biological E Limited reported during the approval process in India that in the company’s clinical trials, Corbevax showed up to a 90 percent efficacy rate based on immunebridging studies, and none of the 3,000 people 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 April 2021 Oct. July

who participated in the final stage of clinical trials had any serious adverse reactions. It also showed only a minimal drop in protection after six months.

When the company’s testing methods and research are published in a scientific journal, that will give the public a look into how the researchers came to their conclusions about Corbevax’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, it’s creating some tension with those who want to support it but don’t have all the facts yet.

“The fact that [Corbevax is] open source, and it’s intended to be easy and cheap to make and to do so at a large scale is really exciting, and it’s exactly what we need to try to get the pandemic under control,” Morrow said. “But we need to see the data.”

Flipping the script

In 2020, the Houston team’s work was passed over for funding by Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership created by the federal government to accelerate treatments and vaccines for Covid-19. Developing the Covid-19 vaccine technology and the codevelopment efforts of Corbevax from the lab to authorization cost the laboratories between $5 million and $7 million, Bottazzi said.

That’s when philanthropy stepped in, specifically the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the M.D. Anderson Foundation, and the JPB Foundation in New York, along with several other anonymous individual donors.

Even Love, Tito’s — the philanthropic arm of Austin-based Tito’s Handmade Vodka — put in $1 million.

By comparison, Operation Warp Speed spent more than $12 billion in federal tax dollars to develop and distribute the vaccines launched by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. The three vaccines have been used to fully vaccinate nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population.

Those companies’ vaccines use messenger RNA, a molecule the virus needs to produce a “spike protein” and bind to human cells, to prompt the immune system to produce antibodies against that protein.

It’s a method that’s been in development

since the 1970s and in clinical trials since 2008. What’s new about the mRNA vaccines are the systems for producing and delivering them in mass quantities. That’s the part that was patented by the mRNA vaccines’ creators in exchange for the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna investing in the science behind it and funding the research. The cost of that investment gets passed on to the buyers, which include governments.

And the richer the government, the more vaccines it can buy. Some poor governments can’t afford any at all, and they rely on donations from other countries, like the U.S., for what little vaccine they can get.

The Corbevax formula is also not new — but unlike the mRNA shots, its recombinant protein technology has been in widespread use globally for decades. In some ways, that familiarity and older technology is what put Corbevax behind the newer, more modern mRNA vaccines in the race for funding two years ago.

Now the lack of a patent and the fact that the formula that can be replicated almost anywhere is flipping the script, making Corbevax the new and buzz-worthy vaccine while others can get bogged down in vaccine hesitancy, cost, production limitations, and politics.

“They [Hotez and Bottazzi] have found a way to get enough money to develop it without the people who are providing the money demanding intellectual property protection,” said Dr. Benjamin Neuman, a Texas A&M University virologist who has been doing coronavirus research since 1996. “That’s the trick. Finding a funder that is willing to say, ‘Here’s the money, let’s do this for people everywhere,’ you know?”

Reaching the global population

Every week, Bottazzi and Hotez field calls from more nations that are interested in the vaccine, that want to know how to obtain it and how to make it.

The World Health Organization will issue an emergency use listing in the coming months for Corbevax, which could help fast-track it in other countries that need it.

For answers as to why vaccine equity in low-

and middle-income countries matters, doctors say to look at the ravages of the omicron wave, which impacted the nation from the winter of 2021 through the spring of 2022.

More than two-thirds of the world’s population has gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, but the vast majority of those people are concentrated in wealthier, more developed countries, nations that are predominantly white. Only 10 percent of the people in poorer countries have received at least one shot.

An article published in the medical journal The Lancet [in January 2022], authored by a handful of scientists including Hotez, warned of the “alarming inequities” in access to testing, treatment and vaccines by poorer countries that have “set the tone of this pandemic.”

By September 2021, they wrote, 5.82 billion vaccine doses had been administered worldwide. Less than 2 percent of the people in less wealthy countries had received at least one dose.

Nations like Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa, where the omicron variant was first publicly reported last Thanksgiving, are still dealing with vaccination rates ranging from 4 percent to under a third of the population.

Scientists have never confirmed a country of origin for omicron, and it was documented in white, wealthy, western European areas around

the same time it was being reported by South Africa, but with no apparent geographical connection.

But the high numbers of unvaccinated people found in poorer countries make them particularly vulnerable to the ravages of new variants, experts say.

The World Health Organization estimated that for the pandemic to wane globally, vaccines should reach 70 percent of the world by mid-2022. Currently, about 3 billion people are still unvaccinated, and up to 9 billion doses are needed to get them all fully vaccinated and boosted.

Reducing virus spread abroad means fewer infections in the United States and Texas. It took less than a month between the time the omicron variant was first reported in South Africa and Europe and the time it was breaking records in some major Texas hospitals.

“We all have an interest in everybody getting the vaccine, and that means we really need to build systems that can ensure equity,” said Dr. Rachel Pearson, a hospital pediatrician at the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at UT Health San Antonio. “We really need to have a more integrated global system with a focus on access in the developing world, because vaccine inequity has been a major source of unnecessary death and suffering.”

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Maria Bottazzi, left, and Peter Hotez at the Tropical Medicine Lab at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston.

A VISIT WITH “MISS DOTTIE”

By Kent Keeth, Director, Texas Collection

Born in Smith County, Texas, in 1878, Dorothy Scarborough, one of Baylor’s distinguished graduates and faculty members, made a name for herself as a teacher, lecturer, and writer. She literally grew up on Baylor’s campus, in her family’s home which occupied the site where Allen Hall now stands. After the death of her parents she lived in the home of Dr. J.T. Harrington, now Baylor’s Harrington House faculty center. Taking her BA degree in 1896, “Miss Dottie” taught English for several years at Baylor while concurrently working toward her MA degree. She founded at her alma mater the first department of journalism in the southwest.

Following a year of study at Oxford and the completion of her PhD at Columbia University in 1917, she joined Columbia’s faculty to teach courses in short story writing. She somehow managed also to find time, in addition to a heavy teaching load, to write five novels, publish treatises on cotton, folklore and literature, contribute numerous articles and stories to periodicals, and edit several anthologies of short stories.

Described by her friends as “small, untidy, energetic, unselfish, tireless, and possessed of great originality,”

Miss Scarborough was meticulous in researching the backgrounds of her works. Several of her novels took place in Waco, a setting with which she was thoroughly familiar, and some of her characters were students at Baylor. Her novel The Wind, which was first published anonymously, was set in her girlhood home of Sweetwater, where an unsuccessful attempt was made to ban the book because of its unflattering—but highly accurate—presentation of life on the West Texas plains. The book became a popular success, however, and was made into a motion picture starring Lillian Gish. The author allowed her name to appear on the title page of subsequent printings and later redeemed herself to the citizens of Sweetwater by a visit and a series of talks to local clubs.

In 1927, four years after the publication of her first novel on the cotton industry, In the Land of Cotton, the author obtained a six month leave of absence from teaching and commenced a southern tour of research for a second novel on a similar theme. In the course of her travels she managed to spend a few days visiting old friends in Waco. During the interview with a reporter from the Times-Herald Miss Scarborough revealed the thoroughgoing methods by which she was gathering her information.

She had travelled, she said, throughout the South, visiting plantation homes, field workers’ shanties and the cotton exchanges of Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Galveston. As she had no secretary with her, she herself made notes of the facts she discovered, until she arrived in Waco with seven hundred typed pages filled with the intimate details of cotton-market operations. “I will take it back with me, study it thoroughly, and then begin my writing. After the work has begun, I can’t stop and search for more data, you know. I must have the material thoroughly assimilated, thought out, and then I will write,” she said.

When questioned by the interviewer about her writing habits, Miss Scarborough revealed that she normally began work at seven o’clock in the morning. “One can always do his best by starting when the day is fresh. About three hours is all I do at a stretch.” She did not use a stenographer for her writing, she said, because “dictating means one is apt to be verbose. Writing your own copy makes you cut down on superfluous words.”

“Do you write with a pencil?”

“Yes, I use a typewriter only on my correspondence. I like to be by myself, undisturbed, and I must be comfortable when writing.”

“What kind of pencil do you use— one that writes soft, or hard?”

“Just one that I can chew the end of,” the distinguished novelist replied.

The book in preparation, Can’t Get a Red Bird, was published two years later, in 1929. After that time the author’s energies were largely directed toward the gathering and publication of folklore and folk songs. Miss Scarborough died in New York City in 1935, and is buried in Waco’s Oakwood Cemetry.

THE BAYLOR LINE PROMISE

We believe in community. We believe in transformation. We believe in you. Because when we all come together in support of each other, there’s nothing that can stop the Baylor Family. We believe that everyone has a place. We believe that your life matters. We believe you are leaving behind an important legacy. And all of our efforts aim to keep this single promise…

We promise to make the Baylor Family ever-better by investing in a future where everyone can carry the torch, live with purpose, and lead with confidence.