Baylor Line | Summer 2018

W H AT I S O U R P O T E N T I A L ?

W H AT I S O U R R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y ?

W H AT W I L L W E F I N D I N T H E L I G H T ?

Illuminate THE BAYLOR LINE

T H E B AY L O R L I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 1 8 V O L . 8 2 , N O. 3 PUBLISHED BY THE BAYLOR LINE FOUNDATION SINCE 1946

Executive Vice President Allen Holt allen@baylorlinefoundation.com Editor-in-Chief Craig Cunningham craig@baylorlinefoundation.com Publication Designer Haley Gandy cedargandy.com CFO James McInnis Member Services Kellie Juandiego kellie@baylorlinefoundation.com Marketing Director Shelby Pipken For advertising opportunities, email ads@baylorlinefoundation.com Letters and comments can be sent to baylorline@baylorlinefoundation.com Contact Info The Baylor Line P.O. Box 2089 Waco TX 76703 254.732.0393

BAYLORLINEFOUNDATION.COM @THEBAYLORLINEFOUNDATION @BAYLORLINEFOUNDATION @BAYLORLINEFDN

It has been an exciting and productive year for the Baylor Line Foundation. Let me share with you a few of the highlights.

In January we hosted a very successful Hall of Fame Banquet. The Program Committee and staff brilliantly organized the event. The award recipients were diverse, deserving and represented the best of Baylor. In addition, this event raised $100,000 to fund our Legacy Scholarships.

The Baylor Line Foundation awarded fifty $2,000 legacy scholarships for the upcoming school year. Our Program Committee spent weeks reading through the 183 impressive applications received. The decisions were difficult. Our goal is to increase the number of scholarships we can award next year.

The Advancement Committee has done a masterful job teaching the BLF board about achieving goals and fundraising. The Advancement Committee members have many years of professional development experience and we are grateful to benefit from their leadership.

Our newly launched President’s Council is made up of Baylor alumni and friends who have supported the University and the BAA/BLF through the years. While this group of faithful Bears enjoys getting together for special tours and Baylor-related events, they also act as an advisory body for the BLF board.

The Communication Committee has been particularly invested in the way we tell our story. Our hardworking staff put the ideas into action and the results have been tremendous! The logo, vision and tagline have been redesigned to give a creative, fresh look. The mission and vision of the organization has been updated as well.

The amount we are putting on social media and the website is up well over 200% for just the first five months of 2018. The email click rate is up over 500% so far. Instagram followers are up 20% and our email open rate is up 100% over last year. These numbers are phenomenal and indicative of the progress being made.

The Finance Committee and staff keep us on budget and monitor our investments and our growing endowment. We are in an excellent financial place.

Our family dialogue continues as representatives of the BLF and the University find ways to collaborate and continue the work of healing. There is much to do but the door is open and the conversation is productive.

So how do you join with us?

How do you add your voice to the story?

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We need you to join the BLF as an annual member, a Life member or a Torchbearer.

st It is easier than you might think. Our membership meeting is moving back to

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Homecoming weekend! Come join us on the Friday before Homecoming at 3:00 p.m.

Other details will be available soon. www.baylorlinefoundation.com/membership

Next, join the process of Alumni Regent selection. Perhaps the most important result of the 2016 settlement between the BLF and Baylor was the addition of Alumni nd Elected Regents. This is an opportunity for alumni to participate in the process of selecting several regents. Please make it a priority to use your voice and nominate strong candidates. The nominating process is straightforward and easily manageable.

Please make sure you vote each year.

Because we have an engaged board, a hardworking staff, loyal members, a blossoming relationship with the new leadership at Baylor and a vision that guides us ever onward, the BLF continues to be a trusted friend and the voice of alumni since 1859.

Jackie Baugh Moore | President of BLF ‘00 1

All truth is God’s truth.

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’ve been hearing that phrase around campus for a while now, and my suspicion is that we will hear it increasingly over the next few years. For Baylor, this means pushing all the chips to the center of the table on the bet that they can become a bona fide research university. The phrase invites a fearless exploration of the unknown. Regardless of where the journey takes us, if we come to a place of truth, we also come a little closer to God. This idea is old hat in Christian discourse. St. Augustine basically said the same thing when he wrote, “Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master.” I’m on board. Count me in.

But here’s the thing: God’s truth is going to be expensive.

Coming full steam around the bend is a capital campaign to end all capital campaigns. Dr. Livingstone has stated that one of her goals is to double the current endowment of $1.3 billion, and Baylor will also need to raise ongoing support for Illuminate, the new academic strategic plan that puts Baylor on the path to becoming a Tier One, R1 university. If you’re like me, it’s always been difficult to fully

grasp what that means. At times, it can feel like a commitment to research is a departure from Baylor’s traditional identity. An alternative perspective is that a commitment to research is a move towards our potential, and neglecting that potential would be a disservice to the unique position God has carved out for Baylor. Certainly, this debate has been going on for decades, and alumni, rightfully, have strong feelings about Baylor’s identity. The x-factor continues to be how alumni will respond to the ongoing revelations from the sexual assault scandal. The ultimate question that we all must answer is this: Why must Baylor exist? My hope is that the content of this issue sheds light on that conversation. Also included in this issue is a powerful story from Robert Darden, spotlights on unique alumni, and a stunning cover illustration by 2013 grad Katherine Makowsky.

As alumni, we are essential parts in the machine that powers Baylor. What a great responsibility. So may we always remember our heritage, and have the courage to explore the future.

Craig Cunningham ‘08 Editor-in-Chief

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER

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EDITOR’S LETTER

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VOICES

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JACKIE BAUGH MOORE

ALL TRUTH IS GOD’S TRUTH

DR. LARRY LYONS | DR. KIMBERLY KELLISON | DR. GARY CARINI

FIELDER’S LAST ASSIGNMENT BOB DARDEN

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ILLUMINATE

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ALUMNI STORIES

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DR. CURTIS CALLAWAY

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FOOTBALL PRIMER

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REMEMBRANCES

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HOUSEKEEPING

INTRO | DR. LIVINGSTONE INTERVIEW | THE VISION | CHALLENGES

REID JOHNSON | BRETT AND EMILY MILLS | ASHLEY KILLOUGH

THE PHOTOGRAPHY PROFESSOR HAS THE WORLD IN A FRAME

AFTER A SEASON TO FORGET, WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT?

DR. WILLIAM HILLIS | DAVID MCCOLLUM

HOF NOMINATIONS | SCHOLARSHIPS, 38 | DAVID MCHAM, 40 | OBITUARIES, 59

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On August 20th,

3,400 freshmen

started their journey at Baylor. This is the most academically qualified class in the history of the university. 31% have a legacy connection, 35% come from underrepresented groups, 19% are first generation students, and 38% come from out of state. Good luck, Bears!

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Voic FACULTY SHARE THEIR VIEWS ON ILLUMINATE

The Texas-Sized Hubris Of Illuminate

Baylor transformed my family. My father was the first Lyon to attend college, going to Baylor under the GI Bill. The degrees he received here allowed a career in public education that forever changed the arc of our family. In 1967, my mother took her first job outside the home to help pay for Baylor’s outrageous $25 per hour tuition, and I arrived on campus to receive much more than a degree. I learned about a world far beyond my small Texas hometown, about how Christianity was so much richer, nuanced and meaningful than I ever imagined in Sunday School, about how brilliant, caring faculty could awaken me and equip me to try and compete with the best and brightest in graduate school.

A generation later, Baylor did all of that and more for my daughters, who now enjoy success enabled by their Baylor experiences.

Through the generations, Baylor has improved, growing larger, stronger, offering more. Today’s students take their science courses in our magnificent multidisciplinary science building and business classes in the cutting-edge learning environment of the Foster Campus. They may think that Baylor has always had chapels near the dorms, faculty living in their residence hall and a dazzlingly broad array of food choices for each meal. They regularly walk across the Brazos to McLane Stadium without the sense of awe that I still experience before each game.

Baylor’s progress has been remarkable, but our next step, as described in Illuminate, calls for much more than just new buildings, more scholarships, smaller classes or better student services — things we have strived for since 1845. This next step — that formally began in 2002 with the controversial Baylor 2012 initiative, codified in the more widely accepted Pro Futuris and now implemented under Illuminate — is based on a revolutionary aspiration that Baylor should become “a preeminent research university that is unambiguously Christian.” Such a step would not only be revolutionary for Baylor, but for all of higher education.

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There are no Protestant research universities, and none are on the horizon, save, hopefully, Baylor.

Illuminate imagines a Baylor where some of the best scholars in the world come to a unique university, where they are encouraged to practice their faith while engaging in important research supported by graduate students in laboratories, libraries and performance halls that are among the best anywhere. Baylor would not only greatly expand its graduate profile, the quality of our undergraduate education would also improve because such universities, without exception, recruit the most academically-gifted undergraduates and provide them with the most highly-ranked learning experiences (e.g. the USNWR rankings). Illuminate imagines a Baylor where the very best of what the Lyon family experienced as undergraduates is supplemented with rigorous graduate programs, producing a truly great Christian research university.

Still, we must be clear about the challenge.

It is easier to compete with Texas and A&M in athletics than it is to compete with them in hiring faculty who are top researchers, who win major external grants, write great books, inspire undergraduates and attract top graduate students.

A colleague at Wheaton once described Baylor’s research aspirations as an example of Texas-sized hubris, and perhaps it is. Maybe we can’t do it, but as Illuminate acknowledges our calling to be a light unto the world, dimming that light in the highest levels of higher education (graduate education and research) diminishes not only Baylor, but the world.

C.S. Lewis noted almost 80 years ago that “a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now — not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons.” Today, science is not only removed from the moorings of faith, but growing hostile to faith, seeing believers as an impediment to progress. Ironically, as Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark argued in The Victory of Reason, science would not have developed when and how it did without the foundation of Christian theology. Similarly, the arts and humanities are now more likely to see religion as a source of knee-jerk censorship rather than as a source of inspiration.

And, as Baylor’s David Lyle Jeffrey illustrates in his People of the Book, this stands in sharp contrast to an earlier time when the finest examples of literature and art were expressions of religious themes. The current manifestation of the trends outlined by Lewis is troubling, but not surprising. We should not expect secular higher education to create culture with significant room for faith. Yet a brave new world of social, economic, political, scientific and technological development without the moral influence of a deliberative faith does not bode well for humankind.

So, with an acknowledged level of Texas-sized hubris, I believe that the success of Illuminate means more than just the continued success of Baylor.

The world needs a preeminent Protestant Christian university. The world needs Baylor.

“So, this is who we are.

Let’s say at some level it made (finding grants) more difficult – and I would not state that it does or doesn’t – that’s still who we are. We’re not going to compromise who we are as an institution and move away from ‘unambiguously Christian’ in order to get more money.”

Dr. Gary Carini, Vice Provost for Graduate Professional Education and Professor of Management To read the full transcript of Dr. Gary Carini’s interview, visit baylorlinefoundation.com

Dr. Larry Lyon, Dean of the Graduate School Class of 1971 7

“By following these initiatives, Baylor will emerge as a leading Christian research institution that will offer a distinctive voice and presence in the contemporary world.”

In 2012, the Baylor University Board of Regents adopted Pro Futuris, a visionary document committed to five major goals: transformational education, compelling scholarship, informed engagement, committed constituents, and judicious stewardship. In 2018, the Board of Regents approved Illuminate, the university’s academic strategic plan and the second phase of Pro Futuris. While Pro Futuris outlined the goals the university aspired to achieve, Illuminate includes specific initiatives that will move us toward the accomplishment of such goals. Illuminate is clear in its ambition to establish Baylor as a preeminent research university where teaching and scholarship intersect in an “unambiguously Christian educational environment.” The strategic plan establishes specific steps to foster Baylor’s Christian mission through a heightened commitment to research and scholarly productivity and through outstanding teaching on the undergraduate and graduate level. By following these initiatives, Baylor will emerge as a leading Christian research institution that will “offer a distinctive voice and presence in the contemporary world.”

One of the most exciting, as well as challenging, aspects of Illuminate is the goal of moving Baylor to R1 status — meaning that Baylor will belong to an elite group of doctoral universities classified, according to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, as “highest research activity.” (Currently, Baylor is an R2, or “higher research activity,” institution.) Why is it important to reach R1 status? How will R1 help Baylor faculty, students, and alumni? An institution committed to the highest level of research and scholarship will bring innovative, cutting-edge solutions to local, national, and global issues. An R1 focus will enable Baylor to speak directly into national and international conversations about pressing societal issues, reflecting a Christian viewpoint and bridging the gap that some people perceive between higher education and American society.

Students and alumni will be part of an institution recognized for its world-renowned research excellence, which will allow them to be more competitive on a professional level.

Attaining R1 status will also stimulate local economic development, adding intellectual and economic vibrancy to the Waco area. Significantly, moving to R1 status will occur within a Christian framework. As Illuminate states, “Baylor’s Christian mission stands not as an extra condition to its current aspirations, but at the very heart of the matter.”

As Baylor enters into its soon-to-be-unveiled capital campaign, Illuminate’s five signature research initiatives — Health, Data Sciences, Materials Sciences, Human Flourishing and Ethics, and Baylor in Latin America — will provide avenues for multidisciplinary, collaborative research involving faculty from various departments, schools, and external affiliations. Appreciably greater external granting and increased PhD production — necessary metrics to obtain R1 status — will be central to these initiatives, but so will revenue generating programs. Illuminate also envisions student participation in each initiative, including undergraduate and graduate research with faculty, study abroad opportunities, mission trips, and internships. Through each of these interdependent, multi-layered, and multidisciplinary initiatives, Baylor will continue to build a pathway as a preeminent Christian revenue-generating, research university.

Dr. Kimberly Kellison, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Where does the strong focus on R1 research productivity leave one of Baylor’s most enduring strengths; its commitment to undergraduate teaching?

Is the “new” Baylor vision overshadowing the university’s traditional emphasis on outstanding classroom teaching that has profoundly shaped generations of undergraduates? Not at all. As Illuminate makes clear, a commitment to innovative research and scholarship does not preclude exceptional teaching and mentoring; instead, the two activities are symbiotic. New, cuttingedge research and scholarship leads to better teaching. The interchange of ideas in the classroom, likewise, helps promote new avenues of research and scholarship. Student participation in Illuminate’s five signature academic research initiatives is a central example of Baylor’s commitment to research and teaching. So too is Illuminate’s plan for recruitment of academically motivated and diverse students both nationally and internationally, as well as recruitment and retention of a dedicated and diverse faculty who wholeheartedly embraces Baylor’s Christian mission. Baylor continues to attract Christian faculty who view teaching and mentoring, as well as research, publication, and granting, as essential to a transformational educational experience. Illuminate promises to maintain and to heighten these foundational aspects of Baylor’s identity.

I am proud to be part of a university that aspires to new levels of research productivity and innovation while simultaneously emphasizing teaching excellence and the advancement of a distinctively Christian mission. I am excited about the possibilities for growth that Illuminate brings. Baylor University is in good hands with our newly approved university strategic plan.

Voices

want to share your voice on this question ?

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Submit no more than 400 words to voices@baylorlinefoundation.com.

Hall of Fame Awards Each Year, the Baylor Line Foundation honors outstanding alumni with our Hall of Fame Awards. This year, we are partnering with the university to unite our efforts to recognize deserving individuals. Details of the event are yet to be determined, but it will likely be held in the early part of 2019. However, nominations are now open!

Visit

baylorlinefoundation.com to nominate candidates.

Possible Awards Include: + Distinguished Alumni Award + Outstanding Young Alumni Award + W.R. White Meritorious Service Award + Abner V. McCall Religious Liberty Award + George W. Truett Distinguished Church Service Award + Herbert H. Reynolds Retired Faculty and Administrators Award + Price Daniel Distinguished Public Service Award + First Families of Baylor Award

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Titanic : The Artifact Exhibition, is hosted by the Mayborn Museum and features more than 150 authentic artifacts recovered from the ocean floor along with room re-creations and personal stories. Visitors will receive a replica boarding pass with the name of an actual Titanic passenger upon entering the exhibition and will find out if that passenger survived at the end. The exhibition is a chronological journey through the life of Titanic, moving through the Ship’s construction, to life on board, to the ill-fated sinking and amazing artifact rescue efforts. Make sure to visit before the exhibit is gone.

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“Do not speak to me of martyrdom/of men who die to be remembered/on some parish day. I don’t believe in dying/though I too shall die/and violets like castanets/will echo me.”

– Sonia Sanchez

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Wilson Fielder’s Last Assignment

By Robert F. Darden

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n the dark summer of 1950, the Russianequipped North Korean army swept down from above the 38th parallel, pummeling its way south. The South Korean army, little more than a police force, held briefly, pulled back, held again, then began a full-scale retreat, its troops enveloped by millions of civilians in a headlong rush to the sea.

A rag-tag American army was hastily assembled to stem the southward flow, to preserve Korea’s southernmost airstrips so that reinforcements could arrive. Lt. Col. Harold Ayres, a hero of Sicily and France, was given command of the newly configured 1st Battalion of the 34th Infantry Regiment of the 24th Division. Out-manned, out-gunned and too-often out of ammunition, the 1st Battalion’s job was to buy time with blood.

A handful of war correspondents arrived in those first few bleak days, including the legendary Life photographer Carl Mydens. On July 5, just ten days into the undeclared war, Mydens joined Ayres as the 1st ferociously fought to hold the small town of Taejon. When Mydens left the battle to mail his film, he passed war correspondent Wilson Fielder Jr., newly arrived from Hong Kong, in a cramped jeep filled with desperate, ragged soldiers.

The muddy roads were clogged with exhausted, frightened refugees streaming south, fleeing the phalanx of tanks and artillery.

But Fielder, as he had done his entire life, fought his way toward the action. He was a writer, after all, and that was where the story was. North.

In his too-short lifetime, Wilson Fielder Jr. lived a life as unique and challenging and rich as anyone alive in those perilous times. Perhaps it was an inheritance of his parents, whose lives

were equally full of peril and praise. John Wilson Fielder Sr. and Maudie Ethel Albritton met while she was in high school in 1910; he was 12 years her senior. He was a Baylor grad, an interim pastor and a high school teacher. While serving as pastor of First Baptist Church of Comanche, he was called to the mission field in China. He proposed to Maudie by letter from China and they were married in Shanghai in October 1914. In Brett Towery’s book on their life together, he writes that Wilson Sr. learned Mandarin Chinese from an elderly tutor via the “signs and wonders method.” The tutor made hand signs and the student wondered what they meant.

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Wilson Fielder Jr. was born July 28, 1917 in a mission hospital in Kaifeng, the first of five children. But the young couple had arrived in a turbulent time in Chinese history. The Republican revolution, led by Sun Yat-Sen, had begun the overthrow on the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

During the 1920s and ‘30s, much of China was in the grip of competing warlords and Wilson Sr. was once briefly captured by bandits.

Other children followed – Golda Jean (1919, during a furlough back in Texas), Richard Byron (1921 in Henan), Lennox Gerald (1926 in Zhengzhou). During the Great Depression, the Fielders returned to the United States, where he served as pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Dallas from 1927-1929.

Florence Ann, the fifth and final Fielder child, was born in 1932. Japan and China were at war and great famines ravaged the countryside. Florence Ann, called Flo, remembered stacks of dead bodies in the streets.

The Fielders returned for a third furlough in 1936. In the year of the XI Olympiad in Berlin, the family took the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia to Moscow, then to Berlin, traveling third class, Maudie recalled, to save money. All save Wilson Jr., who joined a classmate and instead journeyed across Europe by themselves. All eventually made it to Brownwood. In 1937, the Fielders returned to China, leaving Golda Jean, Wilson Jr. and Byron, with relatives in Abilene. (The senior Fielder’s adventures in China were only beginning. After leaving his wife and little Flo in Dallas, Wilson Sr. returned again to China. Following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, he and hundreds of other missionaries spent two brutal years in Japanese internment in Shanghai.)

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Wilson Jr. meanwhile had enrolled at Baylor. Flo, who now lives at the Baptist Retirement Community in San Angelo, said that Wilson was 18 years her senior (“I was the surprise of the family”) and was already enrolled

in college by the time she made her unexpected debut. “Still,” she recalled, “he was a great big brother – I would recommend him! What I do remember in the years that followed is his personality; he was all in to anything he was interested in. He was on the honor roll at Baylor. He had a great personality – he loved people. He was very good at what he did. Despite our age difference, he was very attentive to my needs as his kid sister.”

In one of life’s many Baylor coincidences, Jo Beth Fielder, the wife of Wilson’s younger brother, Gerald, is another resident of the Baptist Retirement Community in San Angelo – just two blocks from Flo. She said she only met Wilson a few times but, even then, he made an impression. “He was very much an up and at ‘em kind of person – much like Gerald,” she said.

“He always was committed to telling the story.”

At Baylor, Wilson quickly attained the rank of Lariat Editor in the Fall of

1939, with a staff that included people who would become well-known in the Baylor and Waco communities, including Roger Edens (Advertising Manager), and Joe Kendrick and Virginia Beall (reporters). His daily column “Along the Way with Wilson” mostly chronicled the comings and goings of a small college campus.

But on a couple of occasions, Wilson disputed columnists in major newspapers who believed that Adolf Hitler was simply “crazy” and would eventually be assimilated into the German political system, or who opined that Hitler’s hatred and assaults on the German news media were somehow justified, and that he was a “moral man” because he was against smoking and drinking and was the darling of many religious conservatives. During his time in Germany, Wilson had seen the truth of Hitler’s regime.

Wilson also worked a night shift at the Waco News-Tribune before graduating in 1940. He spent 1941 with the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and in 1942 enlisted in the Marines’ Officer’s Candidate School. Wilson spent 18 months as an instructor at Quantico before joining the Fifth Marine Division in the Pacific, where he became an amphibious warfare specialist, training the Marines for the invasion of Iwo Jima. But, as Flo remembered it, he was then reassigned to Chinese language school at UCLA. “He was born in China and spoke Chinese – not fluently, I don’t know that anyone ever becomes fluent,” she recalled. “He had a good foundation in Chinese and studied hard.”

After the war, Wilson, who had met and married Virginia Lee Berg while in the language school at UCLA, then joined the staff of the Associated

Press in San Francisco. He became a writer for Time magazine in 1949 and was assigned to the magazine’s bureau in China. According to an article in the Caller-Times, Wilson’s goal, all along, had been to return to China. In time, he became Time’s Hong Kong bureau chief.

Amid a treasure-trove of articles, diaries, letters and cables chronicling Wilson’s life is a typed letter to his parents from October 23, 1949, detailing his adventures in China. He chronicled the inexorable defeat of the Nationalist Chinese, flying to Macao for a “color story on how the Portuguese are taking the Communist advances,” and sharing his hopes of traveling on to Manila to pick up Virginia and their one-month-old son, Craig. It is followed a month later by a letter from Shameen Island, off Canton, predicting – correctly – that within days, Chiang Ki-Shek’s remaining forces would leave the mainland for Taiwan.

When the North Korean army stormed over the 38th parallel, Wilson volunteered to cover it for Time, commandeering a spot on the U.S.S. Juneau, a light cruiser, steaming north. From the Juneau, he filed one of his last – and finest – dispatches, “Last Train from Vladivostok,” about a commando raid from the Juneau that destroyed a railway tunnel supplying the North Koreans. In his typically wry style, Wilson described the Juneau as the “galloping ghost of the Korean coast.” It was the first cabled account of the war at sea off Korea.

As Mydens recalled his brief meeting with Wilson on July 20, Wilson had asked him where the fighting was taking place. “Taejon,” Mydens replied, where the Americans had vowed to hold. “When you get there, look for Col. Ayres and the 1st Battalion of the 24th.” Wilson nodded and the two agreed to meet again in Taejon when Mydens returned.

But Mydens was delayed a day in Tokyo and when he returned to the small American redoubt in far southern South Korea, he met another correspondent, fresh from the battle for Taejon. “It’s a slaughter over there,” the reporter had told him.

“I think your new man Fielder got it yesterday.”

Mydens pressed towards the front and found what was left of the 1st Battalion. Days later, Mydens found Ayres and a few survivors of the Battle for Taejon. They had tried to free a small knot of Americans and been overrun themselves. When the attack came, Wilson Fielder, Jr. was there. But the survivors, some of whom had spent long nights evading North Korean patrols, hadn’t seen what had happened to the reporter from Time magazine.

Thus began two anguished years for the Fielder family, which by now had re-located again to Waco. Virginia and baby Craig lived with Maudie and Wilson Sr. The family’s files are thick with cables and news reports, sometimes contradictory, of Wilson’s fate. He was listed, officially, as “missing in action.” “I was in Waco at Baylor with my parents when he was reported missing in action in Korea,” Florence recalled. “It was a difficult time. We tried to find out everything we could about Wilson, but it was hard.

“Wilson was doing exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to be where the action was – and there was a lot of action in those days.

He loved to be in the middle of the action, talking to different people in different places.”

The family’s documents do not detail how the Fielders were eventually told of Wilson’s fate.

Perhaps the original telegram or letter is in Virginia’s possession.

Perhaps the sad news came in the form of a telephone call. In its place is a thick file of sympathy cards from as far away as China, Korea and Japan, and as close as Sunday School classes in Dallas, Comanche, Waco and Abilene. One card is signed by Cleta Ortlif, a member of Maudie’s Sunday School class at 7th & James Baptist Church. Cleta, now

Cleta Bennett, did not know Wilson, but vividly remembered Fielder’s anguish and grief upon hearing the sad news. “How do people ever go through things like this without prayers and God?” Cleta asked in the small note, postmarked March 9, 1952.

The file also includes cables from Wilson’s friends among the correspondents, who tried, griefstricken, to reconstruct for his parents the young reporter’s final hours, even as they extended their heartfelt sympathy to another fallen comrade. Wilson Fielder Jr. was 33.

“He died the spring Gerald and I got married,” Jo Beth said, “so I only met him a few times.

It was, of course, a sad time for the family. They knew the risks of being a war correspondent, they were missionaries, after all, and had been in a number of risky situations themselves. I thought they handled it very well. Still, it was a shock. It always is. But it went with the territory. They were so proud of him.”

“He loved the challenge,” Florence recalled. “He lived life to the limit. He enjoyed being with people. He loved telling their stories.”

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As he had wished, Wilson’s remains were buried on March 11, 1952, in an azalea-ringed cemetery set aside for foreigners, outside of Yokohama, Japan.

A simultaneous memorial service was held at 7th & James Baptist.

In 1955, a memorial scholarship in Wilson’s name was established by gift of $1,200 from Virginia and $6,000 from Time, Inc. The scholarship – which the Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media still awards today – has been given to dozens of young writers, including the 1957 recipients, Hal Wingo (the former Senior Editor of Life Magazine who became the co-founder of People Magazine), and Sherry Boyd (Castello), who would later become Editor of The Baylor Line. Tom Belden, later an award-winning journalist, was the 1969 recipient.

Virginia later remarried and worked for Radio Free Asia. Florence and Jo Beth continued to correspond with

her until they lost contact a few years ago. Virginia and Wilson’s son, Craig Wilson Fielder, moved to Alaska, where he died a young man.

And in Seoul, Korea, under the eaves of the Ducksee Palace, the Korean and American governments consecrated a memorial in 1963 honoring the war correspondents who died covering that conflict. In the Pentagon in Washington D.C., the Department of Defense maintains an honor gallery for war correspondents. Wilson Fielder’s picture is among those of the 17 reporters who died covering the undeclared Korean War. Further down the wall are the photographs of 44 correspondents who were killed during World War II.

At Baylor, as noted in Moody Library preservation specialist Frank Jasek’s book, Soldiers of the Wooden

Cross: Military Memorials of Baylor University, a marker honoring Wilson Fielder’s sacrifice, hangs on a lamp post on Albritton Street, next to the Hankamer School of Business.

Jasek bequeathed two box-sized files of letters, articles, photographs and telegrams to longtime journalism chair Doug Ferdon. The boxes also contain a letter from the President of the Republic of Korea, awarding Wilson the Order of Cultural Merit National Medal and a small box containing the medal itself, a copy of Fielder’s Marine yearbook annual from 1942, his ID card and, perhaps the most precious item to his survivors, faded ribbons from Wilson’s funeral in Japan.

Of the several dozen photographs, one is particularly poignant. It is a profile shot of Wilson, apparently on the Juneau, staring off in the horizon.

Towards Korea? Towards China? It was taken just days before his death in the far country.

And so, those boxes have come to me. In them is the fragmentary printed record of the life of Wilson Fielder Jr. No box can possibly contain all of the stories of this too-short life or measure the lives he touched or the futures he inspired. In a day where journalists are reviled by some, dismissed by others, Wilson Fielder’s joy and passion for his sacred craft is best epitomized in the generations of journalists who followed him, forever running toward the sounds of battle, the fires in the tallest towers, and the often equally dangerous whispers in the back rooms of the halls of power.

Scholarships:

www.wacofoundation.org/becomeadonor/makeadonation.aspx (Type “Soldiers of the Wooden Cross Scholarship Fund”) www.baylor.edu/journalism/index.php?id=859640 Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media: Wilson Fielder Scholarship Fund

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For further reading:

See also:

Towery, Britt. Strangers in a Strange Land: Maudie and Wilson Fielder in China, 1912-1950, The Tao Foundation, 2011.

Mydens, Carl. More Than Meets the Eye, Harper & Brothers, 1959.

Jasek, Frank, Soldiers of the Wooden Cross: Military Memorials of Baylor University, C&C Offset, 2013.

Appleman, Roy E., South to Naktong, North to the Yalou, Center of Military History, Unites States Army, 1992.

Foreign Correspondents in Japan: Reporting a Half Century of Upheavals: From 1945 to the Present, Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1998.

Gibney, Frank. The Pacific Century: Asia and America in the Modern World, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1992.

Topping, Seymour. On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent’s Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, Louisiana State University Press, 2010.

See also The Baylor Lariat, Fall 1939.

Maudie Ethel Albritton Fielder Papers and oral history, the Baylor University Texas Collection and the Baylor Institute for Oral History.

Ella Wall Prichard | Reclaiming Joy: A Primer for Widows 18 45 S e r i e s / Bay lo r Un i v e r s i t y P r e ss

Those who know Ella Wall Prichard, former Lariat editor, philanthropist, Baylor Regent and much more, are not surprised that Ella has written a beautifully composed, elegantly presented and sometimes preternaturally insightful book. They instead wonder why this is only her first.

The origins of Reclaiming Joy, as sometimes happens, lie in tragedy. In the days, then years, that followed the death of her beloved Lev in April 2009, her soulmate for 46 years, Ella was faced with what the bereaved have always endured – how to survive, then succeed, and then, ultimately, reclaim joy.

It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t easy. But what Ella has done has transformed the process into a journey with definite goals, a journey fueled by patience, common sense, honesty and a bracing dose of scriptural insight.

What separates Reclaiming Joy from any similar books is that it is aimed not just at the eight million widows in American life, but also their children, their siblings, their friends, and their churches. No death impacts only the partner who has been left behind. The ripples and recovery extend far and wide in both time and space.

Reclaiming Joy is divided into 27 sections under four sub-headings: “Love Overcomes Fear,” “Unity Strengthens Relationships,” “Maturity Brings Wisdom,” and “Peace Leads to Joy.” For instance, under the “Love Overcomes Fear” heading are the chapters Grace, Gratitude, Insight, Courage, Expectations, Joy, and Unity. Each chapter has multiple parts as well, including a passage from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

What I marvel at is that these divisions are organic, naturally flowing

pulses rather than some kind of mechanical device. The examples from Ella’s own widowhood are universal, sometimes frightening; when they are redemptive, that redemption only comes with time, patience and, sometimes, ingenuity. Overcoming the grief and shock of such a loss is, frankly,

difficult. But all of us – all of us – will experience it. Ella doesn’t preach. But she speaks from experience, some of it hard-won. She also experienced a rich and interesting life and her carefully chosen, sometimes brutally honest anecdotes are honed and burnished to a rich glow.

Reclaiming Joy is also adroitly sprinkled with quotes and excerpts from a wide variety of writers, commentators, experts and survivors, a testament to her own voracious (and on-going) reading on the subjects of loss, peace, faith, courage, persistence, and (occasionally) transcendence.

There is much to learn here in this strongly written narrative. Not every friend is a friend after a loss like this.

Not every person in your financial world has your best interests after a loss like this. Even family and clergy make the occasional misstep. This is all so new for so many of us. I was appalled to read that some of the things I’ve said – trying to be helpful – to someone who has lost a loved one, are precisely the wrong thing to say.

The fascinating thing is that Reclaiming Joy is not a dark book; it is not a depressing read. Ella is a fighter.

In the beginning, she writes, “Nothing prepared me for widowhood.” Through the course of the experience there are dark days, to be sure. People betray you.

And if you don’t take care of yourself, even your body betrays you. Some lessons hurt more than others. But she endures and, eventually, she thrives.

The pain of Lev’s loss is still there, but it is not the sum total of her being. By the end, she writes, “We find meaning and purpose in living. Ultimately, that is where we find joy.”

Ella processed her grief through her faith, through love and support, through staying productively busy, through travel, through mastering the financial side of the family’s complex businesses (she read Barron’s Finance & Invest Handbook, all 1,220 pages, looking up every unfamiliar word), and through forcing herself to accept the invitations of friends and loved ones when all she really wanted to do was pull up the covers and stay in bed.

In the end, she processed that grief by writing about it, and providing an extraordinarily helpful chronicle, a faithdriven pathway to manage that grief and – ultimately – reclaim joy in her life.

Disclaimer: I saw early manuscripts of Reclaiming Joy, which is why I was delighted to be asked to write a review of it. And yes, I did cry a few times upon re-reading some of the passages. But it was a good cry. – Robert F. Darden Robert is a professor of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media at Baylor University. He is the author of 25 books and is the founder of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor.

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Rhythms

The river didn’t know it would become A dark force hammering out banks Where blue spiderwort grew and old Fishing lures tangled in a lazy dance.

Each thing that swam or played there Waited for a certain rhythm which Would push it further downstream, Just as we wait for moments in our lives

When we finally get it right and tide meets shore And sun throws diamonds to us on each wave.

We want the sparkles as much as we crave Love, waiting for something luminous.

June Zaner

“She Stands” | Kathryn Lairmore ‘14 30 x 40 inches, acrylic on canvas

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ILLUMINATE H OW BAY LO R I S GOI N G A LL I N ON

R ES EA RCH

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Seated at the table are Burleson, Starr, Reynolds, McCall, Sloan, and every other president who has left their imprint on Baylor.

The only question on the docket for discussion is this: Why must Baylor exist? Each has a unique opinion about how to shape Baylor’s identity. The spectrum of ideas is broad. The debates are rich. Alumni have their preferences. There is one point on which they all find common ground, and that is the idea that Baylor has a unique role to play in the world. Now, taking her own seat, is Dr. Linda Livingstone. She has a vision of her own, and it’s called Illuminate.

An d if t h at v i si o n i s f ulfi lle d , B ay lo r could lo o k v e ry di ffe r e nt .

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FIVE SIGNATURE ACADEMIC INITIATIVES

H ea lt h

D ata S c i e n c e s

H um a n Flour i s h i n g & E t h i cs

M at e r i a l S c i e n c e s

B ay lo r i n L at i n Am e r i ca

FOUR PILLARS 1 . Unambiguously C hristian E ducational E nvironment

3 . Research and S cholarship Marked by Q uality, I mpact , and Visibility

2 . Transf ormational Undergraduate E ducation

4 . Nationally Recognized P rograms in H uman P erf ormance through the Arts and Athletics

L ear n mo r e at b aylor .edu /i llu m i nate

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The approval of Illuminate marks a significant achievement for Dr. Livingstone. In May, the Board of Regents approved the plan. Now the hard work begins of uniting donors, leadership, faculty, staff, alumni, and students to execute the plan. We sat down with Dr. Livingstone in the President’s Office in Pat Neff Hall to ask about the vision, the challenges, and what this means for the future of Baylor.

A Waco Trib article that came out a few days ago opened up with this line: “Over the last two decades , B aylor administrat ors and faculty have debated whether the school should f ollow higher research ambitions .” Why is the idea of B aylor pursuing R1 so heavily debated?

I think any institution, as they move toward that more research-focused status, goes through a time of discussion and debate. So I don’t think Baylor’s been any different in that. But I think there are probably two elements that are important in that discussion, and are oftentimes why you have that discussion.

One, we are a Christian university, and our Christian mission is deeply important to us. We intend to continue to ensure that our mission is deeply tied to our Christian roots and our Baptist roots. There are oftentimes questions about whether you can be an R1 research university and maintain the integrity of your Christian mission. Many of the top research universities in the country used to be Christian universities and they ultimately became secular universities as they pursued R1 status. Because people care so deeply about our Christian mission, that causes them to want to have that discussion.

And we have foundationally said we are going to maintain the integrity of our Christian mission. It’s one of four pillars that’s critically important to us.

The second element is your continued commitment to undergraduate education. So again, there’s sometimes a concern that if you’re going to start doing more research, that somehow it’s going to diminish or take away from your focus on undergraduates. And so a second one of our pillars as part of Illuminate is that we are going to ensure that we continue to emphasize transformational undergraduate education. In fact, I would argue that one of the things that comes out of having a stronger research focus is our ability to emphasize undergraduate research more and engage our undergraduates in even deeper learning experiences. And we know from our recruiting process that the best undergraduates around the country want to be engaged in research while they’re still in their undergraduate programs.

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What are the challenges of reaching Tier one and being a sectarian university?

I think one of the areas that you have to be very attentive to is your faculty hiring. At the end of the day you maintain the integrity of your mission as a Christian institution by the people that you bring into the organization because they really embody your mission, whether that’s your staff or your faculty.

We want to hire faculty who believe in and support our Christian mission as a university. But you also need to hire faculty that are going to help you move toward those aspirations. So we want them to be people who are deeply committed to teaching and the learning experience of our graduate and undergraduate students. But they also need to be faculty that are doing exceptional research. And so finding faculty that are committed Christians, really committed to the learning experience, and then also doing really exceptional research will be something I believe we can do. But it’s going to take a lot of strategy and lot of focus to do that.

In fact, I believe that there are a number of faculty out there that are Christian faculty at other top institutions around the country. As we build our reputation in these areas, as we put resources in this direction, they will have a desire to be at a place like Baylor where their faith and their work as a faculty member can be integrated in ways that it cannot be at a secular institution.

So it is a challenge, but I also think it’s a tremendous opportunity because there are so few places where a faculty member with that mix of skills and interests can integrate all aspects of their life in such a complete way as they can do at Baylor.

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I believe we spent around 27 million on research this year .

How would you like t o see that number increase? What numbers are we aiming at?

Well, we’ve said pretty openly that this is probably a 10 to 15-year process to move us into that next tier. When you look at the universities that are in that highest tier, there’s a huge range of research dollars.

For example, Duke was over a billion dollars of research. There’s such a wide range on the lower end of that tier, to give us a sense of where we’re going to have to be over 10 to 15 years.

It’s a substantial move. And one of the areas we’ve got to work significantly on is bringing in more outside funded research. We fund a lot of ours internally, and we’ve got to do much more research where we’re getting outside dollars coming in.

Why has it been a struggle t o find outside f unding up t o this p oint?

Part of it’s just the focus and the places that we’ve placed attention. In order to do a good job of bringing in outside funding you have to have an infrastructure internally in the institution that provides the right staff support to help faculty know where that outside funding is to help them put together grant proposals. And then on the back side, once you get the funding, there’s a lot of post-award work that has to be done to support the grant.

So one of the things we’ve begun working on is to have infrastructure that actually sets faculty up effectively to be able to find and actually apply for those grants, because it’s lot of work to do that.

The other thing that we are focusing on is hiring faculty. You can certainly hire new faculty that then build their research productivity while they’re growing as faculty members at your university. But you can also go out and hire faculty that are already doing substantial work in their field, that have already got funding from external sources. So you can build from the top, and then they can help you attract other faculty that are doing research in their area.

So part of it is building an infrastructure to support our current faculty and the faculty that we’re hiring. It’s also making sure that at least some of the faculty you’re hiring have that expertise and some of the funding already with them.

Where are we currently under resourced? I know you ’ ve talked ab out the need f or lab orat ories .

What are areas where we nee d more faculty and act ual buildings?

We’re in the top 20 in the country in research expenditures in the humanities among private institutions. We aren’t quite that high in the social sciences, but we do reasonably well. We certainly need to continue to grow our productivity in some of the social sciences.

Where we lag the most is in those STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, and math. One of the things that’s so critical in research in those areas is to ensure that you have the laboratory space and equipment and the infrastructure it needs because they do different kinds of research than they do in the humanities and social sciences. So one of the facilities that’s a high priority in the plan is a new science and engineering research facility. The Baylor Science Building is a beautiful facility. Really critical to the significant progress we’ve made over the last 12 or 13 years. But we are completely out of capacity to build new labs and to grow our infrastructure for research in the STEM areas. That’s going to be really important, so that when we do hire new faculty, we have the facilities that they need to be successful.

D o you know where will that building be?

We haven’t made any final determinations. In our master plan, it’s close to the Baylor Science Building so that you keep all your folks that are doing research like that together. But we’ll have to see as we finalize the plans and do fundraising.

Photo by Sarah Barrientos

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w e h ave f ou n dat io na lly s a id we a r e go ing t o m a inta in t h e int eg r it y o f our C h r ist ia n m is s ion 26

Photo Courtesy of Baylor Photography

You ’ re obviously going t o need financial buy in from alumni . What will be the goals of the capital campaign?

This will be the first comprehensive fundraising campaign the University’s ever done. We’ve done a lot of projectbased fundraising, certainly around facilities like McLane Stadium and the Foster Campus for Business and Innovation, or around scholarships, but this will be the first comprehensive fundraising campaign we’ve had that integrates and supports an academic strategic plan. So this campaign will be about 30 percent to support facilities and then about 70 percent to support programs, faculty, and students.

A big push within the campaign will be to increase our endowment. Our endowment is at about 1.3 billion. In terms of the size of institution we are, our endowment per student is low for the quality and type of institution we are.

So we need to grow that endowment significantly. Double it over a period of time. We probably won’t double it in the next five years as we look at the campaign, but we need to double that over time.

We’ll have a significant emphasis on endowment and a significant emphasis on support for student scholarships, support for faculty endowed professorships and chairs, research dollars, and then support that we need to build the new facilities and remodel existing facilities.

What trends are you seeing in giving right now?

How likely is it that B aylor can raise these amounts?

Our giving has been very, very strong over the last several years. For seven years in a row, counting this year, we have raised over 100 million dollars a year. That’s been consistent even over the difficult stretch of a couple of years that we’ve had. Our number of donors went up pretty significantly last year, as well. So not only did we see the dollar amount go up, we saw a broader base of donors give.

We’ve had a consultant in over the last several years helping us do planning for a campaign, and they feel like our donor base is very strong, that the commitment to the University among our alum and friends is very strong. So they have been extremely positive about our capacity to raise the money that we’re going to need to support Illuminate.

Let me ask you ab out the provost search. I know that there’s been some t urnover the last few years . S ome unexpected things have happened .

Why has that role been difficult t o fill?

I’m not sure I can reflect on all that’s happened in that role, since I wasn’t here for several of those transitions. But what I would say, just generally at any university, is that being a provost is a very difficult job. You’re the chief academic officer of an institution and you’re really working with all the deans, with all the diverse colleges and schools across your campus, to help move the academic effort forward. You’re trying to balance the different interests and needs of faculty across campus. And not everybody’s cut out to be a provost. You can be a really good administrator, and being the provost isn’t the right job for you. So I think it’s a difficult job at any institution. At Baylor, because we’re a Christian institution, you have to find someone who has those leadership and administrative skills as a deeply committed Christian, and then has the ability to bring faculty together and facilitate the engagement that’s needed to help faculty to be successful.

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Why has it been such a difficult p osition t o fill here?

I’m sure people have a variety of opinions on that, but I’m confident as we have extended our search and continue to look for that person that there is someone out there who is going to be the right person to help not only ensure the integrity of our Christian mission, but to help move us forward on our trajectory toward top tier research status.

But we’re going to be patient and make sure that we find the right person. We’ve got fabulous folks providing leadership in that area right now.

What would you say t o alumni who may want B aylor t o remain an undergrad -f ocused university, and may not be as excited ab out research?

Well, we will always be an undergraduate focused institution, even as we grow our research function.

In fact, I believe that growing the quality and integrity and size of our research function will enrich and strengthen the undergraduate learning experience. As we have more faculty doing research, as we have more graduate students on campus, it increases dramatically the opportunities that undergraduate students have to be engaged in research, whether it’s in the classroom or in lab opportunities outside of the classroom. And that will just enrich and strengthen the undergraduate learning experience. So I don’t see those as diametric to one another. I see them as integrated, and strengthening research will strengthen undergraduate education.

You have to be deliberate about doing it that way, but we are absolutely committed to that. There has to be a complement to and a way of strengthening what we’re doing at the undergraduate level.

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I continue t o get questions from alumni ab out the sexual assault scandal and ab out inf ormation that the B oard did or didn ’ t withhold . What would you say t o alumni who may want t o buy in t o this vision but have lost their trust in B aylor?

I would tell those folks that Baylor’s a very different place now. That the culture has shifted dramatically. We have implemented all 105 recommendations that came out of the Pepper Hamilton review, and because of that, I think they can feel confident that we have the right processes, the right policies, the right systems, and I think the right people in place. We’re trying to do everything we can to prevent issues of sexual assault on our campus. But if they do occur, those are going to be handled very differently than they were before and they’re going to be handled in a way that is consistent with best practices across the country.

And I think the other thing I would tell folks is we know that we have to regain that trust one day at a time, by every day doing what we say we are going to do. We talk about it regularly. We want those people to come back and be a part of the fold. Be close enough to see what Baylor is like now. What the leadership is like. What the board is like. And how we’re all working together to move the University forward.

finding faculty that ar e com mitted C hristians , really comm itted t o the learn i n g experienc e , and then a lso doing really exc eptio nal res earc h will be someth i n g I believ e we can do .

Photo Courtesy of Baylor Photography 29

F O R N O W, L E T ’ S S TA R T AT T H E E N D O F T H E R OA D. I M AG I N E , F O R A M O M E N T, T H A T B A Y L O R ’ S DREAM OF REACHING TIER ONE H A S B E C O M E A R E A L I T Y.

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Joining alongside Notre Dame, Duke, Boston College, and a few other historically Christian colleges, Baylor University takes its place in the pantheon of our nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Prestige may be enough of a reward in and of itself, but there are also more tangible boons to the local economy and discoveries that make the world a better place.

The Baylor Graduate School is intimately linked with research hospitals, private companies, and academic colleagues at other universities around the world. The flow of ideas and personnel between Baylor and research partners accelerates innovation. Major research grants from federal funds enable students and faculty to tackle big-picture challenges like cancer treatment, clean energy, and food production. A few other splashy projects like breakthrough technology for driverless cars make national headlines. The new Baylor Laboratories are the envy of scientists and academics everywhere, and many of them travel to Waco to advance their own work. Inside the BRIC, patented discoveries stack up, creating long-term revenue for the school. Almost all of the funds used to pay for faculty, grad students, and technology are acquired through outside grants, allowing Baylor to focus its internal spending on athletics and the undergraduate experience. Speaking of the undergraduate experience, the relationship between the grad school and undergrads is an entirely unique proposition. Rather than the two schools acting separately, they’re linked.

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Often, there is no barrier between them, and undergrads and grad students work side by side, allowing promising undergrads to become partners in major research initiatives. This arrangement becomes a sales pitch for bright young minds around the world who can contribute to meaningful work that solves serious problems. Those alumni who once questioned the negative impact a commitment to research may have on undergraduates are eventually converted, as it is proven over and over that proximity to research greatly enhances the undergraduate experience.

Faculty win major awards, and a Nobel Prize is within reach. High-paying jobs sprout in Waco as a result of Baylor’s commitment to research, and with those jobs come better housing, restaurants, and schools. Alumni are filled with pride, not only for what their school represents, but also for what it has accomplished. Most important of all, the minds and hearts of those who emerge from Baylor change the world, and in so doing, reframe the story about the marriage between faith, academia, and scientific discovery.

The foundation for this national acclaim, and this explosion of success, is due to the simple maxim that All truth is God’s truth.

Now, how do we get t he re?

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10 BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT

ILLUMINATE 1 . How will progress be measured?

2 . Where’s the money coming from?

3 . Will Baylor’s overt Christian mission interfere with its ability to acquire outside funding?

4 . Can Baylor attract accomplished faculty members who believe in the mission?

5 . Can Baylor attract faculty who have already secured outside funding?

6 . Which outside research organizations will make good partners for Baylor?

7. How will Baylor address calls for more diversity?

8 . How will a massive commitment to the graduate school impact undergraduates?

9 . Can Baylor sustain its current athletic budget?

10 . Will ongoing investigations into the sexual assault scandal impact alumni support?

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T I E R O N E B AY LO RTO BE OR NOT TO BE W. Richard Turner is a retired industrial research chemist for a major pharmaceutical company. He has a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Connecticut where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He was also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. During his career he was a frequent guest lecturer at major universities. He and his wife live in Woodway, TX.

Recently the Baylor University Board of Regents and Baylor President Linda Livingstone announced their intention to pursue a path that will lead to Baylor becoming a Tier One research university.

Many might be surprised to learn Baylor is not already a Tier One university. People may be astonished to discover just how far Baylor must go to reach this lofty and commendable goal.

There is no agency that decides when Tier One status has been achieved. However, the fact that Tier One and Tier Two levels exist attests to the fact that there is a discernable and measurable difference between the two levels.

B E NCHMARKS FO R T IE R O NE STATUS Let’s look at some benchmarks that are often used in defining the status of research universities. First, and perhaps most important, is the amount of money a university spends each year on research.

The National Science Foundation requires that any university receiving federal funds for research file an annual report listing all sources of revenue and how that money is allocated among the various departments within the university.

They also track the number of PhD degrees awarded each year.

This information is in the public domain. For 2016, there were 46 universities whose annual research budgets exceeded $500 million, 104

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universities with budgets greater than $200 million, 149 schools exceeding $100 million and 197 schools with research budgets more than $50 million — which is about twice what Baylor now spends. With an annual budget of $26.8 million in 2016, Baylor is ranked 241st among all schools in research expenditures.

In a 2008 report to the Texas legislature, Thoughts on Creating More Tier One Universities in Texas, Dr David E. Daniel, President of the University of Texas - Dallas, states, “Research funding is critical to being a Tier One university, and a minimum of $100 million of annual research funding is often mentioned as an essential credential.” Dr. Daniel also points out how the State of Texas is losing out economically to other states by not having more Tier One

research universities. That was ten years ago. Today that minimum is probably closer to $150 million.

One could just take those schools which reported spending more than $200 million and declare them to be Tier One. But that is misleading in that some research institutions are connected to universities but have no undergraduate programs included. It also places universities without medical colleges at a disadvantage.

Another indicator of Tier One status is the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

Pertinent to our discussion are the two highest classifications; very high research activities (R1) and high research activities (R2). There are 115 universities classified as R1 and 107 universities classified as R2. These two categories are often

ATH L ET IC S NO LO NGE R A T OP P R IO R ITY Baylor’s annual research budget of $26.8 million in 2016 is about one-fourth of what Baylor spends on athletics ($98 million).

Because Baylor is one of very few schools whose athletic budget is larger than its research budget, Baylor has a nationally ranked athletic program and has won national championships in women’s basketball.

Meanwhile, here are the annual research budgets of some of Baylor’s major women’s basketball rivals (2016 data): Stanford, $1,066 million; Texas A&M, $893 million; UConn, $265 million; Notre Dame, $202 million.

While these universities can support both research and athletics at a high level, Baylor cannot currently do so. It is fair to question if Baylor has chosen to emphasize athletics over research, and if they will continue to do so.

thought of as Tier One and Tier Two status. Baylor is currently in the R2 category. There are unquestionably three Texas universities that are Tier One universities; Texas A&M, University of Texas-Austin and Rice University. However, University of Houston, Texas Tech, UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington and the University of North Texas also enjoy R1 classification. In addition to Baylor, Southern Methodist and TCU are also R2 universities.

For some, the gold standard for determining Tier One status is membership in the Association of American Universities. There are only 62 members and it is by invitation only. No one ever questions the status of these elite universities. They are the best of the best and include Texas A&M, University of Texas-Austin and Rice.

HOW WACO WIL L BEN EFIT ?

In choosing where to locate their research activities, many companies will want to know what resources the University brings to the table. What kind of technical library do they have? Is there advanced research instrumentation not available elsewhere? How many National Academy members do they have on the faculty? What is the size of the University’s research budget and what are its sources of funding? What is the University’s track record in creating and capitalizing on intellectual property? What other university/industry collaborations has the University participated in? Is the University community and culture open and welcoming to the diversity that their employees might bring to their new home?

A top-tier research university generates hundreds of millions of dollars (and in some cases billions of dollars) in economic activity each year for the community where it is located.

It dramatically improves the quality of life in that community.

Everything, from public schools, to cultural opportunities, to Perhaps one might simply go with recreation, housing, and even national rankings. U.S. News & World the restaurants, get better. Such Report magazine ranks Baylor tied for communities are populated by 71. However, Forbes magazine ranks a growing and well-educated Baylor at 211. Neither magazine uses workforce. There are simply not the same metrics that are used to enough high-wage employers in determine Tier One status.

Waco to raise family incomes.

It would be a tremendous boon to the Waco and to the Central Texas economy if Baylor had an annual research budget of $200 million. Money spent on research at a university is money spent in the local economy for goods, services and salaries. Half of the money spent for university research is federal tax dollars coming back home.

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DI V ERS ITY Baylor must continue to grapple with diversity of faculty, staff, and students, on issues ranging from faith to sexual orientation. Until Baylor proclaims itself as a university that hires faculty on the basis of their academic merit and not their willingness to adhere to a religious agenda, they will likely struggle to reach Tier One status. In some cases, faculty may have trouble attracting the outside funding necessary to become a credible research university. Even an unapologetically Christian university like Notre Dame has an inclusive, nondiscriminatory policy for admissions and hiring, including religious affiliation and LGBTQ persons. Tier One universities do not claim a religious exemption.

For some prospective faculty, research partners, and graduate students, diversity and inclusion will be a key issue in deciding whether or not to partner with Baylor.

WHAT MIGHT A T IER ON E BAYLOR LOOK L IK E S T U D E N T S - What is being proposed is that Baylor University should become a Tier One RESEARCH university. This implies that its priority would shift from undergraduate teaching to graduate research. Make no mistake. Tier One status is all about the graduate school. Perhaps a third of Baylor’s students would be graduate students if Baylor became Tier One. However, if the current undergrad enrollment remains approximately the same (14,000 students) then the total enrollment might ideally increase to 21,000 students to achieve a 2:1 ratio of undergrad to grad.

F A C U LT Y - Tier One status demands a Tier One faculty. Many on such faculties enjoy national and international reputations in their field and receive many honors such as MacArthur Fellowships, membership in the National Academies of Science, Engineering, or Medicine, etc. It is not at all fanciful to ask if a university which is capable of producing a Heisman Trophy winner might also be capable of producing a Nobel Prize winner. One might envision a doubling of the faculty size. A desirable student to faculty ratio is 10:1. Baylor’s ratio is currently 15:1.

I N F R A S T R U C T U R E - There will have to be major capital investments in new laboratories and equipment. New construction could be a big boon for the Waco economy. This will be a major up-front cost of becoming a Tier One research university. But always remember, buildings don’t do research, people do.

P E E R R E V I E W - Academic research relies on peer review of grant proposals for funding and the

publication of research results in peer review journals. Standards are usually set by the professional societies for each discipline. In my field of chemistry that’s the American Chemical Society. Baylor must play by the same rules as any other Tier One university. While being unapologetically Christian may be a commendable virtue for individuals and institutions, it carries no more weight in the scientific community than being unapologetically Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or secular. To be credible, research must be conducted without any bias, religious or otherwise. There is no such thing as a Tier One “Christian” research university.

A L U M N I - Last, but by no means least, alumni will play a critical role in determining whether Baylor

becomes a Tier One research university. Without the enthusiastic support of the alumni, it probably won’t happen. The alumni as a whole, and major donors in particular, will be called upon to be significantly more generous in their support than they have been in the past. It will be seen as a significant factor in Baylor’s commitment to Tier One status. On the plus side, anything that enhances Baylor’s reputation makes a Baylor diploma even more valuable. Baylor alumni should insist on being a partner in decisions regarding Baylor’s future. They should insist on full transparency. Baylor alumni, and the Waco public in general, are stakeholders in Baylor’s future.

D o you have an opinion ab out B aylor aspiring t owards Tier One , R1?

36

Send your thoughts to info@baylorlinefoundation.com

CU R R E N T LI S T OF R 1 UNIVERSITIES

* Located in Texas

Arizona State University-Tempe

Purdue University-Main Campus

University of Iowa

Boston College

Rice University *

University of Kansas **

Boston University

Rutgers University-New Brunswick

University of Kentucky

Brandeis University

Stanford University

University of Louisville

Brown University

Stony Brook University

University of Maryland-College Park

California Institute of Technology

SUNY at Albany

University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Carnegie Mellon University

Syracuse University

University of Miami

Case Western Reserve University

Temple University

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Clemson University

Texas A&M University-College Station *

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Colorado State University-Fort Collins

Texas Tech University * **

University of Mississippi

Columbia University in the City of New York

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville

University of Missouri-Columbia

Cornell University

The University of Texas at Arlington *

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

CUNY Graduate School and University Center

The University of Texas at Austin * **

University of New Mexico-Main Campus

The University of Texas at Dallas *

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Tufts University

University of North Texas *

Tulane University of Louisiana

University of Notre Dame

University at Buffalo

University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus **

University of Alabama at Birmingham

University of Oregon

University of Arizona

University of Pennsylvania

University of Arkansas

University of Pittsburgh-Pittsburgh Campus

University of California-Berkeley

University of Rochester

University of California-Davis

University of South Carolina-Columbia

University of California-Irvine

University of South Florida-Main Campus

University of California-Los Angeles

University of Southern California

University of California-Riverside

University of Utah

University of California-San Diego

University of Virginia-Main Campus

University of California-Santa Barbara

University of Washington-Seattle Campus

University of California-Santa Cruz

University of Wisconsin-Madison

University of Central Florida

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

University of Chicago

Vanderbilt University

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of Cincinnati-Main Campus

Virginia Commonwealth University

Michigan State University

University of Colorado Boulder

New York University

University of Connecticut

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

North Carolina State University at Raleigh

University of Delaware

Northeastern University

University of Florida

Northwestern University

University of Georgia

Ohio State University-Main Campus

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Oregon State University

University of Houston *

Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus

University of Illinois at Chicago

Princeton University

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Duke University Emory University Florida International University Florida State University George Mason University George Washington University Georgetown University Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus Georgia State University Harvard University Indiana University-Bloomington Iowa State University ** Johns Hopkins University Kansas State University ** Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

** Big XII University

Washington State University Washington University in St Louis Wayne State University West Virginia University Yale University

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Baylor Line Scholarship

Recipients

Every year, the Baylor Line Foundation is honored to help legacy students achieve their dream of attending Baylor. This year, we had 183 applicants for 50 total scholarships. From top to bottom, the applications we received were incredibly impressive and deserving. Our scholarship committee is proud to announce the names of the 50 winners.

Thanks to your generosity to the Baylor Line Foundation, we are able to make a lasting impact on the lives of students.

Kylie Haley Hannah John Elizabeth Richard Andrew Samantha Hanna Chase Ronald Carson Sutton Jake Cali Julia Grace

Akin Beard Beard Beard Beggs Beggs Bell Bland Bradford Brown Burr Cabe Cameron Chapman Cox Hawes Hendricks

Katherine John Andrew Joseph Mabrey Trevor Andrew Davis Benjamin Peyton Preston Brooke Kendall Annie Parker Peyton Harrison

Kaiser Mayers Meador Paxton Payne Payne Person Petty Phillips Price Price Reid Reppert Richmond Robinson Robinson Rogers

Claire Molly Scarlett Emily Ashley Sarah Abigail Michael Luke Arden Joshua Anna Christina Haley Meagan Rylie

Schmeltekopf Shirley Smith Starr Stricklin Swingler Traylor Tucker Twaddell Veach Wells Wicker Wicker Winkleman Wittner York

To make a donation for future scholarships, visit us at

baylorlinefoundation.com

38

Scholarship

Baylor Line Foundation

by Shelby Pipken

Emily Starr As an art history major with a minor in museum studies, Tyler senior Emily Starr hopes to change the way audiences engage with art. From a young age she developed a passion for art, specifically how it was displayed in museums and the way a person sees each piece. “My biggest dream is

taking the things that I love and think are incredible about art, and showing people who may not gravitate towards art just how much of an impact those parts of history are,” Starr said. “There are so many things to be learned from art, which is often seen as an old, pretty object sitting in a museum.” Starr comes from a long line of Baylor graduates, and while originally opposed to attending the same college as her family, she quickly realized Baylor was the place she felt most at home. During her time at Baylor, Starr has developed close relationships with a number of professors who have shaped her dreams for her future career. “Dr. DeLouche, who is the specialist of 19th century art at Baylor, has helped me find the part of art history that really interests and resonates with me,” Starr said. She also had the opportunity to work with Dr. Hornic, a Renaissance scholar, which was a unique and amazing experience.

Starr said one of the special things about Baylor professors is how available they are to each student, and how they make a point to get to know their students on a personal level. She said almost every professor has

given her something, either academic or personal encouragement, for which she will always be grateful.

After graduating in May, Starr hopes to return to receive a Master’s in Art History. As a recipient of the Baylor Line Foundation Scholarship for Legacy Scholars, Starr is grateful for the way the scholarship has provided the opportunity for additional experiences at Baylor.

Last summer she attended the Baylor in Great Britain program, which would not have been possible had she not received the scholarship. “This year, the scholarship

will help me when looking forward to graduate school expenses,” Starr added. While at Baylor, Starr

is a member of the Chi Omega sorority and also writes for two student-run publications — Buttoned Bears and Focus Magazine. One of her favorite parts about Baylor are the people she’s met. “All of the close friends I

have made here, I just know I’ll have for a long time after we’ve graduated,” Starr said. “While a lot of college students make really great friends, there is something about Baylor specifically that attracts some really incredible people.”

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David McHam Honored on 85th Birthday

by Tony Pederson

Former Baylor University Journalism Professor David McHam ‘58 was honored for his 85th birthday in a gathering of his former students. The event in July in Houston was organized by Tom Belden ‘70 and his wife, Janice Miller.

Most attending were from Baylor, but there were also former students from McHam’s time at Southern Methodist University and the University of Houston.

McHam retired in 2015. In his 54 years of teaching, he produced hundreds of journalists who became writers and editors at some of the nation’s top news organizations.

Those in attendance came from all over Texas, from both U.S. coasts and from as far away as Alaska.

“Given the influence David had teaching and mentoring some of the country’s best journalists, I wasn’t surprised at the great turnout,” said Belden, editor of The Baylor Lariat 1969-70 and who went on to a distinguished career at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

McHam had been honored with a 60th birthday party 25 years ago, also in Houston. His wife, Betty Lynn McHam ‘62, engineered that party and kept the event a surprise. This time, Belden made McHam a full partner in the planning and organization. By the time of the party, McHam had received RSVPs from 130 former students.

“It was overwhelming, and I was honored beyond belief,” McHam said. “When you teach as long as I did, you don’t ever stop to think about the implications over so many years. But it all adds up. We had people there from the first class I taught at Baylor in 1961 and the last class I taught at Houston in 2015. And it’s amazing to me the bonds students formed from across the generations. I think it says something about our experiences at Baylor.”

Belden said he and his wife also marveled at the age range of those in attendance. Those from Baylor were in their 60s and 70s, from SMU in their 40s to 60s, and those from the University of Houston in their 20s and 30s.

Over the years McHam taught reporting, feature writing, opinion writing, editing, communication history, literature of journalism, and communication law. In any curriculum his courses were considered among the most demanding. The biggest fear any student had was not being prepared for class and having to face McHam’s questions. But his courses were always taught with humor and in the spirit of what constitutes responsible journalism.

40

Alumni stories

Reid Johnson | Brett and Emily Mills | Ashley Killough

If you know of an interesting alumni with a unique and compelling story, send us a note at baylorline@baylorlinefoundation.com 41

The Willows Inn

Reid Johnson

I

n the summer of 2007, Reid Johnson was a Baylor University dropout, camping at national parks on the West Coast, in search of a way forward. Today, he is a Baylor graduate managing The Willows Inn, the finest restaurant in the Pacific Northwest. The journey to get there was almost as unique as the culinary experience he oversees.

Reid grew up in the Waco area and enrolled at Baylor in 2004 with academic scholarships. Despite his academic prowess, he quickly realized that the effort needed was different than anticipated.

“I didn’t do anything that was required to be a good student,” Reid said. “I didn’t go to my classes and study. I didn’t do my homework.”

After three semesters, Reid lost his academic scholarships by failing to meet GPA requirements. He opted to leave Baylor in good standing and enroll at McLennan Community College part-time while pursuing an entrepreneurial path.

Reid started a horse training and adventure company with a friend while also working other jobs to try and stay afloat financially. After another three semesters attempting to find his own way, he set off for a month-long national parks tour with some friends. He was somewhere in Oregon when he realized he needed to return to Baylor and finish his degree.

“I thought by not being in school and not having that take away my attention, I would be able to accomplish more,” Reid said. “I realized that I was actually limiting the doors that would be open to me by not finishing my schooling and getting my degree.”

The next fall, he re-enrolled at Baylor with an intense focus. By the spring he had earned back his scholarships and within two years he had completed his degree. “I actually graduated from Baylor in just three and a half years,” he mused.

Following his graduation, Reid worked in marketing at Baylor for Aramark before feeling the need to 42

by Luke Blount

escape his hometown. He briefly worked for a non-profit in the mountains of Colorado before returning to Texas to work for the Austin Film Festival.

Soon after, Reid once again felt the urge to go west and moved along with his girlfriend to Bellingham, Washington, in the northwest corner of the state.

Bellingham is about as far from Waco as you can get and still be in the continental United States. “My parents have told me that more than once,” Reid said with a chuckle.

Although his girlfriend would be attending a graduate school program, Reid moved with no job or prospects.

Just a few days after moving, he stumbled upon a listing for a part-time reservationist and marketing assistant for a local island-based restaurant and hotel called The Willows Inn. Reid applied, met with the owner and talked his way into a new position as the marketing and sales manager despite having never heard of its location on Lummi Island. Within 18 months, The Willows Inn became one of the most revered restaurants in America and Reid took over as general manager.

The success can be traced back to the arrival of Chef Blaine Wetzel who arrived just over a year before Reid moved to Washington. The culinary phenom won the national James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef in 2014 and followed that up with the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northwest. Since then, The Willows Inn has been rated the no. 1 restaurant in North America for two years running by Opinionated About Dining. The establishment appears on countless other lists and has been featured in every major foodrelated media entity imaginable.

The dining experience is truly one-of-a-kind and not just because it takes place on an island that is only accessible by ferry. The dinner service is 20 courses prepared from ingredients harvested directly from the island and the ocean. The Willows Inn has its own extensive farm and uses local fishermen to provide the fish and shellfish for each meal.

While Chef Blaine’s creations are the clear attraction to The Willows Inn, Reid keeps everything moving behind the scenes and helps create the overall vision for the guests not only at the restaurant, but also the inn.

“Reid is just scary smart, and he works his tail off,” Blaine said. “In a typical week he might do everything from hosting regular guests to building custom reservation software or negotiating with the neighboring Native American tribe, government agencies, publishers or international event coordinators.”

The challenges of providing round the clock hospitality on an island with limited resources is what excites Reid most about his work, he says.

“I try to make sure that everyone has what they need to do the job that they need to do,” Reid said. “That’s finding a way in the budget to make that possible. It is trying to make sure we hire the right people and then set the right expectation for the guests that join us.”

As news about The Willows Inn has spread, some celebrities and culinary stars have made the voyage on the Lummi Island Ferry to experience the unique atmosphere at the 100-year-old inn. But Reid isn’t any more worried about those guests than he is about the residents of Lummi Island.

“Having a community mindset is good in a place like this because it is like a family,” Reid said. He now lives on Lummi Island year-round with his wife, Katie, the girl who originally inspired him to make the journey from Texas.

The two are expecting their first child in August. “We are all out here on this tiny island, together, working a crazy, busy, seasonal schedule. I think that was ingrained into me in some way through growing up in Waco and going to Baylor: the idea of not just looking out for me, but looking out for all these people that are pulling together with me.”

To learn more, visit willows-inn.com 43

jesus said love Brett and Emily Mills

by Britain Seago

E

mily and Brett Mills lead an interesting life as worship leaders and the founders of Jesus Said Love. They’re a staple in the community, welcomed into local strip clubs and have three kids. In other words, they know what it’s like to walk in two different worlds.

But the Mills don’t see their life as a dichotomy; they see it as following Jesus’ footsteps. When their ministry was founded in 2003, God began stirring something in their hearts through what they saw in churches across America.

After leading worship in Austin one night, Emily (’99) was overwhelmed by the stories of former exotic entertainers and became burdened for the marginalized. On their way back to Waco, God pressed an opportunity on her heart: Go to the strip clubs and take Easter. What sounded wild at the time became an open door in God’s plan for them.

The Mills journey together started when they were still students at Baylor.

Brett (’98) led worship for more than 2,000 kids every Monday at the Hippodrome. One Monday, the service was held outside at Fountain Mall when the speakers blew. People began singing in small groups, filling the air with song. That’s when he heard a voice rise over the crowd. It was Emily Washmon.

44

“Where you’ll be used the most is not where your strengths are, but where your strengths and the needs of people intersect.”

That night Emily and Brett met on the lawn of Fountain Mall and later began leading together. In 2000 they married and traveled full time leading worship around the states.

Slowly, Emily said, “God began to put feet on the songs that we were writing.” During their journey, the Mills discovered that if you’re willing, God can do anything. Just because they were called to worship didn’t mean worship couldn’t take place in strip clubs. That’s how Jesus Said Love became what it is now.

Now, Jesus Said Love goes into strip clubs across Texas to build relationships and connect employees with community and spiritual resources. The Mills partake in monthly club outreaches, social work assistance, education, awareness, medical education, childcare and nutritional advocacy in Waco, Dallas, Bryan/College Station, San Antonio, Temple/Killeen, Houston, and (launching soon) Tyler.

Their mission is about seeing people as God’s creation without feeling the pressure to change them. God changes people, the Mills just love them.

“In the early years especially, reception was mixed,” Emily said. “Some of the women embraced the gesture while others ignored it. Management was wary, wanting to know the cost or the catch. More than anything, we were constantly asked, ‘Why? Why would you come into a place like this, with a love for women like these, with absolutely nothing to gain?’”

As God continues to replace their desires with their calling, Brett and Emily have seen every “yes” lead them exactly to what God wants them to do.

Brett said, “calling is what holds you in the dark days. The days that the paycheck doesn’t come—or there is no affirmation.”

Brett came to Baylor with a plan to become a doctor, and Emily wanted to be a broadcast journalist. They left as traveling worship leaders. And yet, looking back at the past years, the Mills faced many challenges where they had to tune out and tune into God’s voice.

“Where you’ll be used the most is not where your strengths are,” Emily said, “but where your strengths and the needs of people intersect.”

Jesus Said Love continues to expand as they say yes to new opportunities and walk out their calling.

You can find out more at jesussaidlove.com 45

reporting live

Ashley Killough

By Craig Cunningham

Long hours. Tight deadlines. Heated debates.

The stress of the daily news cycle.

These are all part of Ashley Killough’s normal.

B

efore she was a reporter and producer for CNN, Killough was a student reporter for The Lariat. She double-majored in international studies and journalism as part of the BIC program. “When I think about my time at Baylor, the relationships I built with professors are my most nostalgic memories,” she said. “I truly miss the supportive and intellectually challenging environment they fostered.”

46

That environment helped shape her as a journalist, and she credits a large group of professors for helping her win a Fulbright Scholarship, igniting her passion for the news, and staying sane through the stress of juggling a demanding academic schedule while pursuing her dreams.

Killough graduated from Baylor in 2009, then interned at The Chronicle of Higher Education in D.C. that summer. After moving to Armenia for a year on the Fulbright Scholarship, Killough returned for a grad degree in broadcast journalism at Columbia University. That opened the door for a job at CNN in 2011.

As the 2016 presidential race heated up, Killough was assigned to report on the Republican primaries. When Donald Trump secured

the nomination, she covered his campaign from March 2016 up until Election Day, and then through the transition to the White House.

That experience required her to fly around the country on the press plane, covering his speeches as an embed that acted as the eyes and ears for CNN at all of his events.

“I’ve loved getting to travel and see different parts of the country and talk to people all over the place,” she said. “It’s such a rare opportunity and it helps me understand this country, which better informs my reporting.”

During the campaign, Killough spent almost two years on the road and traveled to 43 states. While the life of a reporter can at times appear glamorous, the reality is that the work is demanding and exhausting.

“One thing I wasn’t prepared for was learning how to write while sitting in moving buses. That was pretty rough on the stomach during the campaign,” she said. “Joking aside, I often tell people working on a daily paper (The Lariat) was the best training I could have gotten.”

After the campaign concluded, Killough was reassigned to cover the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, where she continues to work today. While the long hours, tight deadlines, and heated debates don’t show any signs of slowing down, the work has been rewarding and fulfilling.

“I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot and go in depth on some of the most divisive issues in our country – gun control, immigration, foreign policy – for example, and I’ve met interesting, knowledgeable people on both sides,” she said. “Getting to cover these issues gives you a greater appreciation for how complex our country is, but also how lucky we are to live in a society that can debate freely – even if it gets intense and emotional at times.”

Ashley Killough’s reporting can be found at www.cnn.com/profiles/ashley-killough 47

From a young age, his destiny has been in front of him: adventure and capturing it in a frame.

Curtis Callaway has the World by the Frame

by Jon Platt

48

O

versized couches scatter the second floor of Castellaw Communications Center. In the spring and fall semesters, students set up shop here between their classes and a buzz fills the hallways.

In the summer, though, the buzz disappears. The hallways are empty, the couches lonely.

In early June, I sat on one of those couches waiting for Curtis Callaway, a senior lecturer at Baylor for Journalism, Public Relations, and New Media (JPRNM).

The linoleum floor and ceramic tile walls of Castellaw make every small thing an echo, especially the stride of Curtis’ boots as I heard him coming up the stairwell. Like these echoes, you are aware when Curtis is there. He is tall, engaging, confident.

Usually, he is on campus to teach and he wears a button-up shirt — one of those polyester fishing shirts by Columbia — in neutral colors, blue jeans, and brown loafers. This time, though, he is not teaching, coming into town from his farm for an errand and our interview. He dressed down. An old ballcap, t-shirt with grass clippings on the shoulder, and the scuffed boots show he had been working outside.

“It’s hot out there,” he said, and he smiled the unforced smile of a man living his best life. His smile is famous in the department.

In fact, almost everyone I interviewed mentioned it. How wide it is, how genuine it is, and how comfortable it can make his students. It lets them know he is not here to badger or crucify them.

Callaway teaches photography. He is one of three in the department who does so. Graduating in 1991 from the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara and working as a professional photographer for two decades, Callaway’s perspective is different from the other two professors, who have spent their lives more in the realm of photojournalism.

His method of teaching involves putting more “time and focus into each photo,” rather than “relying on circumstance.”

Students in a course with Callaway learn to obsess over details and bring emotion into what they shoot.

“He took me to the next level,” said Corrie Coleman, one of Callaway’s current students. “Because, with him, there is this crazy amount of obsession to detail.”

Rae Jefferson, a former student, called that level of attention “Callaway caliber.” She said he taught her, “If you want to be good, you have to be precise.”

Perhaps his smile also comes from the leftover joy of adventures. It lingers from memories. Curtis, his wife Kaye and his two daughters just returned from travelling across Italy. Last summer, he photographed on safari in Africa, but only after taking a group of students to Costa Rica in partnership with the environmental science department. Earlier this year, he and Kaye spent time swimming with whale sharks. A few weeks after their Italy trip, they were travelling again — this time to Maine.

49

rom his days with Cousteau, adventure followed him. And, since I’ve known him, he’s been around the world — either with a camera or complaining that he didn’t have one on him,” said Carol Perry, one of Callaway’s colleagues in the journalism department. Perry, also a senior lecturer, offices next door to Callaway in a tucked-away corner of Castellaw. “Curtis and Kaye should have the middle name ‘Adventure,’” Perry added.

Years before teaching at Baylor, Callaway did contract photography for the Jacques Cousteau Society, which specializes in marine biology exploration.

Callaway “dove into places people had never dove before.” For eight months out of the year, for seven years, it was all adventure. Callaway was one of the first American photographers allowed back into Vietnam. “We would be sailing from point A to point B and just stop at this random island,” he said, recalling one time he emerged from a dive and a native man in a canoe was thoroughly surprised by the diver and his gear.

Callaway worked directly with Jacques’ son, Jean Michel. On passenger ships, he gave lectures “on coral reef ecology, sharks, and marine mammals.”

He did live broadcasts for the passengers from underwater.

50

“(My family) grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” he told a magazine in Mansfield, where his family is from.

He also grew up traveling to visit grandparents in the Ozarks. His grandmother would line her grandboys up with easels, brushes, canvas, and teach them to paint the Arkansas scenery.

It was “truly fortuitous” that he came to teach at Baylor. Since his arrival, he has helped to broaden the abilities of the journalism department and strengthened the graduating classes.

“Our department’s strength, I believe, is our commitment to and our care for our students and Curtis shares this vision,” said Dr. Clark Baker, associate professor of JPRNM and a fellow teacher of photography with Callaway. “It is indeed a pleasure to work alongside him.”

While his record precedes him, his care for his students now defines him.

“One of the things I have to do as chair is review our faculty,” said Dr. Sara Stone, chair of the JPRNM department. “I can only think of one (student) evaluation that said, ‘This class was not for me.’ Only one. There are not many professors who can say that.

“He has made more of our students think about being photojournalists,” Stone continued. “For the most part, students end their semester saying, ‘This was the best class I took at Baylor.’ He opens doors for more students.”

Callaway also opens doors for students into his life.

He shares his ranch, his table, and his family regularly.

Showing them the personal side many workaholics like Callaway might not have.

That day in Castellaw, we intended to sit in Callaway’s office. But, since it is summer, there is little space for sitting—camera bags and equipment he will lend out to students in the fall line almost every available square inch.

Scattered on bookshelves are antique cameras, lenses, and photos. Facing the door is a shelf with a green album of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, a reminder of a former project. (Callaway made a documentary on Tommy Duncan, Wills’ singing partner and bandmember.

Or, should I say, of course Callaway made a documentary on Tommy Duncan.) The man has accomplished so much and, yet, he never stops pushing the horizon and never stops sharing along the way.

Because he obsesses, waits, shows his best, pulls out the best in others—simply put, because he cares to show he cares—Curtis changes the lives of those around him in monumental ways.

And all along the way, he is carrying his effortless, infectious smile.

Photos by Curtis Callaway

51

FOOTBALL

PRIMER

52

TEAM

THE 2017 COLLEGE F O OT B A L L S E A S O N K I C K E D O F F against the

background of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction. While Texans took stock of the reconstruction job ahead of them, few of the Baylor faithful likely anticipated that their football team would be experiencing its own metaphorical destruction and rebuild in the months ahead.

When thousands of Baylor fans gathered at McLane Stadium on the second day of September last year, they did so under the heady excitement of a program coming off a convincing bowl win and with several key pieces returning on both sides of the ball.

Following a difficult 2016 season replete with infighting among an interim coaching staff and a lingering cloud of scandal, there was a palpable sense of hope and cautious optimism about a new beginning under Head Coach Matt Rhule. And then, the unthinkable: a loss at the hands of an FCS program. Baylor’s first season opener loss since 2008, and a harbinger of things to come.

As the season progressed, the team was decimated by injuries, and a lack of depth across the board (particularly on the offensive line) grew increasingly apparent.

The number in the loss column continued to tick upward, and the sole win of the season wasn’t notched until game nine against Kansas.

And yet, there were glimpses of what Baylor football could be. While injuries and losses mounted, a young and inexperienced team continued to play hard. Heading into the 2018 season, there are reasons for optimism.

by Amy Pagitt

53

STRENGTHS Everything in football begins with the offensive line, and, this year, Baylor’s unit should be markedly improved.

“Almost the entire offensive line is returning, and they should be much improved,” explained former Baylor player and current KWTX Baylor Gameday personality Elliot Coffey. “I’m excited to see where [Clemson transfer] Jake Fruhmorgen fits in on this line.”

Colt Barber, Editor in Chief of SicEm365.com, said that Baylor’s greatest overall strength will be its offense, which is something that Baylor fans will be happy to see return to high efficiency.

“Baylor’s strength will definitely be their offensive skill positions,” Barber said. “I don’t want to specify one group over another because when you look through the guys they have coming back, the talent is there across the board. Denzel Mims, Chris Platt, JaMycal Hasty, John Lovett and Trestan Ebner have shown tremendous flash, and only Mims played the entire 2017 season without missing time with injury. Throw in Jalen Hurd, a proven producer at a high-major program, and Tyler Henderson as additional threats and I wouldn’t put many groups in the Big 12 ahead of them from top to bottom.”

P L AY E R S

TO WATC H

The obvious choice for this category is Jalen Hurd, a talentladen athlete who transferred to Baylor in the Summer of 2017 from Tennessee. Hurd was one of the top prospects in the 2014 recruiting class, and had a prolific career at running back for the Vols until he opted to transfer in 2016. It was a coup for Matt Rhule to land him, and early reports indicate that he could be the best player in the entire Big 12 for the 2018 season.

The primary reason cited by Hurd in his decision to leave Tennessee is that he wanted to make a position change from running back to receiver. It will be interesting to see how he is utilized in the Baylor offense.

According to Elliot Coffey, “This is the kind of gamebreaking talent that Baylor didn’t have last year.”

54

QUESTION MARKS

For Barber, it is difficult to speak definitively about either offensive or defensive schemes in the Matt Rhule era.

“Critiquing either the offensive or defensive schemes that were so new to the entire team last season is tough. We will get a better idea of what this scheme is all about after the 2018 season,” he explained.

Personnel-wise, as optimistic as Barber is about the offense in 2018, he is far from ready to make declarative statements about how improved the defense will be.

“As far as a particular position group that I’m not ready to get excited about yet, safety scares me. Not because there isn’t a talented player back there, but because they have a long way to go from last season to be considered good this year, and there aren’t a lot of new faces at the position after the offseason. Blake Lynch has made the move from cornerback to safety, and while he shows plenty of promise, he still has to go out there and execute. It will take a few games to really see what that group has.”

B R E A KO U T P L AY E R

Barber expects that Junior running back JaMycal Hasty could have a year to remember.

“He is healthy and ready to rock heading into fall camp.

He began carrying the load after he returned from injury last Fall, and he can be a perfect piece behind an offensive line that is still being groomed. Matt Rhule defers to the hot hand at running back as games get going, but Hasty is going to be the guy to start the season if he gets through fall camp healthy.”

BEST CASE/ WO R S T C A S E

As a former player, Elliot Coffey knows all too well how quickly the trajectory of a season can turn for the better or worse.

“Are we asking about wins? Of course we are. You do realize this is the hardest question to answer, because so many things change about these teams throughout the year. I believe this is a bowl-caliber team. Staying healthy will be huge. Charlie avoiding a sophomore slump will also be a game changer.”

Barber, too, highlights last season as a shining example of how much of a role luck can play in the way a season’s story unfolds.

“We know what the floor is as we watched Baylor live it last season. Could that happen again? A lot of things would have to go wrong again in my opinion.

The pieces to the puzzle are more clear and the table underneath them is sturdy. If Baylor has a season anywhere close to the same, the wheels are officially off.”

“Ultimately,” he continued, “this team has received a facelift and should enter 2018 with plenty of momentum from within. Charlie Brewer is the QB. There are clear primary, secondary, and tertiary receivers. The running backs are healthy, and a defensive scheme that was going to take at least a year to install the basics has been brewing for 18 months.

It’s hard to predict injuries and what happens to opponents, but Baylor’s ceiling could range anywhere from gaining bowl eligibility to winning eight games if things fall exactly right. Seven games might make the most sense when looking at the schedule.”

RECRUITING

N E WS

In a little more than a year and a half, Matt Rhule and his staff have proven themselves to be tremendous talent evaluators and recruiters, especially after landing a top-30 recruiting class for 2018 following a one-win season. Arguably the biggest coup for the staff in the most recent recruiting cycle was landing 2018 quarterback Gerry Bohannon, one of the best dual threat quarterbacks in the country for his class. Bohannon, an early enrollee, arrived on campus just in time to shore up the quarterback position when Baylor had only one scholarship quarterback on campus. He is Robert Griffin III-esque in stature and on the field.

With the advent of the new early signing period for high school athletes, Baylor is once again looking to have most of its recruiting class wrapped up by early December. After taking larger classes in both the 2017 and 2018 cycles, look for Baylor to sign fewer players.

While Baylor’s 2019 recruiting class will be small in number, do not expect the staff to deviate from its “type.” This staff seeks out players who possess exceptional speed and size.

2018

SCHEDULE

Abilene Christian at Baylor,

Baylor at Texas,

Baylor at UTSA,

Baylor at West Virginia, OCT.

Duke at Baylor,

Oklahoma State at Baylor,

AUG. 22 ND AT 7:00 p.m.

The 2018 season will kick off at 7 p.m. in Waco against Abilene Christian. As with the 2017 season, Baylor’s premiere non-conference matchup will be against Duke University, this time in Waco. Abilene Christian and UTSA will round out the non-conference slate, and Baylor will begin Big 12 play on September 22nd in Waco. Homecoming is scheduled for Baylor’s November 3rd game against Oklahoma State, and Baylor will conclude its season in Arlington, TX against Texas Tech on November 24th.

Photos Courtesy of Baylor Photography

SEPT. 8 TH AT 6:00 p.m.

SEPT. 15 TH AT 2:30 p.m.

Kansas at Baylor, SEPT. 22 ND TBA

Baylor at Oklahoma, SEPT. 29 TH TBA

Kansas State at Baylor, OCT. 6 TH TBA

OCT. 13 TH TBA

25 TH (THURS.) AT 6:00 p.m.

NOV. 3 RD (HOMECOMING) TBA

Baylor at Iowa State, NOV. 10 TH TBA

TCU at Baylor,

NOV. 17 TH TBA

Baylor vs Texas Tech at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, NOV. 24 TH TBA

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REMEMBERING

T

here is an old story about a small, seemingly insignificant seed that was planted and then grew up yielding fruit abundantly and offering shelter for birds to build their nests and bring up their young.

This story is a parable of Bill Hillis’ life, who along with his wife Argye, provided a nourishing context for those who came their way, helping them to find shelter and to live fruitfully and creatively. When you review their professional lives, you are amazed at their accomplishments and at the many places in the world where they sank down meaningful roots and created healthy life conditions in support of those with whom they worked. To be sure, they remained very busy.

In fact, Bill told me that the intensity of their schedules was such that on one occasion he and Argye happened to meet each other, by accident, in the airport in Chicago as they were changing flights. Neither knew the other was even scheduled to travel but here they ran into each other on o ne of their many p rofessional journeys. They decided that from then on, they would at least find time to share their schedules so each would know where the other was going to be.

They lived in several places in the U.S. as well as in Europe, Africa and India, absorbing the history and culture of those places into their rich understanding of life and its many complexities. This in turn made their work and relationships more fruitful as they became more aware of cultural differences and the need for encouragement and support.

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Bill Hillis

A CREATIVE, FRUITFUL LIFE

by Dr. William F. Cooper

Through all this, Bill’s work in Biology led to significant scientific discoveries which were widely recognized.

Another deeply appreciated creation on his part was the course he taught with Professors Kay Toombs and Ann Miller. This particular course brought together the disciplines of Philosophy, Literature and Biology.

The interaction of these academic disciplines enhanced the learning experience of the students as well as the faculty. As part of the course work, each student would also explore through serious research a particular disease with attention not only to its chemical and biological dimensions but also to the psychological and social impact of the disease on the person. The impact of the course on the students was remarkable, creating a new understanding of human health and its impairment as well as a recognition of the crucial role of interdisciplinary learning in the educational experience.

At the same time, students were introduced to the decisive role research plays in their learning as they focused in on the details of a particular disease.

This course became the foundation for the program in Medical Humanities at Baylor, a program which currently guides the academic careers of over 200 students who plan to enter one of the healthcare professions.

Bill and Argye left the world a better place.

The quality of their life investment created new redemptive dimensions in the places they lived and worked. Learning took on new horizons and fascinating depths as students probed the details of the recesses of life. The relationships Bill and Argye nourished brought strength to their communal and professional bonds. Baylor University has become a more genuine learning community through the gifts they wove into our shared heritage.

F

or more than half a century in the newspaper business, 1972 journalism graduate David McCollum let his fingers do the talking through some 11,000 sports columns and countless game stories and features. The fingers that typed those stories and the heart that gave those accounts life were stilled April 30 with his passing in North Little Rock.

At the time of his death, David was one of the most honored sports writers in Arkansas history, earning more than 200 writing awards, primarily at the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway, Arkansas, where he worked from 1982 until his passing, and before that at the Arkansas Democrat and the Orange (Texas) Leader.

David was inducted into the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and named Arkansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters in 2008. Just last year he received the “Golden 50 Award” from the Arkansas Press Association for his half century in newspaper journalism.

In the fall of 1968 David enrolled at Baylor where he and I first met and bonded as the two journalism majors most interested in sports in our class. We studied under the tutelage of legendary Texas journalism professor David McHam and our first Lariat bylines appeared on the same October day that fall.

That spring semester, we alternated three nights a week as the Lariat’s night editor, a fancy name for the proofreader who put the paper to bed in the wee hours of the morning.

In a profession of high stress and often exaggerated egos, David was an anomaly, easy going and with little ego, other than the pride he took in his work. As sophomores, he became sports editor and penned his first sports column, appropriately named “McCollum’s Column.” David would publish sports commentary and observations under that title for the next 50 years.

By our senior year I had gone to work full time for the Waco

understand what made David special not just as a sports writer but more so as a journalist: He was not about scores and stats as much as about sports as a social barometer of the human condition. His sports writing was strong on analysis and even stronger on context. In Orange he covered an integrated football game where the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross outside the stadium. He was in the Astrodome when Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in the much ballyhooed “Battle of the Sexes.” David later described the event as “Rosie the Riveter on steroids.”

After almost five years in Orange, David moved to Little Rock as sports editor of the Arkansas Democrat for five years, then got caught up in the newspaper downsizing of the early 1980s. He moved to the Log Cabin Democrat in nearby Conway so his wife, Beverly, could keep her job and they could raise their son, Gavin. At the Log Cabin Democrat, he covered University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College athletics for the next 36 years. Between the two Arkansas papers, he reported on NCAA basketball championships, the Salt Lake City Olympics and multiple bowl games. Additionally, he covered the first inauguration of Arkansas native Bill Clinton as President of the United States. He compared the inaugural festivities to those of a bowl game.

David always had big-city newspaper talent but never the ego that believed bigger was necessarily better.

He loved covering local athletes and contributing to his community and his church, where he was a deacon and Sunday School teacher.

He cherished Baylor, served several years as a director of the Baylor Alumni Association and returned to campus whenever he could. The last time I saw him was at our 45th class reunion dinner last fall, appropriately

1950-2018

David McCollum News-Tribune and David resumed his mantle as sports editor. He always had an eye for detail and an encyclopedic memory for the odd facts and figures of sports. In his last column for the Lariat, he reported that in his three years as sports editor during the Bill Beall era, he had witnessed three intentional safeties in football, two football coach hunts and a football team that played a half without a first down.

“I have seen the Baylor fan run the gamut of emotions from high optimism to sheer frustration to outright cynicism to cautious optimism,” he wrote in that final collegiate column.

After we graduated, our first professional jobs were with the Orange Leader, where I worked on the news side covering the city beat and David continued in sports. In Orange I began to

enough in McLane Stadium, where we dined with two former athletes and another Lariat reporter. Back home, he wrote another column, noting that he was the only one of us “still into games.” But David’s reportage transcended games and elevated any topic to the level of art.

Our final semester at Baylor, David decided to pen a feature on me. After he finished the task, he called it challenging to write about a friend and feared he didn’t do me justice. He asked if I would mind if he spiked the story.

I said it was his call, and that story never ran.

This story was published, and now I know how he felt.

I fear I failed to do David justice, not only as a journalist and writer but more so as a human being and friend.

by Preston Lewis 57

Alumni-Elected Regents In May of 2018, Baylor announced the election of two alumni-elected regents. This is an important responsibility for alumni to have a voice in Baylor’s leadership. After six worthy candidates were put forward, Baylor alumni selected Katie Jo Luningham and Gordon Wilkerson to serve terms on the Board. It is important that all alumni learn the process of nominating and voting for alumni-elected regents, and remain involved year after year to ensure representation on the Board of Regents. For a quick refresher, here’s a breakdown of the calendar.

October-November : Nominations

Late April-Early May : Alumni vote

December-March : Nominations

June 1 : Winners are announced and new alumni-elected regents begin service

are accepted.

on candidates.

are reviewed, and candidates are notified.

April : Candidates are announced to the public.

For more information about how to become involved, visit baylor.edu/alumni/regents

Prior to this year’s election, the Baylor Line Foundation spoke to all six candidates.

To read those questions and answers, visit us at Baylorlinefoundation.com.

Here’s a few highlights from winners Katie Jo Luningham and Gordon Wilkerson.

Katie Jo Luningham “The Board is the overall, primary financial steward of the institution.

This requires a focus on both the immediate governance items (e.g., current tuition rates, faculty and staff salaries and benefits, financial aid) and future items, like planning for the forthcoming needs of an institution.

The burden is a difficult one to balance: How do we make a Baylor education affordable and accessible while also providing a safe, Christcentered, high-quality, comprehensive educational experience for current and future students? And how do we do this in an intentional way that aligns Baylor’s resources with our unique institutional priorities and safeguards the University’s financial security for future generations of Bears? A robust strategic plan is critical. Innovation is essential. A strong endowment is key. Engaged administration, students, faculty, staff and alumni are necessary.”

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Gordon Wilkerson “Transparency is an integral component of leadership.

Baylor has undertaken changes in its governance procedures which have significantly improved transparency within the board. All board members are encouraged to attend all committee meetings. All board members may participate in executive committee meetings. Certain aspects of board service require confidentiality and non-disclosure. President Livingstone, Chairman Allison and the board as a whole are continuing efforts to improve communications with Baylor’s many and diverse constituencies.

It’s critical that Regents remember that they serve the Baylor Family. I remember as a freshman being part of a small group of Baylor students Judge Abner McCall addressed at First Baptist Church one Sunday evening. A man who uniquely balanced incredible brilliance with an equal measure of humility, Judge McCall noted that in his storied career at Baylor, staff and faculty had a tendency to believe that they worked for him. He paused in his delivery, making eye contact with each of us. “That’s not correct,” he said. “In reality, I work for the faculty and staff. I work for you and your families.” In that moment we observed a living illustration of servant leadership, who remains a stellar example for today.”

OBITUARIES

Doris G. Benton Aug. 13, 1928 - May 16, 2018. Doris Benton, 89, of Riesel, passed away Wednesday, May 16, 2018. A Celebration of Life will be at 7:00 p.m., Friday, May 18, at First Baptist Church Riesel, 301 Edwards St, Riesel, TX, with Pastor Gerry Davis officiating. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to First Baptist Church Riesel Youth Ministry.

Jane Hammack Browning of Edna, TX, began her heavenly journey on March 26, 2016 at the age of 74. Jane’s great loves were her family, church and dear friends. Her family fondly remembers her love of poetry and the family gatherings she hosted. Jane loved playing bridge, attending the UMW circle meetings and the Wine and Read gatherings with her friends.

Jane taught elementary school for 41 years and often shared one of her favorite quotes by Edwin Markham with her students: ‘There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the life of others comes back into our own.’

Dr. Thomas O. Eller, MD, a longtime Plano physician, died Monday, January 8, 2018. Dr. Eller was born March 29, 1926 to Ethel and Jacob Eller in Clovis, New Mexico. He was a graduate of Clovis High School and attended Eastern New Mexico University. He held a Bachelor of Science degree from Baylor University and a Doctor of Medicine degree from Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston. After 42 years of service to his community, he retired from the practice of family medicine in 1996. During his years of practice, Dr. Eller was active in the Collin County Medical Society of the Texas Medical Association. He served several terms as president and as secretary treasurer of the association. He was accorded Honorary Membership in the Texas Medical Association in 1996.

He was also active in the Red River Chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He served that organization several times as president and as secretary treasurer. Dr. Eller became a Charter Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians in 1972 and became a Life Member in 1996. He was a charter member of the medical staff of Plano General Hospital (now Medical City of Plano), and served as Chief of the Medical Staff there in 1977. He served on the development committee for Rehab South Hospital. Dr. Eller proudly served in the United State Navy during World War II and later briefly served as a medical officer.

Dr. Eller was a devoted husband and father. When his children were at home, he enjoyed taking them on trips for vacation and other family activities such as swimming and hiking.

The family suggests that memorials be made to The First Christian Church, 813 East 15th Street, Plano, TX

Visit us at baylorlinefoundation.com to submit your notes, events, and obituaries.

William C. (Bill) Knighton of Longview, Texas, went to be with the Lord on June 13, 2018. Born at home on December 31, 1929, in Canyon, Texas, to Thomas H. Knighton and Grace Cavness Knighton, he died at home in Longview. Bill attended West Texas State College Demonstration School and graduated from high school in 1946. He was a graduate of Wayland Baptist University where he played basketball and ran track. It was at Wayland where Bill met Bettye Sharpley whom he married in 1949. Their home was established in Canyon where they raised a family of three children. The Knighton family lived in Canyon until 1967 when they moved to Miami, Florida, then Longview, Texas, and Hideaway, Texas, and ultimately back to Longview at Buckner Westminster Place.

Mr. Knighton began his working career while a teenager as a soda jerk at the Buffalo Drug in Canyon, his parents’ business. As an adult he was employed as a Travelers insurance adjuster for 35 years before retiring. Bill was well known as a tenor soloist and always sang in church choirs. He was also an avid golfer and enjoyed fly fishing in the mountains of Colorado. Bill loved participating in these activities with the people he loved, finding joy in fun, practical jokes that drew family and friends close to him.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorials to one of the following charities: Buckner Children and Family Services, 700 N. Pearl St., Suite 1200, Dallas, TX, 75201 Wesley McCabe Methodist Church, 1115 S. Mobberly Ave., Longview, TX 75602 Hideaway Lake Community Church, 1500 Lake Park Circle, Hideaway, TX 75771

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Patricia Ann (Robbins) Johnson, a respected scientist and beloved teacher, who specialized in obesity, molecular and cellular research, died from complications of a serious fall. She was surrounded by her loving family. She was 87 years old. She has been a resident of Davis, CA, since 1989 although she spent eight years in Santa Cruz, CA, and four in Honolulu, HI. Prior to her time in California she was a resident of Poughkeepsie, NY for over 25 years.

Pat was born in Waco, where she graduated from Waco public schools and then was awarded both a B.S. ’52 and M.S. ‘54 in biological sciences from Baylor University. Pat taught high school science in Texas for several years before continuing her education.

She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1966 in Nutritional Biochemistry. She accepted an entry level faculty position at Vassar College in 1964. She was a member of the Vassar faculty for 26 years where she taught thousands of biology students, conducted research funded by NIH grants and published many articles, was promoted to full professor, was awarded the Keenan endowed chair in biology, became department chair and subsequently the Associate Dean of the College. She also held an appointment as an Adjunct Professor at The Rockefeller University in NYC. She moved to the University of California, Davis in 1990 where she served for over 10 years as an Adjunct Professor of Nutrition, conducted well-funded and well-cited research in collaboration with several graduate students and a number of her Davis colleagues. She also taught introductory biology to many UC Davis students and gastrointestinal physiology to advanced students, many of whom have gone on to graduate and medical school. Upon her retirement, Pat developed her love of bridge and became a life master, attaining bronze status. In Santa Cruz she was very active in the bridge club and thoroughly enjoyed all of the many friends she made playing bridge and interacting with new friends at UC Santa Cruz.

She continued her love of bridge while in Hawaii, making numerous new friends and playing duplicate bridge nearly daily.

Although she derived great satisfaction from her career, its associated travel adventures, her bridge games, and many students, her greatest joys came from watching her family’s successes. She was particularly enjoying the antics of her Face Timing great grandchildren. Her children and her life partner were grateful to spend much of her last weeks with her at her home in Davis under the care of UCDMC hospice.

Pat was adored by so many family and friends of all kinds. As a biologist, she was a lover of life, large and small. She cultivated many friends, touched many lives in a special way that embraced love, understanding and pure joy.

If you wish to donate in her memory, please support the Patricia Robbins Johnson scholarship at UC Santa Cruz Foundation, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, UC Davis Health System Hospice Memorial Fund or the Cancer Center at the University of Hawaii Foundation, 244 Dole St., Honolulu, HI 96822.

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Laura Virginia Tillotson, 84, a longtime resident of Brevard, peacefully passed into eternal rest Dec. 12, 2017.

Known as “Ginny,” “Tillie,” and “Miss Tilly,” she leaves behind a world made brighter by her smile, more beautiful through her music, funnier with her ever-present humor and happier with her laughter.

Growing up next to her grandparent’s boarding house, The Cottage Hotel, she played clarinet in high school and received a scholarship from James Pfohl to attend Transylvania Music Camp, today’s Brevard Music Center. She would return to Brevard Music Center every summer after, through college and graduate school and into her teaching career.

She earned her Bachelor of Music Degree from Baylor University in Texas, her Master of Music Degree at the University of Illinois, pursued doctoral studies at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Jacksonville University, Northwestern University and Frostburg State University and studied conducting on multiple overseas trips.

She began teaching in Jacksonville, Florida before returning to North Carolina to join the faculty at the Brevard College of Music, where she spent over three decades teaching woodwinds, directing concert bands and eventually, chairing the Fine Arts department. In her “spare” time, she served on Brevard Music Center’s artist faculty and performed as principal clarinetist (Asheville Symphony, Brevard Chamber Orchestra, Brevard Music Center).

From 1980 until 2001, she was the conductor and artistic director of the Brevard Chamber Orchestra (predecessor of Brevard Philharmonic). Under her direction, the Brevard Philharmonic grew into a renowned 55-piece orchestra with guest artists as varied as Phyllis Diller and Robert Moog.

Enjoying a remarkable rapport with audiences, she also conducted the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 1993. She retired in 2001.

In 2005, the Brevard Chamber Orchestra Association honored her with a Golden Baton and conductor emeritus status.

“The much-loved Tillotson relished the moment among old friends and delivered very funny remarks that kept all the hearts in check.”

In 2011, the Brevard Philharmonic honored her during its 35th anniversary celebration, an observer noting that “a conversation with Tillotson is peppered with comic anecdotes and quick-witted come-backs that, while delivered gently, showcase her wicked sense of humor and love of life.”

In 2016, she published her memoirs, “Conducting Matters, a Sonata of Life.”

Accomplished musician, composer, conductor, author, sister and friend, she was above all an educator who found joy inspiring young people to explore the magical world of music. Many of the students nurtured would attend prestigious conservatories and pursue careers in music, some becoming teachers, band leaders and professional performers.

Miss Tilly will be missed by many whose lives she touched.

Online condolences may be left at www.moodyconnollyfuneralhome.com

Photo Courtesy of Baylor Photography

TH E BAY LOR LIN E | S UMMER 2018

CONTRIBUTORS S pecial Th a nks t o Dr. Linda Livingstone Dr. Gary Carini Dr. Kimberly Kellison Baylor Photography Robert F. Darden, Wilson Fielder’s Last Assignment Kathryn Lairmore, Artist “She Stands” June Zaner, Rhythms Katherine Makowsky, Cover Art, Illuminate Sarah Barrientos, Photography W. Richard Turner, To Be Or Not To Be Shelby Pipken, Emily Starr Luke Blount, Reid Johnson Britain Seago, Brett and Emily Mills Jon Platt, Curtis Callaway Amy Pagitt, Football Primer Dr. William F. Cooper, Remembering Dr. Bill Hilli s Preston Lewis, Remembering David McCollum

These are some of the talented and passionate people who contributed to the stories in this magazine.

Are you a writer, photographer, or artist?

Get in touch with us at baylorline@baylorlinefoundation.com

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W I L L YO U B E C O M I N G T O W A C O F O R HOMECOMING ON NOVEMBER 3RD? M A K E S U R E T O S T O P B Y O U R TA I L G AT E OUTSIDE THE TEXAS SPORTS HALL OF F A M E . W E ’ D L O V E T O S E E YO U T H E R E !

Wh at wi ll we fin d in t h e

T H E B AY L O R L I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 1 8

LIGHT?